Both are true

+ A special announcement

Welcome to all the new subscribers who’ve found us by way of

Alison Roman

– thank you for being here!

This newsletter is Sublime’s home for myself and our team to share things we’re thinking about, things that moved us, and honestly anything we find interesting.

Also, wait. What’s Sublime?
Sublime is a tool to save anything that makes you go ‘whoa’. Or, as one of our early members described it: “a second brain with a heart”. We’re currently in private beta. If this speaks to you, join us.

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I hold a lot of conflicting beliefs, and have become happier the longer I’ve sat with them and realized that many things in life are both/and.

Let me quote other people in order to better communicate this thought:

Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird:

Life is not like formula fiction.
The villain has a heart, and the hero has great flaws.

Bruce Springsteen’s advice to young musicians: 

Don’t take yourself too seriously.
Take yourself as seriously as death itself.
Don’t worry. Worry your ass off.
Have iron-clad confidence, but doubt.
It keeps you alive and alert!
Believe you are the baddest ass in town – and [that] you suck!
It keeps you honest.
Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. 

This, from Rory Sutherland: 

Logic requires that people find universal laws, but outside of scientific fields and once human psychology has a role to play, it is perfectly possible for behavior to become contradictory.

A tax rise can cause you to work less because the returns of your labor are lower, or work harder to maintain your present level of disposable wealth.

There are two ways to sell a product: “not many people own one of these, so it must be good”, and “lots of people already own one of these, so it must be good”.

It always depends.

This, via Frank Wilczek in On Being: 

…that’s the essence of complementarity, that you have to view the world in different ways to do it justice, and the different ways can each be very rich, can each be internally consistent, can each have its own language and rules, but they may be mutually incompatible. And to do full justice to reality, you have to take both of them into account. 

Me, in a previous issue of this newsletter:

The thing about smart people is that they tend to think that if they think really hard about something, they might figure it out, when the truth is, in strategy (and life in general), there is never one right answer.

Strategy requires making choices about a future that is not yet known. I’m one of those people that tends to over-intellectualize things and often just end up tying myself into twisted knots.

For example, I believe speed is important. But I also believe that months of continuous pondering can produce an insight that lights the way for months to come. I understand the argument for shipping early and often. But I also believe that we should aspire to build lovable products, not viable products. And lovable products take time to build and polish.

There are no easy answers. Do you know what I mean?

I’ve come to the freeing realization that one of my core values in life is “both are true”.

All of which is a long winded way to make an announcement I couldn’t be more excited about:

Alex Dobrenko`

, the funny, wholesome, and deeply honest human behind the popular Substack newsletter

Both Are True

is joining Sublime to run content, community, culture, and anything else he comes up with that starts with a letter c.

Alex has an uncanny ability to blend the funny with the sincere and the absurd with the vulnerable. He'll be quoting Rilke one minute and sharing how afraid he is that his two year old son hates him the next. Or chronicling his immigration to the US in one post and lampooning how everyone needs to shut up about AI the next (this one's a fan favorite – strong recommend).

One day, Alex is going to write a very great book.

Today, I’m lucky I get to write this newsletter with him.

We’re not 100% sure what that will look like (yet) but the raison d’être will remain the same – we will continue to strive for that intangible feeling of realness, however it can be expressed. We’ll continue to ignite your spirit through ideas that are cool and good. And we’ll continue to share more about our journey building Sublime.

As this newsletter nears 30,000 readers, I can see that something is happening here. Alex and I will keep digging. There is nothing to the world but people. Community is the most beautiful thing in the world! And the seeds of a good one seem to be naturally coalescing here.

If you feel like it, drop a comment and:

1. give Alex a warm welcome

2. tell us… what's been on your mind lately?

3. are there things you particularly love about this newsletter that you'd like to see more of?

4. what are some big questions you're exploring?