Hello friends and welcome back to Life Reimagined, a free weekly elixir designed to make you feel good and live better. |
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📑 I. Essay Worth Reading |
I enjoyed "in praise of uselessness," a short essay by Ava of Bookbear Express about our resistance to and relationship with doing things with no agenda. It's a well-written, thoughtful piece that gets to the heart of something that I've been thinking about a lot over the last two years. |
In some ways, Ava communicates a large part of what I hoped to express in last week's essay: The Case for Being Less Serious. That said, I think her piece does a better job of getting to the heart of the matter in fewer (and better) words. I especially enjoyed her interesting and surprising conclusion. |
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🎥 II. A Documentary I Enjoyed |
I watched Ethan Newberry's documentary WHERE DREAMS GO TO DIE - Gary Robbins and The Barkley Marathons this week. |
It's a fascinating tale about a Canadian ultrarunner's attempts to complete The Barkley, a 100+ mile race held in Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee that has been completed by only 17 humans in its multi-decade history. |
I suppose the film could motivate you to push yourself harder physically, but I mostly found it insane that people feel compelled to attempt anything like this. Looks not fun and probably not that good for you. Still interesting though. |
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💰 III. A Tip for Tax Season |
In my old age, I'm starting to see the wisdom in using Reddit to find interesting and practical solutions for various problems. While browsing r/coolguides this week, I stumbled upon this post about how to talk to a human at the IRS. |
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The post is 3 years old, but if it still works, it's a neat hack for getting in touch with the IRS if you ever need to do that. |
Honestly, I wish there were a website that had simple guides like this for talking to real humans quickly across banking, healthcare, telecom, airlines, and all the other areas where it's easy to waste a lot of time tinkering around and waiting to solve your problem. |
As a side note, the r/coolguides subreddit where this post lives is full of useful picture-based references like this and is worth browsing if you have some time. You can start by sorting for the top posts from the last year. |
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🍝 IV. A recipe I'm trying this week |
Something switched in me recently, and I've started to enjoy experimenting in the kitchen 👨🍳. This week, I attempted to make my grandma's eggplant parmesan and decided to add some meatballs on the side. The eggplant parm was decent, but the meatballs were nothing to write home about. |
I'm sure there are many ways to make good meatballs, but this week, I'm going to try a recipe from my favorite "learn how to cook person," Myles Snider. |
 | Myles Snider @myles_cooks |  |
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Easy meatballs. I make these all the time because they're versatile, great for meal prep, and serve as a nice canvas to play with different flavor profiles. Usually I do a 50/50 mix of one lean meat (venison, elk, bison, etc) and one fattier meat (pork, beef, etc). Then I… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… |     | | | Jan 14, 2024 | | |  | | | 480 Likes 32 Retweets 14 Replies |
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Outside of specific recipes, Myles is a wonderful follow on Twitter for practical advice about how to improve your cooking with simple tips and changes. |
I save a bunch of his tweets, and now that I'm in the kitchen more often, he is my go-to guide for learning how to make simple, healthy meals and have fun doing so. |
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🧠 V. Something I'm Thinking About |
I was talking to a friend this week about how I've noticed that many people in my life squirm at any mention of the word God. I used to be one of these people, but certain experiences have shifted my thinking. |
I told my friend that I was going to write an essay about this topic soon to see if I could understand the matter better, and he told me to read Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle. My friend — who is one of the squirmers I mentioned — said that the book gave him a more balanced view of what God can mean for the world. |
I listened to the book on Audible to see what my friend was talking about. It was a short read with a bunch of joyful and heartbreaking stories from Boyles's life as a Jesuit priest and founder of Homeboy Industries, a gange-intervention program in the LA area. |
The book didn't do much to further my concept of God, though it was clear how it might do that for someone who comes to the idea of God from a certain angle. |
That said, I am walking away from the read with an enhanced view of what it means to live with compassion at the center of how you operate in the world. |
"Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it." | | | | Gregory Boyle in Tattoos on the Heart |
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That's all for now. See you next Sunday. |
— Cal |
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How was today's Life Reimagined? |
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🌎️ Three other things you might enjoy |
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