give me all your meandering
a comic, an essay, and a question
Greetings, earthlings.
This week I’m sharing links to three things that live on Substack, which wasn’t intentional but feels appropriate given the social media shake-up underway.
There isn’t an algorithm mediating these Tender Dispatches. They’re not owned by a conservative billionaire oligarch going through a midlife crisis.
Substack feels like a safer place to share things.
Whether you’ve been here a couple of days or a couple of years, I’m so grateful you’re here.
Three things I’ll draw your attention to this week:
1. My favorite thing I’ve seen about quitting Instagram: Carson Ellis’s comic
“I’ll keep thinking about it.”
2. An essay I loved: In praise of voice notes by Ankita
“Text messages demand that we fit ourselves into concise, well-punctuated versions. Calls require immediacy. Voice notes arrive with no such conditions. They are a medium to unravel, to test theories, to share gossip, to choke on your own laughter as you narrate a joke, to describe a strange encounter and invite analysis, to rant about that petty annoyance in vivid detail, to speak for a minute before arriving at any “point.” They are a medium for life’s most important business to unfold. They are an invitation to the world—I mean your friends—to theorize, analyze, vent, and speak with you. A doorway not just to collectively experience but to collectively arrive at something.”
3. A question I love: Will this enlarge or diminish me?
In his Tuesday newsletter, Austin Kelon shared 7 questions he asks himself when he’s puzzled or uncertain about what to do next, and my favorite was, “Will this enlarge or diminish me?” He writes:
“When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness. I’m indebted to the Jungian therapist James Hollis for the insight that major personal decisions should be made not by asking, “Will this make me happy?”, but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?” We’re terrible at predicting what will make us happy: the question swiftly gets bogged down in our narrow preferences for security and control. But the enlargement question elicits a deeper, intuitive response. You tend to just know whether, say, leaving or remaining in a relationship or a job, though it might bring short-term comfort, would mean cheating yourself of growth. (Relatedly, don’t worry about burning bridges: irreversible decisions tend to be more satisfying, because now there’s only one direction to travel – forward into whatever choice you made.)”
I’ve been collaborating with the City of Burlington’s Conservation Board and their consultants, Agency Planning, to engage Burlington residents in shaping the future of our city’s forests, parks, farmland, and other open spaces via the Open Space Plan.
This is a rewarding project for a few reasons:
I love parks and urban natural areas
I believe local government is powerful and impactful
I believe local government needs a lot of help telling their stories and packaging their work so that residents understand it, engage with it, and value it
Collaborating with city leaders on this work is profoundly satisfying and I’d love to do more!
I made a logo and spot illustrations for the team to use across materials and channels to create a consistent and friendly brand for the whole project:
We wanted to define “open space” and why it matters, so I made this visual explainer. We’re sharing it on socials and printing it as a single-page zine to distribute at events throughout Burlington:
Learn more about the Open Space Plan and share your thoughts on our survey here!
Thank you for being here!
Christine Tyler Hill
Website: tenderwarriorco.com
Email: tenderwarriorco@gmail.com