Archive

Hi y’all,

I hope you were all able to have a healthy, safe, reasonably fun New Year’s celebration, if it’s in your practice to celebrate the flipping of the Gregorian calendar. Several friends and co-workers have spoken about celebrating the winter solstice this year—and setting solstice resolutions—either as a replacement for New Year’s or as a complement to it.

The idea is appealing to me. At some point our ancestors must have started to feel passé about orienting our experience of time to nature and the season cycle, but now we’ve clearly gone too far in the other direction. It feels more meaningful to honor a date that has planetary significance—in that it actually represents a shift in the planet’s condition that affects all life on its surface—as opposed to a date to which humans merely lend arbitrary significance. And I’m not a fan of arbitrary.

I don’t think I ever even learned why January 1 is the first day of the year. Like, why didn’t we just start the calendar on the solstice?

Hey everyone,

Welcome to issue #42, the issue that will reveal the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.

It’s 42.

Wait, dang it, I should have saved that for the end. Keep reading please!

Hey everyone,

I cleaned out my coworking space today. We cancelled the lease on my desk earlier this month, which put me on the clock to move my stuff, but I’ve been putting it off a bit. As I drove up to the building, a sad feeling came over me and I realized why I didn’t want to do it: this was closing a couple different chapters in my life.

Obviously my pre-pandemic life was bravely living on through that desk. When I keyed in my code and went inside, it was a real ghost town in there. It’d be empty on a Sunday anyway, but most of the other desks were already vacant. But I found my jacket draped over the back of my chair right where I’d left it nine months ago, as if it had been waiting for me this whole time.

It makes me glad I never had a chance to fully personalize my space, because it would have been so much sadder to walk in and see a bunch of photos and stuffed animals and notes, knowing I’d have to dump them all into a bag. As it is, I still had to remove my monitor and keyboard and the few small mementos I did bring to the space, leaving yet another barren surface.

Continued from Part 1 and Part 2…

that there are two main kinds of people who are drawn to self-help material: those who see themselves as fundamentally “bad” and want to become “OK,” and those who see themselves as already “OK” and want to become “great.”

Hey everyone,

It's Hanukkah this week (first night is Thursday)! Make sure to eat some latkes and sufganyot if you know what's good for you! (Okay, neither of those are technically good for you, but you should do it anyway.)

Self-Help, Continued...

...from last week.

Hey everyone,

A note before we begin:

The following is something I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, and as such, it’s a little longer than what I normally put in this section. So I’ve broken it up into parts, and I am sending you just the first part today.

Hey everyone,

I haven’t told you yet about my quirky side project. I needed something to do that was purely for fun and had no rational purpose. Of course, the truth is that I’m using it to practice some skills, and I can see some potential applications for it down the line. But that will come later; for now it’s still a passionate fling.

It all started with Richard the Lionheart.

I went to read about him on Wikipedia, because I realized I never learned exactly how he’d gotten his epithet, and I was curious. Then I read that he’d never actually spent more than six months in England during his entire reign as king, which seemed very odd for someone who is so lionized (sorry!) in that country. And, well, one thing led to another, and by the end of the night I was reading about composite monarchies and cadet branches and The Anarchy.

Hey y’all,

We’ve had too many overcast days in a row. Normally I love this kind of brooding weather, but like anyone I don’t like to go too long without at least seeing the sun. And living at the eastern edge of a time zone as we do, it is now getting dark by 5 o’clock. To top it off, starting tomorrow Chicago is once again under a lockdown, although this time it is “advisory” rather than a mandate.

Of course, we were already basically locked down, anyway, so nothing much is changing for us. We were already resigned to a long and stifling winter—not that this makes it much easier to deal with. Some of the things we’re doing to keep ourselves sane include: putting out winter decorations early; refocusing on cooking healthy meals; watching light movies and TV shows, reading books, and playing games; acquiring more plants.

At least it’s not going to get cold for a little while here. Given that I’ve been working 100% at home for so long, though, I think I’m going to have to keep getting outside no matter how cold it gets. Hopefully you will be doing the same. Let’s all stay sane together!

Hey y’all,

Carl Jung made a distinction between “the spirit of the times” and “the spirit of the depths.”

The spirit of the times is what is going on in the world right now. It’s the Zeitgeist. We have to live in it, of course, but if we over-identify with the spirit of the times, we become too myopic and narrow-minded, and we forget that the world has gone on long before us and will go on long after us.

The spirit of the depths is what is going on in ourselves right now, in the unconscious part of us that is tapped into eternal energies. This part of us is where our dreams come from, and our bold ideas, and our true desires and callings. But if we over-identify with the spirit of the depths, we become totally unmoored from the world, and madness and possession result.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to November! Goodbye to daylight savings time. Welcome, 4:30 PM darkness. Goodbye to... nope, I'm not going to jinx it.

A friend asked me some provocative questions about my experience so far writing these emails. The friend is Nick B., who also provided me with last week’s McCullough article. Don’t get a big head, Nick!

Actually, Nick’s own newsletter was the major impetus for me starting this one. He consistently puts out a thorough and thoughtful collection of work every week (err, no pressure though) and he deftly interweaves life updates with big thinking on psychology and culture. That’s been inspiring, and Nick’s personal support has been invaluable. I think if you like my stuff, you’d like his, too, and you can sign up to get it on his website.

Hey everyone,

It has been fun writing these newsletters every week, and I’ve been thinking more about how to expand my writing into doing longer pieces on a more regular basis.

I’ve always been drawn to history, but as I’ve gotten more involved in politics and social justice work, I sometimes wonder if writing about history isn’t the best way to make an impact nowadays, with so many urgent and crucial issues to address. For instance, journalism seems more important than ever, it’s an interesting challenge, and I’d be good at it.

But then I try to remember that while making an impact is nice, I’m primarily concerned with doing what means the most to me. With journalism, obsessively following the news seems to be a prerequisite, and that’s just not how I like to spend my time.

Hi everyone,

We celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary this week!

I’ve heard of the movie The Seven-Year Itch, but I didn’t know that there may be some psychological evidence—according to my therapist, anyway—that couples who stay together that long have in fact reached some kind of threshold, and they are likely to remain committed for the long haul. Not that I was worried about this, but it’s good news; I guess I’m free to stop putting in work! (Ashley is my editor for these emails; let’s see if that line gets through.)

I always knew two-day weekends were short, but they feel a lot shorter when your last “weekend” was 16 days long.

Minnesota Northwoods Trip, Day 3

Tuesday was our first day waking up in our tiny house/cabin. The woods were right outside our door, surrounding us.

Hey y’all,

I’m sure everyone is already aware of this, but I can confirm, once again, that vacations go by fast.

Friday was the last day of our two weeks of PTO. We got back into Chicago on Monday, having survived our first trip out of town together in *checks calendar* almost ten months. That’s unusual for us, but yeah, shit’s kind of unusual right now.

The area where we stayed in Northern Minnesota (near the town of Biwabik) is about a ten-hour drive from home, so to break things up, we stayed over for a night in Minneapolis. This allowed us to visit with Ashley’s family, who cooked us a lovely dinner and brought it to us at our Airbnb, which had a unique custom-built backyard area complete with pizza oven and koi pond (which, while cool, is actually a safety hazard).

Hello from Wabasha, Minnesota!

We are at the tail end of our week-long trip to the Minnesota Northwoods. This town is actually in the southwestern part of the state; we are on the way home now and wanted to break up the drive. Wabasha seems like a nice town, but we couldn’t get anything to eat after 9 PM on a Sunday because everything is closed (even places with posted hours that are later than that).

I’ll probably mix in some photos and trip recap over the next few weeks, because it would be a lot to do all at once. The main thing is: holy crap everything is gorgeous up there right now. A few people told us that this is the most colorful fall they’ve had in several years. That could be true; it could also be that we’re all looking for some good news, and we need things like brilliant fall colors more than ever.

I think I’ll actually whet your appetite with a few of our favorite shots from the full week.

It’s happening! We are actually going out of town.

We’ll be spending most of the next week in a cabin in northern Minnesota, near where the Boundary Waters area begins, doing some hiking and birdwatching and maybe some kayaking, and a whole lot of chilling out.

I don’t have a whole lot more to say about it, because, well, that’s kind of why I’m going on vacation, and also because we need to leave pretty soon and we haven’t finished packing yet!

Definitely expect some woodsy pictures next time, though. And I do have a few other items to share…

A writer friend kept mentioning the philosophy of Lichtenbergianism. Promising to help you utilize procrastination as a positive creative strategy, it sounded exotic and quirky, but I resisted exploring it.

I am discerning when it comes to reading about other people’s systems, especially in the productivity realm. I have been burned so many times by trying to resolutely, mindless, even fearfully follow someone else’s prescribed course for How To Do Stuff, with no regard for whether it was actually working for me, and not really knowing why I wanted to Do The Stuff, anyway.

That’s changed a lot in the last couple years, so now I feel more curious than triggered when I hear about a new idea or system. But I still try to be careful, and use my intuition. At the most recent reference to Lichtenbergianism, I felt a spark of excitement; it seemed like the right time to look deeper.

In what seems like a healthy response for me, I decided that Lichtenbergianism was a smartly counterintuitive philosophy with some very appealing precepts, but not one that I would be giving my life over to anytime soon. There’s an actual group of Lichtenbergians that co-founded the “movement” and they have a blog and meetings and T-shirts and all that. I’m not on board for these aspects, but I’m certainly going to think about how the ideas mirror my own thinking, and how I might interpret and use them for myself.

Hey everyone,

What a relief!

On Monday I went to my dermatologist first thing, to see about getting some answers to why I had itchy and painful red spots all over my skin.

Even if I hadn’t gotten answers, it would have been nice just to feel like I was in the hands of a trusted expert, someone who has probably seen something like this before and knows how to evaluate it. And it always feels validating to be listened to. He also had a resident with him, so I knew that they were both forming judgments and deliberating amongst each other.

Hi everyone. Here’s what’s going on.

So this is just going to be a quick update, because my skin’s kinda on fire right now. It’s not that I particularly want to write about this; it’s more that having trouble thinking about anything else. (Sorry not sorry!)

At first I thought I was having a flare-up of my chronic hives, but after my dermatologist looked at a couple photos, he thought it might be something new. He’s seeing me Monday, but until then, I don’t have many options. I’ve had this condition—technical name, chronic idiopathic urticaria—for a couple years now: the hives just showed up one day and never disappeared. After six weeks is when they become “officially” chronic, no longer acute. And “idiopathic,” as my allergist cousin informs me, means that my doctors are idiots and don’t know what causes it. (They’re pretty good actually, but science is still figuring out the immune system.)

I’m sitting here trying hard to come up with a way to describe what it feels like to want to scratch so bad, but I’m also trying hard not to scratch. And that takes priority over wordplay. It’s a little scary, to be honest, because I have no idea if or when it’s going to go away. But I’ve been through stuff like this before. And I have an amazingly thoughtful and helpful partner, who went to Walgreens immediately and brought me everything that she thought might be soothing.

Hey everyone,

Fall is usually my favorite season, and I think it still is, but this is going to be a weird one.

No Nebraska football. I’m in Chicago now, so I don’t really have a feel for how much consternation and soul-searching this has caused back home, but I can imagine. Especially since the decision not to play the season wasn’t made by the university, but by the Big Ten Conference, in which the team plays.

The Pac-10 Conference has also cancelled all its fall sports, but other conferences like the Big 12 (where Nebraska used to play) and the Southeastern Conference are moving forward with football. This is not a good idea, but I have to admit that having at least some football in the fall is appealing; it would make the world seem a little bit more like normal.

Hey y’all,

Does it feel like nothing in the world is going according to plan right now?

Last week I promised that in my next email I would have pictures from our trip to Starved Rock State Park. It’s about 90 minutes outside Chicago, and thus it’s a popular attraction for people from the city who want to see cool-looking eroded sandstone cliffs and cave formations. Ashley and I both took vacation time this week, and with such a rare opportunity, we thought it would be ideal to hit the trails on a weekday, in order to minimize our exposure to other humans, which is the primary consideration when doing anything nowadays.

We originally decided to go on Monday, but when the weather forecast called for thunderstorms, we put the outing off for Tuesday. As it turned out, what the weather served up on Monday was not mere thunderstorms but a vicious kill-storm of immense proportions. This kind of weather phenomenon actually has a name—a , also dubbed an “inland hurricane”—and consists of an unbroken line of storms stretching for many miles that moves rapidly and sticks together over long distances.

Hi,

Next week I will have some cool pictures from the bird sanctuary and from Starved Rock State Park, but not this week. This week, once again, I did not go anywhere, but I felt mostly alright about it. We did spend an evening enjoying a going-temporarily-away picnic in Horner Park; at least, enjoying it when our food wasn’t being swarmed by wasps and bees. And enjoying it enough that I did not take any photos. We also had a picnic with friends in Hyde Park and that was far too beautiful to capture. You understand.

Ashley and I both have time off this week, which is how we are going to the bird sanctuary and the state park, because we were originally supposed to be at the Maha festival in Omaha, which had become one of the things that makes a year a “normal” year. We considered getting a cabin or small house somewhere else on the lakeshore for a couple days, but it doesn’t feel like we’re supposed to travel right now if it’s not necessary, or at least for something that’s a big deal. So we’re just going to do day trips instead, which feels a lot more comfortable. (What a weird thing to say.)

This would have been our first full summer in Chicago when we weren’t occupied by the residency and/or moving. We were going to feel like bona-fide Chicagoans for the first time, a thing that instead ended up happening in March. It’s weird feeling like you’ve just become established in a city that you suddenly can’t utilize. Driving past downtown, the buildings are as stunning as ever, but off-limits, looking and feeling hollow, like a toy model or a dollhouse.

Hey y’all,

I’m going to keep this one shorter and lighter, both because last week’s was long and heavy, and because I’m feeling pretty tired. I have no bad news to report, thankfully, but sometimes I’m just running low on energy. I’m not taking a week off from this, though, because sending this email out every Sunday has become a valuable source of stability and familiarity in these unprecedented difficult extraordinary remarkable troubled unique times. Thank you for reading!

I think part of the drain for me is that all of the time at home is finally catching up to me. It has been since late January that I’ve spent a night somewhere, anywhere else. So lately, I’ve sought out and been introduced to a lot of cool new nature-y places in the city and surrounding area, and Ashley and I are talking about what safe travel will look like for us.

More on that later, then. For now, here’s what Lake Michigan looks like from atop the hill at the Fort Sheridan Forest Preserve.

Hey everyone,

What do you do when one of your favorite authors writes a vicious take-down of another one of your favorite authors?

Do you feel personally attacked? Do you wonder if you’ve been wrong about the other author and their ideas this whole time? Do you get angry at the first author for betraying you? Do you admit that maybe they’re both right and both wrong, and wish they could just peacefully work out their differences? Do you fling open your china cabinet and hurl all of your dishes into the alley?

All of that happened to me this week when I read this John McWhorter review of Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. (Except the last one.)

Hey y’all,

I’m working on a couple of essay-type pieces that I’m hoping to be able to share soon (he said convincingly), so this week I’ll highlight a delightful trip we took to the Jarvis Migratory Bird Sanctuary on the lakeshore this morning.

Actually, first, check out this car that’s currently parked outside our place.

Hey everyone,

Let’s just get the anticlimactic part out of the way: all of our baby caterpillars are gone.

I’ve seen wasps buzzing around our milkweed all week, and they’re known to eat monarch caterpillars. As for the two black swallowtails, I’m not sure. Same with the black swallowtail chrysalis, which appears to have opened and emptied, but is still mostly intact. These are also prone to infestation, and in retrospect, ours never looked the healthiest.

I don’t know if this is it—there are still plenty of butterflies around—but if it is, we had a good run.

Hi everyone,

When I decided to start this email newsletter, about 20 years ago, I was uncertain where it would lead. But one thing that I do know for absolute certain was that I would end up writing at length about caterpillars.

Yes, sitting down to write that first email to you, I definitely remember thinking: “Well, this will inevitably lead to me composing a multi-week caterpillar-raising saga. There’s simply no way around it.”

The universe may be a mystery on the whole, but some things in life are very clear.

Hey everyone,

Bad news on the caterpillar front. Well, it’s news, anyway—I’m practicing not ascribing value judgments.

Our last caterpillar has left home. He crawled away sometime during the night on Monday. Ashley’s theory is that he needed a sturdier branch for his chrysalis than anything he would find in our herb garden.

I’ll miss the cater-babies, but I’m glad we were able to keep them extremely well-fed while they were here. Perhaps they will return as black swallowtails!

Hey y’all,

I’m a bit anxious. We’ve gone from having five radiant caterpillar children to one.

I’ve been watching them all week, trying to work on the porch as much as possible to keep an eye on them. It’s not like they need intense supervision. They have everything they need: plentiful parsley to eat, cover from the elements, and… actually I think that’s it.

The only thing I was worried about was the robins that keep grabbing berries from the juneberry bush next to the porch. But they don’t seem to pay any attention to our herb garden. Now that the caterpillars are mature, they’ve turned a pale green that blends in really well with the plants. And I read that they’re not tasty for birds, so maybe the robins have instinctually learned to avoid them. Dang, they’ve gotta be nutritious though.

Hi everyone,

How about some plant pictures?

Howdy,

Well, that was a hell of a week. Now I know what I’ll say to people in fifty years when they ask me: “What was it like to watch history happen in real time?”

“I’m still not sure. Ask me again in fifty years.”

One thing that’s happening with me is, the world is putting my belief in the power of individual action to a serious test.

Heyyy there,

Changed up the salutation this week, as you can see. Might make a habit of it. The moment calls for a lighter, more familiar greeting. Maybe as an antidote to all the chaos out there.

Speaking of which. So OK, I was going to write about something totally different this week. And I will definitely still finish that and send it later, but Saturday was yet another crazy day in an absolute whiplash of a year, and I feel compelled to say something about it.

I started writing this sitting at home last night, freshly out from under a stay-at-home order, only to be placed under curfew along with the rest of the city of Chicago.

Hi everyone,

Yesterday we went on a walk through Rosehill Cemetery.

Hi everyone,

This week I realized that I have been doing New Year’s Resolutions all wrong.

For most of my life I wasn’t doing them at all. I always thought it was totally arbitrary that January 1 should be the day that we all decide to change our habits. We should pursue self-improvement year-round! And can’t we see, strolling past a once-again-empty gym on January 23, how obvious it is that our arbitrary goal-setting system is not even the least bit effective?

Over time I have become even more jaded and existentialist, to the point that I have lost the stomach to crusade against arbitrariness. It’s all arbitrary anyway, right? What’s so wrong with choosing one arbitrary date over another arbitrary date? I might as well embrace it, and in doing so come off my soapbox.

Hi everyone,

As some of you know, I’ve been lucky to be published a few times in my life. But I’ve also gone through long periods in between.

When I was 10, I wrote a speech for a school contest — with a lot of thematic help from my mom, I have to say — about my relationship with my 5-year-old brother Avi, who has significant developmental disabilities. At the time, he was also having terrible seizures, and nobody knew exactly what was causing them. Our life was very different from the other families on the block and in my neighborhood elementary school. Other kids’ younger siblings were very different from my brother.

My speech was called “Differences Make Us Special.” Despite the fact that we couldn’t communicate with words and sentences, my brother and I have always been close. Our relationship looks very different than the one I have with my partner or my parents or any of my friends or cousins — and something about that makes it more precious. I relate to Avi on his level. Normally my humor is bone dry, but with him I’m a slapstick goofball. Sometimes there’s not a lot to say, so I just hug and kiss him a lot, and tell him I love him.

Hi everyone,

I took Thursday and Friday off. This corresponded nicely with spring’s long-awaited arrival. The weekend has been so nice that it feels like summer—actually it feels like summer vacation. Maybe that’s what quarantine has been like all along, only I didn’t make the association because we haven’t had weather to match.

As a kid my life revolved around school. So when there wasn’t any, there was this feeling of absence, of something missing. Right now most of my “normal” life isn’t happening. This leads to boredom, but also to creativity. I have to come up with new ideas to fill the space.

Hi everyone,

This week we found out that Illinois is extending our stay-at-home order until May 31. We’re also required to wear masks when visiting essential businesses. In slightly better news, selected state parks will reopen on May 1, and garden centers will also be reclassified as essential. Gethsemane, the massive one up the street from us, confirmed they will open their garden and herb center for business on that day. It’s a Friday, and Ashley and I both have it off already, so we’re planning to be there at 9 AM.

Hi everyone,

It’s crazy sunny and gorgeous in Chicago today. Two days ago it snowed all morning. What are you gonna do?

I left my neighborhood twice (two times!) this week. An amazing achievement. What lustrous adventures did I partake in? Well!

On Monday I went to a little local artisan grocery called Whole Foods. (You probably haven’t heard of it.) It’s not even that far away. But I hadn’t driven that far away in a month, so it felt like a big deal. I never thought a trip to the supermarket could be so surreal. It’s as if I’d become uncertain of whether the rest of Chicago was still there around me, and upon confirming that it is, I felt relief and exaltation.

Hi everyone,

It is sunny in Chicago! At least, it has been for maybe three days this week? I’m counting it.

On Tuesday it got into the seventies. I got dressed up in my jeans and sweater without even thinking, because that’s what I’ve done every day for the past million months. Winter is always long in the Midwest, but this one has been… well, you know.

Hi everyone,

Greetings from week three of self-quarantine. In Chicago we are now under shelter-in-place until the end of April at minimum. McCormick Place, our ungodly-large convention center, is now a 3,000-bed field hospital. The lakefront, parks, playgrounds, and the hip 606 biking trail are all shuttered. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been Very Serious about enforcing this, which spawned some fun memes.

Hi everyone,

Yesterday was my birthday! What is my age? Well, I am either old or young, depending on whom you ask.

I can’t go anywhere to celebrate, but that’s not my style anyway. No pressure to do anything crazy. It’s actually kind of fun having one of the first birthdays in the coronavirus era. It feels special and unusual.

What did I do, then. Listened to our new records. I wrote this, and rewarded myself by opening cards and presents. Then we ordered takeout from a Korean BBQ place down Clark Street and had a virtual dinner with friends. And most importantly, I moved onto Newmashers, our Animal Crossing island!

Hi everyone,

Welcome to weekly email #2! Thanks for sticking around — I feel like the only thing that's not cancelled right now.

(P.S. If you're getting this and you didn't sign up, it's because I love you enough to risk spamming you.)

Maybe I won’t totally avoid the virus thing, like I hinted I’d be doing last week. Lockdown is life right now. Well, it is, and it isn’t. Part of me is tempted to throw up my hands and say nothing else matters because of this. All virus all the time, baby! That part of me is not the whole of me, and it’s not the part of me I want to live out of. At the same time, I feel it's important to document these experiences, not just for history and my future self, but especially if it can help anyone out there to know that I'm doing okay and that you're not alone.

Hi everyone,

I know your inboxes are currently lousy with COVID-19 emails from literally every business you’ve ever even walked past, so I appreciate you wanting to hear from me. I’m going to keep this first one short, because this week has been a year already.

I’m not going to dwell on the virus stuff, either, even though I have a lot to say, because I’m sure most of us are feeling at capacity by now. I want to cultivate some healthy distance from it (puns definitely intended), but I also feel obligated to stay engaged and do my part. So I’ve got one quick thing.

If you are an introvert, or know one, you know the phenomenon where we pray that our plans will be cancelled as we’re walking out the door, and we can just stay home. Afterwards, I’m almost always glad I Did The Thing, but it doesn’t stop that anxiety from creeping in the next time.