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.

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Hey y'all,

“The light is softer than it used to be”, I think to myself on my daily walk.

The walks are harder than they used to be. Not harder to perform, but harder to fit in. After years of being able to schedule my days to suit my purposes, my life has gotten exponentially busier over the last few months. And then there is the wintertime, when it’s cold at 6 in the morning, my preferred time to walk.

I hate the cold. To be clear, I live in the Deep South, so when I say cold, I mean 35 degrees, not the below zero temperatures you hardy souls in the north battle. But much below 45 and I tend to hang indoors. As I told someone the other day, I wasn’t built to shiver.

So while the walks are harder to fit in, I’m still glad when I can do it. I like the feel of the muscles moving in my legs, and the slight ache I feel when I’m done, the feedback that my animal body has moved and stretched and worked. I like noticing that the neighbors hung their Christmas lights, or that their kids left their bikes in the driveway once again. In warmer times, I watched the bottom of Crane Creek for the turtles that live there, and in these quiet days at the end of November, I notice how soft the light has grown.

It's like the whole world is in an Instagram filter.

At least once a month, I decide I am done writing newsletters. Done with it all, really.

After all, who do I think I am, to share my inner-thoughts with an audience of people I do not know? How conceited must I be to believe that anyone cares about my walk this morning, or my fears about the future, or that I miss the turtles, or the cool video of a frog I found while slacking off from work?

Nobody cares about the light on your walk, Hugh!

Whenever I get like this, I remember two related things.

The first is a quote from Mr. Rogers. Yes, that Mr. Rogers.

“Anything that's human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”

The second is in my inbox. The writer Ann Handley says that her most important metric isn’t her open rate – the number of people who open her newsletter – but her response rate – the number of people who respond to her emails.

I get a lot of answers to my emails, even when I don’t ask questions or solicit them. They are my favorite email to get. It reminds me that I’m not just talking into the void, but that by sharing my feelings, my fears, and my noticings with you I have made room for both of us to feel those things, and to know we are not alone.

Thanks for being on this journey with me.

Five Beautiful Things

The logical part of me knows that my visceral reaction to this guitar piece, based on one of Bach's Toccatas, is the result not only of impressive talent but also of post-production, cinemaphotography, and editing. And yet, I do not care.

These digital collages hit a sweet spot for me.

We didn't have but 3 channels on the TV, but I never missed an episode of Fame. To a working-class kid who lived on 40 acres, 10 miles away from a town of 800 people, it seemed as fantastical as a Tolkien story. RIP Irene Cara - may we always remember your name.

I own a lot of books. I mean a lot, and lots of them I have not rad yet. So I feel vindicated when I read about Umberto Ecco's anti-library.

If somehow I could filter out bird and cat photographs, i feel like my usage of the internet would decrease substantially. But so too would the levels of joy I derive from it. Like, for example, check out these photos of raptors in flight.

The Bullet Points

• Over Thanksgiving I spent some time working on my personal website. I’m trying to make it more streamlined, and a central hub pointing to all my projects.

• Back in the early teens, I had a Tumblr account before Yahoo ruined it, like everything they touch. These days the people that own Wordpress own it and are making some interesting moves. I’m trying it out again.

• I took advantage of the Black Friday chaos and bought myself a mesh router for our house. No more dead spots in our house – in fact, now we have amazing Wi-Fi reach all over our half-acre lot, for a hundred dollars and change. It was super simple to install – I should have done this years ago. (To be fair, years ago they were hella expensive, and now they are much less so.)

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.

Take care of yourself. And each other.

Hugh Hollowell Jr
Publisher
​soverybeautiful.org​