Summertime Slowness
Hey everyone,
I am looking for a new editor for these journals. If anyone is interested, simply reply to this email. I will probably be taking a break from publically journaling for the summer, and if I continue to publish my journal regularly again, it will probably be once a week.
Tomorrow’s events:
Collective Journaling w/ Peter Limberg and Co-Hosts. Daily @ 8:00 AM ET. Patreon event. 90 mins.
Coming Home: A Path to Embodiment w/ Schuyler Brown. July 21st @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
The Liminal Space Agency: Taking 100% Co-Response-Ability for the Intergenerational Conversation w/ Jean Robertson. July 21st @ 4:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Newly posted events:
Practices for Authentic Living w/ Susan Campbell. August 3rd @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Wisdom Energy w/ Gregg Henriques. August 9th @ 12:00 PM ET. Patreon event.
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July 20th, 2021
So, what is next for The Stoa for the next few months?
A few things: philosophical venturing, co-stewarding, coaching and journaling. I’ll discuss each of these in turn...
Philosophical venturing. As mentioned in the previous Path of Wisdom entries, two philosophical ventures are coming soon, hopefully to be officially announced in August, and launched in October and November. One is going to be called “Discovering Wisdom” with Andrew Taggart, and the other one will be called “Beyond Self-Discipline” with Daniel Kazandjian.
These will be sort-of-like courses, or what is often called “cohort-based courses” (CBC). They are going to be a little weirder than that though, and we want them to be immersive artistic experiences that have transformative effects. We basically want them to be lifeworks.
We were thinking of calling them “Stoa Experiences,” or something like Uncourses, but philosophical ventures will be the placeholder for now. I am vibing with this because each venture will have a philosophical argument and hypothesis as to why they are needed, and the venture itself will be an act of living out a philosophical inquiry, which is what doing philosophy as a way of life is all about.
I do not want to reveal too much now, but they will be one-month experiences situated in the market economy, unlike the rest of The Stoa offerings, which are situated in the gift economy, or at least situated in the spirit of the gift economy.
Discovering Wisdom will be about discovering the praxis of wisdom, towards developing a wisdom commons. If you want to figure out how to be an artist of life, with other aspiring life artists, then this venture will be for you.
Beyond Self-Discipline will have the best self-help psychotechnology Daniel and I have explored throughout our friendship, including our top-secret mastermind tech, purposed towards developing a “communal discipline.” If you are ready to get your shit holistically together and implement a wise daily rhythm, then you will vibe well with this venture.
Philosophically speaking—to use the four cardinal virtues of Stoicism—I see Discovering Wisdom exploring the praxis for prudence, or practical wisdom, and Beyond Self-Discipline exploring the praxis for courage and temperance, aka doing something and not doing something. Both ventures are doing this with others hence justice, aka being in the right relationship with others, will also be a virtue in play. I want these ventures to help develop all virtues needed to walk down the Path of Wisdom.
They are going to be beautiful, or at least I am very called to make them beautiful. These beautiful ventures will be launched from The Stoa, but I do not see them being a part of The Stoa. I like the idea of The Stoa being this nebulous daemonic incubator, from whence things emerge, then live elsewhere. I am starting to see The Stoa as a portal from one world to another.
Co-stewarding. This idea recently came to me, and I quite like it. I would like to start co-stewarding The Stoa with somebody else, and the co-steward role can rotate either on a monthly or quarterly basis. I like the idea of someone who is daemonically turned on, running with a theme that they are called to explore, and leveraging The Stoa’s status to speak with super interesting people that they may otherwise not be able to speak with.
I only want to have 1-3 one-off events per week now. It was crazy how we were having around 20 events per week at one point, week after week. How did I manage to do that again? Well, unsustainably, that is how. I am very ready to slow down, and only do things that are both sustainable and regenerative.
I would like to see my face less on the YouTube channel as well and see more guest hosts, but I will want to host a few events a month. For the people I would like to host, they probably will be people that will inform how the philosophical ventures will be designed, hence I want to host people who have things to say about walking down the Path of Wisdom. So basically The Stoa is indeed turning into a daemonic R&D lab.
I also want to lean more into the “seduce the artists” algo soon. The Fenne Lily session had a really sweet tenderness to it, and having more artists visit will attract a different group of people, ones who will still have an existential openness to the Path of Wisdom.
Coaching and journaling. I am still not sure how I am going to frame my coaching practice. I am taking August off coaching, and perhaps September as well. If I start up again in October, the practice will most definitely be framed and held differently. For journaling, I am still going to be journaling every day, which is my way of engaging in philosophical inquiry with myself on a daily basis. These will be happening at The Stoa during our Collective Journalling sessions, which happen every day at 8 AM ET.
What about public journaling? I still have a tremendous amount of daemonic horniness right now, evidenced by my recent public journalling burst. However, the editor of these journals, Hannah Robbins, will be stepping away as my editor, as she is called to do something new now.
Hannah has basically edited all of my journals here, and she has been a fucking gift. It will be weird journaling without her, as my public journaling feels so intertwined with her, and her feedback has been invaluable. So while I still have so much daemonic horniness, perhaps I will take Hannah’s departure as a sign and take a break from public journaling.
Publically journaling once a week, perhaps every Sunday with the weekly event updates, might be the wise thing to do. I do like the idea of taking the summer off from public journaling though, going real fucking slow, and private journaling in a sexy, messy sort of way, about all the raw and uncomfortable things that are alive.
There is also a part of me that wants to delete all of these journals. I read a few older entries recently, and the thing that came to mind was this: What the fuck. I actually wrote that?! I was thinking of publishing these into a book last summer, but I do not care about doing that at the moment. Maybe I will care later. I do not regret writing here in front of you over the last year and four months though.
Last summer around this time I wrote an entry called “summertime sadness,” which was a theme for me last summer. I was indeed sad, and if you were following my journals then you’ll know I was struggling with important things, like relationship things. This summer is really different from last summer. It is more peaceful. There is a momentum here, a good momentum, one headed towards an existential opening.
There is a slight fear with me now, presencing this. What if this is too good to be true? What if this will not last? The majority of my adult life felt like one messy struggle. The Smith’s song, Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want, is coming to mind. I am listening to it now, and it is kind of landing, especially the opening lyrics: Good times for a changeeee...
Yeah, this is some tender shit, and I dig tender shit, but the song is actually not landing as it would have before. The vibe is too needy, and the slight fear I feel has a pinch of that neediness as well. This neediness wants good times, and good momentum, to last forever. It basically wants a guarantee. Reality does not work like that, and while I am still a Stoic, I will be a good Stoic, and feel into the fear, and alchemize it into courage.
That feels good. I am ready now to enjoy the rest of this summer, slowly.
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