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I have been very interested in the idea of loneliness lately, specifically the ideas about why middle-aged men have a hard time making friends, or maintaining friendships (I'm doing just fine, by the way). I’m reading Billy Baker’s book We Need to Hang Out: A Memoir of Making Friends as recommended by my friend Mario Fraioli (of The Morning Shakeout fame). And then this Atlantic article popped up in my feed this week, and it delves into why men are bad at texting, and how that affects their relationships. After I read it Wednesday morning, I keep catching myself thinking about it. (Gift link)
I had to watch this very short video twice to make sure I understood what was going on, but essentially this lady had a handsome firefighter show up at her house for a first responder call, and she wanted to get in touch with him but didn’t catch his name, and drew a sketch of him, and then his family got a hold of the sketch and, well, hilarity ensues.
As it is still technically the beginning of the year and many of us are still formulating some goals for 2025, I feel I should mention that this is Year #3 of my Strava club, 100 Grand, which is a very low-key virtual thing you join by clicking a button that says “Join” if you are a Strava user. We don’t have meetings, you don’t have to post anything to the club, but for some people (I guess about 3,000), it is a fun way to motivate yourself to collect elevation gain by human-powered means. If you amass 100,000 feet of elevation gain in any activity (or all activities) by the end of the year, I’ll send you a sticker (if you’d like one). Two stickers for 200,000 feet, and so on. Anyway, this is not a sales pitch, but here’s the link if you’d like to join.
I signed up for the Motatapu 52K Ultra in New Zealand on March 1 (we’ll be there meeting our new niece, who, lucky for us, lives in NEW ZEALAND), and I would be lying if I said I didn’t have a small amount of anxiety about the race (especially since I will have to do 100 percent of my training in Montana in winter). But last week I took a few minutes to use the Fuel and Hydration Planner from newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration, so I could actually for once in my life seek some outside guidance about what I should be eating and drinking during what is probably going to be a 9+ hour effort for me. If that sounds up your alley, you can use this link to use the Planner, and it will automatically apply a 15 percent discount if you decide to purchase anything from the site. (If you'd like the discount but don’t want to use the Fuel & Hydration Planner, use this link instead).
Any time I visit The Pudding, I can pretty much guarantee I’ll find something interesting and wonderfully presented—this piece about the alleged death of the pop love song was really fascinating, mostly because of their thoughtfulness in deciding what actually constitutes a “love song.”
Someone made a DOOM-esque video game, but instead of being a first-person shooter view where you’re looking over a gun, you’re looking over a glass of red wine and cruising around looking at art in The Met.
From a short but brilliant essay titled, "You might just have to be bored," subtitled, "Or: How to fix an attention span":
"Not being bored is why you always feel busy, why you keep “not having time” to take a package to the post office or work on your novel. You do have time—you just spend it on your phone. By refusing to ever let your brain rest, you are choosing to watch other people’s lives through a screen at the expense of your own."
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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 481 Music recommendation: This performance by Gallowstreet, a Dutch band composed of seven horn players and one drummer. (video) You really only need the headline of this story to know that these two ladies are rad, but the story is kind of touching too. Headline: Two women have sent each other the same weathered birthday card for 81 years (gift link) To balance out the many links to actual poetry that I seem to have been including in this newsletter lately, may I present...
Friday Inspiration 480 I bring this up in so many conversations about the idea of “adventure,” and I’m excited that it’s finally becoming a series of short videos: Several years ago, Alastair Humphreys and Tom Kevill-Davies decided to try to go to London restaurants from around the world, from A to Z—Afghanistan, Bolivia, Cambodia, and so on. This is the first in the series. (video) I signed up for the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day email a few weeks ago and I have zero regrets,...
Maybe Next Time. Maybe Not This is a photo of the southeast ridge of a mountain called Sentinel Peak, at the north end of Lake Hawea in New Zealand: The guy in the photo is my friend Martin. I took this photo on March 6 on our way down from the summit of Sentinel Peak, because, I mean, look at it. This is a photo of my brother-in-law, Tim: He’s Australian but has been living in New Zealand for eight years now, after he and my sister-in-law, Whitney, got married. When I got back to his house...