This week’s artwork is Natalia Goncharova’s 1913 “Dynamo Machine”, courtesy of WikiArt.
In time, I have finally recovered from my prolonged sickness, readers old and new. It was tedious, to say the least.
While I’m still easing back into things, I wanted to share something that I’m quite excited about. If you’ve been following along (here or elsewhere) for a time, you’ll be familiar with my work on “The Future of Wellness”.
It began as a rant in 2021, and evolved into a longer body of work later that year. I had a fair draft completed by February 2022, shared with my (then) Patrons. At the end of last year, I re-wrote it in weekly instalments here on Mutability. After many months of tumult, I have again refined it - and for once, it’s actually in a place that I’m satisfied with (which says more about my own high standards of writing and design, than it does about the content).
Now, for those unfamiliar, or who need a refresher, “The Future of Wellness” is a treatise on evolving paradigms in the Wellness Industry.
It’s my hypothesis for what a Future beyond the current Wellness Industry could be, which describes 4 Paradigms: 2 which have come before, and 2 for a Post-Wellness future.
As many of us are, I was jaded by the current Wellness industrial complex. "The Future of Wellness" leaned heavily on my experience with cultural change, organisation-building, and abstract, paradigm thinking (sounds weird to say, but I couldn't think of a better way to say it).
My focus on Wellness was twofold: knowing enough about it, I believed it long overdue a revolution, and it gave me a proving ground to write and flesh out my understanding of social change more broadly. Three years of research, thought, and dreaming, and I am still learning and updating my beliefs about what a generative future looks like.
For the time being, it’s my heart’s delight to share with you in simple terms what I have crafted, that it might ignite your own imagination. All of these can be used under a Creative Commons licence (Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 International) to share or adapt.
+ The homepage for all things “Future of Wellness”
+ “The Future of Wellness” PDF
+ “The Future of Wellness companion guide for revolution”
+ Instagram templates for your own “Future of Wellness” Paradigms
🎬 Short takes
Why have I fallen out of love with prose novels? I feel a general indifference towards most nonfiction novels, especially modern fiction. It’s less likely that the bar for "good writing" has changed drastically in the last century (though maybe it has?), and probably more that I don’t care enough about reading about people’s modern, day to day lives. My partner flies through plenty of recently released nonfiction that she finds through Bookstagrammers (book-tokers? I…I don’t know), and it’s rare that I’m enticed by any of them.
Here’s the thing - I have my own life and my own (very real) problems. I try hard to keep up with the lives and problems of my (very real) loved ones. I try to stay up to date with global news and current affairs. Maybe it’s that I lack the energy or capacity to care about some entirely fabricated person’s life and their whole network of problems, too. I don’t know - I don’t wanna be a cynical asshole, but at the same time…
And I definitely see the other side of that, which is that I very much enjoy films, TV, visual media. Maybe it’s just that I don’t like modern prose? The most recent (temporally) writing that makes me feel “wow, the English language is wondrous and sensuous” is Nabokov’s prose. I guess it could be that I don’t want to read a book about people using apps and doing modern-day things, because that’s my life?
Also, modern poetry is entirely hit and miss for me, and I’ve tried to read a lot of it. You know what, this is sounding real cynical and high brow, so I’m just gonna stop it right here. I really don’t care what people read, but just know if I’m not jumping on your nonfiction book recommendations, this is why.
❤️🔥 What I’ve been crushing on
The heartwarming Imby Book Club I had the good fortune to co-host with my friend, Ashley. If you hear me talk about Imby plenty, and wanna know what actually happens, then you can have a read here.
“Two strong hearts” (1988), a previously unknown-to-me Farnsy song that’s been on repeat this week. It has one of those choruses that just sticks in your brain.
ICYMI, Selina Meyer finally got to meet the President
Sara’s insight that she needed to feel more grounded in reality resonated with me, and might do with you, too .
This list of wonderful to read things that Lisa has to share with us. I adored them alllll, but especially:
You’re not fucked up for struggling with social media, for not knowing where it fits in your life anymore, for wanting to write (which requires a platform) but also not wanting to be a public person, for wanting to disappear from it completely while also not wanting to burn down what might simply need tending in new ways, for feeling frustrated by all that has changed there while also feeling relieved at the lessening of the grip it has on you or your work. All of this makes so much sense. All of these are things many others are feeling, too.
This thought-piece about Nicolas Cage’s career.
“Cage became reborn not as a man, but as a meme, and accepted the internet’s dubious promise of immortality, only to excel as a rinky-dink cult hero and embark on his renaissance. Having refracted the limelight, Cage hid a revelation behind his abnormally-widened eyes: if you do it well, people will pay you just as much to be bad.”
🧶 What I’m wrangling
Recently, it dawned on me that there’s no English-language equivalent for a term of endearment or respect for an older person.
In many cultures (first to mind are [South] Asian and Indigenous Australian) it’s commonplace to use the term “aunty” or “uncle” in reference to an elder. Even in my (Greek) family, everyone is θεία ή θείο (aunty or uncle) - a term I also use when meeting non-family elders in Greece.
It’s unclear to me as to why that’s not prevalent in English-speaking cultures, but if I had to hazard a guess, it’s because we care less about people the older they get? 💁♂️
Having said that, if you know of a word we use in English for this kinda thing, I’d be pleased to hear it - or the equivalent in a language of your speaking!