5 Quick Things #314 📔

traveling scrapbooks, leaving social media, dinner with dead authors, & reading the classics

Hey there,

This week we ramped back up to “normal” life even though my oldest daughter is still here for two more days. She flies back up to the Great White North¹ for another semester, and it’ll continue to be weird (but in a good way) to have her a thousand miles away.

I’ve been around a number of parents with younger kids lately, and it feels like I was one of them just yesterday. So let this stand for the record, even though you’re told the sentiment a thousand times and it rings like a cliché: it goes back SO DADGUM FAST. I know those little years feel like forever, but then one day you blink and they’re over. The days are long but the years are fast, indeed.

And also: parenting adolescents can be a lot of fun. Don’t let the naysayers scare you.

The Magpie (1868), by Claude Monet #

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5 Quick Things ☕️

1. New episode of A Drink With a Friend! We’re starting a new season with a few changes — I’m unpacking what you can expect this spring by way of the season’s theme: rootedness. What does it mean to know who you are, whose you are, and where you belong? How do we become more rooted in an ever-digitized world?

2. I had a lot of fun answering questions from

Joel J Miller

about my various vocational hats—mostly teaching and travel. Here you go, if you’re curious what my favorite books to teach are or which three authors I’d have over for dinner.

3. What a lovely story from

Ella Grace

about a trio of friends and their bond over a shared scrapbook—physical, not digital—that’s now over a decade old: “Our creations have been parcelled up and posted between us between twenty to thirty times over the years – in fact I’ve lost count. It’s like a ‘sisterhood of the travelling pants’ but better because no one has to try and fit inside a pair of jeans.”

4. Whew…

Rebecca Marie

reminds me why I still detest Instagram, and why 18 months after having left it, I don’t miss it one iota. “I ask, ‘How to promote a newsletter on Instagram?’ But I don’t know if Google gets my underlying question, which is, can I do this sensibly? Like, with boundaries and rules. But Google nags, ‘you must post every day,’ and ‘you must use reels,’ and ‘you must schedule posts.’ I wave away wisps of concern about the sheer amount of work this might involve and plead with Google for a loophole like, ‘where are the poets on Instagram?’ Maybe poetry is how I can be sensible on socials?”

5. And finally, I love it when people discover the beauty and goodness of a true classical education, and this man’s new embarkment on reading the original 50-volume series of the Harvard Classics should be fun to follow. I agree with him: we may not have had the education we wanted, but we can take charge of our own education now. We’re not beholden to the modern culture’s definitions and offerings of a good life.

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Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📺

Season 4 of All Creatures Great & Small!

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Quotable 💬

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”

-Anne Bradstreet

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What's your favorite thing to do in January? ⛷

This was pretty broadly answered, and I get it because I think my answer would change by the hour. As I’m typing this? I’d go with declutter, simply because I’m in the mood to get rid of a bunch of stuff right now.

• Get cozy & warm: 28%

• Make new year plans: 23.7%

• Declutter: 22.8%

• Live my usual life: 20.1%

• Be out in the cold: 5.4%

Find this week’s poll here.

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Quick Links 🔗

• 📐Create your own Rule of Life

• 🎧 Listen to A Drink With a Friend

• 📔 Order First Light & Eventide

• 🇬🇷 Join Me in Greece: June 20-30, 2024

Galaxithi, by Pantelis Zografos #

There are SIX spots left on our June 2024 pilgrimage to Greece, and we’d love to have you join us—sign up now if one of those spots is meant for you!

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Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔

Why is your life good? Name at least three ways.

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Have a good weekend,

- Tsh

p.s. Shia LaBeouf² is officially Catholic!

1. Ohio.

2. And as we like to remember around our household, his name translates to "thank God for beef."