Weekly things

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Welcome to Weekly Things, a bonus newsletter filled with things to read, ponder and do—alongside my personal notes from the day (a reader-fave!)

I’m sharing a peep this week incase it’s also your thing. If you’d like this dose of inspiration in your inbox every week, simply become a supporter of On Things ❤️

Things to read

• ICYMI: What if we already have the things we’re looking for?

• “Nobody really knows how much money is enough money, or how much money is too little money. All you really know is that you don’t have as much money as other people, but you don’t have as little money as other people. So how do you even talk about it?” — reflections on writing and money from Taffy Brodesser-Akner

• “We rummage through the chaos of our inner worlds, through our multitude of selves, to discover what we are, what we wish to be, and our authentic relationship with the world.” — Nick Cave on how you know who you are

• Why do I keep a notebook at all? —

  Alex Dobrenko`
  in
  Sublime

• The pleasure of falling asleep with a book on your face

A thing to listen to on writing and creativity

One of my favourite Substack newsletters

Cruel Summer Book Club

has rebooted its podcast. It’s about making space for your art and yourself—and I’m honoured to be a guest!

In our episode together, we talk about the tensions between productivity and creativity, the long path to writing my first book, and my favourite writing advice. I so admire creator and host

Jillian Anthony

’s way of navigating creative life and cherished her thoughtful questions—thanks for having me!

A thing to try to be more astonished

• What if you could return to your life? — To practice astonishment, I often reread this extract from the late Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life:

  “When I am feeling dreary, annoyed and generally unimpressed by life, I imagine what it would be like to come back to this world for just a day after having been dead. I imagine how sentimental I would feel about the very things I once found stupid, hateful or mundane. Oh, there’s a light switch! I haven’t seen a light switch in so long! I didn’t realize how much I missed light switches! Oh! Oh! And look – the stairs up to our front porch are still completely cracked! Hello cracks! Let me get a good look at you. And there’s my neighbor, standing there, fantastically alive, just the same, still punctuating her sentences with you know what I’m saying? Why did that bother me? It’s so… endearing.”

A thing to watch on finding your hammer

• Create fun and delight for the other person in every encounter

• Lean into each moment expecting magic and miracles

• Find your hammer—what resonates with your deepest self?—and search for nails

• Don't try to do everything, look for situations to use your hammer

• Take opportunities to rehearse your best self throughout the day

• It’s not what do you want to do in your life, but who do you want to become?

• The two ways you can change your thinking: change the questions you ask, or provide more inspiring answers

Things to appreciate

“If all you did was just looked for things to appreciate, you would live a joyously spectacular life.”

― Esther Hicks

A thing to ponder

Messenger
by Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Things from the day

Monday 1 July

It’s the first day of what my clever friend Bethany (who could truly rewrite the Gregorian calendar) has termed Try July—instead of turning to various backup plans out of fear, it’s a month to try going after the things I really want and can only do in London.

Tuesday 2 July

During my rowing class the instructor is talking about how beginners often make the mistake of grasping too tightly onto the oar. He says, “It’s only when you relax into it that you can flow,” and I think about how that’s true of life. “When you loosen up you can feel where you want to be and can move into that.”

Wednesday 3 July

I’m trying to return to something that worked for me in the past but encounter a closed door—figuratively speaking—and my friend gently points out that we sometimes need closed doors to direct us to something new.

Thursday 4 July

I read the Wendy Cope poem Being Boring and the line I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for, / If you don't need to find a new lover? makes me ponder whether I spend more time on a whole manner of things because I’m single, or because I’m trying to be interesting?

Friday 5 July

My friend is having a third-life crisis and from my vantage point it’s so easy to see that all she needs to do is trust a little more, go after what she wants, take a risk, invest in herself. If only we could see ourselves from such perspectives.

Saturday 6 July

Why is it so hard to do things that might not lead anywhere even though they’re the very things I want to do?

Sunday 7 July

Perhaps I don’t know if I’m afraid it’s going to be really bad, or afraid it’s going to be really good.

Read all the things

→ Peruse the full archive of my things from the day