070 • Walking very far + turning twenty-one
Some things that happened recently...
The other day I walked from Sheffield to Manchester with my university housemate.
I’m not kidding. Here’s the route…
But how did this come about? Having talked about it since March, we were wondering whether a walk like this was possible and how hard it was going to be.
The involved housemate finished his summer internship a week before the university year was going to start and walked into my room that Monday saying ‘Bro, we need a side quest…’. I mentioned that we had been talking about doing this for the longest time and we fired each other up until train tickets home from Manchester were booked for the coming Wednesday.
For a long time, we thought it was going to be some kind of spiritually enlightening activity with us reaching the end of the walk and realising the finitude of life, becoming more relaxed and peaceful.
In reality, it was just really hard. I was filming short video clips that I planned to turn into a vlog for the first ~30km (see below). After this, I gave up. All energy had to be diverted to putting one foot in front of the other.
So there we were in Manchester Picadilly station, 60 kilometres later, none the more enlightened.
But perhaps there’s some lesson we can extrapolate from this. I think that although we didn’t find god or some alternative religion out there to get us through, it was proof that our limits are largely self-imposed. We can do a hell of a lot more through just using the strength of our willpower.
And the results and outcomes of things in life are largely down to what you make of them. The walk to Manchester could be a painful story or a hero’s pilgrimage but it’s entirely down to how I view it in my head.
I also turned 21 last Thursday so I thought I’d do a two-for-one and throw in some thoughts about that as well…
Although I might be wrong (it’s an iterative game), I think I’m getting the hang of getting better at life. In the past, I used to think I could wait until my birthday and then make a miraculous step forward in progress after cleaning the the imaginary slate.
After much failing, restarting and learning, I’ve come to appreciate the aggregation of marginal gains. Just because I turned 21 it doesn’t mean I’ll miraculously be one year’s-worth better at everything I try to do.
Rather, continually making small changes and improvements and efforts in a positive direction will make the difference, no matter how far through a year I am.
I also had some time over the weekend to take a look and remind myself that I’m only going to get one shot at life - there’s no point waiting for a birthday or a new year so that I can get a fresh start. I have to keep moving, keep progressing and bring energy and positivity into the world. It’s the only way forward.
Thanks as always for reading Fundamentalised and sorry I was so late with the issue this week.
— Theo
Some clips from the walk to Manchester…
What I’ve been building this week…
I’ve stacked my credits and modules in the spring semester of university so that I can use this semester to focus on landing some work for after university next year.
Photography and filmmaking, especially to do with nature, are the fields I want to be in once studying’s finished. This means tidying up my portfolio website - you can check it out here if you want…
What I’ve listened to this week…
Naval Ravikant on Joe Rogan - my favourite podcaster’s (Chris Williamson’s) favourite podcast episode, I finally got around to listening to this one. Very well-timed in terms of all the thinking I’ve been doing this weekend about how to make progress and live a good life.
You are a madman. Rest those knees and feet!