July 2026 Update

July 9, 2026

“Our haste from hence is of so quick condition That it prefers itself and leaves unquestioned Matters of needful value.”

— Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 1.1

A stack of books mentioned in this post on top of the journal used to draft the first paragraph.

This is my last summer as a “stay at home Dad.” I ought to reflect on the time I have spent caring for my children (which is really just the beginning of my parenting journey). And so I have; I see that 'reflecting on the value of' is a meaningless phrase that dodges the real question—because we will never know the true value of our life decisions—not unless we are granted Divine Insight. There a thousand hidden variables that we will never see, and many thousands of ripples more that escape the meaning of 'variables.' How can I calculate the worth of seeing my baby boy smile just for me? Or snuggling with my girl when I read her books every day? This is the problem with a culture so focused on screen appearances and data driven decisions. We can do this with anything, even reading; one can post quotes on social media, but one of the great joys of reading is not finding quotes, it is experiencing the culmination of a thought or a plot in context. It is the sort of joy that cannot be posted online because no one wants to copy & paste three chapters and an explainer (and even if you did post it, it would suck the exclusiveness out of it). Sociology and science are useful tools that can help us understand ourselves and the world, but they were never meant to replace our hearts. Do I really need a study that tells me about the positive outcomes for children who have active and involved fathers? And even if I did, and I found that study, I would still be plagued by a nagging doubt that I was not that father in that study. Science is maddeningly specific, so we must be extremely careful when we apply it to our lives. Real scientists know this, which is why they speak in experimental terms. Most of us are not real scientists, so we misuse it and doubt all our assumptions unless we have a verified dataset with a regression.

Writing

It has been very difficult to write. It is mostly my fault, but this summer has felt far more busy than I wanted it to. It has been busy with good things and lots of fun, but still busy, and at the end of the day I feel so tired that I just want to relax or binge. Still, I managed to do some writing, and have written through the end of my current project (for now). I am now starting at the beginning and rewriting it to get it all in my head and see where I might need to add some sections. I almost always have the opposite problem that Stephen King has. He writes in On Writing that he usually cuts at least 10% from his draft material, whereas I always find myself having to add things. I think a lot of writers out there are Stephen Kings in that sense, but I don't know.

I did write a Sonnet, and I got my Substack up and running. Substack is okay, but I do not enjoy the fact that they cloned Facebook and default to an algorithm driven homepage. They do encourage people to actually pay writers for their work, which is nice, but I get suggested content from people I don't follow and it annoys me. I have been able to engage with authors, which is cool, but I don't really know where the line is between honest engagement and coming up with comments in the hopes of being noticed. I have been thinking a lot about C.S. Lewis's Inner Ring and I will have to write an essay soon incorporating the Abolition of Man. I have never loved social media and I am highly skeptical that there is anyone who does. Even when it is made up of things I love (books and theology etc.), there is just something hollow and distracting about it. When I spend an inordinate amount of time on Substack's social platform I come away wishing I had been reading a book instead. This is hypocritical because I feel the need to post on there in order to “build an audience,” but that has never really worked for me and I am not convinced anyone can build an audience from nothing. The people most famous on Twitter are people who are already famous. My strategy, I guess, is just to keep writing (not posting).

Music

I attempted to record a song but my timing was off, which hurts more when you are a one man band and your 'recording studio' is almost never quiet. I usually track acoustic first because that's how the songs were written and it is the foundation, but I think I will have to track drums first and use a metronome because the timing really hurts me. It is frustrating because I have to track acoustic in order to actually figure out what to play on drums, but this is a learning process. I could use a metronome, but I don't enjoy tracking guitar with it. I do believe in practicing with a metronome but when it comes to performance I find it can get in the way. My intentional practicing has fallen off a bit and I should get back to it.

Reading

The book that looms largest in my mind this past month is Dostoevsky's Notes From a Dead House, which was a Father's Day gift from my wife. He wrote it after spending four years in a Siberian prison camp and it is full of startling and beautiful impressions. I'll just say that it helps put my 'suffering' in perspective, and has helped me rediscover the joy of reading for itself and no other end. I'll just leave a long quote here:

“Tyranny is a habit; it is endowed with development, and develops finally into an illness. I stand upon this, that the best of men can, from habit, become coarse and stupefied to the point of brutality. Blood and power intoxicate: coarseness and depravity develop; the most abnormal phenomena become accessible and, finally, sweet to the mind and feelings. Man and citizen perish forever in the tyrant, and the return to human dignity, to repentance, to regeneration, becomes almost impossible for him. What's more, the example, the possibility, of such self-will has a contagious effect on the whole of society: power is seductive. A society that looks indifferently upon such a phenomenon is itself infected at its foundation. In short, the right of corporal punishment, granted to one man over another, is one of the plagues of society, one of the most powerful means of annihilating in it any germ, any attempt at civility, and full grounds for its inevitable and ineluctable corruption” (Part II, Chapter III).

I am also reading Measure for Measure and I am very excited to go see it this summer. Find some Shakespeare near you, it will change your life.

Ah yes, for July 4th, I also read Langston Hughes' Let America Be America Again and it was beautiful. I have been recommending it everywhere because it is that good. I believe poetry has the power to take all our pain and thought and feeling and passion and redeem it all into something beautiful, so that, for a time, we can find relief.

Thank you for reading! I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee: