This was a featured story on Medium last summer, but I stumbled across a few posts recently that brought this to my mind. Paris Marx makes gives astute commentary on our current obsession with a nomadic lifestyle, opening with the allure: > In an era of increasingly precarious jobs, ever-longer working hours, and declining social mobility, it’s no surprise that digital nomads are gaining a sizable following. Office dwellers lack happiness or hope in the daily grind. They know there must be some…
As my kids get older, the bedtime routine actually takes longer. Instead of trying to get a toddler to sleep, we spend our time in long conversations talking about all the hard things in life.
Sam Hernandez doesn’t write all that often for his site. But when he does, he does it so very well. This time he’s sharing about his dog, his next dog, and becoming a dog lover. > I used to say goodnight to Bear every night. I’d hold his face in my hand and say in my best Texan accent, “Quite a wondrous creature you are, Bear, made by the hand of God himself, I swear. Go to sleep pretty boy.” Sam does a great job of sharing his experiences, but he has a knack for dropping dollops…
If you follow Cal Newport’s blog, you’ll know he writes often about the trends in our culture and the shift towards all things shallow. In this post, he addresses a chief concern of mine. He shares an example from the life of Martin Luther King Jr’s life to get to his point: > I’m bringing this all up because it provides background for a surprising claim that’s been growing online in recent years, and which seems self-evidently worthy of unpacking: social media might be accidentally undermining…
Mairead Small Staid shares a brilliant piece of writing all about reading and its apparent demise. She frames the problem well: > The diminishment of literature—of sustained reading, of writing as the product of a single focused mind—would diminish the self in turn, rendering us less and less able to grasp both the breadth of our world and the depth of our own consciousness. So, what we write and what we read helps shape our thinking and our very being? I like that. But Staid goes further — a l…
I can’t recall how I came across this article. But it sure got me thinking long and hard about my set up for storing notes and information related to all the things I do. Andre Chaperon absolutely nailed the description of a problem I still experience from time to time: > The inefficiencies of a system (or lack of a system) don’t become apparent until we need to retrieve the information we’ve previously been exposed to; information we’ve already deemed important. … and then can’t find the info…
The title says it all. I'm always on the look out for my next bag or backpack.
My favourite writer writing about email newsletters. This is the epitome of my reading experience. About the burgeoning popularity of the age old technology, Craig Mod has this to say: > Newsletters and newsletter startups these days are like mushrooms in an open field after a good spring rain. I don’t know a single writer who isn’t newslettering or newsletter-curious, and for many, the newsletter is where they’re doing their finest public work. And while we often discuss this topic in terms of…