When I started my business, I decided to create a Friday newsletter for marketing. I could promote links, sponsored content, all the things corporate America uses newsletters for. It quickly got old. I didn’t need one more thing to do and it just felt so fake. Like, really. Who needs another list of things to read and do every week? Not me. 

One week, I decided to just write with my whole heart. I don’t even remember the topic, but I distinctly remember how it felt. It was the first time in a long time I loved writing. I was also really scared because for the first time, I wasn’t just writing in service of others' education. I was writing about myself and about my life. About the beautiful things that made living feel better.   

Almost every week since, I have made time to write. To feel that. These letters are the only thing I leave until the last minute. While every other post you’ll read on this blog has been written over a month ago, not these. I write them by Wednesday, edit Thursday, and they’re delivered to all of you Friday morning to enjoy with your coffee or lunch. 

I never stopped. I wrote enough of them to create an entire book (you can buy it here) of those beautiful moments. Not even a tiny one, a real life, couple hundred page book of all the letters I wrote while living on the road. 

Somewhere along the way in the news cycle over the last few months, I’ve really struggled to see what is beautiful about all of this. It’s hard to believe this is part of a plan because look, if it is a plan? It’s a shitty one. I’d like to kick whoever made this plan in the shin. 

Then I listened to this podcast with Alok and Glennon Doyle recorded over a year ago. I don’t quite know how it fell into my podcast rotation but I know it was divinely timed because at the very end, they asked Alok if there was any message they wanted to leave with the reader. 

They said: “What feels important to say now is that we have to become fluent in everything that makes us wanna live. I'm seeing so many people, rightfully so, detail everything that's wrong about the world… And that's not how you continue going. It's just not, the way that you continue going is you notice the beautiful things, the small gestures of kindness. Those are the things that give you stamina. And what I've started to do now is to create a playlist, not just of music, but of everything I find beautiful. So that when I'm feeling despair and loneliness and alienation, I can go to my beauty playlist and remember someone on the earth who created this movie that moved me in such a profound way. There's no doubt that we're gonna win because something this spectacularly beautiful could not exist otherwise. Art has been and will forever be my healthcare because it allows me to keep going. I feel so much despair all the time… But beauty is what is keeping me going. Not the courage. No, it's my beauty playlist.”

Make your playlists. Hold on to what’s beautiful, sweet friend.  Talk about it everywhere you go. Say, I saw this thing. I listened to this podcast. I read this letter. I had something that touched me, made me feel human. And preserve that humanity, preserve that empathy, preserve that ability to feel everyone's grief and pain. 

That's what's going to protect us long term in a world that believes war creates peace. 

Look for the beautiful things. Create them. Never be scared to share it with the world.