While I'm Away...
I thought I'd share a few things you might have missed
Morning, everyone! ☀️
I’m out of town this weekend, catching up with some old college friends. So I won’t be in your inboxes with my normal posts.
In the meantime, I thought I’d share some pieces you might have missed, especially if you’re new here — or even if you’ve been a longtime subscriber.
These are some of my favorite essays, and if you are new, they give you an intro for the kinds of things I write about when my mind gets percolating.
So, here we go: in this first selection, I wrestle with feelings of being in a rut, with feeling stuck, and not knowing which direction to go:
And in this one, I share what it’s like to watch my son grow up and start to leave behind being a little boy:
Even though I’m a huge fan of Daniel Pink, I let his book The Power of Regret sit on my shelf unread for years. Once I finally remedied that, I had a revelation:
The Power of Regret
When I was a student in high school, I had a physics teacher who shared something with our class one day, something I’ve never forgotten.
How much emphasis to place on work in our lives is also something I’ve wrestled with, really ever since I first started working full-time, right after college. And I’m still wrestling with it:
In Praise of Idleness
Lately, I’ve been reading The Essays of E.B. White, a collection by the author of the famed children’s stories Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web. Somewhere I picked up that he was among the best-ever essayists, and since that’s kinda what I do here, I thought to myself, “maybe I can learn something?”
When the seasons change, I always find my mind drifting off to a place of reflection (like you, no doubt). Last fall saw my little man get into football for the first time, something we shared (and learned about) together:
Watching Them Change
Almost exactly this time a year ago, little T was in his school’s fifth grade play. It was a musical — “Anything Goes” — and he tried out for the lead male role.
I stumbled across this book by James Hollis in Austin Kleon’s wonderful blog and newsletter, about finding what we’re meant to do, even when we’re well into our lives:
On Individuation
When I was in my twenties, one of my writing heroes was Tom Wolfe, the author of novels like The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Right Stuff, who before he wrote books was one of journalism’s best-known magazine writers, chronicling subcultures from NASCAR drivers in North Carolina all the way to the then-burgeoning hippie movement of the 1960s, over on…
And here’s one last essay, about a professor I knew way back in college who knew a little something about love, and when you might need to drop everything and go find where it takes you:
That’s all for now; there’s lots more to share from the newsletter archives — maybe I’ll share more in another issue like this?
In the meantime, I hope you have a fantastic weekend and get some great runs in. As always, keep in touch and let me know how your running/life is going.
Your friend,
— Terrell