5 Quick Things #430 🏕️

pride, reading goals, one-dollar houses, & camping expectations

As you’re reading this we’re out camping with friends at a nearby state park for the weekend, so I’m actually writing this two days before this hits your inbox. We can’t afford our own private lake house or mountain cabin, so we consider this particular park, where we camp several times a year, our family’s country estate¹. *sips tea in a china cup, pinky up*

All this to say: this intro is a short one because I’ve got some camping prep to do. …Let’s cut to the chase and get right to it.

Autumn (1890-1895), by Arkhip Kuindzhi #

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5 Quick Things ☕️

1. This week’s episode of Drink—in this one I’m chatting with one of my most requested guest returns: my daughter, Tate! She shares two books and two places she loves (and yes, even though she’s already been on the show to share two books, we all know that we all have more than two…). Even though none of her answers necessarily surprised me, it was still a delight to hear why these four things were so formative for her.

2. From Freddie deBoer for The Lamp magazine, I really appreciated his unpacking of pride, and why it’s such a squirrelly vice to understand, overcome, and even just …sit with—solid writing here, too: “A person who understands that we are all always in the process of becoming—which, yes, is Instagram wisdom, but follow along with me—is someone far less likely to feel terrified by evidence that he is not fully cooked yet. To those who are not too eager to be finished building themselves, evidence of weakness is just information, feedback, material for the next development. Again, I know this sounds like the kind of thing that a Peloton instructor says between sets, and I’m sorry for that. But underneath the banality, there’s a real distinction between a conception of one’s self that is open to revision and one that can never be. Pride, or the deadly form anyway, is what happens when that gate closes permanently.”

3. We go camping several times a year, have been for over two decades, and I genuinely love it. My biggest camping advice? Don’t go expecting to 1. stay clean or 2. get the most amazing sleep of your life. In other words: adjust your expectations. Hear me out: I’m all about comfortable hotel beds and the occasional spa day; I’m not Bear Grylls over here. I’m just saying that part of the reason you may hate to camp is because you’re frustrated that camping is so camping-y. Camping equals dirt, cooking outside, sleeping in character-building environments, and generally slowing down and soaking in nature. Expect that, and you may enjoy it more.

4. I have such mixed feelings about reading goals—generally-speaking, I tend to find goals motivating, but in the years I set myself a reading goal, I always start to resent it. I think it’s because reading is my default favorite pastime, and as soon as I slap a goal on it like a sticker, it immediately shifts from pleasure to work. I’m still mulling over this; workout goals are great for me, for example, so I’m not anti-goal. Anyhoo, this is why I appreciate Joel J Miller’s recent musings on reading goals, why his for this year is shifting, and perhaps why I should take myself less seriously when I embark on an (otherwise harmless) reading goal: “One analysis found staying flexible in goal pursuit pairs with better well-being and greater progress toward goals. If you don’t bend, you break.”

5. And finally, renovating a $1 house from start to finish …for some reason Kyle and I were recently mesmerized by this young woman and her dad’s work (even if I do question her living room paint color choice).

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Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📻

My Quincy playlist (for specifically when I’m novel-writing…)

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Quotable 💬

“A lot of questions get no answer unless you go for a walk in the woods.”

- Norman Maclean

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You must have a woodland creature for a pet. Which do you choose? 🦊

File this under ‘Well, That’s an Unusual Reader-Submitted Question,’ but seeing as we’re camping right now, I found it fitting. I want to answer fox, because they’re easily the most beautiful and majestic out of this group of options, but I think realistically I’m going with squirrel². They just seem like the most feasible for actual indoor pets. …I have no plans to test this theory.

Also, explain yourselves, raccoon-answerers.

• Fox: 31.2%

• Owl: 30.1%

• Deer: 19.6%

• Squirrel: 11.2%

• Raccoon: 7.9%

Find the next poll question here.

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Summer 2027: The Tuscan Region of Italy 🍝

One excursion from next summer’s pilgrimage itinerary: the Sistine Chapel—come join us!

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Quick Links 🔗

• 📐 Create your own Rule of Life

• 🎧 Listen to A Drink With a Friend

• 📖 Read my books

• 🇮🇹 Come to Italy!

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Question(s) For You to Ponder… 🤔

When was the last time you were truly bored? Why is that?

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Have a good weekend,

- Tsh

p.s. - Stress pear.

1. That we just so happen to share with the general public.

2. I realize I’ve said some derivative of ‘squirrel’ in two unrelated spots in this newsletter. Editing me wants to fix this; amused me is leaving it as-is.