Friday Inspiration 463

End of an era (for me), a vacation from the news, weird Chili's story

Dec 20, 2024

Some professional news from me: As of the end of this year, my Semi-Rad column will no longer appear on OutsideOnline.com. I found out on Tuesday and I’m still sorting out my feelings about the whole thing, but long story short: The money I was getting paid by Outside was partially supporting this newsletter. They paid me so they could republish, verbatim, my twice-a-month Thursday newsletter stories. So on one hand: I have to find a way to make up that income (not the end of the world, but it was paying our family’s monthly health insurance premiums). On the other hand: I no longer need to consider any sort of audience besides YOU ALL when I’m creating stuff. Which is kind of liberating.

So, two things:

I just mentioned this last week, but it’s a bit more timely now: If you have 90 seconds, $2.85 or more wiggle room in your monthly budget, and a credit card, can I invite you to join my Patreon? And,
If you are able to help out with Item No. 1 or are already a Patreon supporter, I’d love to hear any thoughts on what you’d like to see more of or less of in this newsletter, since you’re paying 100% of my “salary” now. (You can send me direct message through Patreon or just reply to this email)

Thank you in advance if you can help, and thank you if you’re already a supporter.

And now, our regularly scheduled Friday Inspiration content:

Several years ago, I did a couple nice things for a friend who was recovering from a very serious injury, and every holiday season since, I have been repaid for this by being included in that friend’s father’s holiday tradition, in which Jeff mails out loaves of very dense, very addictive cranberry bread to dozens of people, a process that takes him weeks of baking and shipping. All this to say, this video about holiday cookies reminded me of Jeff, and it’s surprisingly emotional (or maybe that's just me?). (video)

This is an old McSweeney’s story, but I believe still resonant for 100% of people who have ever saved a document on a hard drive.

This story on Reddit is not very long, but I find it hilarious (except the part where the person actually gets written up, but I'm sure it's been long enough now that they laugh about it). Here’s the beginning of the story: “I worked for CompUSA in 1999. The uniform matched Chilis at the time (khakis and a red polo). As the Chilis was directly across from our store many of us ate there at lunch.”

Storrs Ski Hill is not huge (only one lift), but a big donation making all lift tickets free for 2024-2025 is pretty awesome. (Via Kottke.org)

I’m a sucker for a “Best _______ of 2024” list, but I love this idea from Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell way more: She made a post listing her 10 “Most Underrated Cartoons of 2024” (sub-headline, “What no one liked, but I did”). Also, “Buncha Old Shit” is fantastic.

I loved David Epstein’s book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, and pieces from his Range Widely newsletter keep popping up in my feed, including this one, in which he convinces me to take a vacation from news. Look, if Tolstoy could take two months off from the news in the early 1900s, I could do it for a week in 2024, right? Seems like that's close to the equivalent, given the speed/volume of news nowadays compared to Tolstoy's day, anyway.

When I was putting together the materials for my online writing course this fall, I really sweated trying to find the perfect tweet-length “story,” to illustrate that stories can be almost any length. I think the example I included in Lesson 2 is still one of my favorites, but every week, I seem to find another one that would have worked too, like this one (which also could have worked for the dialogue section/Lesson 7!)

Speaking of my online writing course: If you’re planning to buy it as a gift for someone and you’d like it “delivered” on December 25th, please order by 7:00 p.m. MST on December 24th as I’m entering everything manually this year. (Alternately, if you have procrastinated up until this point and need a gift that will DEFINITELY arrive on time, the course 100% meets that requirement!) The 20 percent discount expires Dec. 25th—for gifts or if you're buying it for yourself.

Also, this post seemed to resonate with folks on Instagram this week so I’m including it here too:

I gotta say, I was not that interested in the idea of having a kid, but I also drastically underestimated the emotional value of having a 3-foot-tall roommate whose favorite thing in the world right now is excavators even though he can’t quite say “excavator” yet and it comes out “eckagaber,” and taking a walk down the block with said roommate to see a real-live eckagaber an hour after changing out of his eckagaber pajamas, and gently explaining that the eckagaber guy probably can’t invite him in for a ride-along because of liability reasons, but isn’t it cool anyway