Welcome to Issue #031 of Zen in the Art of Fighting

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Five Things Worth Sharing

1. One Good Picture: Home, Sweet Home

On the one-year anniversary of driving back to the east coast in hopes of finding a place to settle and call a forever home (or at least a more-than-just 'for now' home), we closed on a house in Metro Atlanta.

The last few days have been filled with many getting quotes from contractors, ordering appliances, and picking furniture. We'll be moving out of our apartment and into the house by the end of May.

One silly purchase I am excited to make upon move-in: one of these address embossers. I have always wanted to buy one of these tools, but haven't lived anywhere long enough for it to not become a sunk cost within a year. Even if we move elsewehere one day, for $30, it'll earn its keep when it comes to addressing thank you notes for the wedding later this year.

2. Something I'm Writing: To be honest, I'm in drafting mode for meaningful, net new creative work: everything you read about in the "something I'm writing" section of the last issue is still in progress. Some of it is due to writer's block, some of it is due to wanting to give the requisite amount of thought and heart into what I am writing for it to be excellent, and a lot of it is being busy with the home closing and move-in related tasks.

My published writing the last two weeks has been restricted to updating my summaries and bios on my Linkedin profile and on my personal portfolio website: a highly-overdue exercise driven in part by my book proposal and in part by a career accelerator program I'm enrolled in at work.

Personal summaries and bios are a tricky thing to nail. You want to explain who you are, what you do, and what sets you apart in a salesy-but-still-true-to-yourself way. It is the kind of exercise I wish someone else could do for me, but doing it well requires introspection...which can't be outsourced or delegated.

3. Something I'm Reading: "You Have a New Memory," a wonderful essay that has been making the rounds among people who enjoy reading and writing long narrative essays. It deals with phones, the internet, dating, loneliness, and the author's answer to the question to the question in the subheadline: "What do we mean when we say the internet is reading our minds?"

My favorite paragraph from the piece:

4. Something I'm Listening To: BJJ Mental Models' Interview of Dominyka Obelente and Rafael Lovato Jr on the topic of inspiration.

I trained under Rafael Lovato Jr. while living in Oklahoma City nearly two years ago, and had the opportunity to interview him before I left for San Diego.

Candidly, most of my experiences around Lovato in 2021 were of him as a larger-than-life, deified figure--and an impenetrable wall. In my exchanges with him, both on the mats and in my interview, I felt like I was encountering a persona more than a person, a mask (and sometimes a meme) more than a man. It probably didn't help that I was pretty inexperienced at the time when it came to interviewing athletes and coaches. If I interviewed him again today, I'd be leagues better at doing it than I was two years ago.

Some of the things I heard from Lovato in this podcast were things I wish I'd covered when I had interviewed him back in Oklahoma in 2021. Back when I spoke to him, he wasn't quite so forthcoming in talking about his loss column, his choice to drop out of college and go all-in on jiu-jitsu, or the sense of inadequacy he felt when he was younger as "just a kid from Oklahoma" flying out to Brazil to compete.

All of this is to say I found him more relatable and likable on this podcast than I was expecting, allowing me to see certain memories of him and of my time in OKC in a different light.

5. Something I'm Watching: "Behind the Curtain"​

Bug and I have a household rule that during the week we can only watch TV that is net educational in nature. Usually this means we're watching cooking videos, news analysis, and, recently, a lot of content related to buying and maintaining a house.

Last week, he stumbled on a YouTube channel called "Behind the Curtain" that focuses on the creative process behind some of my favorite works of TV and film. I am now completely obsessed with it.

So far, I've watched the ones for Mad Men, Whiplash, and Fight Club. Linked below is the one for True Detective. They've all been inspiring and insightful.

That's all I've got for this edition. Until next time, I hope your springtime so far has been filled more so with the joy of flowers in bloom than with the itch of allergies.

See you in two weeks,

EZ

PS: When the month of May is a little too close for comfort: