☕ the last saturday mornings
ever?
Happy Saturday!
I hope you’re having a lovely start to your weekend.
What I’ve been up to:
Write of Passage 11 finished on Wednesday! It's always busy and overwhelming and exhausting at points, but so rewarding and sad when it's over.
I published an essay helping Alex Dobrenko with linkedin (using my expertise from being a business undergrad well-steeped in linkedin excellence). It's the first time I tried to write something funny. Hitting publish I felt like I was at the top of a roller coaster for about three hours, but the response has been beyond my expectations.
This morning I caught a 4:45am flight (don't ask) to Bariloche, one of the top-rated towns in Patagonia.
Here are the most interesting ideas I've explored this week.
✍️ quote i’m pondering:
Kurt Vile on spiritual longing and God:
"I think there was always a yearning in me for something else, something beyond myself, from which I felt excluded.
I always felt desirous of those who had a religious dimension to their lives. There was always a yearning. I have come to see that maybe the search is the religious experience - the desire to believe and the longing for meaning, the moving towards the ineffable.
When it comes down to it, maybe faith is just a decision like any other. Perhaps God is the search itself."
📚 book passage i loved:
"No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell."
― Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self by Carl Jung
Jung believed the first step to enlightenment is the encounter with the shadow.
💡 idea from me: the last saturday mornings
This will be the last saturday mornings newsletter I send.
I started saturday mornings in May of 2021. I was uninterested in school, unfulfilled in internships, and reading for hours each day. Writing became my outlet to share ideas I found fascinating.
Like most big life moments, beginning my Substack feels fated. It’s hard to put my finger on an inflection point. It just happened.
Two and a half years later, there are over 800 of you here.
You have shaped me into a better human being with your time, your attention, your kind words, your love.
You have made me smarter by engaging with my ideas, sharing your thoughts, teaching me new perspectives.
You have helped me find work I find meaningful.
There’s still ample anxiety and doubt and days I question what the hell I’m doing.
“dude writing on Substack seriously your gameplan? are u a joke? get a job for sucks sake” inner Tommy says, who can be a bit of an asshole.
I’m still afraid. But I know I’m on the path. Where the hardship is heavy but worth carrying. That’s all I can ask for.
To cut to the chase (idk why it’s a chase that saying makes no sense) I won’t be sending out writing anymore… in this format.
If my weekend newsletters are the horse and my mid-week essays are the man (lol) my new essays will be a centaur (or is it minotaur??).
The top will be a personal essay. At the bottom, I’ll have those life update bullets my Mom loves, as well as a quote or question or poem I thought was exceptional. I’ll also include my best photo each week as I continue my foray into photography. Sent out every Saturday morning (my favourite time of the week since I was a little boy).
See the stunning sketch I made:
This week, I deleted Twitter and Instagram. Stopped my daily travel video logs. I canceled plans to make book summary podcasts. I’m not taking any new courses.
I dream of simplicity. I won’t ever get there if I don’t (painfully) cut back.
My “main thing” is writing high-quality essays on Substack. Writing is more nourishing than curating quotes and questions, and you seem to resonate more with my essays than my newsletters.
I’m only sharing one post a week. For now. The more I reduce, the more powerful concentration of myself I can pour into each piece I produce.
Less but better.
I want to spend more time with each essay. Write more words, rewrite more words, scrap more words. So when I do share something with you, it’s really the best I can do.
As I pour more of my heart into my work, I’m also finding it more exhausting. I was texting a friend about how scared I was Wednesday after publishing. Then I woke up Thursday morning like “I have to do this again???”
And my job with Noah Kagan will get busier as we get closer to the launch of his book Jan 30/2024 (exciting news coming in the New Year on that…)
I’m slowly learning creativity demands rest, kindness, self-care. Cutting back is alien to me. My instinct is to do more. But my writing suffers when I work myself to smithereens.
A friend I admire told me he’s only doing three things: reading, meditating, and BJJ.
It made me ask, “What are my three things, if I could only pick three?”
Writing and reading aren’t going anywhere. My third… probably photography. Journaling counts as writing. And my lecture series counts as reading. It’s not cheating I swear. I also want to practice guitar and exercise/yoga every day and learn a martial art.
Damn… reduction is even harder than seduction. Both are a work in progress.
Growing an audience is exciting, something I dreamed of for a long time. But also scary. I don’t want to lose sight of myself.
Moving forward, I’m obsessed with questions like:
How do I make my writing beautiful?
How do I craft more compelling stories?
How do I make my essays an aesthetic experience?
In the end, I hope this all results in writing you love. Writing that makes you think, writing that makes you feel, writing that makes you smile.
Like any new chapter, to turn the page is to experience both euphoria and terror. At the same time. 2023 has been quite the year and I have an inkling 2024 will be even better.
I’m just learning to focus, to say no. I’m just starting to read humanity’s great books. I’m just beginning to show up more as myself on the page.
I’m just hitting my stride.
Psst. I’m sharing a lot of fun-stream-of-conciousness type writing every day on Substack Notes. So if you have a Tommy-shaped hole in your heart, follow me over there & we can go back and forth on ideas and hopes and dreams and secrets and what’s keeping us up at night.
❓ question i’m asking:
What am I devoted to?
This week, I listened to a Dharma talk on desire & devotion.
It reminded me of an idea from DFW: We all worship. We're all devoted to something.
We only get to choose what we worship.
📸 photo of the week:
My best photo from Week 7 of learning photography in public.
Turned up the pink tint because i want to see the world with rose-colored glasses.
See my best four photos on Substack Notes.
Thank you for reading! It means a lot to me :)
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You got all my love,
Tommy
I remember the time when cable tv was a new thing and I wanted to watch all the channels at once and there were hundreds of them. I've suffered from wanting to do it all and not leave anything behind. It was a disease. Then with time I sort of healed because I learned that I cannot be everything, everywhere, to everybody. That life is made of choices, but here's the thing: no choice is irreversible. When I decide to abandon something to direct my time and energy to other things, I do it with the awareness that, one day, I may get back to that, if I'm so inclined (I give myself permission to think in these terms). We live in a society that fosters absolutism: everything it's either white or black. Either 100% or 0%. And this whole disease of wanting to do everything is exacerbated by the need to do everything at full speed, at 100%. This is as damaging as it is a necessary part of our evolution; I think of it as a phase that cannot be skipped, no matter how much advice you get from (supposedly) smart and wise and older folks. And so I'm happy to see you make a choice and try to cultivate the parts of your life that you deem more salient right now. As much as I really enjoyed your Saturday pieces, I'm glad to see you direct your attention (and heart) to one weekly, personal essay. :)
Congratulations for deleting Twitter and Instagram! A few weeks ago in WOP David Perell said something along the lines of "I wonder how many people would reach for their dreams if they just deleted Instagram and stopped caring what others perceived their life to be." I haven't stopped thinking about it since.