#14 - Things I Value
Great T's; Sand Sport; Options for the Fox
Hello, my friends,
Since we last met I’ve been to Disneyland, a beach house in Orange County, deep sea fishing, and even did a day of work! Was feeling under the weather last night (Thursday), so wrote 2/3 of today’s issue from a horizontal position on my cell phone in bed. See if you can tell the difference! (Also, what’s up with the overcast weather lately. Is this June Gloom?)
Great T's
Every few years, I pick out my ratty and worn t-shirts and buy new ones. Aside from a few exceptions, Threadless has been my go-to tee store. There's only one problem with Threadless: Way too many shirts! Thousands of designs, many of them more than adequate to hang on my shoulders. How to choose? For me, nothing mean-spirited, offensive, or politically edgy -- I'm not a bumper-sticker-shirt kind of guy. Instead, I like meaningful shirts; years ago I bought "the internet was closed today" to remind me of a time I overdid it with freelance website projects and started getting headaches. One of the shirts I'm trading out now is "I love being around you" which I bought because it made me think of Ashley.
I prefer that the designs on my shirts be kind-hearted, delightful and maybe dreamy (one of my favorite dreamy shirts: "Sees the day"). Searching my email, I’m almost certain that my first Threadless order was back in 2008: "Incredible Circus" in steel blue. It made me feel good every time I wore it!
Unfortunately, the criteria above is unhelpful when there are so many applicable tees on the website. By rough estimate there are a total of 2205 options, not even considering color or quality! But it’s not just the enormous selection, picking t-shirts is a tough decision partially because I purchase so few of them. Between gifts and random shirts from events, an average t-shirt can last me many years. For example, I recently retired my Heart Walk 2015 t-shirt after eight years of faithful service! It was high-quality, if not exactly stylish, piece from a fun event (I recall writing poems for people who donated money on my behalf).
So now I keep returning to the Threadless website trying to decide what to add to my wardrobe. Choosing a car? Easy-peasy! T-shirt shopping? Analysis paralysis.
Sand Sport
My wife's family has made it an annual tradition to rent a beach house in Orange County for a week. This year, the few days we spent there were overcast. Nevertheless, there was a volleyball court and we ended up playing a mixed 4-on-4 game with some youngsters (probably HS seniors or college freshman). The quick camaraderie reminded me how much I enjoy team sports.
Sure, fighting is fun and yoga is stretchy, but do they surpass the brilliant tribulations of floppy amateurs keeping a volleyball up in the air long enough to push it over the net, bodies flailing and sand everywhere? No matter your answer, as a participant, I'll divulge that very few experiences match that slapstick effort.
As an aside, yes, I'm sore all over…but my team won two out of two games. Not that I’m bragging or anything!
Options for the Fox
In economic terms, an option is the purchased right to dibs on an asset. Authors sometimes get their books “optioned” when producers buy the exclusive claim for a specific amount of time to turn the books into a movie. Last week, I wrote about my curiosity problem, which is to say that I have many long-term, but intermittent interests. As I was rereading Mihir Desai’s The Wisdom of Finance (mentioned previously in #8 and #10), I realized that the few months I spend on each of my interests is akin to buying an option on that subject!
In his chapter on options (“Risky Business”), Desai wrote:
By purchasing a right as opposed to buying the asset itself, options create an asymmetry that enables speculation ("a happy voyage during a beneficent conjuncture") and risk management ("an anchor of security in a storm"). Because an option is a right and not an obligation, you don't have to purchase assets if they decline, but you can still enjoy the possibility of price increases -- this characteristic makes it a powerful speculative tool. At the same time, having the right to buy or sell an asset means that during bad times you can be assured of some minimal payoffs -- which makes it an effective insurance policy.
I wonder: Is keeping so many fires flickering is simply my unconscious risk management strategy for the unpredictability of life? Maybe I’ll run into someone who is also interested in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and then my keeping up with it will yield a quick rapport, or what if my poetry knowledge will pay-off with a teaching gig? And what if, someday, I need some extra funds and turn to freelance web design again? When I was a reference librarian, having wide-ranging knowledge was certainly a professional strength; optioning so many topics meant that I could make interactions feel serendipitous — Mrs Patron: “What luck that I ran into someone who knew so much about the exact subject of my search!”
Looking at my foxiness* through the lens of options brings up the question: Does the value of options on curiosity change with time? In the Wikipedia article on options, the valuation of the option itself as an asset is determined by “…a complex relationship between underlying asset price, time until expiration, market volatility, the risk-free rate of interest, and the strike price of the option.” And while I’m tempted to keep pushing my analogy further, I’m sure you’ve reached the end of your coffee by now. So instead, I’ll leave the question open. Let’s ponder it together!
* Notably in this link, the author discusses going from being a hedgehog to a fox, not the other way around.
Okay, so you'd think I'd want to talk about the last bit, because this is my THING, but we talked about that previously, and what I really want to comment on is the t-shirts. Because you see, that has been a THING for me recently.
I have never been a t-shirt person. Ever. And esp not t-shirts with anyting on them. If I was going to wear one, it was going to be solid color, plain. I saw no need to wear a bumpersticker around.
And then sommehow that changed when I picked my music up again, because of course, musicians are big on t-shirts. It's how we signal our musical tastes to fellow musicians fromm across a crowded room. ALong with the stickers on our guitar cases. but those are harder to carry around all the time. So t-shirts started to become a Thing.
And then of course, when I went to Liverpool this winter (yes, I'm going to work that into EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION until I go again and then I'll work that into EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION), t-shirts became a thing again. Because they are the obvious purchase at various places, right? Strawberry Field, the Cavern etc. Also there were friends who wanted them, so I was Aware of T-Shirts in a specific way.
And it was intersting because I did in fact come back with t-shirts for friends and for others, but I found myself very specifically NOT buying any Beatles t-shirts. That was the rule. Whatever else, but nothing that says Beatles. Nothing that has a photo of the Beatles. It wasn't like I was disciplining myself here. I just didn't want that at all.
And when I thought about it, I realised it's to do with avoiding the "fan" appellation, which I'm quite put off by because that's not what's going on here as my long rambly FB post of awhile back specified. There's something too shallow and consumerist about "fan." Writer, scholar, expert, researcher, hell, even accoylte. ALl good. Fan. No.
And the other thing was, I loved the idea of finding things that woud only read "Beatles" to people who loved the Beatles. I don't want to get into a conversation with someone who doesn't know about them. (Oleg, you are an exception to this, but mostly I don't find it fun to engage in dialogue with someone about something I'm passionate about and know much about with someone who doesn't, but usually somehow thinks their opinion is of equal interst. But I digress.)
So what I came home with was an interesting and ecclectic assortment of t-shirts that evoke Beatleness, but don't mention the Beatles. A t-shirt with the original design for the Cavern poster on it. An abstract silhouette of the famous photo of the day John and met Paul from St Peter's Church. My favorite, though, is a black t-shirt (I always go for black) with a red silhouette of the iconic gates of Strawberry Field. When someone says to me, "Isn't that Strawberry field?" I KNOW this is someone I want to talk with. And it's happened once already, which is so cool.
So I use my t-shirts as bait to lure my tribe.