Writer, artist, filmmaker, columnist for Outside Magazine. My newsletter about creativity, adventure, and enthusiasm goes out to 15,000+ subscribers every week.
Friday Inspiration 459
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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 your kids to read someday, to creating a rough script for a short film or YouTube video—I hope you check it out.
Each of the 12 email lessons contains a 3- to 8-minute read, an illustration or two, an exercise intended to get you writing or thinking about writing, and a short video that complements the material. By the end of the 12 lessons, you’ll have produced one 1,200-word narrative essay that I think you’ll be proud of.
I’ve been teaching an annual writing workshop through the Freeflow Institute since 2019, and I’ve always wanted to make something that was a bit more accessible and affordable, for people who wanted to explore writing but maybe couldn’t take a week off work/family/everything to tromp around in the backcountry with us. This course is it.
All the info is on this page (PS there’s a special introductory price for the first wave of people to sign up):
HOW TO TELL ONE STORY ONLINE WRITING COURSE
Here’s the video from the first lesson:
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HOW TO TELL ONE STORY ONLINE WRITING COURSE
And now, our regularly scheduled programming:
I don’t know what it is about this video (maybe my particular emotional state when I watched it?), but I think even if you don’t know who Fred again is, or who Joy Anonymous, you might agree that this is a very joyful watch. Or maybe I am just a huge sucker for crowds signing along with music. (video)
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Maybe you saw some semi-recent headlines about the world’s oldest forest being discovered in upstate New York? If you’d like a much deeper dive (with tons of wonderful photos), please allow me to recommend this one, from which I pulled this quote: “… as we stood there it didn't take very long for us to realize, holy cats! These were roots and that's where a tree stood 385 million years ago.”
I just discovered the Mirrors For Sale subreddit and I have to say, I laughed out loud at about half a dozen posts in the span of about 60 seconds. I mean, it’s hard to photograph a mirror without including your reflection, but some of these are incredible.
I saw this headline about not being able to fly with gravy in your carry-on bag and kind of thought, "Well, obviously," but honestly, if you’re flying for the holidays, some of this stuff is (at least to me) not obvious, like that you can in fact fly with a frozen block of turkey stock in your carry-on luggage, but you definitely cannot pack a cast-iron skillet in there.
I sat down with my friend Blake Boles for his Dirtbag Rich podcast, and we had a great chat about creating, adventure, and life, but also about money, which is something I don’t often get asked to talk about (probably because I don’t have much of it?). But we had a great conversation.
Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal) has been absolutely nailing jokes in cartoon form for what feels like forever, and every time I get one of his emails, I open it because I know there’s a solid chance I will laugh. This week’s, about the death of voicemail (“the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” —Mark Twain) was right on.
I guess this video is kind of old (from 2022), and the the guy singing is no longer a rookie for the Detroit Lions, and broke his tibia and fibula in a game a few weeks ago, which is awful, but it still brought a smile to my face.
At the risk of trying one more social media platform only to realize it’s not filling whatever void I need it to, I signed up for Bluesky last week and remain cautiously optimistic that it will soon be the home of funny people who can write incredible jokes and stories in 300 characters. If you’re on Bluesky too, here’s my profile.
AND,
SOME HOLIDAY SHOPPING IDEAS IF YOU'RE DOING THAT SORT OF THING:
The Practice Maximum Enthusiasm Hoody:
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The "Anything Can Be A Taco" t-shirt:
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The Grand Canyon Subway Map Poster:
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The "This Fucking Sucks" Mug:
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Ultra-Something signed paperback:
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Semi-Rad
Writer, artist, filmmaker, columnist for Outside Magazine. My newsletter about creativity, adventure, and enthusiasm goes out to 15,000+ subscribers every week.
The Art Of Staying In Your Lanes -- Check out my new "How To Tell One Story" online writing course here.
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...
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...