Writing Updates, Recommendations of Word, Sound, and Pixel
A Mindful Miscellany, #8
Just a quick note this month to highlight a few things. Lots of churn under the surface, like the proverbial duck. I was asked to do something really hard this month, and I did it. I need to process it before I can really say more about it.
Writing efforts: This month I wrote a piece connecting two thinkers I admire—Shawn Coyne, the editor of Story Grid, and John Boyd, the Air Force Colonel and creator of the OODA Loop. Both are attempting to provide a scaffold/template through which humans can navigate a complex and confusing reality, in order to optimize our freedom and flourishing.
Infernal Tower: Revision continues—working every day on some facet of the novel. Getting the process down, figuring out what moves the needle and what doesn’t. It’s more fun than not—I know this story works, so now it’s just a matter of getting it all to hang together in a manner that entertains, informs, and seeks to transform. My Story Grid Guild group is amazing, and we are learning to weave a tale together—our whole is without a doubt larger than the sum of our parts.
Summaries of Books on Writing: As promised, this one is for all the entrepreneurs and C-Suite types- Secrets of Story by Lisa Cron. Great tips on crafting a narrative that effectively communicates your call to action. I also just read both of Matt Bird’s books on writing. Matt is a guy who got an MFA and discovered that it really didn’t teach him what he needed to write compellingly. He spent the next few years breaking down novels, movies, and TV shows to parade rest (sorry, industry jargon for taking apart) and figuring out what makes them tick. He has a YouTube channel that will give you a nice start point for his work. Summaries of both his books here.
Read, Watched, and Recommended
A Heart That Works, Rob Delaney. Every parent’s nightmare is the death of their child. My wife convinced me to read this book, not quite kicking and screaming, but close. It was painful, heart-breaking, but powerful. I had to go to two SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) schools over the course of my career. They both sucked and were miserable to get through. But, I was glad that I went to them both. I learned a lot. This book was the same way—it was hard to read at times, but I came away thankful that I read it, with renewed gratitude for the time I have with my children.
Gray Zone Ethics: A Practitioners Guide to Making Ethically Difficult Decisions, by Dan Pace. Dan has done the Special Operations (SOF) community a great service by writing this book. For two decades the community has prioritized mission accomplishment at the expense of individual character. That’s not even my own conclusion—that’s what SOCOM came away with when they conducted a comprehensive review in 2020. This led to some noteworthy moral failures among our members—two of the most toxic being the conduct of Eddie Gallagher and murder of Logan Melgar in North Africa in 2018. The book presents a compass/prescription for navigating the ambiguous and murky seas that our nations ask SOF members to sail to support national policy objectives. How do you make decisions when there are bad choices and worse ones? This book will help.
Newsletter—The Lake Street Journal, by Joseph Wells. This always has great content. Here’s but one example—a long form letter from a father to his new daughter, on how to live a good life. I keep a journal for each of my kids, and this piece made the cut as essential wisdom. Great insights on how to be a good human here.
No Way Out Podcast (This link is the iTunes podcast because I’m an apple cultist, but it is everywhere you might want to listen), with Mark McGrath and Brian “Ponch” Rivera. A Marine Officer and a Naval Aviator talk with a diverse group of experts on how the work of John Boyd translates and connects to a wide variety of domains. The world today is complex, confusing, and at times trips into chaotic. These two explore ways that Boyd’s thought can help individuals, groups, and businesses improve their ability to take independent action and increase their freedom.
Meditations on Moloch, Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex). This is a legit, evergreen essay that gets better and more prescient the more times I read it. Take some time—perchance over coffee, wine, or whiskey, and let this piece percolate. It lays out a case in detail about the predicament we as a species are in, and just how challenging it may be to escape. It is a precursor read to the next recommendation.
Ms. Boeree, doing her best Moloch impression. The only recourse is to invoke the goddess Winwin.
Liv Boeree, the intrepid polymathic poker pro and explorer of liminal spaces, has begun an interesting video series—Part I is here and part II here. She’s trying to figure out what the heck is going on today, and how we can work our way out of what Jim Rutt so artfully labels “The Litany of Shit,” which comprises our current Metacrisis, Polycrisis, or however you want to think about it. These first videos are about the distorting effects of photo filters on social media, and understanding why everyone is so mad all the time in our internet ecosystems.
Cunk on Earth (Netflix). Oh man. These days, I don’t guffaw out loud much—that braying, snort your drink, belly laugh sort of mirth. It’s just few and far between. But this show, narrated by Diane Morgan playing the character of Philomena Cunk (Basically the Michael Scott of documentaries) just hits the spot nicely. If you are a fan of watching people with Dunning-Kruger levels of bulletproof, completely misplaced confidence create awkward situations with expert interviewees and dramatically misunderstand history, this could be your jam.
Nate Hagens and Jonathan Haidt. Boom. Two of my favorite thinkers, talking together about how to better navigate the turbulent years ahead. Haidt is writing a new book on Gen Z, and how changes in parenting, cultural norms, and technology have impacted their lives thus far. How do we ensure humans of all ages have the physical vitality, fluency of mind, and strength of spirit to flourish in the years to come? This is the question of our age.
As the Numinous Flows (This is my working title for a new soap opera pilot, ala As The World Turns 😎), Adam.