Eight Days into a New Year

The feast of the Epiphany is a great day to start something new.

Welcome to Eight on the Eights, a consolidation and concentration of what I’m sharing online. This newsletter is the result of thought, prayer, and a month off of social media. My hope is that I can use this space to chronicle what I’m reading, creating, and loving in a way that allows more meaningful connection with you, the reader. Please subscribe, if you haven’t already and invite a friend to join you!

The EIGHT sections of the newsletter are:

1. Some updates

2. What I’m reading

3. What my kids are reading

4. Something I love

5. What I’m creating (knitting, lettering, embroidery, etc.)

6. Where my work is

7. What I’m working on

8. A quote to sit and sip with

Looking forward to where the Lord takes this in 2023. Let’s get started!

1. Some updates. At the end of the year, I took a short trip to Chicago to visit a dear friend. We connected freshman year of college over a cup of spilled tea (it landed on someone else’s backpack on the bus; we never found out whose). Nearly twenty years later, we are still chatting books, life, music, and more, though our lives are lived very differently, almost a grown-up version of City Mouse, Country Mouse. I found myself welcoming living in someone else’s space and on a different schedule for a few days. How easily we can come to believe that the pace of our lives is that of everyone else’s. I joked before I left home that it wasn’t a big deal if I forgot anything, since she and I are nearly the same size. Still, the figurative, though not literal, walk in another’s shoes led me to come home with more perspective on my own life—a welcome departure any time of year, not just at New Year’s.

2. What I’m reading. So much Brian Doyle. I discovered him in my class on American Catholic Literature last semester. I’m working through Chicago, Leaping, and The Grail, depending on what hour of the day it is. If you’re not yet familiar with Doyle start with One Long River of Song (non-fiction) or Mink River (fiction).

3. What my kids are reading. My newly minted ten-year-old is reading The Fellowship of the Ring. My oldest has already read the whole LOTR trilogy, and both are looking forward to watching the movies soon. I’m not sure I can get into the books like they can, but perhaps I ought to give them a try. I said the same thing about the Chronicles of Narnia, but a few years later, I was happily framing the book covers for basement decor. School-aged me wasn’t into fantasy; adult me mourns what I missed out on.

4. Something I love. It’s basketball season—elementary school basketball, that is. I have just one child playing this year, which is less hectic than last year with two. When it’s my turn to take him, I love the drives to and from games and the time in the stands when I get to both cheer and hang out with my friends. When I stay home, I enjoy the change in Saturday morning dynamics when a different combination of people are in the house.

5. What I’m creating. My four-year-old asked me to knit him a toy for Christmas. I’ve made bears, a sting ray, Spider-Man (crocheted), a dolphin, and more in the past, so this wasn’t a huge ask. But when I asked for more details, he refused, saying he wanted me to choose what it would be. I found an adorable snowman pattern on Etsy, and knit most of it while recovering from the flu.

   

6. Where my work is.

   At Radiant: Planning my two-year resolution

   At CatholicMom.com: You Can’t Steal Jesus’ Thunder and Daily Gospel Reflection for January 5, 2023

   At Verily: 5 Cardio Benefits That Have Nothing to Do with the Scale

   At Aleteia: Lion & Lamb seeks to curate the Catholic child’s bookshelf

7. What I’m working on. Well, until now, this. But now that Eight on the Eights is launched, I’m revising a couple short stories that have been workshopped and working on drafts for new-to-me publications, thinking about hospitality and Brian Doyle, though not in the same piece. My next grad class starts in eleven days, and I’m hoping to have some pieces ready to submit by then.

   I’m also preparing to serve an instructor at the soon-to-launch Fiat Self-Publishing Academy, a program for Catholic authors and artists looking to self-publish their books. Enrollment opens very soon. I’ll try to update this post with a link when it’s available. UPDATE: Enrollment is now open! Access it via my affiliate link and let me know if you have any questions. I’ll be working with children’s book authors at Fiat.

8. A quote to sit and sip with.

   … and he closed his eyes and began to play again, and the music was so lean and sobbing and sweet and sad, so slow and haunted and resigned, with a hint of thorny endlessly patient weary bemused endurance in it, that I did feel it in the bottom of my bones; and I had the odd feeling that I had always known this music somehow without ever actually hearing it before, that it had been waiting patiently for me, so to speak, and now we were friends, and would always be so; we understood each other somehow , we thought and dreamed in the same language, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with skin color or gender or occupation or avocation, or any of the other things by which we define and categorize and wall ourselves off from other people.

   — Brian Doyle, Chicago

Until next time,

Lindsay