Physical books aren’t out of fashion yet 📖
This edition: bookbinding, diaries, and buh-bye to the corporate rat race
As a society, we need to encourage each other to do more things for their own sake, for the personal satisfaction gained, rather than just the “productive output”. More leisure time. Less busyness just for the sake of appearing important.
Leisure, I’ve found, provides moments of emotional rest, when we are primed to reflect and be honest about the things that bring us (and don’t bring us) joy in life. There is room in your life, no matter how packed your schedule may seem, for the things that tap into your passion.
Have a great week, folks! Be well.
—Connie
Keeping tradition: a Venetian bookbinder is one of three remaining
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Bookbinder may be one (of many) dream jobs for me. For one, I love books. But there’s also something special about being intimate with a book, whether it’s to undress and redress it with a better, sturdier cover, or putting together a brand new stack of paper, ready for someone to impart pieces of their soul between the pages.
So upon hearing that Olbi is one of the last three bookbinders in Venice, once a major center for printed books, I felt sad. Sixty years of knowledge, with no children to pass it down to.
Not all hope is lost though; Olbi runs workshops and had, at least at one point, taken on apprentices to keep the craft going (phew!).
Physical versus digital: the dying art of handwritten diaries
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Digitization can be a great way to store memories efficiently—in terms of cost and space. But with a purely-digital future, do we miss out on a neurological connection that more tactile formats offer?
Personally, I keep both digital and handwritten diaries. My digital journaling means I can treat my activities and moods as data points to analyze, to see if there are any correlations between how happy I feel and whether I go outside on a given day.
But when I write in a physical journal, it’s during a point in my life when I’m at a crossroads or when I’m feeling particularly emotional about something. The physical release of scribbling on a page is an opportunity for me to process what I’m feeling. And because I write slower than I can type, it means I linger on my words longer, thinking about their impact as one word leads to the next.
Do you or would you keep a physical journal? Or do you consider it a thing of the past?
For realsies: waking up from the corporate rat race
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My friends and family think I’m living my best life. Considering some of them hate their job or feel like they’re lacking something in their lives, maybe they’re right? At least, it seems I’m closer to my best life than they may be.
I wanted to be real with y’all for a moment and share my experience of how I went from being just a cog in the corporate machine to something a little more, if only to inspire others to live a little more freely, to love a little more freely.
Fun finds
Gamestop has an NFT marketplace? Aside from the fact that the launch happened during some of the worst market conditions, I’m curious about the projects that decided to go with Gamestop, of all brands.
How much money do you think you need to live your ideal life? A study found that most people want to be comfortable, not the richest. For me? Just by gut feel, I’d say perhaps a cool $5M (untaxed, of course) would suffice. It’s enough to help me and my family remove financial burdens while giving me room to build a little bit of my own wealth for the future.
Stranger Things, but make it Animal Crossing. Just the CUTEST. I don’t think there are any spoilers with these adorable character designs, but feel free to bookmark and revisit later.