New name. Who's this?

What’s in a name anyways

This is my last post from Your Reading Life! At some point I just got confused. What’s Extragrad? What’s Your Reading Life? What’s the difference between the two? Do I need both?

I could rationalize the difference for a while but then I’d forget it and I’d have to refer to a Google Keep note to recall my fleeting moment of insight. This writing isn’t going away though, I’m just going to change the name of this newsletter/blog from Your Reading Life to Extragrad.

I told my partner about this move last week and she laughed at me. I’ve done this many times throughout this project. Check out this list of names I’ve experimented with:

1. A Moveable Feast (amoveablefeast.world, .world is a cute domain, no?)

2. Virgil, Find Your Virgil, Virgil Hours

3. Proffice Hours (think office hours your professor would have open for you in undergrad, but you can attend later in life)

4. I purchased Reed Retreats dot com but never used it

5. The Infinite Conversation (it turns out Simon Sinek (the “Start with Why” guy) has a whole content play around this idea and probably a forthcoming book)

6. Infinite Friend (this will likely always be the LLC since it’s annoying to kill and recreate those)

7. Your Reading Life

8. Extragrad

In software, it’s common to say “naming is hard”. It is true, naming is hard. But it’s meaningful to me. And also, underlying each of the above names is a slightly different take on this project.

I first started to work on something related to Extragrad in 2015 after reading a Schumpeter column in The Economist. In it, the columnist claims we need “inward bound” leadership development experiences rather than outward bound ones. They painted a picture of executives reading and dialoguing about great books in some rural retreat like me and my classmates did in undergrad. I read the article, thought, reading + dialogue + business (org psyche was my masters)? Sign me up. I decided I was the one that was going to make Schumpeter’s vision a reality. Then I got sidetracked by making a living in several tech startups in NYC. Womp womp.

Then when one of those startups pivoted hard in the early months of the pandemic and let me go, I decided to sit and chill rather than immediately get a new gig. My partner and I had a lot of heart to hearts exploring our deepest desires. We had a lot of time for these given lockdown and no TV. What did I want to bring into the world? What work am I called to do? What would my ideal day to day look like professionally?

A table like this but longer and in a field or wide open space like you might be while on safari.

One day in one of our conversations I had a flash of a vision that I labeled “A Moveable Feast”. It was where I wanted to be. A space I wanted to create. At this point I hadn’t read the Hemingway book and thought it related to his hunting adventures in east Africa. Turns out that’s not the case, it’s him hanging about Paris with a bunch of famous artists instead. Regardless, what I saw in my vision was a long table of people eating, drinking, making merry, and having a really high quality conversation about a great work of literature. For some reason the table was like, somewhere in east Africa on a safari. 🤷🏾 The name games started here. I pictured a feast. Safari means journey hence moveable. I don’t know, a vision is a vision but it was rooted in the reflection that my favorite moments over the previous few years had been in great conversations about great books with great friends in fun restaurants around NYC.

A Moveable Feast’s first websites announced wide-ranging offerings from one on one book dialogues to distant travels, to coaching using the paradigm of the Hero’s Journey. Offerings were virtual and in person too when possible. I had plans for a community portal.

Then, with “Proffice Hours” (I’ve come to hate this name btw) I wanted to emphasize that it’d be professors who readers would sign up to have book dialogues with. One on one book clubs with professors who’d written dissertations related to the book in question sounded awesome to me. It still does. The “Virgil” thing was about coaching and having people mentor you using the books you’re reading as Rorschach blotches. Your Reading Life was meant to offer a personal trainer for your reading life. I wanted to share about the quality of my reading life and encourage others to see their reading lives as high or low quality. Something to improve or enjoy just like one’s love life or sex life.

Now we have Extragrad. At the heart of all of the above iterations is reading and talking, dialoguing to be specific (and maybe a bit pedantic). So on some level there’s no need to change a name but the biggest reason I have to make the switch is that the vision is grander than personal training/improving your reading life. It’s about more than sharing about my reading life. In fact, it’s about more than reading. It’s about building spaces for life long learning, designing experiences for social learning, and maybe reinventing the education we all pursue beyond the compulsory. It’s not undergrad. It’s not grad school. It’s definitely not post grad. It’s just a little something extra.

I’d like lots of my Extragrad sessions to look and feel like this. Photo by Juri Gianfrancesco on Unsplash

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