Different Times Call for Different Reading
image: Giammarco Boscaro for Unsplash
Different times call for different ways to respond to them. And one thing I’m changing? my newsletter and video subscriptions.
Up until last fall, I subscribed to—and mostly read—publications and videos that oriented me to the world around me, and in particular to the United States. I listened to the guys at Crooked Media, and read their newsletter faithfully every evening. I also read Charlie Pierce’s columns over at Esquire, listened to analysts like the Bulwark, subscribed to Morning Brew and Tangle. I eavesdropped on James O’Brien and all the brilliant folks over at LBC. They all gave me slightly different slants on what was going on and I valued their take, becoming far more informed than anything that I, who am not an analyst, could have ever been without them. I spent a minimum of an hour, usually more, each day on these pursuits.
That’s all changed, now.
I’ve cancelled nearly all those subscriptions now, retaining only Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters to an American, American Media (Jesuit takes on the world), and a couple of Substacks written from a British point of view.
It’s not that I’m not reading anymore. It’s that I’m reading things that don’t make me want to go out and jump off a bridge.
image: Simon Sun for Unsplash
What I’m spending my time with, now, includes a lot of publications that in the past I’ve skimmed, pulling out a paragraph here and a quote there, but never really absorbing. Thoughtful publications that are about deeper thinking, curiosity, and something.
As we move through the different seasons of our lives, our needs change. This present season, dominated as it is by fear and shame and disgust at the very nature of being an American, has affected me in myriad negative ways, ways that are amplified by the feelings I have when listening to the words of those various analysts. I realized that I wasn’t just passively taking the information in; I was amplifying it in my own mind. And therein, as Shakespeare would say, lies madness.
So I am paying more attention now to different newsletters and videos. Here are a few:
The Marginalian offers “ depth and delight without the distraction of a social media feed,” a “timeless oasis of sanity to uplift the heart, vivify the mind, and salve spirit.”
Big Think newsletter, one of my favorite places to spend time. We need big ideas. A lot of them.
The Gurdeep Magazine (Substack): yeah, he’s sometimes just a little too joyful, but it makes for a nice refreshing take on things.
The Hyperallergic newsletter: a “forum for serious, playful, and radical thinking about art in the world today.”
Aeon (with its sister publications SophiaClub, an international program of cultural events, and Psyche, illuminating the human condition through psychology, philosophy and the arts.): its mission is “to explore and communicate knowledge that helps us make sense of ourselves and the world. We ask the big, existentially significant questions and find the freshest, most original answers, provided by leading thinkers on philosophy, science, psychology, society and culture.”
We have to find ways to stay human, to stay interested, to stay caring. We must continue to nourish our minds and our spirits. These subscriptions are for me an important part of that.
What about you? What are you finding fulfilling, challenging, comforting these days? Leave your ideas in the comments!
image: Hassan Wasim for Unsplash