[The following is the content of this week’s email update. If you’ve already read it in your email, the best use of your time is to skip this. It’s the same thing.]
Good morning!
Hello from the parking lot of the Rte 3 McDonald’s in Loudonville, Ohio. This is where I can connect to the internet while we are staying at the cabins at Mohican State Park for a family reunion on my wife’s side of the family.
In a way, it serves as a family reunion on my side of the family because much of my family is buried less than a mile from here, on a beautiful hill that overlooks much of this side of town. Later this week I’ll spend an hour up there, as I usually do, talking to gravestones and remembering.
There might be no better place than at a cabin with no internet access to read the book I brought, How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. It’s a brilliant book about the art of doing nothing. I appreciate that she clearly distinguishes between “dropping out” in the traditional definition of doing nothing. Instead, she gives examples of the ways that 60’s hippies and Epicurus dropped out, and emphasizes the lessons learned.
I love that, as of a quarter of the way through, she has not lost sight of the fact that we need each other in a larger, more collective way than we generally acknowledge. It is hard to reconcile that with the need to put down our devices. Faces, not screens. We must remember that.
I must remember that.
This week I wrote about one of the actions I have taken to help get myself unstuck from the quarantine. You can use it for yourself to get unstuck from pretty much anything – a rut you’re in, a bad feeling you need to work through, or a need to escape from your reality. Learn a game. Specifically this week I talk about my recent affair with sudoku.
I hope you’ll read it, or at least skim it. And then go play a game of sudoku – I provide several links for places to do that in my article.
This website is fun. www.pointerpointer.com
I’m not going to describe it, I just encourage you to go. I promise amusement, nothing more, nothing less.
Below, I’m including a picture of my Monday morning office.
I hope you enjoy this newsletter. If you do, and you know someone else who might enjoy it, please share it with them. If you like one of my articles, I hope you do the same!
I look forward to seeing you when I return to civilization.
Behind my head, a McDonald’s. Behind that, and up a hill, the Loudonville cemetery.
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