great work, practice and identity
hello friends,and happy new year! I hope you’re doing well.In the last couple of years, my life has been cinematic. Magical and wondrous things happen to me regularly. The baseline quality of my life has increased dramatically. Chance encounters have led to love, friendship and adventure. I’ve been a silent enjoyer of this process.I’ve not documented much of this in a way that’s accessible to others. I know my stories, but I haven’t captured them. I took pictures, but I haven’t posted them. I used to have a reason for that. The same reason for why I’m not taking a picture of a breathtaking sunset, when I can look at it and enjoy it in real time. Just be there and enjoy. The time is now, after all?This reasoning seems wack to me now. When I go back through my photo albums, I’m almost always happy to see a picture of the sunset or of people and things I love. And when I go back through my public channels, I’m always happy that I’ve written or spoken about something. The recorded piece is much more useful than the being in the present moment. Being present is well cultivated in me, capturing (well!), not so much.And there is another thing: I’m sometimes hesitant to write. I feel so flimsy and too vulnerable. Words are so powerful. I feel so unsure about what I’m doing often times, I don’t know who I am. I’m just flowing in the river. It’s easier when I speak, but either way, I often feel like I have to have a topic pre-loaded instead of sitting down at the blank page, or hit record, just to see what comes out.This makes it hard to be diligent. I forget how good it does me to write and to capture. Much like the difficulty around sticking to the gym, or other movement practices, no matter what, I fall off the wagon, and only remember that I need to do it when it’s high time, when I’m in the red.a wish for practiceFor the first time in years, I can somewhat estimate what this year (of the lord, 2025) will bring, because there are certain forcing functions at play in my life. And I thought, what if I make a commitment to write as it happens?To speak from the river flow?To write through the change?To create artifacts from the now?I’ve been longing for this, I’ll tell you honestly. In 2024 I completed 42 workouts. Those include gyms and swims. In 2023 that total was 17. That’s a completely different ballpark and I’m proud of both numbers, but especially of the higher one. In turn, my body composition is stable. I’m not massive or ripped, but I’m solid, and I’m not fat — and I’ve been living (read: eating and drinking) well so that’s not out of the question! But I’m not and I feel good and that’s good.Now, how good would it be if I got to similar numbers when it came to writing, recording and publishing? One of the big things I wish for is to be more topical and less self referential. To be in the now with my writings, to cut right to the chase. The lack of routine gives me the urge to establish context, to reintroduce myself, partly because I’ve forgotten who I am, since I last put something to the page, or sent a newsletter. But this identity game has been a scourge on my life. I’m not enjoying it, and it doesn’t seem to work. But I’m forced to it, like I’m forced to tidy up my desk, or sometimes my whole apartment, before I can do any meaningful work. It is there and I can’t overcome it with my own will.Instead I have to appease, and the method of appeasement that seems to work is steadiness. My productivity changed when I learned to tidy up my flat in half a day. My gym behavior changed when I teamed up with a friend as a gym buddy, but also when I created notes in my phone that served as trackers and reminders of “who I was when I was here last time”.how does identity work?Apparently identity is subject to entropy? Just like muscles or the state of a living space. Identity, too, needs a regular activity, which produces order, and which, in interplay with entropy, scaffolds a system of homeostasis. A practice.I guess that’s why people have jobs? They give money, but they also give steady identity. Sometimes too much, maybe. I remember leaving my job at Twitch because I was overidentified with the company. I remember I was yearning for finding who I was outside of that work environment.Over the years I found myself in various smaller identities, which could flourish more, once my demanding job was out of the picture. It seems like something or someone gives us identity, but the amount of identity is proportional to how much it wants from us? In turn, wanting something from someone gives them identity? Thinking out loud here…Because what have been my core identities away from work over the years?* Inhabitant of an apartment* Friend to many people* Brother to two younger brothers* Son to my parents* Participant in online community* Occasional content creator* Partner to a woman (relationship stopped)* Partner to a woman (relationship ongoing)* Inhabitant of a body (?)* Music lover* GamerTo analyse this list:I’m strongly identified with my apartment, because we wanted a lot from each other, and we’ve given a lot to each other. People notice this, they see me differently when they see me in my flat, or people who have lived in my flat without me see it differently when I’m in it vs. when I’m away.My friendships became more interesting when we wanted more from each other (e.g. more belonging, more creativity). It also polarizes them — when someone wants something and it doesn’t sit well with the other, it’s not guaranteed that a friendship will remain.I have one brother who I lived with recently and we are strongly identified, and would drop a lot of other stuff to help each other. We needed a lot from each other and worked hard to give it. I have another brother who keeps more to himself and I’m not strongly identified with him. It seems like we don’t want much from each other or at least it is not expressed in a way so we could make something out of it.My identity as the son of my parents is complicated. I’m strongly identified with the rift of their separation that they left me. I thus feel much more strongly as the grandson of my (maternal) grandparents. So I have to see my parents as individuals, and we usually get stopped pretty hard when we want too much from each other. It goes deeper than that, but let’s call my identifcation level “medium”.I’m pretty strongly identified with my online community (tpot). It was a game changer in my life to find “the others” and I feel soothed that they exist, and I made great friends from there. At the same time the identification is not so clear, because the community is not clearly bounded. I would say much sooner that “I’m a metalhead” rather than “I’m part of tpot”. I feel much more like I’m someone who is similar to this *broadly gestures* group of people. On the other hand, when I’ve hosted TREEWEEK, which was an evented targeted at the wider tpot community, I felt strongly identified with that. Probably because it generated an bounded subcommunity, if at least for a moment.I’m a content creator but not a content creator. The amount of content I create is not zero, but I’m doing it occasionally. BUT this is actually very much the point of this article: If I did it more, if I wanted more from it, it would start wanting more from me, and my content and I would become identified. I create little enough content to not be identified with it. I think I shall come back to this further below. *I was a partner to a woman, and our relationship ended (pretty badly). Of course, while it was ongoing I was strongly identified with that. Extremely strongly, I would say. As we all experience, I abandoned parts of myself to be together with her, until these parts started a revolution, and showed me that this isn’t going to work out. The death of this relationship, and the image of it, is something I’m identified with. A gravestone, at which I often pray, for this par… Get full access to The Time Is Now at nowsimon.substack.com/subscribe
