Week 35 of 2024 has arrived. There is a cool breeze blowing most days here in the middle of the U.S. Often this time of the year is unbearably hot and humid. Things change.

Time to walk over to your 4K Weeks poster and fill in another square. Done?

I've been writing like crazy... it's great and hard.  I didn't realize how much I would like writing until I started writing this weekly email almost two years ago...

I am writing 33 daily emails and text messages for a 33 day habit-streak product I'm working on.  It is part of my focus on trying to create tools to help people fill up their squares with intention and it will launch later this year. November?  If you want to get on the wait list, send Eli a message with "33" in the subject line...Info@4kweeks.com

The other day, after writing 10 of my 25 minutes of  "Morning Pages" my right hand was sore so I tried my left... wow... everything slowed down, even my ability to have the thoughts that I was writing was slower... and more primitive... and that got me thinking... Since the brain maps to the opposite side of the body for control, by writing with my left hand, could I strengthen my right brain's ability to think?  I don't know, but it is worth trying!  So now, 20 minutes right hand, 5 minutes left hand - I am already showing improvement. It still looks like a drunk 3rd grader's writing, but baby steps!

Enjoy the email this week!  Thanks for reading!

Do me a favor - forward it to a friend and tell them to subscribe here!

And finally, I made a new hat... You can hear about it at the end of the podcast this week.

Remarkable Weeks

Week  35 of 1942, Lyudmilla Pavlichenko, the most successful female sniper in recorded history, was welcomed at the White House by Eleanor Roosevelt. She was the first Soviet citizen invited to White House. She fought during World War II, had 309 confirmed kills, and was called "Lady Death."  She was 1,367.43 (26.22 yrs). (It's weird sometimes, what we celebrate.)

Week  35 of 1986, Tina Turner had her star made public at the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She was called the "Queen of Rock and Roll" and was a recipient of eight Grammy Awards. She was 2,439.57 weeks old (47.78 yrs).

Week  35 of 2009, Cristiano Ronaldo made his debut with Real Madrid. He scored a penalty and they won 3-2 against Deportivo La Coruña. He was 1,281.57 weeks old (24.57 yrs).

This Week's Quote

"I don’t know where I am going, but I know exactly how to get there.”  Renias Mathanjane Mhlongo, from The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life. 

I latched on to this quote when listening to a rerun of the Tim Ferriss Show interview with Boyd Varty.  It is an old one, and Varty’s book is an old one too… all the way back in 2019.

It speaks to a system of understanding how to discover the track as opposed to knowing it.

I don’t yet understand how to do this.  It is often hard to tease out which habits of being are part of you, are just your nature, and which are only familiar ruts in which you have been driving your wagon.

I say that because I am not sure if the personality traits that I have that make it difficult for me to see a universe in which I know exactly how to get to an uncertain future, are replaceable, or part of the fabric of ME.

It is cliche… I am 47.  Squarely in midlife, some success behind me, 40+ years of possibility ahead of me, and an understanding that it all simultaneously matters SO MUCH, and not at all.

I downloaded the book The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life. It is short - in one evening I was 61% through.  As I read about the art of tracking and how the guides can see a fragment of a lion’s paw print below the layers of impalas and mice who came by later, it seemed not like a foreign language, but an alien language.  

I would be a miserable lion tracker. I have tried to learn skills that require patience with uncertainty, and fragments of information, and I have never succeeded in mastering any of them. 

And so I guess this quote makes me wonder, can we change our nature and pop our wheels out of the ruts of a familiar trail when we are hopeful for a new track? Is that what is required?  Or is it enough to just become slightly better at observing the signals the universe sends to us?

This book makes me feel a little bit like I have been asleep when I thought I was wide awake… and I want to be wide awake, and I am willing to work for it.

What I am Consuming This Week

The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life, Boyd Varty

It's a fast read, and pretty short.  It is one big beautiful metaphor. I am not sure how much of it I can directly press into service in my own "track" but the lesson of "staying open" to what clues the universe is sending your way is gold, and has come to me in a few different ways this last week... I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for the "next first track".

Tim Ferriss Show, "#763 Margaret Atwood and Boyd Varty"

This is the podcast that got me on the scent of Varty, and Margaret Atwood is also awesome... I now need to go listen to the full episodes of both.

Economics of Everyday Things, "Money Laundering"

This was research... I have millions of ill gotten gains that I need to clean up... ope, maybe that was TMI... super interesting.

The Daily, "How AC Conquered America".

If you are my age, there is a good chance you grew up in a home without AC... CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE!!! It has changed us soooo much. It is hard to think of all the ways.

"Tiger Mountain Peasant Song", Fleet Foxes.

I heard this in a coffee shop and had to ask them to tell me the name... It spoke to me out of my past as a song that I used to love, before Spotify, when it was all Pandora all the time. So Beautiful, and odd. And then, when looking for the link, I realized that a cover of this song was how I discovered First Aid Kit. (My son, when 5, called them "Bandaid Box".) Spectacular... when they hit that note... wow.