AbigailMarkov.com 

In which we discuss - in a loosely but nevertheless intimately connected round about way - Burn Out and Work, Capitalism, the Great Resignation, Climate Change, and Universal Basic Income. Plus the beautiful bits of rural Florida as I drive through it, because if I am going to drive six hours a day, five days a week, I might as well use that time to talk to y'all.

Hopefully the road noise isn't too bad - do let me know? 

Half of this is just me prying kitten claws out of my skin, but the rest is on needs, the pandemic, responsibility to your fellow humans, finding meaning, friends, and being exhausted and hopeless and hopeful.

We're making up for missed time. 

Whooboy. I've been asked about this one a bunch, and if it wasn't for the number of conversations I've had this month about relationships and expectations, I'd probably have kept putting it off indefinitely. This one is... extra rambling. 

So, here. On why modern relationships are progressively not about white picket fences, why communication is everything, and why I really don't have expectations of people anymore. 

This episode is what happens when THREE DAYS of organizing and cleaning to find my Wacom Intuos4 pen stylus (between work) meets deep levels of personal acceptance.

Celebrate your mess, y'all. It turns out that it's a really good thing. 

So, you may have seen the posts about Kali, the kitty. Here's her back story, plus a bit about why we almost didn't keep her, on loving what's in front of you, and taking risks. Plus, there's a hurricane. 

Musings on spiritual development, bamboo, loneliness, insanity, meaning of life, ambition, monks, hermits, and feeling more like light than matter. 

I've been putting this one off, chewing on it, for a while. 

This quote from Ira Glass is one of the most influential quotes I've ever run across, and I frequently send it to people I talk with to see if it resonates with them, as well. (They're usually my kind of people if they Get It.) The quote below, and then hit play for the rest: 

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me.

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.

Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.

And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you're going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you're going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you're making will be as good as your ambitions.

I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It takes awhile. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.

—Ira Glass