Friends of Caesura,
On a sunny day I regret sitting inside the apartment and staring at my work screen. I have this urge to be outside and catch the sun before it sets at 4PM. Sometimes the sunlight fills up my apartment and it feels like a blessing — I learned to appreciate the moment like this, to stop everything and be present with the sun.
I am Adil and this is (still) Caesura, a weekly newsletter that is very proud to have you as a subscriber.
🌔 Glowing in the Rain
Budapest is awesome in the rainy night, when warm yellow lighting of streets reflects in wet surfaces. In the evening I was walking to ATM and enjoying the sounds of raindrops on yellow leaves under my feet. The city looked like a scene from Woodie Allen’s movies. Rain dropping, each drop reflecting the city in milliseconds of its existence, calming the mind. Cold air filling your lungs. Smell of wet wood and concrete adding freshness. Warm inviting glow coming from shops and cafes.
Interestingly, it is a yellow glow of street lamps that gives the city its warm groove. Cities with white lights, although probably saving a lot of money on electricity, look colder and artificial. Cities with yellow lighting tend to be more lively and cozy, inviting you to to take a walk instead of transport, look around and notice things rather than rushing inside buildings.
🗺️ Mapping the City
In other news, I want to take a moment to appreciate Google Maps. It is my go-to tool for making sense of any city I visit and building my unique map of places I like (and do not like). Each city I travel gets filled by icons and lists on my account. The map seems like a living, breathing space where people share their opinions about places, post photos and videos of those place on a constant basis. Having access to collective wisdom as an expat and traveler is just awesome. Reading reviews on Google Maps is usually valuable, sometimes funny and sometimes frustrating experience.
🎨 Omniculturalist
I was speaking to my colleague on a brunch and we were discussing how we, both expats from different countries work and live in so many different cultural environments at the same time. Our team and managers are located in one country, yet we physically work in a different country, while each of us being an expat and having a home country elsewhere.
I was talking about how a constant change of cultural contexts makes me think more of who I am and what I represent. I remember mentioning being an omnicultural person, because in different cultural environment I mean and represent different things.
In the past, these my different selves used to be a separate silos, that did not interact with other and I kept them this way to make things simpler. But now, I look at them as being one continuum of my identity. Each of them being a song in an album, and my identity being the album itself comprised of different songs.
📝 Article: Two Kinds of Optimization Addiction
There is an amazing article I recently read on productivity and minimalism culture. To give you the sense of what it is, here is the quote:
In general, self-optimization enthusiasts consume one of two strains of “porn” (webspeak for any imagery you can’t stop looking at). One is what Alexis Ohanian has called “ hustle porn ,” a tireless celebration of peak performance. The other might be dubbed “zen porn,” lifestyles and sceneries Marie Kondo’d down to their essentials. Between these two competing sensibilities, wellness-obsessed performance addicts spend their days staring at idealized portraits of the values they imagine for themselves—as supplied by the influencer gurus of Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube.
You should read it. I would lie if I say that I am not a typical consumer of those kinds content on YouTube. Here is another good one:
Hustle porn, as a kind of maximalism, would seem to be the opposite of zen-porny minimalism, which advocates for doing well by doing and having less. In practice, their struggles are as similar as their aesthetics are different.
If you have read it, let me know what do you think and whether you can relate to it.
See ya,
Adil.