Looming Void: October 21, 2024
After absence … publication hopes on the horizon; less climate change angst; and a more relaxed, fatter me
Nothing much to say, lately
The original intent for this journal was to post weekly on Mondays, nattering to myself and the world about the week that just thundered by, ranging freely but gnawing away at three existential matters:
Progress on my book (I call this 10,000 Minutes to remind myself to latch onto every minute in a week)
The climate crisis that looms for my grandchildren (I dubbed this Monsters after hearing scientist Stephen Pacala refer to “monsters behind the door,” meaning possible catastrophic, irreversible tipping points)
An elderly human’s existential angst and anxiety about Mortality and how to flail against angst, against anxiety, against mortality
10,000 minutes
One reason for radio silence from me has been a strange, trembly slide from one state to another, a slide that has proven to be difficult to identify. This book has taken so long to scope out, initiate research, gather material, take notes, and then draft chapters, that I’ve grown used to promising friends and family that “it’s going well, it’ll be out soon” whilst having no idea at all about completion timing. Yet now I can glimpse the shoreline from the crow’s nest. The following crude sketch shows that if I divide the 15 chapters into a drafting period and four edits, I’ve only got two chapters to draft (and one of those is a concluding chapter that should be short). Moreover seven chapters need two edits and six need three edits. I plan on the basis of taking a couple of days’ work to edit a chapter, so I aim to have a “live” manuscript (a long one, it’ll be 1,200 pages without notes and references) done by the middle of January.
So I’ve begun to put together a brief, comprising my ham-fisted design ideas and market-comparative images for a cover designer. I’ve lined up a copyeditor. Right now I don’t have a clear picture of whether my mid-January draft manuscript will present as strong or weak, nor have I decided whether or not to pass the draft around to any friends or writers, so guessing a publication date is risky, but I’d hope to self-publish in the second quarter of 2025.
Such a vista blinds me. After so long! Today and tomorrow I’m initiating Volume II research (yes, there will be some but hopefully just a month’s worth) and organization of materials. I may even grasp the courage to begin plotting that book.
All of this thinking has not proceeded smoothly. Some days I’ve needed to take ten or a hundred deep breaths and float along with gentle work. But now that I’m here, I hope to use this Looming Void journal as it was intended, as a weekly chronicle and, more importantly, a motivator.
Monsters
My climate change anxiety upswells and recedes, rises and lowers. Work optimism seems to have allayed some of my regular terror-laden thinking about the future, yet I don’t wish to avert my eyes for one second because nothing tells me we’ve moved away from a situation of planetary/human dire peril that can laced with great hope but which at a fundamental level (carbon in the atmosphere, global temperatures) remains inexorably horrifying. So … that’s a way of saying that, even though my physical anxiety levels are currently low, I’ll continue to note news that buoys me or that plunges a dagger in my back.
Susan Crawford usually focuses on the climate change impacts in the crevasses of society, such as insurance. But she also has a knack of capturing what we as a human race now face. Describing Hurricane Helene:
It’s hard to describe 40 trillion gallons of rain. Imagine Manhattan’s streets covered by a pool 1.6 miles deep. Or the entire state of Massachusetts under 23 feet of water. That’s how much rain fell on the southeast US through Sunday. It’s apocalyptic, astronomical, unthinkable.
With ferociously accelerating climate change, more extremely wet storms like Helene are in our future. We need leaders with the capacity to plan ahead. We need people who can imagine living differently. At the least, we need to stop building infrastructure that can’t cope with extreme rainstorms.
Since then we’ve had Hurricane Milton. A former Florida climate change commissioner (do they still have one?) lambasts the ongoing denialism of Florida’s leaders. Read her article, “Milton is a monster: Elected leaders are to blame.”
The World Wildlife Fund has issued its annual report, 2024 Living Planet Report: A System in Peril. I didn’t find anything new in it, just the same unremitting gloom. They track 5,500 invertebrate species (maybe 8% of the estimated 70,000 global such species) and reckon that over the last half century, numbers have dropped 73%. Why doesn’t that ring alarm bell after alarm bell?
Mortality
This is a period of reevaluation of what I decided to do two years ago after a mild health scare (some arteries partly blocked, a genetic disposition toward clogging), namely to max out on the most stringent diet and daily exercise regimen. I have read so much—book upon book, articles after article, podcasts galore—about diet, health, healthfulness, exercise, mortality, etc., etc., that my knowledge base has grown muddier and muddier. Some of what I thought was sound science might not be quite as clearcut. Some of my resolve is evaporating in the face of doubt.
The upshot is that I’ve put on weight, am eating less “well” (while still being a paragon most of every day), and hit an exercising wall after jogging really poorly in two longer fun runs. Currently I have a sense that I do not possess the emotional strength to do all three: write well and hard; love family and friends, plus enjoy myself; and be a health role model. It seems that at any point in time, one of the points of that triangle falters.
So I find myself relaxing into a heavier me, a less active me, but one who works hard and lives well.
That said, after a fortnight of poor gym attendance, this morning I restarted (only one set rather than the desired three sets). My gym routine concludes with a lot of rollering and spiky balling and band working, and here you can see my tools.
