5 Quick Things #210 🍁

Chain mail, young idiocy, nostalgia, & standing under a tree

Oct 15, 2021

Hey there! It’s been quite the relaxing week around here, it being our week off of school for fall break, save for one thing: yesterday I ended up in our local urgent care because I woke up unable to move my right shoulder more than a few degrees. It had been feeling funny the past few days, but it escalated to a full-tilt, lets-have-someone-look-at-this level by yesterday morning. Turns out I have tendonitis in my shoulder’s rotator cuff — fun stuff. 💪 The remedy? Anti-inflammatories, water, ice packs, rest, and for my work in particular — left-hand-only typing for the moment and an ergonomic mouse ordered and on the way.

On a fun note, though, I’m getting a haircut this morning, the first in a very long time. I’ve been growing out my pixie and it’s now time to straighten the process out. I’m excited!

A couple of astronauts walk during a training mission in Israel's southern Negev desert. (Six astronauts from Portugal, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, and Israel will be cut off from the world for a month, only able leave their habitat in spacesuits as if they were on Mars.) #

5 Quick Things ☕️

1. 👉 New episode of A Drink With a Friend! 👈 If we knew then what we know now, would we be better off? Or is there something redeemable about the mistakes we all make when we’re younger? Seth and I answer a listener question about any wisdom we might have for our slightly younger listeners — if we were in our twenties right now, this is what our forty-something selves would …well, tell ourselves.
2. Monomania is Illiberal and Stupefying — this is long but really good and, I’d say, really important. I see this trend more and more, especially among young adults.
3. “We were at odds with these salesmen because we live and move and have our being within a completely oppositional narrative to the one that they assume. We are fish aware of the water that gives us life, and they are fish trying to climb the shore, not realizing they cannot breathe on land.” I enjoyed this story from Jessica Hooten Wilson’s new newsletter.
4. Andrea Debbink’s Natural Wonder newsletter is a monthly balm I open religiously, and I loved her thoughts this week about fall: “If you, like me, want to revise your thoughts about time, don't look at the calendar or social media; go outside, stand under a tree, and read a poem. It might remind you that autumn isn't a gauntlet, it's an unfolding chapter.”
5. And finally, I was transfixed listening to this week’s Throughline episode on the history of nostalgia — who knew?

Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📚

The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry, compiled by Paul Kingsnorth

Quotable 💬

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

— Flannery O’Connor #

Inside The Commonplace ✍️

This week we enjoyed a chat sharing what we’re currently reading, plus a request from me for a short novel I could finish this week. As always, you didn’t disappoint: