Writer, artist, filmmaker, columnist for Outside Magazine. My newsletter about creativity, adventure, and enthusiasm goes out to 15,000+ subscribers every week.
Friday Inspiration 528
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Mike Sowden, whose Everything Is Amazing newsletter I have mentioned here many times, sent me a link to this website with the simple message “Top 100,000 Wikipedia articles of the year....as if they're skyscrapers in a city.” I see no need to further elaborate on his words, and if that kind of data visualization sounds fun to you, here’s the link to check out WikiCity. (OK, sorry, I would in fact like to further elaborate, or just ask: Why is the Wikipedia page for the number 4 the 1,100th most popular Wikipedia page?!?!?)
Anne Kadet walked around New York for three days in order to ask 200 New Yorkers to name their worst enemy and collect their responses, which are relatable, touching, funny, quite diverse, and worth reading.
Thanks to Hannah sending me this link, I now know what a nudibranch is, and I am also very happy that artist Arina Borevich seems to have created her own lane in the art world by making felt interpretations of the colorful marine sea slugs, which seem to sell out very quickly on her website.
Reuters spent a ton of time and resources figuring out the identity of Banksy, and if you want to read a super-long piece about how they did it (and who Banksy is), it was published online this week and has MULTIPLE CHAPTERS. I was a bit conflicted about whether or not I wanted to find out, and if you don’t want to know, don’t click the link (although you might have already seen it somewhere else).
This is good advice for (as stated) “if you’re feeling overwhelmed,” and also if you would like a little chuckle.
What happens in this story titled “Sucker: My year as a degenerate gambler” is probably not inspirational in a positive sense, but I thought the writing and research were honestly quite bold: McKay Coppins, staff writer at The Atlantic, practicing Mormon, and married father, takes $10,000 of The Atlantic’s money to gamble with for the 2025-26 NFL season (he OKed it with his bishop since it was a journalistic exercise). I got hooked and read this entire piece in chunks over the past week (if you listen to it, it’s almost 74 minutes), and wow. What happens is maybe not surprising, but illuminating nonetheless. [GIFT LINK]
One more thing: Thanks to a very generous alumnus of my Running to Stand Still running + writing workshop, we are able to offer one full scholarship for this year’s workshop in Montana. So if you’ve thought about joining us but need some help, check out the application here. The deadline to apply is March 28.
Related to that: I took a series of screenshots from Ethan Hawke’s interview on Subway Takes to try to explain why I teach writing workshops (including, of course, this year's workshop, which has a few spots left):
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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.
Friday Inspiration 531 IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A SIGN that you should say, “oh, what the hell, I’ll sign up for Brendan’s trail running and writing workshop in June,” this is it: We are re-opening our application until April 13 at midnight MST to fill two more spots. I can guarantee we’re going to have fun regardless, so you might as well join us for six days of digging into writing and storytelling, punctuated with mellow trail runs every day before lunch. Here’s the link to check it out. --...
Friday Inspiration 530 I think I know probably a dozen people who will be VERY excited reading the words “Hey, there’s a documentary about Mary Oliver coming out soon,” and I hope I am the one to deliver this news to them (video) As I understand it, this guy was replacing the stairs in his multi-floor townhouse, took out the spiral staircase, and then realized that his passport was on the top floor, which was bad because he was leaving the next weekend for a cruise. So he put an ad on...
Sure, I "Trust The Process," But, The first time I remember ever hearing the phrase “trust the process,” I was interviewing my friend Mick about the house he’d built. It had taken him eight years of evenings and weekends, and started, kind of ironically, with him spending an entire weekend peeling three 20-foot logs before he realized he’d had the draw knife backward the whole time. He stuck with it, of course, and built a house so beautiful you’d never guess he had no idea what he was doing...