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ANNOUNCEMENT: There’s a longer story about this on the DFTBA store page, but we are putting my “Periodic Table of the Elements of Adventure” on a LIMITED EDITION Nalgene bottle. You can order one from right now until midnight Mountain Time on April 5th (next Friday), and that’s it. Order now or live a life of regret. (Here’s a short video of the whole bottle so you can see the whole design)
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If you own more than one mug, and you click on one thing in this list today, let it be this brilliant piece about the worst mug in your cupboard. I was going to include a quote from it, but I couldn’t decide on one. And for the record, my current favorite mug in our cupboard is actually Hilary’s, and the worst mug in the cupboard is probably one I brought to the relationship.
I love many things about this story, including but not limited to the fact that it’s about the guy who picks up dog poop on our local trail up Mt. Jumbo here in Missoula and leaves passive-aggressive (or maybe just aggressive?) notes for people calling them out, but also that it’s 6,000-plus words, which, given the average reader’s attention span nowadays, is really going for it when you’re writing a story about a guy who picks up dog poop on a trail in a town of 75,000 people. To be fair, there’s a lot there.
Payson High School, where Footloose was filmed in 1983, is scheduled to be demolished after the end of the 2023-3024 school year. Students wanted Kevin Bacon to come back to the high school for prom, and he told them he would, via a video call into a school assembly (that was broadcast on the Today Show).
Sure, this is a map of the internet in 1973, but how does it make you feel? Because I have feelings about it. Like nostalgia, but not?
This is a super-fun idea, and I think needed for a lot of people who enjoy creating things: A free (or pay what you want) zine, How to Keep Your Hobby From Becoming A Job.
This short blurb of a blog post is kind of all over the place, references a Slate article from 2014, and also the Emily Dickinson poem “That Love is all there is,” all to say: We’ve only been roasting vegetables since 1980? How is this invention younger than I am?
[RELATED: I have made this Brussels Sprouts Roasted with Kimchi and Scallions recipe at least 15 times since I found it in November 2022, and I can all but guarantee it help you win friends and influence people]
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Writer, artist, filmmaker, columnist for Outside Magazine. My newsletter about creativity, adventure, and enthusiasm goes out to 15,000+ subscribers every week.
Friday Inspiration 507 “Who’s gonna watch a senior citizen grandmother do jigsaw puzzles on a platform where people are competing playing Warzone?” Apparently a lot of people. (video) This math about budgeting at the bookstore of course makes no sense but is exactly what most of us do when we want something, and that is why it is an example of a well-written joke. I finally subscribed to Blackbird Spyplane yesterday after Hilary sent me this piece about creativity and AI and making birthday...
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...
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...