☕ saturday mornings - october 21, 2023

keeping your soul alive, parenting & mary oliver is the goat

Happy Saturday!

I hope you’re having a great start to your weekend.

What I’ve been up to:

• I've been busy as ever writing essays, working on a resource library and bonus bundles for Noah's book, and being a student/editor for Write of Passage.

• I'm working my way through Jordan Peterson's Biblical Lecture Series on Genesis.

• I published the most popular thing I've ever written on my love for lighted windows.

Here are the most interesting ideas I've explored this week.

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✍️ quote i’m pondering:

Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson on keeping your soul alive:

“To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.”

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🖋️ poem i adored:

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💡 idea from me: a journal entry

You found your wool sweater with that one burn hole in the sleeve from last summer. Dug out your Blundstone boots from the basement, mud still caked on the heels. Put on your worn-out blue jeans. 

You always said Fall was your season.

Hot coffee. Frosty grass. The blue and gritty sky. Golden light crowning the tops of trees. Leaves piled up on sidewalk curbs. Road hockey games. 

Then you remember you haven’t been home for Thanksgiving for two years. And you forget what color your Blundstones are.

~~~

You bought a plane ticket to Argentina. Because that’s what young geographically-independent people seem to do. There was a time you thought travel would solve your problems. 

You still work all day. Sit down at your desk, let your coffee go cold, microwave it every 30 minutes. The hours melt together into one Google-suite-induced haze. You look up and it’s almost evening. Your brother has to drag you out to explore. 

Most days, you feel calmer. You’ve started to book bus tickets, flights, hostels in advance. You used to leave it to the last minute. It used to make you anxious. That makes you a little proud of yourself which feels strange, also silly.

You learned to bake scones. Your family is amazed. You retort that recipes are easy to follow and you don’t get how it’s so impressive. Then you tried to make gnocchi but it fell apart in your hands. No one told you how hard it was. The recipe lied. 

Your hair is growing longer. Your Mom jokes over Facetime you should cut it, but she’s not really joking. You say it makes you look more like a creative spirit. You hope one day it will cover your eyes.

You journal more than you used to. You hope the words will run out, but they don’t. The pen never catches up to your thoughts. There’s always something left unsaid. 

You found Gregory Alan Isakov. You listen to his one album on repeat. It reminds you of home. Of a person you could be.

~~~

You dream of Paris and cold winters. You think the cold will clear your head. 

You keep adding to your list of places to travel to. A note in your phone creatively titled “Travel ✈️”. You keep daydreaming. Of beauty and simplicity and natural light — a reduced life, where nothing is missing. 

The truth is, you’re scared. You’re scared of going big, of actually committing, so you take on more things. Insurance, maybe.

But you have no one to complain to. You’re exactly where you wanted to be. You’re living the days you once fantasized, not stuck in a 40th-floor cubicle. Your Dad says you’re living the dream. He’s right.

~~~

You met some of your idols. You realized they’re human, just like you. Your dreams feel closer but still too far away. 

You say you’re scared of failure but you’re more terrified of success. You say you want to be noticed but you’re afraid of being seen. You hate the spotlight. Something you wrote went semi-viral on twitter and it scared the hell out of you. People on the Internet are mean.

Each week you worry you’re going to run out of things to say. But you still show up every day. Honest. Earnest. You still open your heart. Bleed. You’re better at showing up as yourself on the page, being vulnerable, but sometimes you think no one cares.

You were told the discipline will lead to something but what if it doesn’t.

You said you’re done thinking about the future but it still nags at you. Life still feels so undecided. Unshaped. You’re not sure if you’ve grown more tolerant of uncertainty or just become numb to it. “Maybe it’s the same thing,” you think. 

~~~

You’re getting older now. You’re not allowed to shrug, say I’m still a student. 

You thought you’d have it figured out by now. You thought you’d have more answers. You’re tired of asking the same questions. 

It’s just like you to think that the hard work will all pay off. It’s just like you to think that fullness lies around the next corner. You’re starting to see the holes in your own logic. You can poke your fingers through. 

Your boss tells you he needs more out of you. You mumble some excuse and thank him for his feedback. But deep down you want to keep you for yourself. 

Everyone seems to want more of you. You’re not sure how much you have left to give.

You smile. You send emails with one exclamation mark at the beginning and one at the end. You try to say kind things. Even when you don’t feel so kind. You try to care. But you’re getting worse at it. 

You don’t get why you have to build Excel spreadsheets and fire off emails when you could be reading Plato’s Republic and trying to understand the Christian foundations of the world and what it means to be human and how to cope with the fact you will die soon. It doesn’t make sense. 

Nothing seems as interesting as your own thoughts. You worry you’re becoming unemployable. If only you had a trust fund, you joke. 

You started to think about God. You see Him everywhere. You’re not sure if you’re religious but you’re no atheist anymore. You worry your family will think you’ve become a Bible banger. But you just want answers. You just want Truth.

~~~

You find that jean jacket in the closet you love, the one with the fur around the collar your high school girlfriend bought you. You realize you’re wearing all denim, but no longer care.

You step out to the crisp morning air. The breeze smells like damp earth and fresh beginnings.

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❓ question i’m asking:

From poet Mary Oliver:

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it life?

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📸 photo of the week:

My best photo from Week 3 learning photography in public. See my best four photos on Twitter.

I also spent all Sunday making a mood board. It’s the new lock screen on my phone. If you’re curious, I wrote about it.

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Much love,

Tommy