This week’s selected media, October 13, 2024: Sustainability Simplified and Lifegasm
This week I finished:
Sustainability Simplified: The Definitive Guide to Understanding and Solving All (Yes, All) Our Environmental Problems, by (me) Josh Spodek: The copies below are called “advanced reader copies” or ARCs in publishing. They’re proofs that may still be edited, printed early for people in the industry, like journalists, bookstores, and podcasters.
Still a milestone to hold a printed copy in my hand. Several rounds of proofreading has led to my reading every word several times in the past few weeks. I’m biased, but I find it excellent reading. As one endorser wrote, “This book is a masterpiece.”
The back cover:
Lifegasm: Marshall’s Promise, by Evelyn Wallace: Hosting the This Sustainable Life podcast has led me to meet and befriend many authors, including New York Times bestsellers, but almost always I read their work before meeting them. A few years ago a friend shared a novella he’d written though not published and I was blown away at the quality of writing. Until then, I still considered great authors as different than regular people I might know. I didn’t have a reason for thinking them different. I just figured someone being a great writer would have manifested before I met them.
I know Evelyn. She is leading the current sustainability leadership workshop, in the picture above her name is on the back cover of Sustainability Simplified, and you’ve heard her on the podcast. She posted this audiobook in 2021, which repeated the pattern of someone I knew before reading (or listening to) their work producing something I found wonderful writing. It’s a memoir of a period of awakening in her life prompted by seeing a dear friend die from cancer, leading to newfound looks on life. As she described the book online:
In October, 2016 I looked death right in the eyeballs and the truth of the universe/ life/ love/ God/ infinity cracked open before me. Truth is the best news in the world (YOU CAN END YOUR SUFFERING RIGHT NOW!!!) (if your human rights aren’t being violated), and this book is my best effort to sing its sweet melody from the rooftops.
During my journey, I ended my marriage (amicably). I explored my sexuality (enthusiastically). And I carried on my shoulder an enormous, colorful sugar skull named Maestro—which I’ll explain later. I lived transiently (voluntarily) for the better part of a year, which got me asking A LOT of big questions about private property and human rights and legal versus spiritual freedom. And yet, from the heart of the storm that was my new life, I was finally at peace. I was finally in balance. I was finally… a homeless divorcee with no marketable skills?
The book was more feminine than most things I read, describing her deepest heart in ways I don’t, which is what learning others’ views is about. She’s open and vulnerable. Her covering her social and sexual awakening reminded me of mine. Some things that were easy for me, and men in general I think, were big challenges for her. Many things that were easy for her took years of some of the most challenging and intense work of my life, including some of my biggest failures. Some things I think she and, based on advice I’ve gotten from other women, some women don’t even realize were nearly impossible for me and most men I know.
I’ve enjoyed great experiences living freely and marginally for years, but even if I flew, I wouldn’t expect a woman to offer to fly me first class and pay for everything for a week just from meeting me online, or rescue me after briefly meeting me at a sex club after I left with a different woman, take me to another one as her guest, host me for a week, and so on, especially if I had no income. I once had a sugar-momma, and enjoyed entrusting the universe to provide and finding it did, but found it very different for men. By contrast, some criticisms and concerns she faced, I never had to.
What I’m getting at is that the book led me to think and see the world from different eyes. Also to question preconceptions that may have limited me and may still be limiting me. Also to know a friend better and appreciate her creative abilities more.
Read my weekly newsletter
On initiative, leadership, the environment, and burpees