Unnecessary plans I take seriously

“At those groups that feature an activity, people really tend to just focus on the activity,” my walk group host said, empathizing with my lukewarm experience at line dancing.

“Here we don't really have that. The activity is just to talk to each other.”

I loved that he could poke fun at his own group, a premise that has quietly improved my life since I discovered it barely a month ago.

Meanwhile, The Half Pint Pilgrimage is booked. I socialized my plan. Check and check.

With those two steps out of the way, my brain has been free to move onto other unsolved problems. Like whether I should try going outside where I live now.

The tension here is between trying to realize my ideal calm and public life — which I’ve taken to calling my Liverpool brain — and knowing that I have tried umpteen times in NYC through various bursts of energy and still largely feel unseen by the social norms.

I conceived of my Liverpool brain after my last trip as an attempt to bring back some of the presence, intentionality, and public life I felt while in the U.K. One Saturday afternoon, it culminated in walking to Whole Foods, buying a slice of pizza, walking home, sitting by the window, and listening to the radio. There’s a distinct strain of r/simpleliving in this plan, but for me it features going out in my city, being willing to spend a couple of bucks, and just existing. Even though this is the solo version of public life, it still feels meaningful to me.

When I was new to NYC, my friend and I coined a similar term we called NY Zen. I’d use it to describe a Sunday I’d spent solo in the city lightly exploring and feeling present. I’m not sure then I recognized the disconnect between what I said I wanted (to feel useful and influential in my career) and what I actually enjoyed (reading a magazine, going on a walk, buying a burrito from a food truck).

I can now declare that NY Zen and Liverpool brain describe the same phenomena. Please update the DSM. Is it done? Thanks.

How does all this relate to my plan to sit in a pub in Leeds? My upcoming trip splash experiment in public life has given me another burst of NYC energy. It reminded me I needed a control group for the most scientific of experiments on which I’m about to embark.

In addition to my twice-weekly group walks and my one evening spent grapevining in a humid basement, I hosted my first in-person office hours. This fell out of asking myself: what if I made myself visible in my neighborhood with an offer to be useful?

I realized I was trending towards hosting coding office hours in Leeds having not tried the same thing where I live now. Flipping that order would mean putting myself out there here, not in a place I’m just passing through.

That’s the moment I realized The Half Pint Pilgrimage was already working. Not getting downvoted on Reddit didn’t hurt either.

No one showed up to my office hours! Having been twice — one for the trial and one for the real thing — I understand the rhythms of my local cafe better now. The rush to get a table when it opens, the two older men who sit and read a magazine.

I will likely try it again a few more times before I board the plane to Leeds. In the meantime, if you are stuck on Python and live in my zip code, I hope you’ll reach out. See how I managed to slip a plug for my business into an essay about Leeds? That’s called marketing.

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Ignoring what I just said about The Half Pint Pilgrimage already working, I’m scared about it not working.

Not in the sense of “bloody hell I didn’t make best lads at the pub bollox could you hand me the HP sauce.” My fear is that I’ll be sitting on my flight back to JFK, sipping sparkling water from a small plastic cup, and realize that my best option is to keep trying where I live now.

That it was easier to imagine a new life with a public rhythm that led me to feel seen immediately than it is to do the work to make that happen here.

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My other fear is that this project could be big with the right platform and I don’t think I have that platform. Not yet, at least. And by “big” I mean: will it strike a chord with anyone?

I started Googling “how to meet people in public” as early as 2011 and I remember taking a page very seriously whose recommendation was to talk to people in bookstores. In retrospect, could this have been a You’ve Got Mail fansite?

This is around the same time I read my first A.J. Jacobs book, The Know-It-All. While seated in my college dining hall, I devoured his memoir about reading the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica. I loved his quirky prose and could imagine doing a random, but similar, project in the distant future. And I sat alone in public because I liked it, my early version of background belonging.

I think what I’m saying is I feel like I’m going on The Half Pint Pilgrimage and attempting to write funny sentences about it for my 2011-self. I’m confident it would have resonated with him/me, and I suspect crossing borders in search of a third place may resonate a bit wider.

This is the point in my creative process where I pause to ask ChatGPT to evaluate my balance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. If I want someone else to read my story, is that inherently bad? Does knowing that my project is unique make me self-centered? The AI said I’m doing fine.

When I land on something I don’t perceive many people considering, I latch onto it. I take my own plans extremely seriously, especially the unnecessary ones. They’re what make me, me.

Is that my creative side or my subversive side?

C) All of the above.

Leeds calling.