👟👠 Weekend catchup (#20)

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 haven’t subscribed yet, you can join here or by clicking the button below. - Eve D.❣️

WEEK IN REVIEW

⏰ It flew by. Again.

🚶‍♀️ I’m 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. 🐩 

😩 I was tired of people this week. Like, I had had enough. Everyone annoyed me. Reminded me of this sage advice: “There are two types of people in the world. Avoid both.”

🏅 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.

📺️ But this would be cool too…

ARE WE BEING PUNK’D?

For the love of all that is holy, make it stop. 🙄 

COMFORTABLE HEELS?

👠 This newsletter is titled Sneakers and Heels…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 looks…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 don’t think it will ever be sexy (I LOVE a sexy heel…) 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, Let’s 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 Walker’s 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 mountains…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

The writing is part trail news, part introspective thoughts sprinkled with bits of memoir.

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 time…I’ve 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 they’ve 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).

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 else’s passion, I highly recommend the site, even if just for the photographs.

FREE THERAPY

THE GOOD OL’ 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 show’s 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 “quiet, quaint slow paced life”. 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 “in my day…” 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, I’m 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 “in the old days” truth…that we could always kind of guess what the following days would bring, more or less. I’ll 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 don’t
Grey: No reaction

It’s 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 🤣. (Sorry for them, but this is still on my bucket list!)

SPEAKING OF OLD SCHOOL…

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 wasn’t an actual dial. Buttons that made windows go up and down were sure to break, and then what would we do? The more “old school” the better. (Still, I have a feeling he would be driving a Tesla today 🤣 ). Anyway, it seems the US Navy agrees with my dad, which made me smile.

ODDS AND ENDS:

🎯The word “hello” only appeared in English in about 1820s. It’s only about 200 years old.

🎯 Have you noticed that almost all good writing is behind a paywall these days? It’s so frustrating. We can’t 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 don’t actually care if publishers want to put content behind a paywall, but they mustn’t market it under the guise of a “good free read”, only for the reader to be hooked 3 paragraphs in and then be cut off. There’s a sneaky solution though. If you go to Archive Buttons, and input the link to paywalled content, you can read almost anything for free.

🎯 Serious question. Do men not generally respond to messages/ Whatsapps? I don’t 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 “single post” messages (not part of ongoing conversation) they rarely acknowledge or respond. Not even a thumbs up 😃 . 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?

❤️‍🔥 Dating apps are in trouble? They’re 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 “your” person can be conveyed in a profile picture (!). The art of nuance is being eradicated…but maybe, hopefully, it’s on its way back?

CONTROL

It’s worth keeping in mind what you can and cannot control, and acting accordingly. Here’s a guide to help you, below. It’s a worthwhile exercise to go through the “No Control” list every once in a while. Makes life easier!

XMAS 2024

See below, and then panic.

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 😄 . You can also email me privately by hitting reply on this email.

PS

I talk to myself all the time. So does Zac. I’ve normalized this in my house, and I love it!