- Sneakers and Heels
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- šš Weekend catchup (#20)
šš Weekend catchup (#20)
Hiking the Alps, dating apps, life hacks and sneaker heels?
Hi ! Welcome back. This week I am thinking (and writing) about weird trends, very, very long hikes, a fast paced world, dating apps going out of style, how to read anything online for free and Christmas 2024. Yep, I said Christmas. If you havenāt subscribed yet, you can join here or by clicking the button below. - Eve D.ā£ļø
WEEK IN REVIEW
ā° It flew by. Again.
š¶āāļø Iām still walking to train for Kruger. Am feeling mildly optimistic (I leave in one week!). Meeting new pups on walking adventures is always a plus. This is Noodle the Poodle. Literally. š©
š© I was tired of people this week. Like, I had had enough. Everyone annoyed me. Reminded me of this sage advice: āThere are two types of people in the world. Avoid both.ā
š Just like every family across the land, mine wondered how we could score a gold medal in the next Olympics (or two). We settled on archery as the fastest and easiest route, and have sacrificed Zac for the cause. The training has commenced.
šŗļø But this would be cool tooā¦
ARE WE BEING PUNKāD?
For the love of all that is holy, make it stop. š
COMFORTABLE HEELS?
š This newsletter is titled Sneakers and Heelsā¦and Sara Blakely (who created Spanx) has taken that concept and combined it into one shoe! Sneex is supposed to be a comfortable high heel. It looksā¦awful. But then, it kind of grows on you (well, me). I can see that maybe this could catch on? It looks almost fun, cheeky. I donāt think it will ever be sexy (I LOVE a sexy heelā¦) but a comfy high heel might be a novel thing to try?
Walking the World
I was researching electrolytes for my upcoming Kruger hike (I'm literally clueless about these type of things) and came across this website, Letās trek it . It's written by Kristin who is a 20-something ultra hiker from Norway. She went through a bout of depression some years ago, and as a remedy started to walk. And by walk, I mean walk. She does what is known as thru-hikes (a new term to me, which I think just means ultra-long distance hikes). The longest one she's done is 1,400 km long - Te Araroa Trail, located in New Zealand. But she's also walked in North America and Europe, and some of her hikes/walks are just a couple of hours long. So something for everyone. She usually walks alone.
The reason I am mentioning her to you is because I was utterly captivated by her blog/website. She goes through a day-by-day experience of some of these walks, and she writes beautifully, with just the right mix of technical bits and personal memoirs. In the The Walkerās Haute Route writeup she talks about how she went on a hike in Switzerland and France with her 67yr old, overweight dad, who for some reason felt it was completely unnecessary to train for this experience, and was totally unfit. And these hikes are hikes up mountainsā¦I think this particular one has you going up and down the Alps six times! Her version is full of despair and frustration with her dad, which is both endearing and very real. At one point she says
I was beginning to realise with some panic what it would really entail to hike with an overweight senior hiking partner. Dad was barely putting one foot in front of the other and stopping every few steps to catch his breath. It was a torturous pace, much harder than power-blasting up the hill. I told him Iād wait for him further up the pass, which he wasnāt too happy about ā but I need momentum to keep me going.
Kristinās dadā¦struggling. From Letāstrekit.com
The writing is part trail news, part introspective thoughts sprinkled with bits of memoir.
On yesteryearās thru-hike I had been heartbroken, this year I was furious. Worn down to the bone by indifferent, immature, emotionally constipated men who didnāt care who or what they smashed up with their selfishness.
I was utterly captivated. She also gives a lot of good advice about the type of gear you need, hiking tips and the trail recommendations. Her descriptions and her photographs even had me wondering...could I ever do something like this? I don't realistically think so, but for a nanosecond she convinced me I should try.
The other thing I loved about her website is that it's...a website. Not a newsletter, or a twitter thread. She writes with permanence, which I feel was a dying art, but I think we are having a reversal of that. About timeā¦Iāve been predicting it for ages. I think people (writers and readers) are tired of bending towards the social media algorithms, and are eager to seek the stuff that interests them, not just consume theyāve been told to enjoy by a machine-language driven bot. We want to be more in control. This is not just true for writing, btw, it's also true for how we date (see below).
letstrekit.com
Anyway, even if you never want to overnight in the Alps while carrying your little house and little kitchen on your back, or if you just want to lose yourself in some elseās passion, I highly recommend the site, even if just for the photographs.
FREE THERAPY
Every time you take something personally,
you have found a part of yourself
you havenāt learnt to love
THE GOOD OLā DAYS
I'm sure you're well aware, but we are the last generation who know a life pre-internet. I was recently reminded of this, and it made me strangely nostalgic. My pre-internet memories include: going to library and copying reference books to finish school projects; having pen pals the old fashioned way that involved envelopes and stamps; visiting libraries, music CDs that were impossible to unwrap; newspapers sold on every street corner; the Sunday Paper that everybody read; QUICK bathroom dashes during a showās ad breaks.
It was a quiet, quaint and slow paced life.
But guess what? Our kids are going to look back on today and consider this to be their āquiet, quaint slow paced lifeā. Can you imagine? What will life have to be like in 30 years time for us to consider today to be slow?? What do you think will make up āin my dayā¦ā stories? Here are some of my predictions for the future:
no petrol cars. No manual-gear cars. Maybe no person-is-the-driver cars.
the way healthcare will happen will be completely different. Chemo will seem horrific. Unexpected illnesses will be extremely unusual. We are going to focus on prevention, not cures.
schools and colleges will be very different, Iām just not sure how this is going to pan out
AI personal assistants will be the absolute norm (very near future)
The way we mistreat animals for food will cease, for the most part
Basic income might be universal. Wild, wild concept!
There will be no language barriers (immediate translation of everything)
One thing that I do think is true: life has never been more unpredictable than it is today. In earlier years, even when the pace of change was relatively fast, it could still be predicted. I heard someone say that the only futurists who are calling it right these days are the science fiction writers. Maybe that will be the biggest āin the old daysā truthā¦that we could always kind of guess what the following days would bring, more or less. Iāll miss that, if it ever goes away.
FUNNY TRUTHS
Speaking of universal languages - I really laughed at this.
Red: You said one word in my language and we are now BFFs!
Blue: Congrats, but why did you put yourself through that?
Orange: Please donāt
Grey: No reaction
Itās so accurate. If a non-native speaker came up to me speaking Polish (blue), I would be impressed but also very sorry for them that they bothered to learn the language.
In the UK, everyone assumes that you will be speaking English, because what other language is there, really?
France is so on point š¤£. (Sorry for them, but this is still on my bucket list!)
SPEAKING OF OLD SCHOOLā¦
My father always said that anything digital/techy in a car is bad news. He passed away over 20 years ago, but even then he was very opposed to anything on the dashboard that wasnāt an actual dial. Buttons that made windows go up and down were sure to break, and then what would we do? The more āold schoolā the better. (Still, I have a feeling he would be driving a Tesla today š¤£ ). Anyway, it seems the US Navy agrees with my dad, which made me smile.
ODDS AND ENDS:
šÆThe word āhelloā only appeared in English in about 1820s. Itās only about 200 years old.
šÆ Have you noticed that almost all good writing is behind a paywall these days? Itās so frustrating. We canāt pay a subscription to everyone, and sometimes we just want to read that one article or newsletter (paid newsletters with no free option annoy me). I donāt actually care if publishers want to put content behind a paywall, but they mustnāt market it under the guise of a āgood free readā, only for the reader to be hooked 3 paragraphs in and then be cut off. Thereās a sneaky solution though. If you go to Archive Buttons, and input the link to paywalled content, you can read almost anything for free.
šÆ Serious question. Do men not generally respond to messages/ Whatsapps? I donāt mean men you date or chat to on apps, I mean your male friends. I have about 4 male friends who I chat with regularly, but when I send them āsingle postā messages (not part of ongoing conversation) they rarely acknowledge or respond. Not even a thumbs up š . Then a day or two later, they will start a new conversation, as if nothing happened. None of my female friends do this. I mean, for sure not every message requires a response, but most deserve at least a reaction? What do you think?
ā¤ļøāš„ Dating apps are in trouble? Theyāre all experiencing a fall in usage to below pre-Covid levels, and only one in five US students uses them at least once a month. There is a reversal to in-person meetups (hiking clubs are popular!) I think this is a great trend. Online dating is superficial, especially if you are a young student who is fooled into believing that all the info you need to find āyourā person can be conveyed in a profile picture (!). The art of nuance is being eradicatedā¦but maybe, hopefully, itās on its way back?
CONTROL
Itās worth keeping in mind what you can and cannot control, and acting accordingly. Hereās a guide to help you, below. Itās a worthwhile exercise to go through the āNo Controlā list every once in a while. Makes life easier!
XMAS 2024
See below, and then panic.
Thanks for reading!
Thatās 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 š . You can also email me privately by hitting reply on this email.
PS
I talk to myself all the time. So does Zac. Iāve normalized this in my house, and I love it!
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