Don’t take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal—
the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;
the price of grapefruit and stamps
— Tony Hoagland, Personal
That’s the introduction to my favorite poem. I take everything personally. Ascribe meaning to the most mundane of things. It’s how I interact with the world.
I published a newsletter with an internet bff of mine for five years. The pace of it got to be too much, our lives changed a lot. So, in the back-half of 2020, we put it to bed. It felt deeply satisfying to take a break, to read at a leisurely pace—to not read at all, sometimes. But with a break from the grind, I’m renewed. Feeling a creative energy and am not sure exactly where to place it. Except in the familiar landscape of a new newsletter.
Personal will be consistently inconsistent. Sent as small collections of delight as they arrive. I suspect sometimes it might be weekly, following by months of silence. Instead of searching for interesting things, I will live life and see what comes to me.
I can’t wait to share what I stumble across.
— Mallory (@mal_corum)
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