Last Words: The Project!

“Through attention and curiosity, we can suspend our tendency toward instrumental understanding — seeing things or people one-dimensionally as the products of their functions — and instead sit with the unfathomable fact of their existence, which opens up toward us but can never be fully grasped our known.”

– Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 2019

“Our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any more.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” 1837

“Last Words” is something I want to try here. A winter project, a practice of imperfection, a tribute to my friends and “paper mentors” (a phrase I am borrowing from my friend Sarah).

Project guidelines:

1. Read a book or other media I’ve been meaning to get to for ages.
2. On this blog, in 200 words or less, reflect on:
   • Where I was reading or listening to the final pages or words.
   • Other things/past experiences I associated with this reading.
   • What action this text inspires.
3. Publish reflections here November 1, 2023 through February 29, 2024.

Why?

I’m starting “Last Words” on the heels of a busy season in 2023. The first six months of leading a new nonprofit, with a milestone first fundraising event to cap it off in late October. Whew! 😅

I’m also on the heels of a busy decade. The end of university life, a move, deaths of my parental figures, helping raise kids into teenagers, the first seven years of starting a publication while also establishing a career. A marriage.

For many reasons many books have sat unread and podcasts unlistened-to.

I look forward to a course correction. ☺️