The year is too young to be this long

10 things worth sharing this week

“Too young to be this long,” newspaper + marker, 2016

Hey y’all,

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

1. In desperate need of distraction and something to look forward to, I’ve been having a blast writing my new “Tuesday Trio” series. In each letter, I recommend one book, one record, and one movie around a theme. The first three: “Radioactivity,” “Problematic Gifts,” and “Sherlock Holmes.” (As always, I get a ton from our excellent comment section: based on your recommendations, I’ve downloaded the complete Sherlock Holmes audiobook read by Stephen Fry and queued up The Great Mouse Detective for pizza night.)
   
   

2. “That tension—between everything mattering so much and nothing mattering at all—is probably the through line of the collection…. The speed with which I can move from obsessing over ass-puckering, invisible minutiae (removing italic formatting from spaces in a Word document, for instance) and wanting to chuck the whole enterprise of civilization into a bonfire (see “Original Syntax”) is remarkable.” I read an advanced copy of Elizabeth Zaleski’s The Trouble With Loving Poets and Other Essays on Failure based on a single newsletter sent out from her publisher at Belt, Anne Trubek. It’s a delight to pick up a book by a writer totally unknown to you and finish it in a single day.
   
   

3. Lesser known books new to the public domain.

   
   

4. On director Rian Johnson’s website, he’s posted many of the scripts for his movies. This seems like it would be a treasure trove to an aspiring filmmaker — the script for Wake Up Dead Man is “the final shooting script, so it has stuff that was cut and moved around.” (And speaking of directors with websites: I missed that Steven Soderbergh posted his Seen, Read list for 2025.)
   
   

5. Radiohead shared their “walking in” pre-show mix.
   
   

6. “Freewriting does involve relaxation, but it’s not the relaxation of lassitude or passivity. It’s more a matter of getting out of action’s way, so that your whole self, no longer so constrained by your controlling ego, can bring forth the most of which it’s capable.” Oliver Burkeman on the freewriting way of life.

   
   

7. Questions I ask myself when I don’t know what to do next.
   
   

8. “There is something destabilizing about having known someone only as a child and then hearing they were gunned down in the street.” Kristen Radtke, author of the wonderful graphic novels, Imagine Wanting Only This and Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness, on losing her best friend from childhood.
   
   

9. RIP legendary reggae drummer Sly Dunbar, who along with his bass-playing partner, Robbie Shakespeare, “backed nearly every reggae artist of note and collaborated with an array of admirers.” They played on so many great tracks! And tons of stuff I didn’t know about — I had no idea they played on Bob Dylan’s “Jokerman,” for example. (Grace Jones’ “Private Life” would’ve been great on my About Time mixtape.)
   
   

10. February is just a few days away. It’s the shortest month, a clean four weeks, so if you’re feeling strong enough, it might be a great time for a 28-day challenge. Here’s a poster you can download and print out to help you along:

    

    

    28 Day Practice and Suck Less Challenge

    467KB ∙ PDF file

    Download

    Download

And remember: for artists, every day is Groundhog Day.

Thanks for reading. This hand-rolled, ad-free, AI-free, anti-algorithm publication is made possible thanks to the kind support of readers like you. To keep Friday free for everyone and get an exclusive email from me every Tuesday, become a paid subscriber:

xoxo,

Austin