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​Friday Inspiration 558

LAST CHANCE TILL SPRING 2027: If you’ve been thinking about signing up for either or both of my online writing courses, registration closes Sunday night (October 18th) at 11:59 p.m. As of Friday morning, there were 5 available spots in the How To Tell One Story and 7 available spots in Demystifying Publication. Here’s the link for more information.​

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I put this video at the end of my post yesterday, but I didn’t say: This was originally the introduction to a book titled “Make Bad Art Now!” that was rejected a few years ago (I wrote a proposal and a couple sample chapters). I thought it would be easy to quickly flip into a short video for YouTube, and surprise surprise, was I ever wrong. A lot of late nights went into this one, so I hope it lands with a few of you. (video)

I am 99 percent sure I shared this poem on Indigenous People’s Day last year, but the Poetry Foundation emails it out every year, and I read it again this year, and it’s honestly one of my all-time favorites from their Poem of the Day: We Acknowledge Ourselves​

I did something to my hip (or glute) a couple weeks ago (Romanian deadlifts? Too much sitting? Running up steep trails?), and I have been avoiding using the word “injury,” but it’s been keeping me from running or going to the gym for a while now, and I’m trying to be patient. As a person who is very, very bad at listening to their body, I appreciated this piece from newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration, “5 ways to improve your recovery from injury,” the first of which is, of course, “Listen to your body.” (<—reminder that clicking this link will give you 15% off your Precision Fuel & Hydration purchase)

Leon Bridges’ new album Happiness Anytime has been in heavy, heavy rotation at my house for the past couple weeks (Hilary hasn’t asked me to stop playing it yet though), and I’ve been starting it on track 2, which (to me) is very reminiscent of Paul Simon’s Graceland album:

• ​YouTube​
• ​Apple Music​
• ​Spotify​

As promised in the Kottke.org post, I did lose many minutes scrolling through the alt movie posters on Roger Erik Tinch’s Reelizer (so many good films there, and beautiful interpretations of them).

This group of guys:

1. Planned an “ugly shirt exchange” at the airport (I think in Las Vegas?)
2. Gave each other said shirts
3. Filmed each other modeling the shirts, one at a time
4. Laughed their asses off at each one
5. ​Will probably make you laugh your ass off if you watch the short video​

My friend Sinuhe wrote a wonderful, thoughtful essay about consent, group dynamics on expeditions, and how he hopes to raise his son to be someone who isn’t afraid to speak up: “You don’t need to be the expedition leader, the captain, the oldest guy, or the loudest voice. Sometimes leadership is recognizing that everyone is moving in the wrong direction and having the courage to stop walking with them.”

I think a lot about realizing when you have enough, and how growth is helpful up to a point, and how enshittification of everything is probably directly related to companies trying to please shareholders who want growth no matter what. So this piece Ryan Holiday wrote about “the discipline to not scale” really resonated with me. (via my friend Mario’s wonderful The Morning Shakeout newsletter a few weeks ago).

Also: I did a livestream called "There's More Than One Way To Be A Writer" on Tuesday, talking about some turning points in my creative career. If you missed it, it’s on YouTube, complete with the Q&A session afterward.​

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Books I’m Currently Reading:

• ​Brooklyn Antediluvian by Patrick Rosal

I am 99 percent certain I heard of Patrick Rosal somehow through Ross Gay, who was so enthusiastic about Patrick Rosal's poetry that I bought this book of poems, which won the Lenore Marshal Poetry Prize in 2017. It is much different than the last poetry book I had in this section (Andrea Gibson's Lord of the Butterflies), but gritty, powerful, and imaginative, and I'm really enjoying it.

• ​The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel

I had only heard of Alison Bechdel through her fame as the namesake of the Bechdel Test, the pass/fail test for representation of women in fiction and films, in which a work has to feature two or more women having at least one conversation about something other than men. And then Zoë, my co-host on The Trailhead, mentioned this graphic novel about Bechdel's lifelong obsession with fitness and movement, so I bought it. I've just started it and I'm really into it.

• ​Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel

Hilary was reading this for months and absolutely gushing over it, and there’s only so much you can hear about one book before you just say “I’ll go ahead and borrow that whenever you’re finished.” And I am happy to say it’s as good as she said it was (although I would be terrified of taking on the challenge of writing about five different [famous] artists all in the same book like Mary Gabriel did).

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