Hello, dear family and friends :-)
Why “Unicycle”?
For this second installment of the Unicycle, I wanted to share the story behind the name. It started with this quote:
What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
~ Steve Jobs (c. 1980)
A human can’t go very far on foot. The bicycle increases our efficiency, letting us cover more distance, experience more things, and generally live a better life. Today, bikes and computers are everywhere. They each play a big part in my life and I often think that my first bike was the best $200 I ever spent (it’s eleven years old and I still ride it).
A unicycle, however, is not the pinnacle of human achievement. It’s not easy, it’s unusual, and you feel a bit silly riding it (unless you’re really good). And that’s what my relationship to writing is right now.
Once I made that connection, I found lots of similarities between writing and unicycling.
They’ve been on my mind for a long time. I’ve wanted to ride a unicycle ever since I was in circus school twenty years ago, and I’ve even owned a unicycle for the last decade. But I’ve never made the decision to start. With writing, I’ve had several short-lived blogs but never a consistent writing habit. My Twitter account goes back to ‘09 but has less than a hundred tweets.
They exercise my thinking. I love to learn and master new things, especially things that force me to think in new ways. It’s something I’ve always found very fulfilling.
They require regular practice. Getting good at either takes lots of reps. Without solid habits (another area of interest for me), it’s hard to improve.
They are useful life skills. Ok fine, maybe not unicycling. But writing is. Despite the amazing ease of writing online, only 1% of people do it.
They connect to my weird side. It’s fun to be silly, to defy expectations, to bring a smile to someone’s face.
After a few days, the phrase “writing is a unicycle for the mind” stuck in my brain. So there you have it: I’m writing the Unicycle.
Think Links
Just one link today.
The split-screen effect: The damage from epidemics and civil unrest is not evenly distributed. One place might be hit hard, while just a few blocks or miles away there’s no sign that anything happened. I’ve been feeling this dissonance with respect to COVID. When friends ask me how I’m doing, I feel guilty saying that my life is pretty good, and in some ways it’s even better than before. Turns out, this lumpiness of suffering is common. I don’t mean that everything is great or that I’m absolved of a duty to help others. But that in a crisis where the average quality of life falls, it may fall drastically for some while staying the same or going up for others.
Happy Friday
Cheers,
Grin