Good morning!
Confession: my March Madness bracket was a hastily-done effort utilizing the ESPN app’s random-selection-with-weighting feature. I am still losing.
The Part Where There’s an Essay: Unsubscribe
In the first two years of our marriage, I unsubscribed.
As a result of our wedding registries, I used to receive a mailbox full of catalogs each month. Those were the dark ages when yes, we had email, but the internet was still slow enough for most people that internet marketing wasn’t practical or effective. Companies sent you actual mail, and they did so often.
We had moved into our first house the second year we were married, and it was a fixer-upper. The kitchen still had the original 1960s blonde oak cabinets and yellow linoleum floor. It did not have a dishwasher. The windows were small and drafty, and the walls had flat paint that showed every handprint.
We had one baby and another on the way, and David was still early in his career. While we were thankful to be able to get into a house of our own, we did not have much money to do anything with it. The best I could do was stencil some designs in the kitchen and the baby’s room. I scrubbed the kitchen floor into a brighter shade of yellow.
Yet week after week, I would go to the mailbox and pull out catalogs full of photographs of Crate and Barrel kitchens and Pottery Barn interiors. Since we had registered at Crate and Barrel for our wedding, they sent us every catalog in their collection — from them and their affiliated companies. To say that the images contained therein for someone in my season of life were unattainable is an understatement.
The envy in my soul became darker; the overgrowth of materialism was a cancer to any chance I had at contentment. I believed the lie that my lack of things defined me — judged me.
Worse, I believed that people thought poorly of me for my “lack of taste.”1
Worse, I believe that people thought poorly of my husband for not earning enough money to provide well for his family.
One day, by the grace of God, I finally saw through it enough to unsubscribe. I sat down on the navy plaid couch with the spit-up stains on it and clicked on my cordless phone.2 I picked up a catalog off of the pile on my lap, flipped it over to the back page, looked just above the address sticker, and found a tiny phone number. I unsubscribed.
Once that was done, I flipped over the next catalog. And then the next. I made call after call; I had conversation after conversation about the fact that I’d chosen to discontinue my mailings.
The mailbox became quieter after that. I continued to scrub away the decades-old dirt on the kitchen linoleum and make the place shinier. If I couldn’t refinish every surface of the home, at least I could make them cleaner.
I think about that afternoon when the internet sneaks up on me with discontentment. We love to blame social media for all of it, but the fact is that advertising is everywhere, even for those who avoid social media. It’s OK if you need to unsubscribe.
For the Anglophiles
It’s time you knew that there was a goat in the British military named William Windsor. One time he was demoted for behaving badly at the Queen’s birthday party. He is now retired and has been replaced by William Windsor II.
Reads & Listens of the Week
Some of these are tongue-in-cheek, but I very much enjoyed these Twelve Rules for a Bookish Life. “Patronize the local library often. Unless of course you are on the run because of overdue fines. Then pay those first or move to a new town.”
The boys at Smartless are usually too crass for me to get very far with them, but this week they interviewed one of the classiest men we can claim: Al Michaels. They were all on their best behavior. I really enjoyed this.
Jonathan Rogers interviewed Daniel Nayeri! Jonathan Rogers interviewed Daniel Nayeri! Jonathan Rogers interviewed Daniel Nayeri!
In case you’ve missed it, Jonathan Haidt has been doing quite a bit of commentary on social media and girls. You can start at his substack.
However many years she lived, Mary always felt that 'she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow.' ― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
I still think this is too fine a line for some. When someone says, “she has good taste,” he might mean, “she spends a lot of money.” They aren’t the same. :)
This was a kind of technology that existed in the dark ages. You might see it on Full House.