Veja Rio Branco II Mesh Sneakers. My trusty New Balance 574s finally gave out after years of faithful service, so I pulled the trigger on these retro-styled running shoes. I’d been eyeing them for awhile. I’m a fan of that classic 80s silhouette that works equally well with jeans or chinos. They’re not cheap, but the build quality feels solid, and they nail that smart casual aesthetic I’ve been going for lately.
On Whether Having a Baby Ruins Your Life or Not by Sam Parker. I see a lot of talk online about how parenting is crushingly hard and ruins your life. This essay by forthcoming AoM podcast guest and new dad Sam Parker offers a refreshing list of the pros and cons of having a kid. [Note: the essay contains profanity.] His pros list resonated with me; he does a superb job of describing the supernal, incomparable joys of having a child. The cons for Sam? You’ll need to read it to see. A great antidote to all those TikTok warnings about how miserable parenthood is.
The Fear of Success by David Ward Tresemer. I discovered this book while aimlessly wandering through the stacks at the University of Tulsa library. David Tresemer, writing in the late 1970s, makes the case that many of us unconsciously sabotage ourselves not because we’re afraid we’ll fail, but because we’re terrified of what success might demand — like responsibility, visibility, and higher expectations. His exploration of how we create elaborate internal barriers to prevent achieving what we claim to want most feels like a precursor to all the modern discourse about imposter syndrome and self-sabotage. It’s a bit heavy on the Freudianism, but overall I found the insights in this book interesting and helpful.
McFarland, USA. There aren’t many movies about the sport of cross-country, and of those that do exist, few are likely to appeal to a guy who played football in high school and doesn’t like running. But McFarland, USA hits that mark. The film is based on the true story of a 1980s high school cross-country team from a small, predominantly Latino town in California. With Kevin Costner at the helm as a down-on-his-luck coach who helps transform a group of overlooked kids into state champions, the movie hits many of the standard notes of an underdog sports drama, but manages not to feel overly tired or cliché while delivering on the feel-good uplift.
Quote of the Week
There is certainly no defense or waterproof garment against adverse fortune which is, on the whole, so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.
— Thomas Wentworth Higginson
