Grief is love with nowhere to go (Ricky Weekly #55)
This is where I share 3 things every week with my friends and anyone else interested.
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A picture from my life:
My first standup show on Zoom.
Thing on my mind:
It’s getting harder to write this newsletter because Flow Club is picking up and I have less time for my inane thoughts. Still I feel an urge to connect with y’all.
Last weekend, my side project Startup to Standup came to an end. Six startup founders with little to no comedy experience successfully performed a standup set to an audience of 30. What an accomplishment! I’d like to say it’s because of the six weeks we spent together writing jokes every Sunday, but honestly these guys were hilarious to begin with. As predicted, the Zoom crowd was tough. We asked everyone to unmute their mics and turn on video if they can, but only a few obliged. As for me, I caught myself reading jokes instead of delivering them. A rookie mistake. I attribute it to me feeling uncomfortable performing to a screen. Maybe that’s a skill the TikTok generation will have on the rest of us.
There’s a quote that’s been stuck in my head and makes my heart ache every time I think about it. “Grief is love with nowhere to go.” I recently heard a more positive version of the same thing that goes, “What is grief but choosing to keep loving.” I shared these with a friend recently who is the kind of person who loves people with abandon. I’ve always admired that about him because he’s fearless with his love and I wish I could be more like him. If your heart was a restaurant, every time you lose a loved one, it feels like a table becomes permanent reserved for that person to never come back to, and then at some point you run out of open tables and you’re closed for business. It feels like my friend (and his entire family) have giant, Italian restaurants with lots and lots of tables. I wish mine had that kind of capacity.
Piece of content I recommend:
The Expanse on Amazon Prime Video (h/t Yoshio G)
I’d like to do a better job recommending this show than my friend Yosh did when he recommended it to me two years ago. This show feels like a hidden gem and I don’t know why. No one talks about it. The trailers on YouTube barely have 1M views, and yet the show is amazing. The production value is very high. The storyline is like Game of Thrones, but in space. The details about life in space are fascinating. On top of that, I was pleasantly surprised by how much diversity there is in the cast. I’m three seasons in and I count eight Asian/South Asian characters in major roles. What a joy to watch. The trailers don’t do it justice because the world is too expansive, but watching one episode probably would do.
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As always, you can find out what I’m thinking in more real-time on Twitter and my essays are on my website. My primary focus (and where I focus) is on Flow Club.