Newsletter No. 6

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I flew to California on Monday for work. I started my day at 5 AM in Florida, flew seven hours, then spent five more hours walking through a warehouse. I had been going for fifteen hours straight which left me sapped out of energy by the early California evening. So I excused myself from group dinner invitations, checked into the hotel and went to bed.

I awoke Tuesday morning at 2:30 AM California time which is 5:30 AM in Florida, my usual waking up time. Sleeping-in has a paradoxical effect on me — it makes me groggy for the rest of the day. On days when I sleep-in, I spend nursing a low-grade headache. With the clock showing 2:30 AM I knew sleeping-in would be a disaster for the busy day ahead of me. So I decided to commit. I got out of bed, fiddled with the little coffee machine, and sat down with my book.

The book was Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. I read around 80 pages between 3 AM and 6 AM. In Caste, the author makes a strong case to identify the role that long standing caste systems play in American and Indian societies, and the role it played in Nazi Germany. I was naturally hooked to the topic as I had grown up in India under the Caste system. It was a heavy book and I was grateful that the quietness of the early hour opened the space for the chaotic humanity the book exposed.

I was in bed early that evening and I woke up early on Wednesday again. I repeated this early morning reading schedule for the entire duration of my visit. Those three quiet hours of reading every day were too precious to give up! I never left the Florida time-zone.

Thursday, somewhere 30,000 feet over Tallahassee, Florida in a Boeing 757, I finished the 400 page book.

I am not a speed reader by any measure. I am prone to day-dream while reading. So I was surprised to complete a large book with a heavy topic in half a week! I had picked up several hours of reading during the long flights, and additionally 3 hours of daily reading during this visit. This reminded me of Casey Neistat who said air travel is the closest thing to time travel.

James L. Gibson says in his book Ecological Approach to Visual Perception that an environment provides us good and bad options for movement. These he called Affordances.

Business travel three timezones away provided the affordances to read uninterrupted (I have deputized reading to be a form of intellectual movement). My Florida home does not provide three uninterrupted hours to read on weekdays. I read in the morning for ninety minutes before life pulls me away. Feed the cats, make coffee, make the bed, get dressed, pour cereal, turn on the computer and start the workday.

There is nothing I want more than the routine of a harmonious life at home in Florida. Reading in the morning, albeit shorter, is not the same without one of our cats sleeping on my lap. There are obvious drawbacks to traveling all the time. I will tolerate with staying in hotel rooms, eating hotel food and drinking hotel coffee in short and temporary bursts. What I notice is the disdain of business travel has shifted for the better. The affordances of transit — cramped airplanes, noisy airports and hurried schedules — used to be a bother but have now morphed into gateways to a temporary world where uninterrupted reading can happen.

Business travel is starting to look like a portal to uninterrupted reading time. On a trip I don’t have to make the bed, do dishes, feed the cats and take out the trash. I go to work during the day, and when I am not working, I can read!

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I write this newsletter once a week but I post short articles daily on my blog. Here is what I posted last week:

Van Neistat

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Working To Code is the movie series designed for employees of the Tom Sachs studio referred to henceforth as the studio

This is how 10 Bullets, one of my favorite videos on Youtube begins.

"Working to Code" is a movie series designed for members of the Tom Sachs studio team. Required viewing for all employees and studio visitors. ALWAYS BE KNOL...

If you haven’t seen this film yet, you will find some familiarity with Casey Neistat’s older videos. Casey is Van’s younger brother and Van helped produce 10 Bullets.

I particularly like Casey’s older videos that carried this low-tech aesthetic — videos before his daily vlog days. Here is an example of Casey making a Custom Pennyboard Suitcase.

Casey eventually developed his own style that is great for youtube. I think Casey understands attention in the Youtube world better than most people do. But this post is not about Casey, it is about Van.

I think the low-tech production of 10 Bullets is timeless in the way they do special effects. They are not trying to show off their special effects budget or Final Cut skills. They talk about an idea and show it in a plain and natural way. My brain is making a weird connection here as I write — I am thinking of how Scott Carrier writes. Plain but clear, with impact. Lasting.

Another good video from the time of 10 Bullets is the Nautical Challenge on Tom Sachs’ youtube channel. It shows all three people — Tom, Van and Casey. Think about this video foretelling a trajectory of where Casey and Van have ended up.

The trajectory I want to highlight here is Van Neistat’s new channel — The Spirited Man.

It has the timeless style of low-tech production from the 10 Bullets videos. And there is something refreshing about that.

Glimpse into a spirited man's self-reliant analog world. Meet a spirited woman, too.For an in-depth explanation of this channel: https://www.kickstarter.c...

I went to school for engineering, and engineers like me will recognize the principles of 5S in the way Tom Sachs’ studio is set up in 10 Bullets, and also in the way Casey and Van’s studios are set up. A place for every thing, labels everywhere, shadow boards… etc. Engineers are all too familiar with this way of organizing. The difference I notice here is the strong will of an Artist coming through in the organization of the workplace. I think Steve Jobs called it the intersection of liberal arts and technology. In all the places where I set up 5S ended up with neat lines on the floor and printed labels. Instead, Van’s and Casey’s workshops have hand drawn lines and hand written labels which add life to an otherwise dull process of organizing things.

I think this artist-in-action is rare to find in our ever saturated world of DIY’ers and makers.

Something honest comes through in The Spirited Man.

From Inertia to Momentum

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I can be very hard on myself.

I started podcasting last year when the pandemic had started. I posted a few episodes and then ran out of gas!

This is not new. I have started many hobbies in the past that ran out of gas. I would start a hobby and get super into it, and even create meaningful work. Then the gas runs out. Time passes. And then the inertia of not doing becomes too hard to overcome.

Here are some hobbies I have picked up and abandoned:

  • woodworking
  • youtubing
  • making short films
  • bicycle advocacy and urban planning
  • percussion drumming
  • digital photography
  • médium format film photography
  • blogging daily, even

The list goes on. I had good reasons to pause and, I'm sure even better reasons to stay paused. But none of them should matter. I know I feel guilty of abandoning the hobbies and I am sure some of that guilt holds me back from re-starting it. Like I said, I am hard on myself.

I can also get addicted to TV and Youtube. I'm always fighting it. I've never been better at fighting it as I am today. I quit social media years ago and I can fight the entertainment media also.

But enough with the excuses.

I'm going to give podcasting another shot. My goal this year is to post 6 episodes. I know that is a low bar but I want to produce fantastic quality work. I want to think deeply about the topics, and even read some books to prepare for it. This is not analysis-paralysis. I won't let perfection keep me from delivering.

I recognize it takes a lot of effort to overcome inertia of not doing. Not doing is so easy. Doing is hard. I've been slowing training myself to do more. I now get Casey Neistat's tattoo "Do More". I'd add, "Do more and do it well".

I also know what happens when one does overcome inertia and start moving. Extending this metaphor from Applied Physics, once you get moving, momentum takes over and it gets easier to move the next bit, then momentun gets higher and it gets easier. You get the idea. This works for creative work, at least, it works for me.

The first episode of the podcast this year will take some effort to produce and post.

The second will get easier.