There Is Wisdom in The Space | #174

March 19th, 2022: Greetings from Austin. I wandered around most of the week checking out the South by Southwest music festival which has been far cooler than I imagined. This was mostly due to my cousin who’s attending for the tenth or so time who helped me discover a number of cool bands I never would have otherwise seen in person.

This also felt like a special post-covid celebration and it was so moving to see so many musicians excited to perform and create coming to Austin from all around the world. Here’s a picture of Angie and me last night at the Kygo show in an outdoor park in Austin.

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#1 There is wisdom in the space

After quitting my job in 2017, I had a few months where I didn’t really have any work to do. Despite giving three months’ notice, I had failed to land any freelance gigs.

In those first months, I had a lot of time and very little to do. I wrote a bit, wandered, and hung out with my grandmother but most of my time was unscheduled. There was only so much networking I could do to try to land a gig and my curiosity had not yet led me to a number of things I enjoy doing.

That space was intoxicating. It seemed to contain the essence of everything I felt missing from my life for the previous few years and much of my journey over the last five years has been inspired by this realization.

There is wisdom in the space.

I eventually became busier but still with much more space than my previously employed existence. It still shocks me how much less mindshare being self-employed seems to take up for me than giving a fixed weekly block of attention to a company.

As those first few freelance projects were coming to a close, I had a choice. I could run the same playbook and try to double down on my success as a freelancer or I could lean into the space. If you’ve read a bit of my writing or my book you know which direction I chose. From January to April 2020 by stopping looking for work, I unintentionally created a non-work sabbatical. I woke up each day doing what I felt like doing. This was even better than those first few months because I had confidence that if I needed to make money I could shift back to freelance mode.

In those months I became confident that I wanted to continue to explore and to lean into getting lost. I wanted to wander and to see where life would take me. This is only so easy in your home country and is likely what pulled me towards Asia. There is something natural to feeling lost while living abroad that is hard to experience in your home country. Feeling lost at home often also feels like failing.

We are all wired with certain cultural scripts about what a “good” person is supposed to be doing yet when you live in another country there is enough variation that you simply think about it less. This is also why sabbaticals might not deliver their promised results if you don’t leave familiar surroundings.

In October of last year, I knew that we’d be making an indefinite move back to the US. I wrote about how I shifted into “freelance mode,” trying to network with companies and follow up on leads to do paid work. This has more or less been a success and the projects I’ve landed in the first three months of the year will guarantee that I end the year at least at breakeven with my cost of living (this has been my main goal - keep the journey going, don’t burn down cash).

The challenge, however, has been trying to lean back in the other direction and create space again. Last year I started doing seventh-week sabbaticals inspired by Sean McCabe (our podcast about this here) and I found them to be a great addition to the pathless path. I was able to pause and reflect during those weeks. This was an important part of my book journey too as it enabled me to pause to see where I was within the whole project.

In February, I had a sabbatical week blocked on my calendar but slowly it started to fill up with a client project and other meetings. One exception here and another exception there and suddenly I had 10-11 commitments on my calendar.

As my work slowed down this past week, I was finally able to take a sabbatical week. Yet it was still hard to disconnect. In Austin, I’ve found a vibrant social scene and have had increasing numbers of people wanting to connect and hang out. This is great but it’s also meant my calendar is being filled up with commitments. One person I wanted to meet texted me to see if I was available. I told him:

“I’m taking a week off to wander without scheduling anything. If you text me later and I’m free I’m happy to meet up if we are close.”

I felt bad saying this but he was intrigued. He wanted to learn more when we eventually did hang out.

How do you find the space in a life where we tend to get so busy?

It’s hard and I don’t have a good answer but I do know that over time it’s something worth fighting for. Every time I create space in my life, interesting things usually emerge.

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#2 My “Creative Engine”

I updated my essay on my personal “creative engine” which is the virtuous cycle that I’ve stumbled into that lets me create all sorts of stuff while making my life better.

It involves five key parts:

1. Filter content input for high-quality content

2. Filter ideas through my curiosity-first “second brain” approach

3. Write, create & synthesize ideas

4. Publish and ship ideas

5. Feedback & conversations

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#3 Degrees

Tyler Cowen wrote about how the State of Maryland is no longer requiring college degrees for jobs. If you’ve read the intro of my book you’ll know why I think this is a great thing. Here is how they are framing it:

As an alternative qualification, Maryland will seek out “STARs” (Skilled Through Alternative Routes) — those who are “age 25 or older, active in the labor force, have a high school diploma or equivalent, and have developed their skills through alternative routes such as community college, apprenticeships, military service, boot camps, and most commonly, on-the-job.”

Here is Cowen’s take:

On average, more education probably does correlate with better job performance — but there are a lot of exceptions. If U.S. society wants to boost opportunity for everyone, it needs to work harder to spot those exceptions and act on that knowledge. In a world where so much information and so many diverse forms of certification are available, there are far better ways to assess a candidate than asking the binary question of whether they have a four-year degree.

I think this is spot on.

I’ve written in the past about the degree gap, the bizarre disconnect between those actually employed, and the number of jobs listed that require a BA.

For production workers specifically:

If you want to read my previous post on this from a couple of years ago you can find that here.

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#4 Links

Angie is taking Write of Passage and just published her first essay in English about finding self-love through IFS. It’s good and I’m impressed!

Jonny Miller’s interview with Charles Eisenstein was great, highly recommend.

Greg Galant and Matt Mullenweg launched the “work remotely forever pledge.” It will be really interesting to see what kind of differential advantages or disadvantages emerge from the companies that committed to fully remote in 2020.

I started reading Jedd McKenna’s Spiritual Enlightenment - The Damnedest Thing. Here is a quote:

but the general pattern is always the same: The truth, though, is that nothing is really wrong. Nothing is ever wrong and nothing can be wrong. It's not even wrong to believe that something is wrong. Wrong is simply not possible

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