Venkatesh Rao (Twitter)My lifestyle could reasonably be called stochastic semi-retirement, trading money for time in a very unpredictable way to make room for doing things for which there is absolutely no economic demand. That, or it’s a very poorly tuned freemium hustle.
A short, but useful essay (in the guise of a Tweetstorm) about “solving for life”.
While this is focused on how one could/should help others, it can easily be applied to one’s own life. This is a fantastic reframing for how we should treat others not only with compassion, but with some additional pragmatism.
In some sense, I can also see the outlines of why the IndieWeb in general and idea of building blocks and itches in particular is so useful and powerful. While people saying “just move to platform x” (because it works for them) is lovely from their perspective, it doesn’t necessarily satisfy the needs and wants of the person for whom they’re giving the advice. While it can be helpful to give them some ideas, they’ll need to do their own research and make the space for themselves to figure out what their desires, needs, and the constraints in their life will allow. Being able to put some small and simple pieces together in a way that will work for them is much better than a some monolith that will be much less penetrable.
Perhaps it may not be as transparent to you as I may have found it, but just yesterday I was reading a thread by Venkatesh Rao about the idea of “solving for life”. While it focuses on how we treat and deal with others, I think it could also apply to how we treat ourselves, and as such it may be useful framing for you while reflecting about your flânerie experiment. I thought of it specifically where you said, “”
I’m still thinking about the broader implications of the essay and want to revisit it a few more times, but it had an interesting concept which seems worth considering further.