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"The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” - Mary Oliver via Brain Pickings

Sometimes, I can be a bit of a Gilfoyle when it comes to talking about SF.

🙏🏾 Wow, you all are awesome - thank you! 🙏🏾

Thank you so much to Veronica for her donation this week and to all of the amazing folks who donate to support E is for Everything! You can learn more about E is for Everything on Patreon below. Also, re last week's essay, 'thank you' to Sascha for reminding me that some men and nonbinary people menstruate as well. Spot on, and I really appreciate the heads-up there. 

What's worth reading this week (and last week) 🗞️

  1. If you like all of that cool, minimalist design going around, you can thank the economic recession. Speaking of money, it turns out there’s a movement to get the Millennial workforce to love Mondays and want nothing more to do than work. If you’re enjoying that, thank the golden-parachute crew (the big bosses with fat salaries). No wonder Millennials are the “burnout generation”. Here’s a how-to on understanding the marginal utility of money.
  2. Waiting for your boyfriend to propose and wondering if you’re waiting too long? Here’s an advice column you may want to read. Meanwhile (a great segment from The Late Show), here’s how the brain maps out ideas.
  3. You need routines and rituals to be productive, and there’s a great book coming out from my friends Margaret Hagan and Kursat Ozenc on making rituals for work so you can make your work life work for you. Here are 30 one-sentence stories from people who have built better habits
  4. "We crave hearing that we’re alright, we’re not alone, we’re accepted in spite of our flaws. Belonging is an essential human need.” If you’re worried about feeling okay, here are a few of the things that reduce the odds of long-term success and the guaranteed prescriptions for misery (I.e. Shane Parrish using Twitter in an awesome way).
  5. The story of this incredible couple fighting a terrifying disease had me on the verge of tears. 

The essay: How to write about your life ✏

In 2018, the local NBC Investigative Unit in San Francisco completed a report on the trash, needles and, yes, feces that litter the streets of downtown. They came to a startling finding: one of the wealthiest cities in America had a trash and human waste crisis comparable to some of the worst slums in the world.  

The news wasn’t surprising to people who live in the Bay Area. Over the past five years, I’ve lived here on-and-off, and I’ve noticed the situation getting worse, especially in San Francisco — and I’m not afraid to tell people as much if they ask. This can prove challenging when I’m in conversations with San Francisco natives or others who relocated here because they were excited to be in and around what the Bay has to offer (money, entrepreneurial opportunity, nice weather, etc.). 

So, a few nights ago, over dinner with a couple of friends, the conversation turned to how much they loved living in the Bay Area. One guest was a middle-age, male immigrant to the US. The other was his girlfriend, a San Francisco native who loved the area as well. Eventually, all eyes turned to me. 

Isn’t San Francisco great?, they asked.

The pressure to answer in the affirmative was strong. The weather is pretty great, and the food is really fresh (when one can afford it), the park areas in my neighborhood are enjoyable nearly all year-‘round, and the Bay Area boasts one of the strongest biking cultures in the country.

How couldn’t someone love it here? 

Well, I responded, it’s not Washington, D.C. … 

Their eyebrows furrowed. I wasn’t agreeing with them. How could I not agree with them? 

And, I continued, I would appreciate it more if there was greater diversity among the professional class, less wealth disparity, more shelter for the homeless and greater opportunities for those not well-suited to the tech sector.

Their heads cocked to the side a bit. I was clearly not on script. 

It would be better, I added, if San Franciscans meant what they said when it came to racial and gender equity, and it would be wonderful if the tech companies had better diversity numbers generally. So, no, I don’t like living here, but it is where I’ve found compelling work, so I make do. 

It’s not always easy to be honest — to derail a don’t we all agree-train. But it’s important to be intellectually honest with yourself and others, especially if you want to see change. So, I held true to my lived experience and my sense of right and wrong, and found the conversation ended up being quite productive. 

I was able to share the ways in which the area didn’t work particularly well, especially for people of color, women, and those who made the environmentally-friendly decision to not own a car. And, to be fair, my dinner companions weren’t blind pollyannas, they knew that, for all of its wealth, the Bay Area had a lot of work to do in order to bridge the rapidly growing wealth gap. 

In the end, we all walked away wiser. They helped me see ways in which the Bay was actually quite nice, and I showed them ways in which it wasn’t quite hitting the mark. No matter the tension or the pain of disagreement, rarely does sticking to the honest answer turn out badly in the long-run, and even in the short run it can lead to seriously positive results. Here are my tips to staying honest with yourself and others: 
  1. Appreciate the other person's/people’s point of view. They have a lived experience, and it’s as valid as your own. Don’t discount it. 
  2. Recognize that disagreement does not equal dislike. Just because you happen to disagree doesn’t mean you dislike the person/people or their ideas. You just happen to see things differently. 
  3. Imagine holding the other person’s perspective. Try feeling what it might be like to hold the other person’s perspective. What would it be like to grow up in the Bay Area suburbs in the 90s? What might it be like to be an immigrant in San Francisco today, having grown up in Argentina for the first 20 or so years of your life?
  4. Enjoy the tension. I like to think it’s uncomfortable to disagree because you’re learning something new and being challenged to feel something different. Expanding your mind — really learning something new and different hurts a bit. Learn to enjoy the pain and tension. 
Enjoy sharing your lived experience and honest opinion, just remember, you’re not the only with a point of view and there is no universal point of view that everyone holds. Between the differences lies infinite opportunity.

🤝 Your support matters. Period. 🤝


Thank you so much to all of the 1,000+ subscribers to 'E is for Everything' and especially those like Natalya Pemberton of the Presidio Graduate School. Natalya has been with me and donated to support this little, crazy newsletter since its earliest days. I do 'E is for Everything' for fun, but sending newsletters isn't free (sadly). So, your support matters. Natalya has generously supported E is for Everything on Patreon. Please jump on through or click on the big orange button to learn more about how you can support this newsletter too. (Yes, I am a bit behind on 'thank you notes' -- they are coming!)
I got you, fam.

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I'm imperfect, and I'm cool with that. Do you wish I shared something else? Did I get something wrong? (Failure is learning.) Please reply directly to this e-mail. I will always and whenever possible give credit where it's due for great recommendations and inspiration. Have a great week around the corner.
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