Blog – New Escapologist

Just a quick note to say I’m running out of Issue 18. If you’d like a copy in print, now’s the time to strike! In Issue 18: The Time of Your Life, we look at time: how to spend it, what to do with it, how to win it back from The Man. We interview August Lamm who is working to set up her own print magazine and offline community in New York, and Dickon Edwards who is a ‘90s indie heart-throb, dandy and diarist who has barely worked a day in his life. Hero. Heather Delaney writes about her…

To send a letter to the editor, simply write in. You’ll get a reply and we’ll anonymise any blogged version. Reader D writes: It creeps up on you. Despite several years of decluttering, reducing soulless consumer purchases, and making progress toward escaping The Trap, the “Beast of Consumerism” must have appeared from nowhere and compelled my purchase of some expensive fishing gear that I have never truly required, nor will likely ever use. In total, I spent more than enough money for a…

You are here on Earth to turn vegetables into poo. Anything else is just a distraction.

Arbeir Nert (Work Sucks) by German elecropunks, Deichkind.

Thanks to New Escapologist contributor Andy for drawing our attention to this excellent long read by Gen-Z writer called Martin Dolan. It contains some brilliant Workplace Woe and a great review of the recent antiwork literature coming out of radical and leftwing academic presses. I’m hardly the first person to feel anxious about spending my day doing seemingly arbitrary tasks. So much ink has been spilled on workplace angst that it’s become something of a cottage industry, from the countless…

Here’s Derek Sivers, a prominent advocate for a nicer Internet, on his recent escape to the woods: Last month, I moved into my new home in the woods. There’s no internet and no phone service here. It’s so productive. It doesn’t have to be productive, Derek, but go on… At first I thought I couldn’t move in without internet. But now I prefer it this way. My thoughts feel more independent. I explore my own ideas deeper before looking for other perspectives. Now you’re talking. Derek spends 23…

This is an introductory paragraph from a remarkable essay in The Point magazine, which I mean to say more about in coming days: I spent my breaks in the city park across from my office, eating lunch on the wrought-iron benches dedicated to old machine politicians, people-watching. Pedestrians would trickle down the crunchy gravel path in front of me — young migrant families pushing strollers, old drunks on e-bikes, state workers talking loudly into their AirPods. It had only been a few months…

Thanks to Reader C in New Zealand for sending me this remarkable essay at an equally remarkable website (which we’ll come to in a moment) about handcarts. The essay is about rediscovering the handcart: a push-chair like platform designed for carting things around in an urban environment. It goes on the footpath, not the road and has many sensible things going for it: Unlike a van or a car, my handcart doesn’t need gasoline, electricity, or batteries, making it entirely independent from energy…

Philosopher Julian Baggini has a nice harrumph about why so many things today — from art and singing to sex and nature — are marketed as “means to ends” instead of in their own right. He laments an art gallery pass, which twists the arm of potential art lovers not by pointing out the inherent […]

This is a lot like my anti-car essay back in Issue 3 (later filleted for the Idler), BUT MORE SO. It’s based on a very good academic paper called Car Harm (2024). * The Kickstarter has made target (thank you), but will remain open for 10 more days. The new book will probably be an […]

The artist Landis Blair, normally based in busy Chicago, has retreated for a few days to a cabin in remote Wisconsin. In his newsletter he writes: [I revisited] a number of the principles and ideas of […] the magazine and newsletter New Escapologist, which showcases writings and wisdom about escaping the daily grind. and: in […]

I took a six month sabbatical from work and halfway through that sabbatical, I quit my job. I started to live in the moment instead of the future. I went swimming in a local lake. I read books. I walked by the canal. I visited a friend in Devon. I started writing my newsletter. I […]

apart from the fear that I’ll one day have a use for the thing I’m binning, the thought of anything going into landfill weighs heavily on my soul. Adrian “Urinal” Chiles writes amusingly about decluttering today. Don’t worry too much about the landfill thing, Adrian. Do your best to intercept the passage to landfill but […]

Does freedom exist? Yes, it can be bought: people who have money are free. They can afford to do what they want when they want — and that is freedom, which, we are often told, is happiness. This is from Service, a brand new novel set in LA’s Echo Park district by John Tottenham. Big […]

To send a letter to the editor, simply write in. You’ll get a reply and we’ll anonymise any blogged version. “Emmy-nominated Netflix stars and New York Times-bestselling author,” Joshua from The Minimalists writes: Howdy, Joshua from The Minimalists here. You didn’t make the cut. A couple years ago, I made a quiet decision: I removed […]

Regular readers of this blog will know our position that Universal Basic Income (UBI) is (a) a likely solution for societies who want to abolish Wage Slavery and (b) an illustration of what happens when you let people be free instead of forcing them into undignified jobs that waste everyone’s time and energy. In one […]