Gertitude
I'd like to say thank-you to my past self of the last two years. I have made some amazing strides with ERE and my meditation practice. I have become a micro-Gert at a permaculture farm, and going forward I can play and experiment and land wherever my curiosity takes me.
From where I stand now, there are basically five careers that I want to have.
1) Mindfulness teacher and researcher
My meditation journey has been one of the most profound things I've ever experienced. Though I'm far from the Buddha, I'd like to share what I know and help the field progress. The University of Arizona is currently studying whether noninvasive ultrasound stimulation can be used as "meditation training wheels" to help people get to the good stuff without having to spend 20 years in a cave. I'm finishing up a literature review investigating whether mindfulness and psilocybin have common neural effects.
2) Permaculturalist
Diving into ERE has made me much more aware of peak [resource] and climate change, and that knowledge confers responsibility. I now know enough that I cannot not do something.
3) Anthropologist
Everyone knows the Amazon is being cut down, but a less discussed issue is the cultural destruction that goes along with it. Last time I checked the stats, half of the world's 7000 languages were on track to disappear within a generation. I furthermore believe that an anthropological perspective could help understand how to effectively get a meme to spread throughout a culture, which has essentially been the failure of the ecological movement. In Peter Kalmus' book
Being the Change, he talks about how he believes social scientists to be more important than climate scientists for the future of the environmental movement. As a longtime language and history nerd, I think this is the best track for me to go down.
4) Personal Trainer
I am fortunate to be young and healthy, but I know that there are areas I could improve. And the earlier I establish good habits, the better. The fittest I have ever been was when I did gymnastics in high school; I'd like to work back towards that.
When the pandemic began, I switched my main form of exercise from strength training to yoga. This means I got a lot more flexible (I can lick my toes for the first time in years!) but am now basically a stretchy twig. Liebig's Law of the Minimum applies here—by far my weakest link is my diet. We eat dinner together here on the farm, and most of our meals are hearty meat-and-potatoes-style meals. Since I'm vegetarian, this means that >90% of my diet recently has been carbs, which just doesn't work for me. There's also junk food in the house, and I've been indulging.
By this time next year, I'd like to be in the best shape I've ever been in. In order for this to happen, I have to put together a plan. Here's what I got so far:
- Stock up a healthy food pantry in my room. Nuts, fruits, vegetables, beans, rice, mushrooms. Make sure to include healthy snacks for when I don't have much time to cook.
- Add strength training back into my training routine. It is a fairly long bike ride to the gym, so this may just be once a week at first
- Start looking for a martial arts school. Of particular interest to me are capoeira and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Musician
I have a deep love of the piano, and got pretty good when I was a kid, but my piano teacher died before I felt like I met my fullest potential. And when I got to high school, it was of course unthinkable and prohibited to be taking two languages
and band, so I didn't take any more music classes. In my early piano training I got pretty good at reading sheet music and learning how to play it, including some fairly complicated pieces like Scott Joplin's
Maple Leaf Rag, but I never got a good grounding in music theory or a deeper understanding of the music. Like, when other musicians got together to jam, I couldn't participate because I had just learned how to memorize songs. I want to learn how to jam, dammit!
Other piano inspirations include:
- All the songs on Buena Vista Social Club
- The pianist in Theo Katzman's YouTube videos
- Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
- Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
- Mozart's Rondo alla Turca
- Pete Seeger and American folk music. I love this stuff, even though it's usually more banjo-focused than piano.
I don't think I'll have the bandwidth be able to do a serious dive into piano until 2022, but it remains a part of my web of goals nonetheless.
Shoutout to ERE and Renaissance Overwhelm
I'm extremely grateful to Jacob; if it weren't for his work I wouldn't be in a position to pursue
any of this, much less all of it. But as it happens, I'm twenty years old and I feel like the world's my oyster. Thank you @jacob, sending you love!
However, I must admit that in recent days I have felt overwhelm and self-doubt when thinking of pursuing all this. Questioning whether I'm even capable of it at all, in fact. It'll be a long journey. In the modern world with our hyperspecialization, is it even
possible to make meaningful contributions to five different fields? Though Jacob's criticisms of specialization are certainly valid, the Renaissance ideal should not be developing breadth at the sake of depth.
Though in a way, the hard part is over. What remains is to show up and consistently put in the work, and stick with it until the end of the journey.
Education of a Reluctant Businessman
At the recommendation of @Western Red Cedar's journal, I read the introduction to Yvon Chouinard's book
Let My People Go Surfing on a pdf I found. The rest of the book was not available online, so I ordered a used copy from Amazon. I have not yet read the whole book, but the introduction convinced me that it is in fact possible to be a small business owner without sacrificing my anti-capitalist ideals.
From the intro:
I'vebeen a businessman for almost sixty years. It's as difficult for me to say those words as it is for someone to admit being an alcoholic or a lawyer. I've never respected the profession. It's business that has to take the majority of the blame for being the enemy of nature, for destroying native cultures, for taking from the poor and giving to the rich, and for poisoning the earth with the effluent from its factories.
Yet business can produce food, cure disease, control population, employ people, and generally enrich our lives. And it can do these good things and make a profit without losing its soul.
Another quote I liked, which is certainly relevant to ERE and my own life:
I learned at an early age that it's better to invent your own game; then you can always be a winner.
I'll have more detailed thoughts after I've actually read the book, but the important thing is that I am now okay using small business ownership as the income-generation node of my system, and I don't have any ethical qualms about doing so. Only time will tell if that's the path I end up going down, but the door is now open and I consider it a legitimate possibility.
Miscellaneous
I'm due to get my second shot soon; quite happy about that. My neuroscience project is due on Monday, and then the plan for the summer is to save money and learn permaculture. I have been getting more landscaping and translation work, so my income is homeotelic with my web of goals. After five years of resisting, I have decided to finally get my driver's license. At this point, continuing on a regenerative lifestyle path will require me to travel more within the region in order to learn. For me, it's a good example of the transition ethic.
I've planned as far out as the fall. I'm going to Canada to speak with an anthropologist; my steps after that will all depend on our conversation.
Peace and love everyone! Hope you all are well.
-- Roaming Francis