Every Monday since 2015, Hugh wakes up, makes coffee, sits down, and writes an email to thousands of folks in at least five different countries. There’s an original blog-length reflection on where he sees beauty in the world right then and links to five things he saw that week that struck him as beautiful. Because the world is beautiful, but sometimes it’s hard to notice.
The Promise on the Other Side of Chaos | LISB
This is Life Is So Beautiful, a weekly email from Hugh Hollowell, devoted to the idea that our hope for survival in this brutal world is rooted in finding the beauty that is everywhere, but sometimes hard to find.
Click here to read this on the web
Hey Y’all.
Thanks for all the notes and responses to last week’s email. Both my wife and I are largely recovered from the effects of COVID – she’s back at the gym every day and I even started getting my taste back over the weekend. I am still moving slowly, and I don’t have all my strength back yet – I tend to lose steam early in the afternoon, and I’m not back into my daily walks yet.
That’s the worst part of it all – the way being sick disrupts my routine. I work best when I have a schedule. In fact, I pretty much need a schedule if I am to work at all. My ADHD-riddled brain will otherwise flit from thing to thing. If I am lucky some of those things may be related to commitments I have made, I am just as likely, as I did yesterday afternoon, to end up hyper-focusing on four hours of YouTube videos about the proper way, according to the British, to make tea.
And I don’t even really like tea. Sigh.
I also don't feel like I have all my words back yet - there is still some brain fog, which makes writing harder for me than it normally is, and which is why this email is somewhat less than you are used to. But it's coming back, and as I said last week, I'm giving myself permission to be sick. Things like healing just take the time they take.
But I’m slowly building my routines back. This has been made harder because when COVID hit us I was in the process of moving my desk from the front room, where I posted up “temporarily” during the 20200 lockdowns, to a dedicated office I built for myself in a former storeroom in our carport. Right now I am functionally in both places, and thriving in neither. But I see the promise on the other side of the chaos, and right now, that’s what’s holding me together. Well, that and the promise of a trip to the beach later this month as a reward for surviving all this *waves hands*.
How are y’all doing? Seriously – I like it when you write back, and I read every single one of them, even if, and this is a huge regret of mine, time doesn’t always allow me to answer every email I get. (As a side benefit, your replies to my emails tell Google that you wanted this email, and it increases the odds of emails from me not ending up in spam or promotions folders.)
Five Beautiful Things
February 10th 2023
|
This collection of photos that famous photographers took of their romantic partners is lovely. There is something that the gaze of a lover sees that rolls over, that turns a candid snap into an act of devotion. Keep going in the replies - there are swoon-worthy photos of Julia Child taken by her husband Paul. (Some of these are marginally NSFW, depending on where you W, of course.)
Maybe it just means I was too influenced by Richard Scarry books as a child, but I have a deep, deep love for these music blueprint posters from the art studio Dorothy.
This instillation piece by Felipe Pantone is mesmerizing.
I remember being a teenager and going to Memphis, the nearest big city to my rural childhood home, and seeing street musicians and buskers, and thinking it was magical. Image being in a place where spontaneous acts of art could break out? I think it was then I fell in love with cities. Here is a street performer playing the Pink Floyd song Time in front of the Pantheon in Rome, and the crowd and the energy and the reactions are just so... alive.
I came across this helpful printable poster - the Trauma Stewardship Institutes Tiny Survival Guide - and now it's printed out and over my monitor. Such wisdom on one sheet of paper.
Previously
I'm still not writing much (other than this newsletter, and it's a struggle!) but a year ago I wrote this story of my favorite memory of my great-grandfather.
Last week, the most popular link was this screed by a fellow GenXer about influencer culture.
Check this out!
Things move fast on these internet streets, but in case you have forgotten, the creator of Dilbert is a horrible person who happened to have written a once-brilliant comic strip. So, I loved this essay called A Case For Shunning, where the author says that some people just object to being understood.
This Mastadon post about AI is a whole word, as my people say.
Can you do me a solid?
If you like getting these weekly emails, would you please forward them to a friend, recommend them to someone you care about, or link to the web version (the link is at the top of the email) on Social Media or elsewhere? I don't advertise and so I am counting on you telling people about this project if you like it.
Thank You!
This newsletter remains free and ad-free because of the support of my members, who insist on my making it free for everyone else. Other ways to support this project include buying me a cup of coffee or forwarding it to your friends or even just replying and saying hi.
Take care of yourself. And each other.
 |
Hugh Hollowell Jr
Publisher
Hi! I'm Hugh Hollowell.
Every Monday since 2015, Hugh wakes up, makes coffee, sits down, and writes an email to thousands of folks in at least five different countries. There’s an original blog-length reflection on where he sees beauty in the world right then and links to five things he saw that week that struck him as beautiful. Because the world is beautiful, but sometimes it’s hard to notice.
Click here to read this on the web, or to have a link to share on social media The eclipse as captured in my wildlife pond. NB: Resent, because I missed not one, but two links! I was in a rush this morning, and it shows. Thanks for all the folks who let me know. - HH Hi y’all, Thanks to the folks who wrote and checked in when your inbox didn’t have a note from me in it for two weeks in a row. Over Easter weekend, our cat Felix ended up in the hospital and we spent a few days thinking we were...
Click here to read this on the web, or to have a link to share on social media The eclipse as captured in my wildlife pond. Hi y’all, Thanks to the folks who wrote and checked in when your inbox didn’t have a note from me in it for two weeks in a row. Over Easter weekend, our cat Felix ended up in the hospital and we spent a few days thinking we were going to have to put him down (we didn’t, he’s still with us, thousands of dollars later) and I was a mess. And then last week, my Monday was...
Click here to read this on the web, or to have a link to share on social media Here I am! This is Life Is So Beautiful, a handcrafted weekly dose of hope and aspiration. It’s lovingly curated by Hugh Hollowell, and is devoted to the belief that our hope for survival in this brutal world is rooted in finding the beauty that is everywhere, but sometimes hard to find. I hope you enjoy it. - HH Hey y’all, Born in the early 1970’s, I was surrounded by, and cared for by, people who had come of age...