Check out today’s issue in all of it’s glory here.

October is my favorite month. Cooler weather, playoff baseball, memories of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves creeping me ever closer into an axiety disorder.

It’s the year 2000 and, while not the jetpack futuretopia I had imagined as a boy, it is the zenith of a certain phase of my life. A manic ascent of responsibility and success. Travel, Napster, E*Trade. Making more money at 25 than I do today at 40, 60-hour weeks the norm.

Yet I can’t seem to hang on through the ride. I’ve fallen in love and the sense that it could ever be lost begins to preoccupy the few spare thought cycles left to me apart from work and sleep. I’d always been afraid of flying on my frequent business trips, but now I felt like there was so much more to lose. I was acknowledged as a rising star in my job, even as I was more sure than ever it was happening beyond and despite my own efforts, and that my own career would far exceed the life of the company to which I devoted every ounce of available mental energy.

I found myself gripped by a kind of mundane existential horror. Constant sweats and racing thoughts. Numbness and pain all through my arms and chest. Spinning dizziness springing from nowhere. And always the fear.

I became certain that I would die on or around my approaching 26th year.

As I’ve grown older and more comfortable talking about these experiences I’ve found it’s actually rather common for panic disorders to manifest in a person’s mid-twenties, particularly when paired with biological factors and family history. Hey,even my neuroses are normcore!

In spite of, or perhaps because of, my fragile state of mind, I chose that October to immerse myself in what was marketed as a horror novel. Good idea! Amazon’s editors describe House of Leaves thus:

Had The Blair Witch Project been a book instead of a film, and had it been written by, say, Nabokov at his most playful, revised by Stephen King at his most cerebral, and typeset by the futurist editors of Blast at their most avant-garde, the result might have been something like [it].

The PoMo shenanigans I still cherished post-lit-degree were on full display—House of Leaves is a found story, about a book, about a documentary film. Ersatz editor Johnny Truant (a Pynchonesque name on top of everything) writes about the book you are reading about reading:

For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You’ll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you’ll realize it’s always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won’t understand why or how.

And I’ll be damned if that isn’t exactly how I felt as I sank ever deeper in Danielewski’s book. Hypnotized by it, like it should have come with a warning label. Like the house it describes, House of Leaves seemed impossibly deeper and larger than itself as I read and re-read the twisting accounts within.

As that fall froze into winter, my anxiety intensified until one day I found myself in an urgent care center, 100% convinced that I was having a heart attack, that everything had gone irretrievably wrong and that I had somehow squandered everything good ever given to me in my life.

Of course it wasn’t true. Our minds are liars. Help is always available and I was fortunate enough to have someone help me find it. The woman I was so afraid of losing stood by me every step of the way while I found a mix of mindfulness and medication that, mostly, keeps the darkness away. Today she’s my wife. That next October I quit the job that made me so physically and emotionally sick.

My copy of House of Leaves still sits in a box in the basement, though. Waiting for me to return.

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And now, some links!

World-ending:

There was a nice writeup in The New Yorker about Walter M. Miller, Jr. and one of my favorite science fiction books ever written (“A Canticle for Leibowitz”).

Homecoming:

Why every newborn you see on Facebook is wrapped in the same baby blanket and its relationship to the largest employer in the village where I live.

Texting:

A different approach to texting from Backchannel’s Virginia Heffernan:

Linguists may dismiss the form’s shortcuts and tacky neologisms, but in texting is the beginning of the full-fledged digital grammar.

For all we do it, though, texting is culturally invisible. No wonder we screw things up with texting — sexts, solicitations, quarrels, misfires and misunderstanding. We don’t know what the hell we’re doing. Unlike with gaming, no books exist about the dark allure of texting; its elegant storytelling; its shocking semiotics.

Changing:

Data scientist Alice Zhao analyzed the texts she and her (now) husband have changed over the course of their relationship in How Text Messages Change from Dating to Marriage

Enlightening:

Douchebag: The White Racial Slur We’ve All Been Waiting For

Weighing:

An iPad filled with apps weighs more than one with nothing installed

Touching:

How One Boy With Autism Became BFF With Apple’s Siri

In a world where the commonly held wisdom is that technology isolates us, it’s worth considering another side of the story.

Heartbreaking:

The Halloween of my dreams by the late Marjorie Williams

Wish-fulfilling:

My friend Michele on The Fickle Fame of Twitter

Childhood-defining:

Just where exactly is Sesame Street?

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Be well my friends.

Mike

You know those image macros that say “I have no idea what I’m doing”? That’s pretty much how I feel about everything these days.

I’d say that this letter is a case in point, but to be honest I know what I’m doing here but have just had other “latest and loudest” gardens to tend. (LOL, that’s not at all true.)

October’s one of my favorite months of the year—rich colors everywhere, cooler weather, and a simmering pervasive creepiness. Some of my favorite things!

It’s also Columbus Day in the US, and I don’t think it’s overly politically correct to note that it’s a complicated day. Historian David Perry tells us “what to tell your kids about Columbus Day.” Spoiler alert: start with the truth

As you put yourself in the mood for Halloween or Día de Muertos, I recommend you scroll through Haunted Antiques Roadshow, a tumblr blog by Bonnie Burton that collects creepy items from Antiques Roadshow. Two great tastes that taste great together!

And because I’m always trying to justify how much time I allow my kids to spend playing Minecraft:

• The Minecraft Parent by Michael Agger
• How Videogames Like Minecraft Actually Help Kids Learn to Read
• This Minecraft Map Of Great Britain Was Built Using 83 Billion Blocks

On my perennial hobby horse of living a balanced life in a world gone mad:

• Should We Live Life, Or Capture It?
• Erin Kissane on “Ditching Twitter”
• How a Nightly Walk Can Change Your Life

Uncategorizable links!

• New Glarus Spotted Cow: Overrated Beer From An Underrated State
• The History of Iron Maiden’s Brazil Triumphs
• A Field Guide To American Truthers. Be sure to pay close attention to the fact that you live in a world WHERE PEOPLE CARE WHETHER STEVIE WONDER IS REALLY BLIND.

Enjoy the daylight that’s left, my friends. Until next time,

Mike

Better late than never this week. I’ve made my first soup of the season this evening, a simple puree of boiled cauliflower, cream, chicken stock, salt, pepper and chives. There’s not much to it, but it tastes simple and nourishing and gives me a good excuse to shovel in big chunks of ciabatta.

Do you have a fan of The Mountain Goats in your life? You’d probably know it if you did, but if not, heads up: we’re just a little excited because tomorrow is release day!

Not that release day, but the day a FedEx/UPSperson will deliver Wolf In White Van, the first novel by John Darnielle into my hot little hands.

Don’t take my giddy anticipation for it, here are a few reviews:

• John Darnielle’s first novel plays a dark game
• Sprinting Toward Epiphany: Talking With A Songwriter Turned Novelist
• We Shall All Be Healed

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If you’d like to have your very own column on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, you only have a week left to enter your submission in their annual Column Contest.

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Other articles that I’ve kept hanging around in tabs for far too long:

• The New Luddites: Why Former Digital Prophets Are Turning Against Tech
• Why Everyone Should Read Harry Potter
• My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me
• The Death of Adulthood in American Culture
• Fingerprint Words: The verbal tics that make up who we are—and how they spread to others

Okay, that’s it for the moment. Now get on with that wild, amazing week you were planning to have!

TTYS.

Mike

We’re experiencing the first cool weekend that forecasts delicious autumn—the kids are in school, football season has started, the gardens are winding down. It is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Thoughts start to turn to homesteading for the coming winter, all marking the often unwanted unfurling of time’s relentless ribbon.

Time on my mind, I’ve been on a deliberate quest to slow it all down. Hence no letters the past couple of weeks. Justin Lancy uncovered a great Haruki Murkami quote the other day, which describes my motivations well:

Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.

I appreciate the handful of you who noticed my absence, and wrote in to inquire about it. I’m here, and well.

For a bit, I found myself in a familiar habit of absorbing far too much of the world’s misery, forgetting to make time for family, love, beauty.

Molly Crabapple said it well, when she wrote “It’s been a summer full of monsters.” She concludes:

The world is connected now. Where it breaks, we all break. But it is our world, to love as it burns around us. Jack Gilbert is right. “We must risk delight” in the summer of monsters. Beauty is survival, not distraction. Beauty is a way of fighting. Beauty is a reason to fight.

For all intents and purposes, I’ve set aside Twitter and abstained from Facebook. And I’m happier. I’m better connected to my home and my family, and closer to some of the passion projects I’m pursuing. I really identified with Patton Oswalt’s commentary on his three months away from social media:

Slowly weaning myself off of social media has, ironically, made me feel younger. At least, I have the habits of a much younger person now. I used social media—at least for these past 90 days—at the frequency of a 20 year old. Occasionally, like it wasn’t some exotic novelty, and didn’t need to be consumed like a wine whose supply was finite.

Some of the most arresting prose I’ve found recently has been in the food writing of Tamar Adler. Her book An Everlasting Meal is a revelation—part meditation, part memoir, part cookbook. In all ways it is one of those books that came along at exactly the right time for me, and has helped give focus to my slowing down, to my deliberation. A lovely Believer interview with Adler addresses this aspect of her writing and is also worth reading.

Strangely, I’ve also found that as I have been slowing my thoughts down I have found even more pleasure in being present with material things. I’ve enjoyed walking more, tending to our small wild prolific garden, cooking with attention, and reading physical (as in, printed on old fashioned paper) books. Along with everyone else in literary circles, I’m particularly excited by David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks and Ben Lerner’s 10:04.

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Have you been listening to Serious Business? Episodes two and three of my podcast with Toni McLellan have hit the webwaves, with lots more fun stuff to come. If you like it, do us a favor and rate or review it on iTunes? Thanks!

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This isn’t even my final form.
Mike

Not a lot of gas in the tank at the end of this past week.

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There’s something about losing Robin Williams, and the way it transpired, that seems to have ricocheted through many different circles and touched many of us in different ways.

So much has already been said about Williams this week. I’ll only add that what I admired most about his approach was his vulnerability, the warmth and sweetness that seemed to motivate both his mania and his acting.

If you only make space for one hour of retrospective on Williams’ life and career, you won’t do better than listen to Marc Maron’s remembrance on WTF, including a very candid interview with Williams from 2010. There’s some comedy-inside-baseball sprinkled throughout, but also some very powerful and moving stuff. Give it a listen.

As with any high-profile suicide, there’s also been a resurgence of discussion on mental illness and self harm. I particularly appreciated this piece from Helen Rosner, “Not Everyone Feels This Way.” Sadly it’s also worth bookmarking the following recommendations from the CDC on how the media can responsibly report on suicide to prevent so-called suicide “contagion.”

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And of course there was the all-too-familiar, though shocking and awful events in Ferguson, Missouri.

We must do better.

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As much as we may want to forget the past week, I found articles specifically about remembering (and photography) especially poignant. The first is Thomas Ricker’s piece, “Stop Being a Tourist,” which bemoans that “the internet and smartphones have made us all tourists, gawking at our own lives.”

Pair with “We Are All Glassholes Now” by the wonderfully named Ellis Hamburger. For a slightly more optimistic, but no less thought-provoking angle, read John Carey’s “Don’t Forget To Remember This”:

Photography is a privilege we are lucky to have, but it should never get in the way of our happiness, it should pull us toward it like a magnetic force. The secret to great photography has nothing to do with your philosophy, your choice of format, or your pedigree. Let your camera be your compass. Live first, then shoot.

Carey continues:

The solution here is obvious and most of us are already well aware of this tune, don’t shoot to share, shoot because you love what your shooting. Shoot to remember. Make your photographs in your own image and personality. Use photography to tell the story of you.

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That’s all well and good when talking about vacations or kid photos, but it’s hard to know what to do when things look so bleak in the world around you. I’m reminded of the Fred Rogers quote about looking for the helpers, but the helpers were awfully hard to see. Luckily, they were still around.

My own escape from the turmoil took the shape of Patrick Rothfuss’ novel The Name of the Wind (not to be confused with Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s wonderful The Shadow of the Wind). With the exception of some of Gene Wolfe’s work, The Name of the Wind is the first fantasy novel I’ve read since I was in high school that’s really gotten its hooks into me.

But, if all else fails, and you have the privilege to do so, perhaps just fix yourself a peach wine slushie and watch this utterly wonderful video of baby They Might be Giants playing “Birdhouse in Your Soul” with the Tonight Show Orchestra in 1990.

Be nice to each other this week, ’k?

TTYS.
Mike

What a remarkable week it has been! Yes, I turned forty and, no, the world didn’t end. Instead, life is already opening up all around me like so many of you warned me it would. Thank you for all the well wishes and notes. I truly feel like the best is yet to come.

Part of that optimism may stem from still being full from a once-in-a-lifetime birthday meal at Rick Bayless’ Topolobampo last week. It was a feast befitting a milestone. We were genuinely speechless over some of the food, and the team behind the restaurant has done an amazing job at creating refined and modern interpretations of soulful Mexican cooking, without being bogged down by pretentiousness or art for art’s sake. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

We also spotted Linda Yu from Chicago’s ABC 7 and drank quite a bit of very good wine.

This weekend we also visited the House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin. If you’re not familiar with HOTR, it’s a staple of “Weird Wisconsin” tours that Neil Gaiman wrote into American Gods as a portal to another dimension. As Gaiman wrote on his blog:

I had to tone down my description of it and leave things out in the book in order to make it believable.

and:

It’s a monument to kitsch and wonder and madness and uncertainty.

True story, Neil. One of the best overviews of the location I’ve found on the web is from earlier this year in Slate.

The place reminded me of a more rundown and sinister version of the Sanfilippo Estate and “Place de La Musique” in Barrington where I met Mr. Gaiman, along with other literary luminaries in a never-to-be-forgotten tribute event for Gene Wolfe and the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

The visit caused me to ditch my previous draft of this letter and start exploring some of my thoughts on the kooky, creepy, sideshow museums that I seem to have developed an interest in. Here’s where my thoughts have gone so far.

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The notion of the misunderstood genius, often an artist, unappreciated in his or her lifetime but revered for the ages, is an enduring one in American culture. I can see why. It’s comforting for those of us whose adult lives don’t quite match the super-heroic expectations we set for ourselves as children. It’s also a peculiar brand of afterlife story, to believe that no matter what one endures here and now, redemption will come someday from a more sympathetic future.

I’ve become particularly intrigued over the years, not just with such people and their stories, but with the way their lives tend to leave behind otherwise inexplicable monuments to their particular drives, and the way they become attractions for those of us “normals” to stand at the foothills of their madness.

Look at the weird legacies left by eccentrics like Sarah Winchester and the Winchester Mystery House, Bob Cassilly’s City Museum in St. Louis, or Alex Jordan and the House on the Rock.

For each, the outcomes of their obsessions draw thousands of tourists each year. Our thrill comes not only from viewing the collections or the results of their passions, but from the glimpses at the obsessions and neuroses that drove them into existence. The compulsion that drives someone to defy social consensus is fascinating to those of us who are hemmed in by those same constructs.

Perhaps I’m showing some kind of selection bias, but at least in the three examples above there’s a kind delicious creepiness at play. Something slightly sinister leaks from the walls that makes it all the more fun, even as we imagine these auteurs visions to be unreachably far beyond our own.

[I’m sure I’ll write more on this topic someday. Send me your thoughts!]

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On to some Serious Business.

One more thing. If you follow me elsewhere, you may already know that one project I’ve had underway finally saw its first light of day last week, but in case you missed it: I’m a podcaster now! My friend and podcasting partner Toni McLellan said it best in her own kick-ass newsletter:

In other news, my friend Mike and I just released the first episode of a just-for-fun podcast called Serious Business. We are silly, hopeful, engaged, and at times irreverent, so if you’re into that sort of thing, you’ll definitely want to check it out.

You can listen to the first episode and find links to subscribe at seriousbusinesspodcast.com. I’m having a blast recording the shows, or as my daughter calls it, “talking to Toni in the basement.”

Normal!

Until next time,

Mike

I suppose we all feel this way to some extent as we get older, but birthdays have pretty much always struck me as bittersweet. Another year gone, another year older…but hey! A “holiday” all about me!

Birthdays: New Year’s for narcissists.

Beginning in July and marching steadily through August, “birthday season” for our family counted down the end of summer and the beginning of a new school year. My birthday always felt like the last call for summer—a signal to begin the start of clothes- and supply-shopping, scheduling the last big summer projects (only a few more weeks to finish that ramp we started and abandoned), and making sure we got the most of the neigborhood pool passes.

I still get a similar sensation in the first weeks of August—part birthday high, part New-Year’s-Eve melancholy, part new-school-year dread.

Indeed, it’s hard for me to separate my feelings on the threshold of my fifth decade with those I see in my kids heading back to school in a couple of weeks: A little sad that the past is behind me, a little eager to start something new. Excited for the opportunities to make new friends and work hard, to discover new things about myself and the world. To fear looming authority figures and long for more play.

I think of the turning of previous decades:

• My tenth birthday: spent in Estes Park, Colorado, with my parents. An inflatable birthday cake (inexplicably pink and white) and a hike to Bear Lake. Missing our new puppy who we’d left in boarding for the trip. I still had an imaginary friend. We were spies.
• My twentieth birthday: hopeful and naïve in the certainties of a life still lived mostly through books and liberal arts classroom debates, overshadowed in my memory by it not being my twenty-first.
• My thirtieth birthday: sleep-deprived, a happy mess, still on paternity leave with a barely one-month old daughter.
• My fortieth birthday: coming in a year stained but not overshadowed by loss, a summer for trying new things, a decade for expanding and building upon this foundation I’ve created with my various partners in crime.

Though I have a strong sense of stepping into something new, and I don’t doubt I’ll be trolled and teased (lovingly, I’m sure) for being over the hill, I don’t feel any apprehension about turning forty.

If anything I am more hopeful than ever about what the next years may bring. I feel more confident in my own skin, closer to myself—and to you, my friends—than in years. I fear change much less than before. I’m getting better at asking for what I want out of life, and not pouting when I don’t get it.

Writing this letter each week is part of that change, and while I know some weeks are more interesting than others, I appreciate you joining me for the ride.

Since I’m still clearly in the mood for looking inward, here are some…

Links for introspection

• Introspection? We don’t need no introspection (Yes we do)! Too bad we all go to such great lengths to avoid it.
• As much as we love tech and the toys it brings us, we must also confront the growing evidence that the tech industry is also sick from within. Issie Lapowski shows us “What Tech’s Ugly Gender Problem Really Looks Like.”
• Winnie Lim on “recalibrating the definition of self.”
• Kevin Kelly at his best: You are not late.
  

  What you may not have realized is that today truly is a wide open frontier. It is the best time EVER in human history to begin.

• The results of Harvard’s 75-year study on what makes for a happy man are in. Spoiler alert, the results are not all that surprising.
  

  “The seventy-five years and twenty million dollars expended on the Grant Study points to a straightforward five-word conclusion: Happiness is love. Full stop.”

Full stop indeed. I can’t top that!

Have a good week!
Mike

 

Hi,

I’m starting things this week with a quick expression of gratitude. There’s a “milestone” birthday coming up fast and, as you’ve probably already noticed, it’s got me even more thinky than usual about who I am, where I am, and who’s along for the ride. I’ve been thinking a lot about how lucky I am to have such a kind and supportive audience with whom to share my thoughts. So thank you. Keep me honest and let me know how I can do better, but thank you for all the incredibly encouraging notes you’ve sent so far.

Moon pie

Though I missed writing about it last week, I wanted to touch on the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11. Like so many armchair space enthusiasts, the entire space program of the 1960s has fascinated me for years—the heroism of both the famous and unknown participants, the mixture of pragmatic engineering and wide-eyed dream, the long-lost unity I occasionally imagine must have held the nation enthralled.

If you’re like me and can’t get enough space, particularly Apollo, I encourage you to read through the epic Apollo Flight Journal or Apollo Lunar Surface Journals. There is enough geek material there to last you until the next moon shot. I first learned of these awesome resources from the equally awesome and much more digestible retrospective at Ars Technica.

The best book I’ve personally read about Apollo is the excellent Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon, by Craig Nelson (not that Craig Nelson). I love this book, and can also recommend the Audible version.

It seems like every marketing conference I’ve been to in the past few years has featured at least one talk by David Meerman Scott. And Mr. Scott has recently published Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program, which looks excellent. While speaking on Marketing the Moon at the BMA conference this year, Mr. Scott showed off some jaw-dropping Apollo memorabilia from his personal collection—stuff I can’t imagine owning, much less feeling comfortable taking on the road.

(Sidebar: He’s also published Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History, so I also imagine he and I would make for pretty sympatico pals. David! Let’s hang!)

While we’re at it, here’s a fun article on Apollo 11’s Scariest Moments and, of course, a cool infographic on the Apollo missions.

Just a bunch of really good links

• A friend of mine posted a link to this article to his site, Reforming Faith, and it really struck a chord: “Unacceptable: What it’s like to be a Liberal Christian in a Sea of Conservativism”
• There’s two kinds of people in this world (and I’m one of ’em): people who love Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon and people who think it’s creepy. I’m a little of both, but if you’re more the former, don’t miss Aimee Bender’s appreciation in the NYT.
• Robin Sloan is a terrific writer and he’s written the definitive Medium thinkpiece on Minecraft.
• Anthony Bourdain continues to really intrigue me. I can’t tell if I love him or hate him or envy him—which I guess is what makes him such a perfect intellectual cypher. Anyway, Dave Pell linked to this great interview with Bourdain, “Exploring Simple Pleasures in a Very Complicated World.”
• At the risk of my coworkers reading anything into this link, I loved this piece from Jezebel, “The Key to Greater Work Happiness Is Taking and Giving Less Shit,” riffing on a HBR article by Greg McKeown:
  

  But overall, McKeown’s message is beautifully simple: Don’t let anyone give you too much of their shit, and don’t give anyone else too much of your shit. LESS SHIT. Less shit is key to everything you guys (except actual bowel movements or maybe things requiring fertilizer. ANYWAY).

On that note…

Next week I’m planning to dump lots of 40s at you, and I don’t mean Olde English. While you’re waiting, here’s the Chicago Tribune from 40 years ago today (hack this URL to explore any date: archives.chicagotribune.com/YYYY/MM/DD/ – thanks Angie!).

Talk to you soon!

Mike

 

Let’s think of this week’s letter as the B-side to last week’s somber reflection on loss. In fact, as Erin McKeown sang on “Slung-Lo,” “I’m turning this B-side around to a de-light.”

Newton’s First Law of Motion

Three weeks ago I asked my mom what she wanted to do to celebrate her birthday this year and without a moment’s hesitation she replied, “you could take me zip lining.”

Mind, this is no adrenaline junky grandma we’re talking about. Though prone to a lead foot behind the wheel, my mother is typically more likely to remind you not to fall than to encourage you over a ledge. Yet here she was, ready to start her 85th year on Earth, and her first in more than half a century without my dad, by taking an actual leap into something new, something dangerous, to prove to herself that she could.

Sometimes the parables write themselves.

Now I’m standing on a metal platform 70 feet above a Wisconsin Dells resort, tethered twice to a zip line stretching hundreds of feet ahead toward a similar platform obscured by yearning leaves and the tops of trees beneath me. Waiting to step into warm July air, I watch mom recede into the distance, the cable thrumming a science-fictional frequency.

For a moment, I’m unsure whether my well advertised height anxiety will keep me from following this remarkable woman ahead into something new. If she can do this…

Our guide gives the go-ahead, flips open the gate, and I push off into nothingness. I can feel the cable flex with my weight and I am zipping! My thoughts leap from fear into joy.

Much of the next 45 minutes or so is a blur. Waving to my wife and kids. Knocking my foot on the top branch of a tree. Once again, a child learning lessons from a mother, learning that doing is almost always better than not-doing.

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Ok. More words and links next week. But since it is stuck in my head now, and the chorus seems appropriate this week, here are more lyrics from “Slung-Lo.” (If you’re not familiar with Erin McKeown, do check out her work!

“She was so down, look at her now

She’s never been so high!

Everyone knows, give it some time

The clouds’ll clear the sky!”

Have a great week!

Mike