AliceFraser
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New Tea With Alice: Ash Fontana
🕑 Added 2020-08-23 00:51:57 +0000 UTCA time travel episode today, over mint tea. Talking laphet and gyokuro too. So a three- tea intro. I originally didn’t put this up because I thought I talked too much. Which is a fun thing to have a moment of self doubt about when you have your own podcast. Anyway, I listened back and I think actually in retrospect, I don’t talk too much, and Ash is fascinating. So I’m putting it up.
Ash Fontana, is a friend of mine who is normally on the opposite side of wherever in the world I am. We managed to catch up in London a very short time before the pandemic. Anyway, I think this a really interesting episode – prescient in some ways, very much unprepared in others.
How much to struggle, and how not to get caught up in questioning big life choices. Intellectual Honesty. Community. Ambition. Competency. Success. Algorithms.
The bit where I talk about hanging out with Laura through the festivals is heartbreaking to listen back to.
Here you go: http://apple.co/2oyL7Vy
Non- itunes listeners can catch it here
I’m going to try to get him back on the show for a follow up soon, because he’s currently in Italy, with a broken leg.
Find ash on instagram at @ashfontana
Comments
Well, I’m a big believer in failure, these days. I think it’s so important
It's an episode that really made me think, and feel better (that I haven't been able to do so since December 2019). It's about you talking about yourself being in better mental position than your peers since your school day. That you felt healthier because you haven't felt that compulsion/obsessiveness to meet the mark/milestone set by your senior/authority at any stage. That sparkled my brain (a professional now) that I have been the opposite of your since I was in my school age; and I still do care that kind of milestones I set myself up, or someone in my social life has set up for me. That set up has created and accumulated in me a lot of pressure and frustration (esp. some milestones set up for me being extreme difficult to make it, making me fail again and again). At the trough of my life (i.e. last couple of years), I feel many bubbles written "FAILURES" just occupying my brain and already ready to blast. It has been driving me very close to a dangerous zone, however it may mean. So your sharing kind of put my situation into a better perspective for me to revalue myself. I am still in this trough. And I don't say here I feeling changed all of a sudden because of you and me getting back on track (I have had many experiences of getting myself overboard right after I said similar things. So it's something superstition of my life). But thank you. I try to not giving a fuck / give as less fuck as I can about em. Thank you again. Take care.
Interesting but about the competency trap. Quite prevalent for technically minded people. We tend to create positions in firms where either the number of people or the size of their budget is the measure of the salary without any necessary knowledge of the subject area. Whereas technical workers can't really transfer to another discipline because they would not have the knowledge, or they would have to relinquish their specialism.
Meagan
Amazing conversation, thanks for sharing! So nice to hear two people talking in the same room together.
