It’s Groundhog Day... again.

10 things worth sharing this week

Hey y’all,

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:

1. I believe that January — a long, seemingly endless month — is the worst month for resolutions. I believe strongly in the possibilities of February! It is short and perfect for a daily “Practice and Suck Less” challenge. Since it’s a leap year, we get an extra day, so I made a special 29-day challenge poster to download and print. (If you’re just getting started today, here’s a 28-day challenge.)
   
   

2. Today is Groundhog Day. Yesterday was the cross-quarter day that marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Spring is coming no matter what because it can’t be canceled, and, once again, I’m going to link to the first chapter of Keep Going called “Every day is Groundhog Day.” (We’re going to watch the movie tonight for pizza night.)
   
   

3. Today is also the anniversary of Flaco the Owl’s escape from the Central Park Zoo. It’s been a joy to root for Flaco and track his whereabouts in the concrete jungle via Manhattan Bird Alert. (The screech owls that had babies in our back yard last year have also returned this week, so I’m reading a brand-new book about them, The Screech Owl Companion.)

   
   

4. “I spent a lot of time alone, but I was rarely lonely because I like my own brain.” Meg was giggling so much while reading Jen Beagin’s novel Big Swiss I had to start reading it for myself. So far it’s my favorite combination: dark and funny.
   
   

5. “There’s a crucial difference between the need to be paid attention to and the desire to connect—it’s the difference between trying to one-up someone else’s story and telling one of your own to commiserate, to empathize; between saying Look at me, everybody and You’re not the only one.” Tim Kreider on the tension between making art and sharing it. (Also, ahem, that tension is what I tried to address and alleviate in Show Your Work!)
   
   

6. Movie/album mashup: I noticed that the new record from The Smile, Wall of Eyes, is about the same length (45 minutes) as Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr., so I watched them at the same time to see what happened. Recommended! (More from the Radiohead side project: P.T. Anderson’s video for “Friend of a Friend” is pretty delightful and Stanley Donwood has been posting the artwork on his Instagram.)
   
   

7. Ear candy: Yusef Lateef’s Eastern Sounds. (Also: I’ve been playing with a really fun sampler on my phone: Koala Sampler.)
   
   

8. Eye candy: The notebooks of Janice Lowry. I’d seen her work many times before, but never actually gotten a chance to read a high-res scan of one. Lowry said she originally started the notebooks “as books for my sons, so they could see my progress through life. Now they’re 126 chapters of a memoir.”
   
   

9. Austin, TX: On Monday, Sara Hendren will be giving a talk at the UT School of Architecture (Meg’s alma mater!) with the same title as her excellent book, What Can A Body Do? If you don’t know Sara’s work, this interview with On Being is a wonderful introduction. (If you want to go deep, check out her newsletter.)
   
   

10. I had a really wonderful conversation with Jane Ratcliffe about being part of something a little bit bigger than you, riding bikes, writing the opposite of everything you hate, and bottling maniac creative kid energy.
    

Thanks for reading. This newsletter is a hand-rolled, algorithm-free, completely reader-supported publication. If you’d like to support my work, buy my books, hire me to speak, or become a paid subscriber:

xoxo,

Austin