A Rule-Breaking Tuesday

I only published on Friday since 2021. Why not try something new?

Dear friends,

I decided to stop using Substack Notes and basically all social media at the start of April after noticing myself spending less time thinking and more time scrolling.

Still, quite a few of you found me hiding in this mountain hut. So, welcome! And kudos to my old friends who have been a part of this journey in the past four years.

This newsletter is for all of you.

Juan Escudero, Ocean light, 2024

Let’s go easy this week, shall we?

Here are a few things on my mind:

Music

After discovering FKJ about a year ago, I fell into the rabbit hole of multi-instrumental artists.

Then I found Ash, a Cairo-born, Montréal-based musician. I have never come across such wide-ranging music with a blend of Arabic melodies and Western electronics.

I love how his music softly reaches the untapped part of my brain.

Book

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley

Genome was too much of a read for me the first time. I gave up after struggling through the first couple of chapters without any basic knowledge of biology.

The book has been quietly gathering dust on the shelf over the past year.

I picked it up again lately.

This time, I used AI as a guide to help me better understand anything I didn’t know. The re-read feels better. I gained new perspectives on the secret code of our existence. It might take me another year to get through it, but I am on my way.

The genome is a book that wrote itself, continually adding, deleting and amending over four billion years.

Writer

Linart is the first writer that I have connected with on Substack.

I feel like we are evolving and exploring what it means to be a writer together. The first thing that attracted me was his discipline and structured thinking.

And it’s lovely to see how Linart has changed over time as he moves towards leaning on his intuition, going with the flow, and doing what he enjoys the most.

If you’re like me, you might be surprised to notice that you can actually let yourself feel more joy, even if nothing changes externally.

Do what you enjoy

Habit

I stopped using Facebook in 2017, Twitter/X in around 2021, and Substack Notes and Instagram in early April.

The screen time report on my phone tells me I cut down the average phone usage from over 6 hours per week (~an hour per day) to less than 1 hour and 40 min last week (~15 min per day).

What’s your relationship with these social media apps like?

Future

Sequoia is turning up the heat with its AI-generated content on Substack with alien words like ambient intelligent environment, augmented cognition tools, and AI Collectives.

In the face of these technological waves, my question is:

What’s our role as writers in the age of AI?

Quote

Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different.

- C. S. Lewis

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Before you go, I have a question for you: What’s your earliest memory of your dad?

This is for a new project about exploring what it means to be a dad. I would love to hear from you!

I know some of you are going through a rather hectic period lately.

I hope you will find peace from within. The answers are already inside us, and to quote Zhenya, “You are never lost.”

Until next time.

- Franco