On the Common 107

The Flying Scotsman and My Year-end Thoughts

Hi everyone,

Should I say “you’re not behind” again? I heard somebody say that social media feels “very shouty” in January, and I heartily agree.

Every day is new. Every day the Lord sends us fresh mercies. One day at a time.

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The Part Where There’s an Essay: The Year in Review

Another year is in the books, friends. It brought some unique joys and some unique challenges. Different, and yet the same as all the other years. Here are some thoughts as I close the book on 2023:

A full house: I know many of you have been “out of” the pandemic mindset for years, but we were slower to emerge for many reasons. Last year was the first year that I felt like we were back to filling our home up as much as we once had before 2020. We had dinner parties, casual gatherings, an engagement party, book club meetings, and our usual everyone’s-invited Easter lunch. We had a church intern come here to live with us for a couple of months. We reached a regular routine of having our grown-and-flown kids here for Sunday lunch each week. We hosted a small group. It feels like our house is finally back to its purpose once more: service, comfort, and hospitality.

Regular reading: With the help of the app Freedom (described more here), I made progress with getting off my phone and reading more books. I really want to keep this up in 2024, especially given that it’s an election year, with lots of foolishness on tap.

Three books I loved: I loved Harrison Scott Key’s wickedly funny, dark, and unflinching How to Stay Married (reviewed here); Alan Noble’s gentle and courageous On Getting Out of Bed (reviewed here); and Claire Keegan’s beautiful Small Things Like These (reviewed here).

One book I wanted to love, but didn’t: I spent most of November with Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, and while it’s no doubt an accomplishment of literature, I just didn’t love it. The darkness was too dark mid-book. I finished it, and I’m glad I did, but it was tough sledding to be sure.

Some things that worked:

Increasing grocery costs meant that meal planning was more critical than ever, and it worked great for us. We cut costs and focused on simple meals. Everyone was fed and content. Remember, most people don’t want inventive food all the time. Familiarity wins almost every time.

The library. Our public library in Charlotte is the owner of one of my most-used apps. I regularly used the library last year, more than I have in years (mostly for The Book Basket, but also for books I just wanted to read but didn’t want to purchase). Charlotte is kind enough to transfer the books I want to read from any branch to the branch that is ten minutes from my house. This helped me read more and spend less.

Some things that didn’t work:

I am still tempted by the siren song of multitasking. While there are libraries full of research about how this does not work, I still charge forth and try it. WHY?! I don’t know. There’s no answer here, for me or for you, except, “stop it.” It’s OK to go slow and do one thing at a time.

I stopped bullet journaling, relying instead on a mix of the evergreen planner and digital solutions. As seasons change, so will our ways of mapping and recording them. It’s OK to move away from things that have served you in the past.

A few quick hits:

My son messaged me in the spring and said, “you should listen to this guy. He has a song that says ‘I’m mean because I grew up in New England.’” Setting aside everything that might mean for me personally, I looked up the music of Noah Kahan and was immediately hooked. (warning: he swears sometimes, but, um, not as much as Taylor Swift)

The Bear. Though we were sad to bid goodbye to the AFC Richmond crowd, the third season of Ted Lasso was dreadfully uneven and felt hastily thrown together. A month later, I was in deep with the staff at The Original Beef of Chicago and I haven’t thought about Ted and Rebecca much since. My one request if you’re going to watch this show: when you reach season two, watch episodes six (“Fishes”) and seven (“Forks”) back to back. This season of TV has one of my favorite arcs of struggle and redemption (along with a killer cameo from a favorite English actor) in recent memory.

In the fall we had a work gathering when we played the game Priorities. It’s a simple concept: the person who’s “it” gets handed five things to rank from “love” to “hate,” and then everyone else has to guess how that person ranked them. We laughed and laughed with my coworkers, and later, with my family.

I’m still making the overnight no-knead bread from The New York Times, and it continues to earn me a reputation as a baking genius, something I do not deserve in the least.

Like millions of other women, during the pandemic, I started following GoCleanCo on Instagram, and I now mop my floors all the time. I do not wish to confess how dirty they were at the beginning, but Sarah’s hot-water-and-Tide thing made me change my ways.

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For the Anglophiles

I LOVE TRAINS. Have I discussed this yet? I do. And while this article has a picture of King Charles where he looks like he’s saying, “How did I end up next to this train?!”, it is a lovely discussion of the most famous of steam engines, The Flying Scotsman.

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Reads & Listens of the Week

The Rest is History had a wild episode about a bizarre mystery of Victorian England, The Tichborne Case. I had never heard of this before, but it was captivating to say the least.

Upstream featured a conversation about one of my all-time favorite books, The Supper of the Lamb: The Neglected Theology of Food.

I discovered these too late for use at Christmas, but I’m saving them for next year: The New York Public Library has free printable tags and cards that are ADORABLE.

This sweet story about a girl and the crows she’s fed for years was a delight. Read all the way to the end.

I loved this little meditation on bookstores from

Tresta Payne

: A Lovely Sort of Chaos.

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The question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us. -CS Lewis, Mere Christianity