Weekly Seeds | October 21, 2023 | Don't Stop Believing
Published by Noa Elan on
Noa’s top-of-mind
Taking the first step. This morning, I stared at my garden, as I have every day in the past 2 weeks, with deep despair. I have been neglecting my plants for the past 2 months, which resulted in a lot of dry yellow leaves on dry yellow branches. “Agh. Where do I start? There is just so much to do!”. ← My daily routine of giving up. But today, I decided to take the first step, I started chopping off branches, sprinkling fertilizer, composting pots of dead plants, and watering for a solid hour. My garden looks just as sad now, but I’ve taken the first step.
This feels like a very real metaphor for the work we’re doing at Bloom these days, taking the first steps to tackle some big challenges around growth and expansion. Want to join us as an ambassador? Email me!
Data! Data! Data!:
Bad news doesn’t mix well with party planning. The week after the attack on Israel was one of the lowest ticket sales weeks in the past 6M, 2nd only to the week of Burning Man. This is not very surprising, but, when combined with data on increased news consumption, this data invites all of us to rethink whether we want to spend our crises with anxiety-provoking screens, or with warm-bodied human beings. In case you’re starting to feel ready to come out of bed, look out for a Halloween event newsletter next week.
#Trending:
TIL that Da zi, which roughly translates as “everything can be matched,” is a Chinese relationship trend, that embraces short-term relationships, frequently focused on sharing specific, mutually enjoyable activities. This sounds fairly obvious to people practicing non-monogamy, but I think it is the first time that I’ve read a monogamous framework that embraces the likely temporary nature of relationships. From the article: “Another lesson da zi could teach other societies is not only can relationships be brief and still be satisfying, but they can be extremely specific. So, as opposed to attempting to find a single person to meet all your needs for the rest of your life, why not have a series of brief ones that give you, and them, what you all want—and when the fun's over you can shake hands, kiss, or whatever, and agree to move on. To keep things from getting messy, signing on the dotted line could be right up there with negotiating the terms of a relationship or consenting to proceed.” You don’t say!
Community Spotlight:
Candice Dawn and Gabriel Diamond are some of the most thought-provoking dance community leaders and film creatives I know. Candice and Gabriel have been leading blindfold dance jams since before covid, and continue to do this periodically in Berkeley. They have recently released two films related to blindfold dance and are touring film festivals with them: Dance With MeandThe Dance After The Last Dance. I attended their Blindfold Contact class in 2019 and was blown away by the powerful way they held the container, maintained safety, and allowed for deep exploration and expression. If you are in the Bay, you can catch them next Monday in San Francisco.
Growing Bloom:
New event newsletter! We are transitioning our event digest to a new and automated system. This means that you will hopefully find fewer typos and errored links, but if these errors do exist- they will persist until we discover them again. and again. and again. Please let me know if you see anything weird. Email me if you do. I want to take this moment to HT Francerly and Violet on our team that have been creating weekly digest several times a week for the past months.
