👟👠 Taking the shot (#44)

Hi !  Welcome back. It’s February. Finally! This week I am thinking (and writing) about shooting, hiking, cheat codes for life, yoga and cookie baking. - Eve D.❣️

Week in review…

🔫 I went shooting this week. That was an incredible and unexpected experience. I loved it. I knew nothing about guns going in, and walked out with a lot of conflicted emotions. (See below).

🚶‍♀️ Did another early morning hike, about 5km. It meant I had to be up at 5am, which I have now learnt is a great hack to jumpstart your day and get a lot of shit done. Not sure I can do that every day (Fun fact: during holiday G and I were on a beach walk every day by 5:30am) but I will try to ease into it. Also, during the hike and especially during the uphills I really regretted my life choices and vowed this would be my last walk. But that feeling quickly evaporated once the hike was finished. (Kind of like being in labour, I guess). I discussed this with G, and he said “welcome to the world of every athlete, ever”. It’s good to know that it’s not just me who suffers through. Others make it look so easy!

🎭️ G got two tickets to see My Fair Lady, and instead of taking me to see it, he took some cool blonde chick instead. He and Micole enjoyed the play thoroughly ( 😂 ) and as a bonus we all got to hang out for a pre-show dinner. My sister and her partner came too, as did Zac. It was all very impromptu, and very fun. Micole had a tradition to watch My Fair Lady the movie with my mom every New Years, so it is very special to her. She was desperate to go to the play, but couldn’t find the right partner to go with. G filled the role perfectly, and they both loved it.

🍽️ This week’s best food adventure was Indian again, and it was so, so good. I am in love with the concept of ordering small plates of food, and sharing with everyone at the table. It enriches the experience, and Indian food lends itself perfectly to this. Also: the taste explosion of these dishes! My word.

📷️ A while back Zac set himself a 100 day challenge of building a Minecraft house a day, creating a video around the process, and posting it to to YouTube shorts daily. This past Monday he posted his final 100th video, without missing an upload. Overall, he considered this a massive success: He accumulated 275 subscribers, 80,000 views and 500 watch hours(!). Now that he’s proven to himself that a)he loves the process and b)can be consistent, he is moving into long form videos, and is certain he will be monetised this year. He is very serious abut this!

Free Therapy…

OK, so no jokes…it’s 2025 proper

This might seem weird or very late, but I only really reflect on the past year and plan the new year at the start of February. I think about it in January, but I have realised that January is a crazy month of wild ambition and pressure, and is not a good time for me to reflect at all. I have been “writing January off” for years now, and this approach works really well for me.

So in the upcoming week I am going to put down my thoughts of what 2024 was, and what 2025 will be (twenty twenty thrive?). I will choose my word or phrase for 2025, and will figure out a strategy of what I want to accomplish, and to what timeline. One lesson I am definitely using: I am going to keep things tight and small. Wild ambitions just cause massive frustration. I want to do few things, and I want to do them well. I have obviously already spent a lot of time thinking about it, and discussing it with G and friends, and now I feel ready to start committing to it officially. I might post something on the blog, in which case I will link it here next week or so.

In the meantime, I came across this “7 most satisfying things in life” framework, and you know what? It’s spot on. We overcomplicate life. Our goals should be clear (this falls under the “simple, but not easy” heading):

• Mastery of a craft. A journey with no destination, but an everlasting source of purpose.

• Lasting relationships. Difficult, but rewarding.

• Financial Freedom, otherwise known as “Control of your time” and thus not always measured by your bank balance.

• Helping someone else shine. It’s more satisfying to help someone else win than to win yourself, especially if that someone is a loved one. Plus, karma.

• Being extremely fit. Fit people have better lives, period. Also, this is an equal opportunity pursuit: fitness can’t be bought.

• Being a parent. Personal choice, for sure, but I think it’s the most rewarding pursuit of all. Not easy though!

• Communing with nature. I’m re-discovering this, and it’s where and how I find my peace.

Shoot your shot…

Like I said, G surprised me with a visit to the shooting range. I loved the experience: it was completely novel and unexpected. Prior to this, I had held a gun (G’s) once in my life. It was also a massive learning curve and rather wild.

Let me tell you: guns are incredibly loud, especially in a closed-in space. I nearly jumped out my skin when I first heard a shot. Also, you very quickly figure out that guns are more scary, powerful and dangerous than you ever realised. And being in an enclosed space where there are 5+ other strangers with loaded guns who are actively shooting (and some of whom act somewhat unhinged about the experience) is a bit disconcerting.

G is quite a gun fundi, and owns a few of them. We had two rifles with us (one was used in WWI, the other in the Angola war), and a 9mm (which is a pistol). Rifles are incredibly heavy, and get super hot, super fast. They also have massive recoil and are very, very difficult to shoot with any decent accuracy (especially if you are me). To think that in warfare soldiers had to carry the rifles and the ammo, and stay alert and shoot with accuracy. It’s all mad.

Also, guns kill. I know this is obvious, but every time I fired I had this jolt of awareness that anyone on the receiving end of that bullet would be dead, and it’d be me who killed them. I am not going to be dramatic and say that it is traumatic to shoot a gun, but it’s close. I also kept on thinking about the poor kids in active-shooter scenarios. It must be pure hell, the mixture of fear and noise. Horrendous.

I am now undecided what to do next. The options are to enjoy this as a once-in-every-while experience or to actually commit to learning how to shoot a gun properly and accurately. I’m not sure. I can see the wisdom in mastering a gun, rather than being its master, if you know what I mean.

G shot a video of me shooting. Click to watch (and follow me on IG to inspire me to post there, ha ha!):

sneakers.and.heels_by.eve

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4 quick things to share…

🔥 Wikenigma.org.uk is a wikipedia-like website that documents gaps in our knowledge ie academic questions to which we don’t have an answer (yet). So far, there are 1146 such questions listed. Example: Hepatitis E, in most patients, normally 'self resolves' (there is no specific effective treatment). The mortality rate is estimated at 0.2% to 1% - but, in pregnant women this jumps to around 30%. There is currently no explanation for this very significant increase in mortality.

🔥 Best cookie recipe. Lily scours the Internet looking for chocolate cookie recipes, bakes them, and then rates them. Currently, she has dozens of recipes ranked, and this is the best one. 

🔥If you’re overwhelmed by your email inbox, here is a hack: search your email for the word “Unsubscribe”, select all and delete! That will get rid of all mass emails, which should help. Speaking of which, I lost my fist subscriber to this newsletter this week 🤣 . Given that I’m 44 issues in, I don’t think that’s a bad record. (I don’t take unsubscribes personally at all, and have myself unsubscribed from dozens of newsletters this past week.)

🔥 Speaking of which…I’ve changed my strategy with this newsletter! In theory I wanted to grow it quickly, but in practice I found I was loathe to market it anywhere because I like the intimacy of it being small. So I eventually accepted that I do not want to grow the newsletter much at all, and would rather grow it only organically and directly through people I meet, and through readers sharing it with friends. I prefer that. (I have a much bigger newsletter with 10,000+ subs for work, and I will put my “growth” focus on that one, plus one more that will be related to my upcoming book). It feels good to have made this decision!

🔥 Given that it’s the start of February today, why not commit to doing a full month of Yoga with Adrianne? This woman will make anyone’s day better, just through her calming nature. She has month-long routines (all free) so today is a good day to start, or you can just do an individual class. Good feelings guaranteed!

I’ve been reading…

This week I reminded myself to only read books that captivate me, and I gave up on The Lost Bookshop. I have no regrets. Instead, I moved onto The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue which I find enthralling. It’s written beautifully, and has been on every bestselling list you can imagine. From Amazon:

I have no idea where the story is going to go, and I cannot wait to find out.

I’m liking the fact that I consciously “force” myself to read fiction again. It feels good.

I’ve been watching…

We watched Anora this week. It’s about a young escort (who seems to love her job, and is very good at it) who hooks up with a young Russian billionaire-heir, much to the chagrin of his family, who immediately try to put a stop to the relationship. There are some Pretty Woman vibes. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but there is a subtle (oh, so subtle!) energy running through this film, that by the end you realise is actually the whole point of the movie. I loved this movie. It’s sexy, funny, and sweet all at the same time. It’s also nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars.

Thanks for reading!

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PS

There is a whole movement of online collections of people taking photos of mirrors to sell in online marketplaces. It’s hilarious.