DISPATCH #005
2-Minute Tuesday (okay, maybe 5)
Hello dear friend,
I’m starting to trust my intuition.
This is new. Or at least new-ish. And because I can’t fully turn off the part of my brain that needs to categorize and map everything out, I’ve devised an internal workaround.
It’s basically me tricking myself into trusting my intuition by creating a system to avoid overthinking.
A system to avoid over-systematizing.
So here’s how it currently breaks down:
1. My default probably isn’t catastrophic.
After many years (possibly a lifetime) of compulsive overthinking, I’ve started to suspect that my initial reaction to something isn’t necessarily going to be the absolute worst possible decision available to a human being.
It turns out that there’s a steep and rapid curve of diminishing returns when it comes to analysis. Like yes, some thought is good. But if I go three layers too deep, I start creating imaginary problems and imaginary versions of myself reacting to those imaginary problems and then somehow convincing myself that’s reality.
So now I just stop a little sooner. Or try to.
2. I’m not a piece of shit.
Which sounds obvious when I say it like that, but for a long time I operated like I might be.
Not in a loud, egotistical villain way — more like a quiet fear that deep down I was secretly the worst and just doing a decent job of hiding it.
But now I trust that I’m not fundamentally terrible.
So if I act quickly or instinctively, I don’t immediately assume I’ve bulldozed someone or revealed some toxic inner evil.
I trust that I’ll still land somewhere in the range of okay human behaviour, even if I’m not obsessively auditing myself in real time.
3. Worst case, it’s still progress.
Even if everything goes wrong, even if the thing crashes and I have to fix it later, I can take some kind of pride in the fact that I made a call.
I moved.
I chose something without letting it calcify into a thought spiral. And that counts. That’s growth.
It’s maybe the only kind of growth I trust right now - not the perfect outcome, just the attempt to trust myself.
Recipe
Made this last week - great quick-and-lazy meal prep. Which, honestly, has been the overarching theme of all my cooking lately.
I just haven’t been enjoying cooking.
That said, I still need to eat. And if there’s nothing prepped and ready in the fridge, things go downhill fast.
I was extra lazy with this one and swapped out most of the veggies for broccoli slaw so I didn’t have to chop anything. Highly recommend.
 Click before you order Uber Eats again.
Thing I Learned
I’ve been fascinated by theology and spirituality lately (the last ~9 months more deeply)
....and if that’s uninteresting to you, oh well.
One thing I found particularly compelling recently (in my explorations of Christianity) is this: in the birth accounts of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, there are clear contradictions (especially around chronology and geography).
Maybe unsurprising, given that best estimates place these accounts as being written about 40-50 years after Jesus died.
It’s not subtle. These are clear contradictions in the Bible that you can find right now.
I learned this from Bart Ehrman, who actually encourages you to go check for yourself: to read both accounts, list what happens and in what order, and see what doesn’t line up.
I thought that was quite neat.
Ehrman’s been a great resource. He started as a born-again evangelical, became a New Testament scholar and professor, and over decades of study, gradually shifted to agnosticism. That makes his insights unusually valuable, in my opinion.
He’s not trying to convert you. He’s not trying to “own the Christians.” He’s just interested in truth.
And he’s deeply informed, even when that truth challenges what he used to believe; even if his conclusions leave him tribe-less, stranded in ideological no-man's land.
That shift (from belief to agnosticism through deep study) fascinates me, especially as someone on my own kind of spiritual side quest.
I want to give everything a fair shot, as I do with many things in wellness, which this feels like another dimension of.
Maybe even a foundational one. I’m not sure yet.
If Christianity has ever intrigued you, Ehrman’s a great place to start.
If you're deeply rooted in a Christian belief system, Ehrman's a great place to test and grow your faith.
Quote That Stuck With Me
Do your emotions need solving? What else, but emotion, do you stay alive for?
“The final stage is come when Man by eugenics... has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won... but who, precisely, will have won it?”
― C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943)
"The human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering — these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love — these are what we stay alive for."
— John Keating, Dead Poets Society (1989)
Max Love,
EB
Did something land? I read all replies.
Mostly because I think you're probably interesting. Occasionally, because I’m procrastinating something important.
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