If a frog eats you alive, don’t just sit there and get digested, like a wimp.
Pick yourself up and start walking.
I’m fully serious.
There’s a species of Japanese water beetle called Regimbartia attenuata — we’re going to call it Reg — that is the natural prey of frogs.
Reg is small, only 4-5mm, so the frogs swallow them whole as a tasty treat.
Now, Reg could simply fold its little legs underneath it and succumb to the digestive juices, but at some point one of its ancestors said
HELL NO
and
THERE MUST BE ANOTHER WAY OUT
and started walking.
Reg walked all the way out of the frog’s stomach, along its intestines — which are, just like our intestines, a very long tangle of squishy tube so probably the equivalent of the Silk Road or the Oregon Trail or something — and out of its bumhole.
Mostly this journey takes around 4 hours, but at least one frog speed-ran it in 6 minutes.
(I’m waiting for some game dev to create the computer game of this please and thank you. I’m imagining all sorts of side quests — like NO, NOT THE APPENDIX — where you can win power ups and treasure, and have to battle ever-encroaching poop bombs or digestive fluids and enraged bacteria. And you get a bonus if you can do it in under 6 minutes.)
The moral of this story is: when it feels like everything is eating you alive, keep going.
You might emerge covered in poo and somewhat bewildered, but you’re still here and you’re ready to rock and roll and create cool stuff and write your damn book because if you can survive that, you can certainly tell us all about it.
After a shower, of course.
If you’re ready to do that, and you want to get your first draft done before 2025 bows out, MicroBook Magic might be just what you’re after.
And now for the Friday Goodie Bag. Here’s what I’ve harvested for you…
The Dull Men’s Club
In a world where everyone is posing with their rented Lambo, making outrageous income claims, and skydiving naked off Everest with ribbons tied to their nipples, I’m super excited about the man who photographs bins. No sarcasm here: I truly find joy in the little things other people find joy in. The Dull Men’s Club is a celebration of the ordinary, the mild, the delightfully mundane — and the stories we find there. Check out Dustbin Dave and his fellow “dull men” who are not at all dull.
The One Hour Studio
Have you seen the world right now? HAVE YOU SEEN IT? I mean, how could you not? Which begs the question: how on earth can any of us get any art done right now? You might think this is no time for art. There are more important things to do than foster our creativity. There are fires to put out. I would argue: art and creativity are some of the most important things we can do right now. Partly for our own mental wellbeing, and partly because art and creativity are resistance. They’re rebellion. They’re where hope and optimism and good ideas and community come from and we are not going to come out of the other side of all this without those things. Especially community.
So check out Austin Kleon’s “one hour studio” where he sets a timer and potters around making stuff. If you don’t have an hour — and maybe you don’t, because you genuinely are busy — I bet you have 20 minutes.
Set a timer and make something, even if it’s crap or silly or sentimental. It’ll remind you who you are and why you’re here.
This dude who left the far right and now works for love not hate
I think this is one of my favourite stories from this week. Meet Nigel Bromage, who was a member of Combat 18 — a genuinely scary, militant far-right organisation — for many years. How he ended up there was insidious. He didn’t set out on that path, it dragged him in. But that’s not who he is anymore, and he’s dedicated the rest of his life to “atoning” as he puts it, which means doing a ton of community work and setting up organisations like Exit Hate.
And the great news? After the riots of the past few years, his organisation has been flooded with requests for help from people horrified at their own behaviour.
We HAVE to talk to each other and we have to LISTEN. We cannot just shut down anyone who thinks differently, no matter how horrifying their views and actions are. Because if we shut each other down, we drive each other further apart.
As Nigel says: “We’re trying to encourage families to have some open conversations and say: ‘Well, why did you support it? What positives came out of it?’ Hopefully we can highlight that the answer is — nothing. We have to use education, compassion and understanding, and we have to listen to people who feel the extreme right offers them a voice. We have to fill that void.” (emphasis my own)
And tolerance, he suggests, cuts both ways. “Let’s listen to why people are angry and try to find some solutions,” he says. “Let’s talk about the fact that it’s OK to be patriotic, it’s OK to support your heritage and traditions — but it’s got to be inclusive, and it’s got to be there for everybody.”
This absolute travesty cover song
There are a few people who always make me cackle on LinkedIn, and Lewis and Dan are two of them. They made an absolutely heinous cover of Bohemian Rhapsody and put it out there and honestly I couldn’t love it more. Check it out.
These defenders of the land creating gardens
A garden can grow anywhere. ANYWHERE.
“Across the world, from Ukraine to Zambia to south London, gardens are springing up and blossoming in some of the most unlikely places. They’re doing so thanks to a rising wave of land defenders: people reclaiming the right to grow healthy food for themselves and their communities, in a world that is increasingly squeezing that into the margins.”
This is one of the small ways humanity can save itself. Check out this story.
What I’m reading
I am currently reading Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir, as recommended by my friend Hillary. I’m only a little way into it but so far I’m hooked. Basically, it’s lesbian necromancers in space with added skeletons and who on earth doesn’t want to read that? It’s kind of batshit in the best way, a creative mishmash of ideas, genres, and storytelling that I adore so far.
What I’m writing
I’m writing manifestos. Lots of manifestos. For myself, for what I’m doing, for what I believe in. A phrase that keeps coming back to me right now is “slow creativity” — I’m a champion for slow creativity in a world that demands everything right the hell now, with shortcuts and templates. For the stuff that gets in the way? Yes. Bring me all the shortcuts. For creativity? NO. There is no shortcut, there’s only the joy of the process.
Word of the week
pavonise
verb: to preen like a peacock
Could be accurately applied to any number of politicians and a large proportion of people on LinkedIn. Use it in an email today!
Quote of the week
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” —James Baldwin
And finally, because I don’t do this very often, here is a quote from one of my beautiful clients, from the end of our coaching call this week:
“Well, I mean, how lucky are we that we get to work with you? Honestly, it is a talent, and I don’t use that word lightly, to be able to take your wisdom, knowledge and expertise and apply it in so many different ways with so many different people. You bring out the best in people. I have no doubt that working with me is very different to working with [client] to working with other clients. We all have different ways and different styles. You’re amazing, because the way you adapt in a flight of foot with all of us is incredible. Genuinely mean that. So there you go. Take that, put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
Thank you.
And if you’d like to experience my magic, MicroBook Magic Season 7 begins on October 20. You can get on the waiting list here.
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