Friday Inspiration 462 I cannot believe I haven’t seen this guy’s art before, but I love everything about his work, including the fact that he CREATED HIS OWN PAINT for these enormous, impermanent, outdoor murals. (video) I don’t know if this is the best time of year to mention this, or the worst, but: These Friday Inspiration newsletters take me several hours every week to curate and write. I am able to have the time to do that because people like my friend Don Laub support my work through...
8 days ago • 2 min read
Searching The Heart [For Coronary Calcium] My mom was the first to recommend it, but it was the close calls of a few friends that finally sold me on it. I watched the ceiling as I slid into the CT scan machine, and I thought about the “seven touches” principle of marketing, in which we need seven interactions with a brand or product to actually make a purchase or act upon a call to action—social media posts, ads, word-of-mouth mentions, et cetera. And that if one of those “touches” is an...
9 days ago • 6 min read
Friday Inspiration 461 Are you finding yourself less and less excited about what "The Algorithm" assumes you will like, because it seems like you're just getting served more and more of the same stuff? Me too. This short video, “The Algorithm Has Been Hiding Something From You,” feels right on. (video) This is the last Friday I’ll be including links to the stuff in my online shop at the bottom of this email, since—sorry for the all-caps here—but in order to receive orders by December 25th in...
15 days ago • 3 min read
Friday Inspiration 460 I love everything about this damn film. It’s just a story about a guy who loves climbing and has created a community around it, just because he can’t stop himself from being friendly to everyone. May we all strive to be a little more like Chad. (video) NEWS FROM ME: In response to several requests about my How To Tell One Story online writing course, we’ve added the ability to give it to someone as a gift. If you purchase it as a gift, you’ll enter the recipient’s first...
22 days ago • 2 min read
The Art Of Staying In Your Lanes -- Check out my new "How To Tell One Story" online writing course here.
24 days ago • 1 min read
Friday Inspiration 459 Today is a big day: For the past couple months, I have been working to create an online writing course, and it’s finally live. It’s called How To Tell One Story, and it’s designed to take you through the process of writing one 1,200-word narrative nonfiction essay, through 12 lessons in six weeks. If you’re at all curious about writing—and to me, this means anything from dreaming of writing for a literary magazine, to writing down some stories about your grandmother for...
29 days ago • 3 min read
Friday Inspiration 458 If you click on this video, make sure you have 14 minutes to watch it uninterrupted. It’s slow, but I think it needs to be slow to help you feel what it’s really like to live in Forrest, Australia, population 2. I absolutely love the shot of the bicycles on the runway. (via Kottke.org)(video) NOTE: I have a bunch of new stuff I’ve made for the holidays this year, and I’ll be sharing it at the bottom of the next few Friday newsletters so this doesn’t turn into *yet...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Somebody Should Do Something About This It was a couple years ago, probably eightish miles up the Stuart Peak trail, when I first started thinking about it. A small tree had fallen perpendicular across the trail, no more than four inches in diameter. I had to slow my already-not-that-fast uphill running trot to almost a complete stop to step over the tree. Of course I thought for a half-second, like you always do, that my day would be a tiny bit more pleasant if that tree had not fallen...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Friday Inspiration 457 This film takes its time letting this guy Beneke de Wet drop some bits of wisdom, but it’s worth the wait (video)(thanks, Nate) I’m pretty sure I shared an article a couple years ago about the special secret mud that gets rubbed on every ball used in a Major League Baseball game, but this is kind of a summary of that same story with a new twist: University of Pennsylvania researchers conducted a study to figure out that yes, the mud has unique properties that can’t be...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
