Dear friends, and subscribers to this little newsletter,
When I was 25, I’ve quit a job for the 2nd time. It was a particularly comforting memory. I was feeling neither confident, nor defeated. It was one of my earliest encounters with stoicism, a philosophical movement that would change the course of my thinking (and living) half a decade later on.
I found this micro-blog entry from that day written from a coffee shop. Although at that time, I was flat broke, and had no job prospects in line, I still had the money to buy overpriced coffee and write some thoughts. Walking cliché, I really was back then.
Anyway, here’s that said note, unedited and raw from 2015:
“The trick is to stay calm and look the part, clear your head and clean your ears, be on the look out for tricky phrases and vague sentences, keep your chin up and don’t lose eye contact, dress so well they’ll be the one who’s intimidated, and not the other way around, stay positive and hope things will fall to place, draw the worst conclusions but expected the best things to happen, have an honest mouth and take action with what you want. If you don’t ask, you’ll never get it. You’re the sum of all the things you have learned and saw and experienced. You didn’t go through all of that to stay a mediocre. Show them what you’re made of, what your influences did to you and what you’re doing for yourself. Don’t overthink things. It’ll just mess up your mind. Don’t corrupt your heart with toxic thoughts. You’re sensational, if you want to be.
Also, always have a trusty brew on top of every good decision.”
I don’t know who needs to hear this. I just think hope & some bit of optimism is getting too old-fashioned these days, with good reason right? I mean with everything that’s been happening all over the world these days, it’s sometimes hard to wake up and actually look forward to living. It’s even harder to get excited about the future.
But guess what, as cliché as it sounds, nothing worth having comes easy.
‘Easy’ to me is this:
Escapism is a modern drug we’re all guilty of having in various shapes and forms, some more potent than the others. We escape through gluing our eyes with endless news cycles, rotting our brains with Facebook/Twitter troll confrontations, numbing our feelings of instability, and despair with feel-good movies on Netflix, getting high on ‘add to cart’ buttons.
Just one more movie, TV show, or a stroll on a category & clearance page. Maybe, just maybe, I can finally find what I’m looking for. Maybe, just maybe, I can leave this page and checkout happiness or peace of mind, or clarity, or fulfillment. Maybe, just maybe, I can shut off the noise for once, and have some bit of control to things, for once in my life, even if it lives primarily inside a shopping cart.
Don’t fall for any of this.
Derek Sivers said it best in his short blog post entitled, ‘You are enough’ :
“I’d like to train parrots to say “It won’t make you happy!.” I’d let them loose in shopping malls, big electronics stores, and car lots. Then, when people are considering spending their savings on a giant TV, or going deeply in debt with a new car, a surprising squawk might shock them back to their senses.
The quickest way to double your income is to halve your expenses. Any study of happiness will tell you it’s best to actively appreciate what you’ve got”
Here’s to contributing to less noise. I am looking forward to a future less of it, and more of sustainable happiness doing most of what I want without relying too much on external sources for them.
Be well, and talk soon, I hope.
Your friend,
Nikki Espartinez