Friday Inspiration 506 Today is the LAST DAY to sign up for my How To Tell One Story online writing course for 2025. If you haven't heard people (me) talking about it before, it is: a six-week, 12-email course designed to help you get one good written narrative nonfiction story on the page comprised of brief emails and assignments (a 3- to 6-minute read plus a 10- to 30-minute writing exercise) proven to be very satisfying according to the 27 people who have taken the post-course survey (and...
8 days ago • 3 min read
Not Really A Time Machine, But Kind Of September 26th was the 10-year anniversary of the first time I ever tried to run an ultramarathon—the 2015 Bear Chase Race in Lakewood, Colorado, at Bear Creek Lake Park. A brief, bullet-point version of how that happened might be: It was kind of a lark, but I got hooked. Jayson and I ran a couple 50-mile races together, then signed up for a 100-mile race, the 2017 Run Rabbit Run, and ran it together. I made a film about the experience (and about...
9 days ago • 4 min read
Friday Inspiration 505 TODAY is a big day—we are re-opening registration for my How To Tell One Story online writing course. We sold out the last round of 25 spots back in July, and I just this week finished up reading the stories the folks who completed the course sent me (pretty much the highlight of my week). If you’re interested in writing, or really, putting together a story in any format, you can register for the course from today (October 10) through next Friday (October 17). We’re...
15 days ago • 3 min read
Friday Inspiration 504 Apologies if you are a longtime fan of ARIatHOME and will wonder if I live under a rock, but I somehow just discovered him this week, and I kept going “no way” every time a new person got on the mic and rapped or sang—especially the two “Brooklyn OGs” who appear around the 10-minute mark. As a commenter on a different video said: “According to these videos, every single person in NYC can spit hot fire at a moment's notice” (video) I loved this collection of photos of...
22 days ago • 2 min read
Stop What You're Doing And Watch This Birdwatching Documentary Right Now Life comes at you fast: On Monday, I was not at all interested in birdwatching. On Tuesday, I was obsessed with it for two straight hours. I am probably not the first person to tell you that you should, as soon as you can spare one hour and 59 minutes, watch the film Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching. Someone sent me a link to it on August 29th, 10 days after it went live on YouTube (thanks, Jason), followed...
23 days ago • 3 min read
Friday Inspiration 503 I spent a good chunk of the beginning of my book Ultra-Something talking about the movie Rocky, so of course when this CinemaStix video about it popped up in my YouTube feed, I of course watched it, and of course was not disappointed (although I did already know the bit of trivia about the skating rink scene). (video) I am a big believer that you don’t necessarily have to go to film school to make films, and that you don’t have to go to art school to make art, and that...
29 days ago • 3 min read
Friday Inspiration 502 I watch way too many of these NBA highlight collection videos, and I know not everyone likes basketball, but I love this one for a couple reasons: a) The conceit of the video, “Dunks but the dunker gets increasingly more unlikely,” is actually backed up with each person’s statistic of “dunks per season,” and b) many of these clips show the reactions from the team’s bench, from the teammates who are often baffled and elated that their teammate threw one down (video)...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
I Go To The Hardware Store When the world is going crazy, which is how it feels anytime I spend too much of my time looking at the news slash social media slash glowing screens slash information, which I’ve been doing for the past week or so, I go to the hardware store. Because at the hardware store, I can feel, for a few minutes, that maybe the world is not falling apart, as much as these people screaming at each other about “your side” and “our side” on TV news clips have very nearly led me...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Friday Inspiration 501 I have enjoyed many of Arthur Brooks’ columns for The Atlantic over the years, so I wasn’t surprised that this video, “You Need to Be Bored. Here’s Why.” hit home for me as well. Sometimes I wonder if we’re all keeping ourselves so “busy” with everything that we don’t have time to feel anything anymore—boredom included, but also other things. (video) I don’t know who the market is for this app, or if the market actually exists, but I love that this person created it: A...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
