And also with you…
I hope everyone has had a great week! Or at least a good one.
My week was good! This season of life is busy in a fun way, and busy in a second-to-last class of grad school way. I have deleted TikTok, for the time, and only have Instagram on my iPad, which is actually great. I can still post if I want to, but I’m not sitting in my car checking in on someone I never followed in the first place.
What else. Still cooking through Comfortable Kitchen, but in the market for a new favorite cookbook. Still in three book clubs and only reading the first 100 pages of each book. Still on the hunt for more jeans for fall. I’m down to my last pair. My Loft jeans are too stretched out or holey, and I just have my Abercrombie pair.
Ok, no one cares about my jeans, let’s get to steppin.
This sentence now has links to the my instagram, and old issues of the newsletter. Also my Nuuly referral link. I hope today is beautiful for you.
Number One: BeReal
BeReal is a newer social media app with a fun concept. Once a day, at a random time (although almost always in the evenings on Monday) an alert goes out. You have two minutes to “Be Real” which involves taking a picture with the front and back facing cameras on your phone. If you post late, you post late, but you can’t post early.
I’ve intentionally kept my BeReal friends list dinner-party small. There are beloved readers of this very newsletter sitting in friend request purgatory. It’s not personal, it’s just that Instagram is wearing me out, and I want one small thing.
What I love most about BeReal is that is has made me realize that, in fact, most of my friends lives are also a little bit lame. Not lame in a bad way, but lame in a we have jobs way. We send emails, we eat dinner, we go to the grocery store. It’s not that everyone is hanging out without me all the time - which I know objectively, but BeReal has served as a helpful reminder. I downloaded the app in Europe and it had the propensity to go off while I was laying in bed, not while I was walking past Christopher Columbus’s tomb or whatever. Even on your most exciting day, there’s a two minute window of lame, probably.
Anyway, I think you should get this app and also keep your friend list small and post your lame life.
Number Two: Tim Keller says everything is going to be ok
I found this video clip via a Tolkien account I don’t follow, so just track with me here, but I think the following video is well worth watching. It came up on my timeline when I was checking Twitter to avoid feeling anxious about the 99 follow up emails I need to send, and it was just such a tender reminder. Helpful context: Tim K has cancer, and it’s bad; Kathy is his wife, they met in seminary. Tim has, or at least had, a minivan that he would let the NYC RUF kids take to Summer Conference. The minivan doesn’t come up in this video, but I’ve been in it, the minivan.
“We wipe our tears, but we don’t stop crying.” Ugh, a gift!
Number Three: Borrowing an American Girl Doll in Arlington
The Arlington, VA public library let’s you check out American Girl Dolls. I am on record as a Josephina girl who envied my sister’s Kit.
Number Four: “America’s Lost Chinatowns”
This is a super interesting piece on the Asian immigrant experience in the United States throughout history - but especially since the 1880’s in places that you don’t typically think of.
Number Five: Throw something away this week
If there’s a sentimentality personality test, I would score high. I love holding onto little pieces of paper. I like to hold onto things, just in case.
But this week, I threw away the glitter duct tape my mom had mailed me when I worked at Kamp 10 years ago, and it felt good. After that I was kind of on a roll of throwing away the random crap that’s been collecting in this basket under my desk. A folder from last year’s season of Girls on the Run? Don’t need it. The pens I’ve moved from house to house but never used? I don’t want them and neither does anyone else.