Newsletter Therapy

Hey Reader! When I graduated from college I assumed I'd be doing a lot of traveling. ✈️ 🚐 🚌 🚢 🚲 🚁 🛳️ 🏍️ 🚞 I'd already been to Europe and South America and Africa, as well as a majority of these United States; it seemed a reasonable assumption. 🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍🌏🌎🌍 And while I did manage to get out and about during my 20's, it all fell apart when I bought a house and had a couple of kids. 🏡 My partner wasn't a huge traveler, and let's just say we didn't have an income that would support...

Hey Reader! My front yard has a bit of a slope, which means that the soil drifts slowly downward until it slides over the curb into the street. So several years ago I started to build this tiny fence made of wine bottles. It's just high enough to keep the yard from migrating to the street, and I think it looks pretty good. A work in progress which hasn't progressed very quickly. The challenge with this project is that there's a fairly brief window in which to work on it. When the nearly daily...

Hey Reader! 50% of parenting is repetition. True? Feels true. It’s one of the many aspects of raising littles no one tells you about. You will repeat yourself constantly. It’s how we learn, so it kind of makes sense, but that’s cold comfort when you’re telling your child for the ten millionth time to put their dishes into the dishwasher. Or to brush their teeth before bed. Or to leave sticks outside. That last one may not apply to all parents, but my kids were big fans of bringing the outside...

Hey Reader! Comparison is the thief of joy. And yet it’s often hard to resist. Yesterday I read an email from someone I don’t know very well - a business acquaintance - and it made me feel like a straight-up loser who has done nothing in the past 25 years but read celebrity gossip and complain about the weather. My own fault; I went looking for reasons to feel inferior and so of course I found them. She’s done a bunch of interesting things, and has apparently done them all annoyingly well....

Hey Reader! You ever find an easter egg? 🐣 Not the plastic ones filled with jelly beans, or the kind that comes from a chicken and is then painstakingly dyed by a kid exercising an unusual amount of dedication. I mean the kind that’s just for someone in the know, like a video game that sends you a secret message if you type a particular word or move a player to a specific point. Or a movie that references another movie, or includes subtle clues that reinforce the story. What makes an easter...