Friday Fun Flier XV
Launching exclusive content and offering discounted early access!
Quote of the Week:
“The truth is that this universe is gassy and unpredictable, it still has not said ‘excuse me’ for the big bang. Sometimes, we expect too much, instead of practicing enough, or receiving in us just the right answer. You the staggering answer.”
-Buddy Wakefield, The Gospel of Lightning
Dear old friends, new friends, and family:
This is one of the most exciting days of my life as a creator! I’m offering exclusive content, which means that I’m officially transitioning out of education and into full-time freelance writing. The Well-Lived Life is going to be my primary means of financial support.
If I’ve made you laugh, made you tear up, or helped you in any way through my writing, please consider signing up. This is how you can help build this little community and make sure that the content keeps coming. I don’t want to fill my blog with affiliate links or spammy ads. I want to create a community funded by readers.
My first exclusive post is going to go out on Sunday, August 1st. This is when I’ll begin releasing my writing for The Unfamiliar Movement Project, the personal healing journey I’m on. Also, based on the feedback I received from the survey I sent out, I’ll be offering a private server where readers can chat and meet each other, and if enough people sign up, I’ll be opening up the opportunity for paid guest posts to readers once a fortnight.
As I mentioned before, 10% of whatever I make through The Well-Lived Life will be donated to charities that I’m passionate about (Pete’s Mission, Access Fund, etc).
Today I’m offering early access at a discount.
I found out that the minimum I’m allowed to charge on Substack is $5 per month, but I can offer deals! So for the next ten days, I’m offering 40% off for one year. This means that if you sign up now, it will be $3 per month or a flat rate of $24 a year for exclusive content. After August 1st, it will be $5 per month and $40 per year.
If you are honestly, truly in a challenging financial place and you still want to join, no worries! Send me an email and I’ll add you to the community, no questions asked.
Please consider joining, it would mean the world to me as a creator!
The update:
I’m safely in Costa Rica, nestled in at a surf school. Over the last 4 days, I’ve managed to stand up on a few waves, and my technique is getting better by the day. The Unfamiliar Movement Project has officially begun! More to come on Sunday, August 1st :)
A hostel book that flipped my heart inside out:
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
“You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.”
In a glorious bout of serendipity, this book showed up in my life at the perfect time. Someone in my hostel in San Jose recommended it to me, and I loved the sound of it. The day I arrived at my next destination, there is was, sitting on the hostel bookshelf.
Sometimes heaven and earth move in harmony just to deliver you the information you need.
The Midnight Library begins on a sad note. The main character decides that she is fed up with life, and as a result, eats a lot of painkillers in an attempted suicide.
She winds up in an infinite library, with books stretching in every direction that illustrate every conceivable combination of lives she could have ever lived.
In some lives she is famous. In some lives she is adventurous. In other lives, she’s happily married. She lives out every possible combination of lives, and along the way, must choose if she has the strength to continue her own.
This is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read, and I don’t say that lightly. This book made me want to live so loudly that the universe would hear the roar.
If you read nothing else I’ve recommended, read this one. It’s worth every second.
“Of course, we can't visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we'd feel in any life is still available. We don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don't have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum.”
And now, something great happening in the world!
Eliot Middleton, owner and operator of Middleton’s Village BBQ in Awendaw South Carolina, spends his spare time fixing up donated junk cars through his nonprofit so that he can turn around and give them to people in his community who need them.
Awendaw has no reliable public transportation, and Uber does not operate there.
If people in his community have physical ailments, small children, or live far from where they work, it can be very challenging for them to get around if they don't have cars.
"You don't have a car; you don't have a career. How will people who have no reliable buses, no Ubers, travel to the city, where they would be able to find bigger jobs at the port authorities or manufacturing centers?" Eliot said when interviewed. "They can't walk 40, 50, 60 miles to great jobs— they have to settle for small-end jobs that pay well below what they need to survive. Giving someone a car can change all that, and it does change all that," he added. "I want to help everybody looking to better themselves when transportation is what's holding them back."
His story attracted national coverage. If you're looking to feel a little better about the general public and humanity, read on!
Before his story went viral, Middleton had donated 32 cars to families in his community since last September. But after the video was shared hundreds of thousands of times on social media? Middleton’s personal charity exploded.
Donations flooded in from all across the country, including more than 800 cars. His Gofundme page is sitting at $134,000.
Middleton was humbled by the experience, feeling the glow that comes from realizing that humanity is not so bad after all.
“Whatever glowing feeling is inside me, it just transferred from that TV screen and went inside them,” he said. “It’s soul-soothing.”
His sister is also helping to organize responses, you can respond or donate through his Facebook page at Middleton’s Village To Village Foundation.
Now in his late thirties, Middleton looks fondly on learning how to fix cars from his father. He and his father operated a mechanic shop for 17 years, before his father passed away suddenly in February of last year. It took Elliot only seven months to begin repairing cars for neighbors and strangers. According to Elliot, it's his way of healing.
"I like working on cars with a lot of problems because that's my time to relate to my father, speak with him, because that's what we've always done together," he said. "It makes me feel like he's right there. It's helping me as much as it's helping the people, I give the cars to because this is allowing me to cope with the fact that my dad's not here anymore."
This modern hero is going to be able to do a lot of good, because of the goodness of humanity. He also has a deep understanding of what makes humanity tick, an understanding of the importance of community.
"A lot of people turn to their pastors or psychiatrists to open up about their situations, but others turn to their communities," Eliot said. "That's what I'm here for, to always be here for my community whether it's for advice or to talk or fix up cars for them. I'll always be taking care of my people."
I read a few pages of the Midnight Library and kept it aside because it just didn't feel like a fit for the time being. Now I'm excited to read it haha!
Oh damn I also read the Midnight Library this week and was going to include it into my newsletter on Sunday haha! What a coincidence.