I blame Mercury Retrograde
Hi Love,
I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry!
I have not abandoned you. I just got overwhelmed with work and travel, but the real culprit is Mercury in retrograde.
Okay, to be fair, it's more like it all started with Mercury in retrograde. Mercury stopped in Picese (water sign) and I was forewarned to watch out for electronics and water. My water bottle leaked due to improper handling (me) and an indispensable 1yr old MacBook Pro gradually soaked up the liquid on an overnight flight from SFO-JFK.
The laptop arrives home dead as dead can be.
Thus began the tedious undertaking in repair quotes, insurance claim, unsuccessful Time Machine syncs (corrupted files), temporary machines and on and on.
It's amazing how I am crippled without a working laptop. Do you experience the same? I'm still on a temporary machine but we are near the end of this missing limb saga.
Since 2016 I feel like I've slowed my travel schedule, spending more time at a single location and being very selective of where I go and purpose of the travel. I would qualify myself to be a great traveler, lover of perpetual motion, yet the travel in these past couples of months have completely floored me, making this weekly installment nearly impossible. Could I have aged into being a homebody? Yikes!
Maybe it's because these trips have involved very few down days and each day on the ground are full-on, physically and emotionally demanding. I look to all of my traveling friend, these road warriors, and I wonder how are they all still managing.
I'm writing to you from a cafe in Istanbul in my old/favorite neighborhood. A cold spell is blowing through the city catching everyone off guard, I included. I packed for Spring in Iraq (where I was) and not for an Arctic chill.
There is an election in Turkey tomorrow. The political climate is more divisive than ever, perhaps even worst then in the US. The lira is losing value but reinvigorating tourism as a result. I love Istanbul so much that I seriously considered living here long term in 2016 but the way the country is trending post-coupe is just not something I wanted to be a part of.
How do we draw that line? As expats and as travelers? If we vote with our dollars, then do we not uphold some responsibility to the flourishing of oppression when we choose to be there, for work or pleasure? It's a hard and murky line to draw and I don't have the answers. What are your thoughts on this?
I'm back and I've missed you!
Charlie
IDEAS YOU CAN STEAL
I'm a member of Acumen Global Leadership and an Edmund Hillary Fellow. Both of them start the community building and getting to know each other as humans before we identify as our profession. It's not uncommon. It can be an uncomfortable process but when it's done right, it is effective in creating deeper bonds that result in greater ROI for both the individual and the network. It's worth considering and adopting.
WORTH A READ
Amanda Palmer's rambling notes to her Patreon audience are about the only non-work things I've had a chance to read these last few weeks. They are so good. Often ungrammatical, a stream of consciousness style mind dump of anything and everything that is anything but unfocused, extremely intimate and insightful. Unfortunately, these notes are for her Patrons only. However, you can become one for as little as $1 a month. For the writing alone is worth it, not to mention, if you are skilled, you can extract some great marketing insights.
A POD WORTH LISTENING
Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.
