Hi there,

Anyone else feel that weird phenomenon I’m dubbing “panic-pleasure reading”? It’s finally the time of year when you can read with more leisure, perhaps enjoy more lighthearted themes and plots, and generally turn the pages while your toes are metaphorically or literally dipped in cool water — and you feel a weird panicky urge to make the most of it, which means you ultimately don’t? You know this season is short so you sense a frenetic need to plow through your TBR stack, even though this isn’t a homework assignment. Instead of enjoying your favorite pastime, you barrel through it like it’s a workout. …What’s up with that? 🤷‍♀️ It’s just reading. …Hopefully we’ve got plenty of time.

My week has been blessedly light, so I’ve been doing my best to pleasure read sans the panic, harvest the garden before it becomes Scorched Earth around here, and enjoy a Pimm’s Cup or three. How’s your week been?

5 Quick Things ☕️

1. 🎧 New episode of A Drink With a Friend! 🎧 It's now my turn to give an update on my six-month challenge: what I’ve learned living as best I can in a 100-mile radius. Seth and I talk about the importance of subsidiarity, reorienting our priorities, finding community IN an actual community (vs. online), and doing it all imperfectly. Is living locally worth the effort?

2.  Myles Werntz (who recently wrote a guest piece here) said on his own Substack what I’ve wanted to put into words but couldn’t. “Are online communities communities? Until further notice, I’m staying with no, for a few reasons.” What makes IRL an actual community, something the internet can’t replace?

3. What do our bookshelves say about us? I weirdly think about this quite a bit. “What I show on a bookshelf these days is less and less about an imaginary self that I wish I could or should be.”

4. A good collection of best-of parenting advice. …I think I agree with most of it, especially the eighth on the list.

5. And finally, here are five things you probably need to hear (#4 made me nearly spit out my coffee).

Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📚

• Damnation Spring, by Ash Davidson

Quotable 💬

“I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, but to make carpenters men.”

— W.E.B. Dubois #

Poll #1 🤔

Share your opinion here.

(Starting a new feature of 5QT, just for fun…)

Quick Links 🔗

• Create your own Rule of Life

• Subscribe to A Drink With a Friend

• Travel with me + Seth & Amber Haines to Tuscany, Italy: July 23-August 2

Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔

What one thing could you do today to make the rest of your weekend better?

Have a great weekend,

Tsh

p.s. Why is this so funny?