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Let’s lose 20 pounds and be less creative!

THE STORY SO FAR

• I'm best known for the series Everything is a Remix.

• I'm pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons.

• I'm seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life.

• I'm thinking about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule any of these statements.

Howdy folks!

I’ve written a new AI piece for the fantastic site Freethink, which is part of the Big Think media juggernaut. It’s called “Why artists shouldn’t fear AI.” It’s an adaptation of the last Everything is a Remix episode, Artificial Creativity, but it’s substantially revised and in some ways it’s a deeper exploration of the topic. (And in case you didn’t hear, the complete edit of Everything is a Remix 2023 is back online!)

I’m now on the new, decentralized social app Blue Sky. (Thanks Sebastian!) It’s still invite-only, but if you happen to be on there, come follow me. Otherwise, you can join the waitlist.

And one last thing before we proceed, I have a question for you: where do you compose ideas and do your thinking? It only takes a moment to respond and it’s anonymous.

Last week’s results looked like this. Clear winner: you folks like to learn by watching. Thank you to everyone who voted, and thank you also for your many helpful comments.

I’m choosing to be less creative

I wouldn't say I'm slaughtering my sacred cows lately, but I'm certainly worshipping them less. A new and somewhat shocking decision I finding myself making lately is choosing to be less creative.

Old Kirby would have found this choice radical, weird and probably sad. But creativity is a monumentally inefficient undertaking. It requires loads of exploration, experimentation and failure. I've done an incredible amount of all these over the years. A minority of this work has been published, the rest sits on my hard drive. Much of it is junk, but some of it isn’t.

I abandoned loads of ideas that got stuck, and I was always in a rush to get on to the next thing. After dropping a major video, which was the product of months of work, I didn’t do anything further with that material and just zipped along to the next thing. I have loads and loads and loads of research that never got used for anything.

Any kind of knowledge work is about exploration and exploitation. I’ve done a lot of exploring, and not much exploitation.

I don't need to chart new realms. I've already explored plenty. I’m looking to exploit my existing body of creative work and research: simplify, popularize, augment, transform, and commercialize. There’s still plenty of creative effort required, but it’s a more modest variety. The results of some of these efforts are starting to appear in the redesign of the Everything is a Remix website, which is currently underway.

Let’s lose 20 pounds!

Like many of you I’m sure, the last few years have not been kind to my waistline or my health. There was of course the COVID years, but for me, the major culprit was parenthood. Prior to having a baby, I’d finally gotten my diet and exercise pretty dialed-in after having yo-yoing weight my entire adult life.

The lack of sleep and relentless work of co-parenting sapped my willpower and resulted in me taking lots of shortcuts and craving ease wherever I could find it. I cannot deal with figuring out how to not eat pizza right now. I gained over 20 pounds, going from 190 to 212—or maybe more. I stopped checking the scale after a while.

The intensity of parenting has eased-up as we approach the mid-point of Kirby Junior’s second year and I now have the strength to get my health back in order and keep it that way. My goal is to get back down to 190 pounds. I’m 6’2” and this feels like a good weight for my frame, but I’ll reevaluate my goals once I get there.

This isn’t a short-term plan to drop some pounds, I’m changing how I eat forever. The approach I’ve chosen is pretty simple. It’s the Harvard Medical School plan plus the Mediterranean diet, which seems the consensus choice for overall best diet. (The Japanese diet is probably equivalent or even a bit better, but that’s hard for Western people like me to pull off.)

Red meat, flour, processed stuff, and sugary treats have been cut way back. Dairy and potatoes, both beloved staples of mine, have also been reduced. You can see the Harvard food pyramid here, which is my template.

My lifestyle is decently active. I love to get Little Kirby plenty of play and outside activity so when I eat well, the pounds zip off. I’ve already lost about 12 pounds—though I got a little assist from catching COVID, which knocked out my appetite for a few days. I’m already over half way to my destination.

The major difference I’m experiencing already is that I just feel better on my frame. I feel bouncier, quicker, and less achey. Basically, I’ve rewound my age about five years.

This is all still a work in progress. When life gets more stressful, my willpower lapses and my old habits score some wins. After a truly wretched recent day, I Doordashed Wendy’s and watched NBA playoffs. It was both glorious and immediately regrettable.

But I know my old ways just aren’t sustainable, and after getting off track, I just turn ‘round and head back in the right direction.

If your weight’s been creeping up over the years, losing some pounds really does make a big difference, not just to your long-term health but to how you feel right now. If you think this could help you, the Harvard plan and the Mediterranean diet work. Join me.

I'm also drinking salt for some fuckin' reason. Is this bullshit? I dunno but I have to say, I feel like it improves my energy. Maybe it's just the placebo effect but nowadays, I’ll take that placebo, thanks.

Happy post-Mother’s Day to all the moms! Have great week everyone!
Kirby