I Refuse to Become Cynical.
Hello! I hope you’re all doing well.
As parts of the world continue to reopen, I wanted to theme this newsletter on the future, and where we’re going.
I believe that we always have the chance to shape the world. That we are shaping the world whether we like it or not and the last year and a half have clearly shown me that we’re capable of massive change in very short periods of time.
In this newsletter I want to share 4 things that I’m thinking about/interested in exploring.
Peering into the Future
I. A Resurgence of the Physical — to be perfectly honest with you, one of the things that made 2020 so hard for me was that so much of my life was abruptly thrown online.
Already, I had been feeling like I was spending too much time on the internet and not enough in all of the other areas of my life, and then all of a sudden so many of those other areas of my life got put on hold.
Since then, I’ve restructured my life to give far greater priority to the non-digital, and it’s having a positive impact on my happiness and well-being. I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but I’m not spending very much time on Instagram.
Moving forward, I’m going to be further exploring analog alternatives for photography, the organization of ideas (paper and pen), and… leisure. A walk in the forest beats the best video game out there in terms of unplugging my mind from work and appreciating life.
I’m obviously cognizant of and grateful for everything the internet allows me to do but I also have a threshold as to how much of my time I want to spend on there and on my computer/phone. Boundaries.
II. Build Things. I realized in the last 18 months that I need to make stuff outside social media. Posting on social media can help build a following, but that then needs to be maintained, and “relevance” can be lost as quickly as it can be gained.
Also, fickle algorithms are a nightmare for mental health.
Social media encourages people to consume quickly and move on quickly.
At this stage, I still use social media as a resource for artistic self-expression but it’s also an incredible marketing tool, and I’m looking to build things now that have a longer lifespan: courses, investments in start-ups, and of course a book.
III. More People Need to Feel Seen & Heard Or We’re In Trouble. These are basic human desires and I feel them as intensely as anyone else. So much of the frustration that I see in the world today is due to feelings of powerlessness and invisibility, the feeling that the rich and powerful always get away with the same old BS. Spoiler: they usually do.
Decentralization strikes me as quite interesting, and a potential solution to many of the challenges we face. And I’m not just talking about cryptocurrency here (which is coming along but also seems like it still has a ways to go). I’m talking about distributing power across more groups/people/entities.
I’m more inclined to be a believer in systems where everyone is an owner, where people actually feel like they have a say.
Here’s a brilliant blog/newsletter that breaks these concepts down phenomenally.
IV. I Refuse to Become Cynical. Not because I choose to be ignorant about the challenges that we face as a society, which are massive, but because that’s just not the way I want to live my life.
I’m inclined to say that life is more beautiful when we live with our hearts open but that’s not quite right. It’s more like: the beauty of life, which is always there, reveals itself when we choose to live with an open heart.
Food for thought.
Music Recommendations
Tom Fox and I continue to release original music from our soundtrack and I’ve created a playlist with all 10 tracks right here.
For reference, here’s the latest track we released.
Feel free to respond to this email with your thoughts on the music, I’d love to read what you think.
Finally, here’s a song that I’ve been writing to a lot lately.
BONUS
→ Nearly 3,000 people have now taken my latest class on speaking confidently on camera: dang! Thank you. If you want to get a free trial to check out the class for yourself, you can use this link.
→ I Surprised My Parents in the US 😏
→ I tried Maya Angelou’s daily routine and loved it.
→ I think the way we think about fear is wrong.
Thanks for reading!
Nathaniel Drew
P.S. my experiments in posting on facebook and tiktok have led me to this conclusion: I don’t like those platforms. There’s a reason why so many good things came to me when I placed all of my focus on YouTube.
