🌊 My City's Underwater

Exploring The Aussie-Atlantis

Mar 4

Australia is bloody weird. You think of a red wasteland, giant spiders, even bigger bush fires, and then amazing beaches, with blonde-beach-babes and washboard-8-pack-abs-dude surfers living the paradise lifestyle.

I’m also keen to perpetuate the “Kids go to school riding in Kangaroo pouches” story as well but unfortunately, some realities just aren’t meant to be 😢. Dismal, tell me about it, especially when the spiders part is fucking true instead.

The other day I killed a spider the size of my hand, and before you imagine my dumb face on a heroic spartan body defeating this spider. I want you to picture me panicking and pathetically flailing around trying to find something long enough to keep this thing from running at me at the speed of a thousand suns, and yes, I’m aware suns don’t run, but the statement stands.

Safe to say, I burnt the house down after. You know… Just to make sure…

But speaking of bushfires, suns, hot people, and burning things, Australia is also the only spot on earth that Noah’s arc needs to make a comeback.

Flash flooding is a thing, and this week my city hadn’t seen insanity like this since 2011 - surrounding cities hadn’t seen it in 100 years; this was some biblical shit.

And it was literally just from the rain.

Now, in Brisbane, there are many houses in flood zones, and I’m one of the lucky ones that aren’t. So it’s easy for me to say this, but I found that even the people who got absolutely shat on said it too…

🍋 When Life Gives You Metaphorical Lemons…

The Aussie spirit is equal parts beer and comedy. So yes, people said, “let’s make some god damn lemonade.” We had people have all types of fun during this; as serious as it was:

🎹 A guy taking inspiration from the titanic and kicking ass playing the piano in his new Garage Aquarium, half-submerged.
🛶 People kayaking in the streets to do some light exploring - yes, that’s a street sign that’s level with Kayak, that’s how bad it was.
👶 Speaking of kayaks, this one woman gave birth directly after being rescued by one.
🏄‍♀️ People even took the opportunity to surf down giant mudslides.

Tragedy aside, the spirit of metaphorical-life-lemons being squeezed into some cocaine-salted lemonade is real - we did well.

🍄 And Shared Experiences Are Weird, Right?

Here’s a picture I posted after doing a little Instagram Vlog when I was exploring the floods - they’re rare but funny, I swear, catch the next one here.

The common thing with everything I’ve mentioned in that photo is that they’re a shared experience by a massive amount of people - just like ayahuasca in a tent with 12 random tourists and a shaman.

Even though covid sucked (and continues to suck), even though the impending financial cuckery is going to impact everyone, there’s some weird feeling we can take solace in - and that’s the feeling of “we’re all in this together.”

And it’s easy to feel that way when everyone’s talking about these experiences all the time - they’re so far out of the ordinary that I forgot what we used to talk about before these things.

But I think it’s insanely important, more important than these once-in-a-century kinds of events, that we remind ourselves that our day-to-day struggles with:

Life meaning.
Work dissatisfaction.
Unclear or rocky goals.
And the general feeling of “what the fuck am I doing.”

Are all shared experiences too.

They’re universal. Millions of people have gone through it, will go through it, and just like you and me, going through it now. That mutual feeling of camaraderie on this giant space disco ball gives me some comfort.

Hopefully, reminding yourself of this reality will give you some too.

🔨 Making Things

A bunch of you seemed to love that Productivity DB I sent over in the last email; hell yeah. Let me know if you guys want an ultimate guide on this topic. It’s when I do a deep dive on something with a bunch of research and past experiences - I did one on sleep a while ago.

Feeling the love - it’s here if you missed it.

I’ve got a few more things coming on the blogging side, and I’m coding away on some other projects too. Let me know what you want first:

Ultimate Medium Guide (Article/eBook)
Building Valuable Apps w/ NoCode Tools (Tag-along)
Detailed Blogging Platform Comparison (feat. Substack/Medium/Ghost etc.)
Ultimate Productivity Guide (Article/eBook)
Something Else

Let me know on Twitter or in the comments 👇.

🔗 Link Dump

Links today are all about the good feels. Some inspiring and hilarious things that I’ve been revisiting or thinking about:

🎙 One of my favorite Tim Ferriss podcast episodes with Cal Fussman, a master storyteller, talking about life and travel.
🤣 Another favorite podcast episode, this time from Joe Rogan interviewing Miss Pat - the most I’ve laughed during any podcast.
🎬 Recently also re-watched Ben Stiller’s version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - say what you will, but that movie is as feel-good and travel-inspiring as they come.

That’s it, amigo’s - I’ll catch you in the next one.

✌ Sah

Don’t forget to share this with that friend you hate.

The Professional Generalist