Hi Grant, so sorry to hear about your significant (3-4 out of 10) chronic back pain. That's a big deal. Does it affect your ability to sleep?
You did a great job describing surfing, I've read few better accounts (including Tim Winton's "Breath" and "Barbarian Days".
I'm a little concerned that David Foster Wallace is your touchstone. For various reasons. You make great points about how the existential dissatisfaction of being human spurs us onward to consequential achievement. It's so true.
Wallace is definitely one of my touchstones. Obviously Thoreau is too, as I think I quote him in every essay. I also like psychologists like Csikszentmihalyi and Peterson, historians, philosophers, poets, and so on.
But I think I relate to Wallace the most. He was tortured and trying to grapple earnestly with the world, and I feel that sometimes too, though certainly not on his level. He also battled with diagnosed mental illness, though thankfully I don't (that I know of, haha). But his writing is so beautiful, and it's his way of explaining things using language that really strikes me. And it makes sense. He's not so much lecturing to others as talking to himself. And I think the struggle to understand the world through language is the most amazing thing, and what I try to do, and what drives me to keep writing on here every week.
Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I don’t see Wallace as that compelling, although many of the best and brightest of your generation do. I guess for my generation maybe it was Camus or various war heroes, or even Hemingway and Walter Pater—not his life but his admonition “to burn with a hard, gem-like flame”. Certainly achieving flow and sustaining it as long as possible is a worthwhile metric.
Hi Grant, so sorry to hear about your significant (3-4 out of 10) chronic back pain. That's a big deal. Does it affect your ability to sleep?
You did a great job describing surfing, I've read few better accounts (including Tim Winton's "Breath" and "Barbarian Days".
I'm a little concerned that David Foster Wallace is your touchstone. For various reasons. You make great points about how the existential dissatisfaction of being human spurs us onward to consequential achievement. It's so true.
Chin up, mate!
Looking forward to reading your next piece!
Wallace is definitely one of my touchstones. Obviously Thoreau is too, as I think I quote him in every essay. I also like psychologists like Csikszentmihalyi and Peterson, historians, philosophers, poets, and so on.
But I think I relate to Wallace the most. He was tortured and trying to grapple earnestly with the world, and I feel that sometimes too, though certainly not on his level. He also battled with diagnosed mental illness, though thankfully I don't (that I know of, haha). But his writing is so beautiful, and it's his way of explaining things using language that really strikes me. And it makes sense. He's not so much lecturing to others as talking to himself. And I think the struggle to understand the world through language is the most amazing thing, and what I try to do, and what drives me to keep writing on here every week.
Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I don’t see Wallace as that compelling, although many of the best and brightest of your generation do. I guess for my generation maybe it was Camus or various war heroes, or even Hemingway and Walter Pater—not his life but his admonition “to burn with a hard, gem-like flame”. Certainly achieving flow and sustaining it as long as possible is a worthwhile metric.
Thanks Chris!
The pain is honestly not that bad. because it's normalized (haha). I've gotten used to it.
I have read Barbarian Days, and I think that's a fantastic book. I'll have to check out Breath. Sounds like you are also a surfer?
Yes, I was—you’re in it, or you’re not. I moved to the US from Sydney in early 2018 so that’s over for me.