Intro and throat clearing
[Clears throat]
"Is this thing on?"
It's a Substack. It's not your first. It won't be your last. But this one mine. And think you'll like it.
This is a scribble pad for my thoughts on a range of interconnected topics that I call The Dizziness.
The name comes from Søren Kierkegaard's proverb "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom." And it's how I think about this post-pandemic world full of newfound freedoms.
No longer tied to places by our jobs, we now have many more degrees of freedom in how we live our life. It's exhilarating. It's also anxiety-inducing.
I'm going to explore candidates for what might quell the anxiety of our newfound freedom:
Where will we find grounding? What will we put at the center of our lives? What will replace our stable job in our stable city in our stable home near our stable community?
We'll explore some of my favorite topics: New cities, coliving, decentralized scenes, online-first communities, life experiments, cohort-based programs.
I'd like the readership to be small, engaged, open-minded, non-judgmental, optimistic, and a tad geeky. The goal is to toy with some emerging ideas like a cat with a ball of yarn.
In about 5 minutes, I'll send you the first essay. It tries to capture what I think is our current collective headspace.
You may already be subscribed to my other Substack - Supernuclear. This is different. Supernuclear is narrowly about creating coliving communities. This one takes a backward lunge outward to the bigger picture and dives mostly into non-coliving related topics.
Does one person need two Substacks?
Does any person need even one Substack?
Is two Substacks a FullStack?
These questions will be left to the reader.
I hope this provokes something meaningful for you.
Much love,
Phil