State of the Newsletter 📰

my priorities, your priorities, & why they matter here

Laundry, by Kim English (b.1957) #

It’s quite easy to write about what’s wrong in the world. The topic du jour (année?) is A.I. and its cousins, such as rage against The Machine, the dangers of the modern world, and how everything is going to hell. Even calmer versions of this, such as why it’s so hard to not be on a screen, or how to not focus so much on global news to the detriment of your mental health, still sit on a perspective that notices first and foremost what’s wrong. “The reason you feel bad is because things are bad” gets a lot of clicks and likes, a lot of comments, a lot of engagement. It’s easy to publish and it’s easy to respond to.

The pendulum swing is also rather easy to write about. Look at this cat video, here are ten ways babies are cute, this is why it’s beautiful to wear all linen, and wouldn’t it be lovely to live on ten acres and gather apples from your orchard every fall but in a way doesn’t involve the mud and muck of farming? —these are also click-magnet topics. It’s often a reaction to the above: everything is awful, so here’s a C.S. Lewis quote about how we’re made for another world paired with a photo of a young woman hanging her all-white sheets out on a clothesline surrounded by grassland and a toddler at her skirt. That toddler isn’t crying.

It’s much harder to focus on the in-between of all that, where most of us actually live and what’s based in actual reality. Because sure, A.I. is everywhere and messing up a lot of stuff, and yes, farmland is idyllic and I’m still keeping my eye out for free nearby land with a babbling brook that no one else miraculously wants, but the honest truth is that I live most of my life wiping down counters and listening to my kids’ “fun facts” about how much PSI it takes to crush a human skull and commentary on their shift bussing tables at the nearby diner. I bet you do too, in some iteration of your own. Reality, in reality, rests on a foundation of three-dimensional skin the game and not pixels; grocery lists and not bullet points about why [insert latest global catastrophe] must be protested; let’s ignore our actual lonely neighbors so we can focus on our global outrage.

Every couple years, since I’ve been actively writing online in 2007, I’ll write up a State of the Union about the space I’ve been given to publish. It helps me remember why I bother doing what I do, and it provides clarity to readers and listeners, new and old, what they can (and can’t) expect from me. It’s been a very long time since I’ve done one of those. So, this is that.

Welcome! Here we go.

My Personal Priority

Cutting to the chase: Right now and for a few more months, I have two kids left in my home. As of this fall, I’ll have one, when our middle guy starts his freshman year of college (which means he’ll be coming and going for the next few years, like his older sister recently did). My youngest will be starting his junior year of high school, which means I have two years left of him under my tutelage, both as his mother and his humanities teacher. Sure, I’ll always be his mom and I’ll always be given the solemn duty of imparting wisdom on all of my children. ...But I know from experience that it’s different once they’re adults, and my full-time influence will shift. This is good and by design, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a recurrent smack in the face at how these days of kids at home are insanely fleeting.

I have two years left with any of my children in my home full-time. Two. Years. 🤯 I remember continually reading that online trope of “we only have 18 summers with our kids; make the most of them!” and each time mild panic would set in, as though if I were checking email for thirty minutes instead of swimming with them in the nearby river I was doing something wrong. When I started my blog (from which many of you first read me), my oldest was two and my middle, who just graduated high school, was a four-week-old. I was literally nursing him when I held him with one hand and clicked ‘buy’ on a domain name with the other. It was a Sunday afternoon in our Turkish apartment, and the sun was angled from the living room window onto my laptop screen; my toddler was down for her nap.

I know from personal experience that there is nothing online that matters more than being fully present with my family. Nothing. For two more years, while my youngest lives at home, this remains my first priority. I know I won’t regret it, because I don’t regret one whit all the minutes and hours and days that added up to years from the past two decades that I prioritized focusing on my brood of kids in the midst of writing and publishing. I missed a fair amount of opportunities to “grow my platform,” I know, and I’m well aware of all the things I didn’t do to become more of an Influencer™ because I just didn’t have the bandwidth. No regrets in the slightest.¹

But admittedly, I do have more time now than I did a decade ago, a few years ago, or even earlier this spring, when I was chock-full busy planning a wedding, navigating the college admission experience for a second time, and rewriting entire chapters of a book. These kinds of seasons ebb and flow, I know, and I know I’ll have them again soon (more book edits might land in my inbox any day now, and in a few months I’ll start teaching again). But on the whole, in comparison to my early days of growing a blog and podcast with a trio of kids under age five, I now have more time. Who knew that would ever happen?

My Work Priority

I had an ‘aha’ moment in 2018 on the first pilgrimage I led, and it continues to ring true: when it comes to my work-work, all I really want to do is write books and lead trips. It’s when I feel most alive, like I’m doing the work God’s given me to do, where I affect the most good, and what I reasonably see myself able to do for decades still. I also love teaching, and I do earn an income doing so, but I categorize that task, for the most part, more as community involvement than career growth. I’m open to teaching for a while after my kids are fully graduated, but it’s not something I definitively see myself doing indefinitely. Like homeschooling, it’s something I prayerfully consider each year before committing to more.

But writing books and leading trips? I see myself doing that until my mind and body will no longer let me. Who knows how long that will be, but for now, I have no plans to stop.²

This means that all my other work-ish things point to those two end goals, which includes this newsletter, The Commonplace, and its podcast, A Drink With a Friend. To put it bluntly: to those of you who read and listen to my words here, I hope you are convinced to eventually read my books and travel with me.

(If you just read that last sentence, this means I’m talking about you.)

This is my desire and ultimate goal with this newsletter. What, then, does it look like to “convince” you to eventually do those things? It looks like writing and talking about topics here that people who would also read my books and travel with me would resonate with. Those people are also largely Carries, but not always—yet as I’ve said for years, if you write for everybody you write for nobody, so I keep her in mind.

My Priority for You

...Which brings me to how I initially started my thoughts here in the opening paragraphs. Carrie can find plenty of other podcasts and newsletters on how the world is burning and what’s the unattainable ideal. With me, I want Carrie to find encouragement in the in-between. She needs readable and listenable reminders that, despite all the hard around her, she’s able to roll up her sleeves and do the hard work of living her ordinary life. She’s able to question the theology she’s always assumed was true and do the scary thing of changing streams, if needed, and co-leading her family to do the same. She’s able to make choices about how to best educate her kids. She’s able to host her neighbors for dinner and make time to really know them, because she’s also able to live her life offline and recognize that community is found in the real world, not in some Influencer’s™ social media account or newsletter comments. She’s able to save up her pennies so that she and her husband can join Kyle and me on a game-changing pilgrimage, should God allow. She’s able to participate in her local book club and teach her child cursive and make time for nightly drinks on the deck with her husband after all the kids are asleep. She’s able to read fiction for fun. And as I’ve long told my own kids and students, she’s able to embrace the truth, even when it’s hard, that she’s a beloved child of God who’s able to do hard things and trust in the goodness of Christ.

The words and conversations I publish here, and plan to publish in the future with even more narrowed concentration, hopefully help Carrie do just that. They’re essays and episodes that remind her to stay buoyed in hope and not despair, to love her ordinary life, and to dig deeply into the real world in which God has placed her. The words and conversations here do not, Lord-willing, trigger anger or malaise, distraction, or addiction to too much screen time. They give her hope that her ordinary life is good, that there is Truth that is knowable and findable, and that it is worth it to do the hard work of living in the flesh-and-bones world.

At the risk of cashing in on clichés and relying on quotes from other people (I’ll leave off any sharable graphics or stock photos of the back of someone on a hike), here are the three quotes I keep coming back to when I think about what I want The Commonplace to prioritize:

“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes; the rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” -Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.” -G.K. Chesterton

“Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.” -Wendell Berry

In spite of all the facts, I want us to be joyful, to recognize just how extraordinary our ordinary lives are, and to take off our shoes when we truly see all of it.

I hate publicly committing to something because as soon as I do, I either change my mind or something out of my control comes up that makes the commitment less feasible, but it’s also good for me to do so. And it’s good for you, reading this, to read where all this is going. So consider the following as the overall plan for this newsletter that I’ve been trying to get at since my first sentence here.

Here’s what you’ll find at The Commonplace, now in its seventh year:

• Weekly 5 Quick Things (always free for everyone)—I’ve been doing these since before I migrated my newsletter to Substack, and have no plans to change them.

• Weekly or bi-monthly podcast episodes during the school year³ (still free for everyone)—I’ve been doing some form of podcasting since 2008 and in spite of all the changes, I still overall enjoy the medium. This fall, I’ll be returning to favorite book conversations, which are also reportedly your favorite, too. They’ll also include conversations on favorite places around the world, ranging from some famous monument on the other side of the globe to a beloved corner armchair.

• Monthly essays reminding us to be joyful though we’ve considered all the facts (free for everyone)—The foci will be on the Transcendentals of beauty, goodness, and truth, which easily covers a huge range of topics. This includes thoughts on the natural world, art like books and films, travel, the goodness or raising a family, where truth is really found and why we can’t just make it up based on our whims or preferences, and occasional stream-of-consciousness observations about the joy of neighborhood third places or grilling meat on the back deck. Oh, and super occasional short stories.

• One more monthly essay that digs a little deeper into the above, perhaps with a bit more practicality or some personal experience (for paying subscribers).

• Bi-monthly conversations with you all about books we read and books we plan to read, as well as invitations to name our monthly gratitude lists (for paying subscribers)—these simple chats are some of the highlights of my month here.

• The ability to leave comments (for paying subscribers).

• First dibs on pilgrimage news and registration openings (for paying subscribers).

I plan to keep the annual newsletter fee for paying subs as low as Substack will allow me, which is currently $35. This is because I want to make it as accessible as possible, and because I know how many things are vying for your wallet these days.

For those of you who can, I’ll still encourage you to pay to keep the lights on around here, because it really does help and because we all vote with our dollars. If you want to see more focus on beauty, goodness, and truth on the internet and less despair and anger, then one way to help is paying the small subscription fee for The Commonplace. I’ll be honest: while free subscriptions have gone up around here this past year, paying subscriptions have gone down, for whatever reason (I have my theories). I have no doubt that some of this is due to inflation and the economy in general. But to be up front, this newsletter’s revenue has dropped substantially in the past year, and yet instead of despairing over this, I’m choosing hope that those of you who can help keep the lights on the newsletter and podcast, will. As of now, I plan to keep my current offerings ad-free, so long as I’m able.

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As always, thank you for reading these words. I’ve long said that I have the best readers on the internet, and I still believe that to my bones. You all pick up what I’m laying down, and every reader and listener I’ve met in real life turn out to be the best, most hope-filled, ordinary (in all the right ways) people.

This summer I plan to make progress on my novel, make edits on my next non-fiction book (out next spring!), record conversations for this fall’s podcast season, and publish this newsletter when it’s good to do so (unlike most summers, when I typically take my annual much-needed break). I’m also leading a small group of us to Scotland on pilgrimage during the second half of July, which you still have time to register for! I’d love you to join us.

And as always, during the second half of the summer I’ll also start prepping for teaching next year’s classes, help organize our co-op, volunteer at my parish, have friends and family over for dinner, and weed the garden. I’ve got another kiddo to launch into university life, another one to launch into upperclassmen status as a high schooler, and yet another one to encourage in her early days as a wife. Life is good.

If the spirit moves, I’d love you to do two things next:

1. Take this short anonymous poll, and

2. Tell me in the comments here how you first found this newsletter (if you can remember!)—I’m opening up the comments for everyone.

…I’m so grateful to publish here. And that’s because of you, so thank you.

1. No one is more glad than me that I’m not an Influencer (except maybe my husband and kids).

2. I imagine my kids may have to one day fly my wrinkled body back from some stone cathedral across the pond, where I was found having expired after having fallen asleep in a pew, and then have to decide what to do with my latest book halfway written and probably in its terrible first-draft stage.

3. …This year’s publishing frequency still TBD.