👟👠 I'm writing a book :-) (#13)

Hi !  Welcome back. This week I am thinking (and writing) about how I hope to help others live a more meaningful life, green living via social media, little IG superstars and world geography. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can join here or by clicking the button below. - Eve D.❣️

WEEK IN REVIEW

This week I did a lot of work, a little bit of socialising and squeezed in some chilling on the side. But mostly I’m cocooning at home, which is my favourite thing to do. So…not bad, not bad.

Micole got her results back, and despite being sure she failed two exams, she actually passed everything, and even picked up exemptions along the way. One more semester to go, and honestly, it’s about all I can handle. This actuary stuff is emotionally exhausting, and I am over it.

We’ve been watching the soccer, and I am over it too. This happens every tournament: I am really excited to watch, then I get really heartbroken for the teams that fight so hard, but still lose. When Croatia was eliminated in the last 15 seconds of eight minutes overtime, I was crushed. It’s like my sister said “..and why must we go to bed feeling sad?”. Today the immediate elimination rounds begin, so it’s going to be extra painful. At times like this I struggle to see the appeal of watching sport…so much joy, but also so much anguish? Of course, then I remember the elation of SA winning the Rugby World Cup and it all kind of makes a little bit of sense.

I am not talking about elections, politics or debates here. But for the love of God…..South Africa, US, Europe…can you please get your shit together? It’s now embarrassing.

MISSIONS

I’m writing a book (!)

Yep! Remember a while back I said I was working on a project that has me super excited, and feels like this is exactly what I am meant to be doing? It’s the book 😀 . I’ve been writing it for a (short) while, but am making it official on 1 July (you get an early view 😀 ) and I have 6 months to finish it.

The synopsis: I do believe that, ultimately, we all want to be better, however we choose to define that for ourselves. If you think about it, that’s really the purpose of life. The problem is that it’s difficult to know how to be better. Life is difficult to figure out and hard to experience. We stumble. We struggle. And we despair.

The irony is that we have never had more access to information, which includes information on how to lead a more fulfilling life. But instead of guiding us down the right road, all this information overwhelms and paralyzes us. I know that no matter how much I read and how many experts I listen to, I never feel as if I have the full picture, and I often have more questions than answers.

So I decided to fix this problem for myself.

Of relevance is a day-by-day book that draws on the expertise of hundreds of the smartest minds in the world, to give you a comprehensive overview on how to have a healthier, happier and more meaningful life. Every day introduces a new “concept”, and talks about its relevance in 400 words or less. Then, if it resonates, you can go and dive deeper using the suggested links. Or you can simply think about it throughout the day. Or you can ignore it, and wait to see what next day’s concept will be.

The goal is that by accessing these concepts in small bites, day by day, there will be less chance of being overwhelmed and more chance of this stuff actually resonating and giving readers more direction. Not every concept will strike a chord, and that is kind of the point: you will respond to what is relevant to you right now. It’s a fluid process, which is why I think this is an evergreen book. There will always be something new to discover, because you as the reader will be forever changing.

Connecting disciplines for new perspectives

The most exciting thing for me about this project is that the format allows me to combine the opinions of multiple experts from multiple disciplines for every concept. It’s amazing what emerges when I combine the expertise of, say, a neuroscientist, a psychologist, a futurist and a primary school teacher. New perspectives!

I won’t lie. As excited as I am about the book, I am also terrified. I have set myself quite a mission and the amount of work required to pull this off is a bit scary. And there is a strict deadline, since the book starts on January 1. Also, somewhat ironically, to write a book which will minimize overwhelm I have to first dive deep and completely overwhelm myself with information. I have thousands of pages of notes and ideas, and am really hoping that it all pulls together towards the end. Right now, it’s just a lot of very random facts. I have a digital system to help (not AI!) and this is an example of the info graph (every dot is a concept, every line is how it connects to another concept). 🤯 

There’ll be more on this!

I will be writing much more about the book, about the writing process, about the struggles and the wins, and other tidbits along the way. So brace yourselves 🤣. This is 90% of my life now, so it’s natural it will trickle down into the newsletter.

If you want to learn more or to sign up for (another!) newsletter, I have a website for the book. Fun fact: I bought the ofrelevance.com domain name about 10 years ago, and have been sitting on it for this long, not knowing quite what I want to do with it. But I always knew I would use it to simplify information and make it more accessible to the masses, one way or another.

FREE THERAPY

INSTAGRAM

I have two IG account suggestions for you, both of them new to me as of this week, and both suggested by my sister. The first one is Nancy Birtwhistle, who is a 60+ UK based Instagrammer who is just so wholesome and quaint. She talks about sustainable living, cleaning hacks, etc. She self-published her first book about 5 years ago (I don’t think she was on IG yet) and sold over 20,000 copies! She now has 4 or 5 books in total. A great account for down to earth stuff.

Here’s a hack of hers my sister tried, and one she says works. Take your greasy, dirty oven racks and instead of scrubbing them clean, leave them outside on the grass, overnight. The next morning, you just gently wipe down with a paper towel and all the grime just comes off with no problem 🤯.

The next account is the opposite: it’s of an 8 year old girl, Hannah Lea. She suffers from ARFID, which is another way of saying she has a phobia of food. Last year her doctors told her parents that her lack of good nutrition is not only stunting her growth, it is causing her to regress. A solution needed to be found. The parents found a specialist who treats children, but she was thousands of miles away, so consults had to be Zoomed, which worked fine. As part of the process, the therapist wanted to watch Hannah eat, so she asked the parents to video tape it, which they did.

And thus they discovered a strange thing: as much as Hannah hated eating food, she loved being on camera. So much so, in fact, that the focus of being filmed allowed her to lower her food anxiety and actually eat while being filmed. One thing led to another, and her parents started an IG account to share with the family and friends, in the hope that it continued to motivate Hannah to eat.

Well…we are now only six months later, and the child has 1.6 million subscribers and is also physically growing! And she is so cute. Go see for yourself. (@myarfidlife)

KEEPING IT REAL

This too is from Instagram, and is probably my favourite post ever. It literally sums up social media vs real life debate, and I salute Jane Fonda for being so genuine, humble and wholesome. Love it.

Caption 1: Here’s me on the red carpet of LA Museum of Modern Art gala

Caption 2: Here’s me the next morning. I couldn’t get my dress unzipped so I slept in it…never wanted a husband in my life until now.

GAMES

Sporcle is an online game that tests your knowledge of countries. You type in as many countries as you can think of, and it fills them in on the map. You can view the map to see what’s missing, to help you along (you don’t have to know the exact location of the country, the map is just there to help you out).

So there are 197 countries in the world. How many do you think you can type in 15 minutes? I played this with the kids, and thought I could do about half. Turns out I only managed 47%. Micole can do all 100%, but she has been practicing for a while (she uses the 15 minute diversion to temporarily shift her focus from studying maths for exams 🤣 ). Zac did just over 60%, but I think he was secretly training beforehand 😂 . Anyway, we are now doing this daily, so hopefully Zac and I improve accordingly. And don’t think it’s just us who are this nerdy…the game has been played over 350 million times! Play here.

MONSTERS IN PLAIN SIGHT

What creature do you think this is? Some diabolical monster from a movie? Nope. Answer in the caption.

ENTERTAINMENT

I watched Dune 2 on Thursday, and I am still thinking about it. It’s definitely a dystopian science fiction movie (no aliens), so if you are not into that sort of thing don’t bother. But the storyline is good, the book adaptation masterful and the acting and effects superb. The main character’s story arc is somewhat disturbing, and I think will be fully developed in Dune 3. Can’t wait for that. (Fun fact: Dune 2 has same director as Arrival, which is also a science fiction film but with aliens, and even if you are not into sci-fi I strongly recommend this movie. It’s brilliant.)

Thanks for reading!

That’s it for this week. (Want more? You can find past editions here). I hope you have a great weekend and upcoming week. Please keep sharing /forwarding to your friends/groups 😄 and let me know any feedback (you can just hit reply to this email, if you’re reading it in your inbox).

PS