Thought Bananas 12 | "just commenting ‘love’ is is great"
Dreams of Childhood, Magic Giraffes, Intense Self Care, YouTube Gold
Look, I get it. You get a lot of emails. Number 12 is a good issue of Thought Bananas.
In the Bible, the number 12 appears a lot. It is supposed to signify a completeness: a level of perfection or authority from which to start something. This makes me wonder about when I started this and named it Thought Bananas:
I wanted a newsletter name that sounded clever and made people think of, “Insightful Takes on Serious Issues,” but all the names I came up with made it way too easy to take myself too seriously.
Taking myself too seriously makes it easy to generalize and draw premature conclusions. I begin to worry about the serious, respectable, usually unsuccessful stance of sharing the right idea, rather than the messy, embarrassing, usually entertaining process of finding the right idea.
How am I doing? What would you tell a friend Thought Bananas is about? I love all the feedback I get in emails and Substack comments.
I have had a blast and grown a lot (ir)regularly writing and publishing this, even though it hasn’t been easy. Which brings me to this issue’s quote:
🍌Quote of the Week
"Doing anything of significance is hard."
-Patrick Collison
🍌In the Newsletter This Week
Original Writing: A magical realism short story and an essay about parenting.
On My Mind: My work in the news and the adventure of self care.
My Favorite Things: Two YouTube channels I love.
Crowd Work: Check out my new front page!
Original Writing
Original Writing is a place for me to share anything new I’ve written as well as any older stuff that seems particularly relevant now.
🍌You can’t let something go if you don’t know you have it.
New Writing: Vulnerability and fear as they relate to raising a baby girl have been on my mind lately. In this essay, I use stories and dreams to explore the urge to protect my daughter, how that urge forces me to think about being vulnerable as a child myself, and how that experience informs the decisions I make now. Read it here.
🍌To Go and Lay Down in the Sense of It
From the archive: This is another essay that talks about the intergenerational theme of intentions. It starts discussing a documentary that really spoke to me, then meanders through a review of some movies and music I love, and ties it all together with me asking big questions about the ideas of meaning and sacrifice. Read it here.
🍌The Masculine Urge to Visit a Psychic Giraffe in Khartoum
New Writing: How do you know when you’re running toward something or running away from something? In this short story, the main character moves to Europe for a new life, only to find himself living in a rundown hostel drinking all day. He pins his hopes on a wild-eyed street performer who promises to take him to see a giraffe in Africa who can tell him the future. Read it here.
This is the second story in my Magical Realism Short Story series, where I am writing magical realism short stories based on computer-generated prompts.
On My Mind
On My Mind is for updates on life or work and other things I’m thinking about.
🍌The Center for Economic Inclusion in the Houston Chronicle
I just found out that at the end of last month, the donation to the Center for Economic Inclusion, where I work, was mentioned in the Houston Chronicle. Read the full story here. This is huge and will really allow us to expand our work. As it says in the story:
The donation will add graduate research fellowships and support for research costs, and it will expand the Stimulating Urban Renewal through Entrepreneurship (SURE) training program for students. The program also educates and assists community entrepreneurs launching their businesses.
🍌The Adventure of Intense Self Care
Over the next one to two years I’m going to have a lot of medical work done. I have always had an underbite and known I wanted to get that fixed, so I was expecting that. I wasn’t expecting an allergist to tell me I’ve basically been playing life on hard mode because I am allergic to everything.
Soon, I start allergy shots. Then, I will get braces (again). In a year or so, I will have double jaw surgery. All the doctors involved also suggested that complications would be less likely if I were in better physical shape. In a few months, I will be wearing braces, getting weekly allergy shots, working with a personal trainer, and doing physical therapy to prepare for double jaw surgery.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t apprehensive, but I am also excited. We often think of adventures as striking out, conquering the unknown, doing something crazy. But doing the hard things you know you need to do is a wild ride sometimes. Often self care is slowing down, but sometimes it’s subjugating fear, conquering procrastination, triumphing through the unknown. It’s taking problems from ethereal issues you need to confront “someday,” and putting them on the calendar.
I wanted to share this because I’ll probably be writing about this a lot so I wanted to hear if you’ve experienced anything like this. Have you had to do any hard work on yourself? Have you had to prepare for any long term medical procedures? Have you ever lost a bunch of weight or done long-term physical therapy? I’d love to hear about it.
My Favorite Things
My Favorite Things is a dedicated space for me to share interesting things I’ve watched, read, or remembered this week.
🍌Live “Concert” YouTube Channels
I spend a lot of time working from home. When I’m in the office, I’m still in front of the computer a lot. When I’m not working, I spend a lot of time feeding or hanging out with a six month old. In sum, I don’t get out to do much lately.
This “sitting time” has however allowed me to discover some awesome YouTube channels. They are live concert channels. They focus on electronic music. Instead of being in a stadium or similar venue, the performers are making music in beautiful historic or outdoor locale. For the most part, the performers have minimal or no audience.
While the performers play, the producers fly drones around and splice that footage in. So far, my favorites channels are TIME:CODE and Cercle, although some artists have their own great videos in this genre, like Chris Luno and Rufus Du Sol.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who often gets bored working at a computer, but needs to concentrate more than movies or podcasts will allow. If that sounds like you, these are four of my favorite from TIME:CODE and Cercle.
Crowd Work
In standup comedy, crowd work is when the comic speaks directly with the audience. This section is a place for us to directly engage one another.
I reorganized the main page for the website. I have organized my writing into various categories (Fiction, Essays, and so on). Please click here to see the main page and let me know what you think.
Click the essays and stories so you can “heart” or leave a comment. Even just commenting ‘love’ is great, as it helps other people find my writing.
That’s all for now—see you next week!
Thanks to everyone who edited, proofread, and gave feedback on the writing in this issue. And thanks for reading Thought Bananas!