Meador News March 2022
Hey y'all,
I've decided I'm going to do these on a monthly basis simply because I don't think there's much need for anything more regular than that. I may copy the cadence a close friend uses and make this a first Friday letter in the future. But as we've already missed first Friday in March, we're sending this one out today.
The Work
I'm going to start with some work updates as most of you on this list know me mostly for my work, though I'm also going to include some personal updates near the end.
Currently, I am proofing the designed version of print #2 of Mere O. It's very late, but that was hard to avoid on this one due to a variety of things that all came together and destroyed my hopes of getting this out sooner. The good news is that half of print #3 is already turned in and I've started edits on it already. Look for that in June. The three lead pieces, all of which I'm really excited about, are essays from Leah Sargeant on how to value caring work and Charlie Clark on the idea of "good work" as well as an interview with Paul Kingsnorth by Tessa Carman.
On the web side of things, we published a lovely piece today by a woman named Rachel Roth Aldhizer writing about her youngest child, who was born with some severe disabilities. We have a number of pieces in the editing queue including an Orthodox theory of extremism, several pieces on friendship and relationships, a handful of pitches on deconstruction that I'm currently reviewing, as well as a few book reviews. It's a nice and characteristically eclectic mix that suits us, I think.
Regarding my own writing, I continue to blog about church renewal and intellectual life at "Common Places." I'm also going to be giving a lecture in a couple weeks at the Rochester L'Abri branch, which you can learn more about on my website. That's the main thing I'm working on in terms of writing work this week. I'm also still doing a lot of interviews for the book and will be doing some speaking engagements too—we have an event in Omaha already on the calendar, will be planning something for Lincoln soon, and I'm hoping to make it down to Arkansas in the fall for an event. So if you'd like to interview me or host me at an event, let me know. (For travel, it's much easier for me to do it if it can either be a family trip of some kind or if I can at least bring a kid or two with me.)
Finally, my reading these days is dominated mostly by Henri De Lubac, a mid-20th century Catholic philosopher and theologian, the early 20th century Catholic historian Christopher Dawson, and the 16th century Swiss Reformer Heinrich Bullinger. The Dawson reading will be over soon as that is for an essay about him that will appear in print #3. I'm trying to keep some lighter projects going on the side and am especially eager to start reading Joy Clarkson's new book, which looks extremely promising.
Home Life
Our home life has looked pretty different these past two years relative to what had been before, but that is probably true for many of you. I've worked from home full time since January of 2020. and I've been doing Mere O full time since I unexpectedly lost my day job last September. I deeply prefer this sort of arrangement because it means we only need one vehicle, the only commute I ever have is a voluntary walking commute to a coffeeshop, and I can be home when I need to be or want to be. But given the ages of our kids (2, 4, 6, and 9) it comes with its difficulties and challenges. We're also in the middle of some home projects that I think will help with some of this. My basement study has been a bit of a disaster for most of the past two years as it became an effective storage space for Mere O Kickstarter perks and some of those items are still sitting there. But we're shifting some things around and hopefully getting those perks shipped out in the near future, both of which should lead to me getting a designated work-space back for the first time in awhile.
I also am hoping that it will work out financially for us to build a little writer's shed in our backyard this summer that will become my study, thereby freeing up the basement room to use as a guest room. If you know me at all, you know that I am not in any way an especially handy person. But five years of home ownership has forced me to learn a few things and I think the pandemic has made me more inclined toward home too—certainly my cooking has improved dramatically during the pandemic. So I'm hoping that I can use the shed construction project as a way to learn a bit more. I'm not planning to hook it up to electricity or water, so I don't anticipate any zoning difficulties or other issues there. Basically I hope to end up with something like this. The thought of having a little writer's shed in the backyard to retreat to, especially in the winter months when I can have a wood fire going inside, is deeply exciting to me.
For now, we're deep into the spring semester of the school year with our older two kids, the younger two are at home with us during the days, and we're mostly muddling through, I'd say, as we try to figure out what the long-term future will look like for us.
Prayer Needs
Where to begin? Well, I'll start here: Sleep is hard to come by in our house. Ambrose, our youngest, routinely wakes up once or twice at night and then is up and ready for the day at 6am. Joie and I... are not ready for the day at 6am. And because Brosey and Austin share a bed (we have the three boys in one bedroom with bunk beds—the bed actually has a trundle bed with it, but Brosey prefers sleeping on the bottom bunk next to Austin and it's a double mattress so there's actually plenty of room for them) when Brosey is up, Austin is up. Even if they just slept till 7, that extra hour would be huge. Relatedly, we've had several nasty bugs go through our house the past three months. We didn't do Christmas with family this year because we were sick (probably omicron but Lancaster County's COVID testing was a bit of a nightmare—they lost Joie's results—and the home tests we did all came back negative, so who knows) and we've had the same or very similar stomach bugs hit us twice in the past six weeks or so, most recently last week and into this week. So sleep and better health are almost constant needs right now, it feels like.
The other major need at the moment is some clarity on what my vocational future should look like. We have funds to do Mere O full-time through 2022. If Mere O's finances don't pick up significantly by the end of the year, however, I will need to start looking for work. At this point I feel like I've put in my time in marketing and I really don't want to go back to that if I don't have to. Even the freelance stuff I'm doing right now just to try and help pad our income a bit and, if possible, reduce what I need to be paid by Mere O feels really draining and exhausting to me. I did marketing for almost ten years and I just kinda feel done with it. But it's entirely possible that I'll have to go back to it next year.
There are other options, of course: I could try to pick up some additional PT editing roles with outlets friendly to my work and Mere O. But at some point you run out of hours in the day. Moreover, editing jobs tend to be the "work full-time hours for a part-time salary" sort of gigs and, well, I already have one job like that. I don't need more. That said, if there were ways to basically turn "40-50 hours a week of writing, reading, and editing," into 2-3 PT jobs, that starts to feel a bit more viable. It'd need to be some mixture of local work serving the Lincoln church, Mere O, and one other gig, but if the work overlapped enough (or if it drew on work I've already done), I think it would be viable. Fortunately, we have several months yet before we need to really start working on this problem. But the time will go fast.
Relatedly, I'm going to be traveling in New York and DC in April. The goal of the trip is to hopefully meet face-to-face with potential donors, board members, or collaborators on Mere O. So pray that that trip is fruitful. My plan is to be gone Monday through Friday so that Joie isn't doing a weekend on her own with four kids but instead has the older kids in school during the day and thus has a bit less to manage while I'm away. But it's a huge strain on her so when I travel, it's important that it really be worthwhile. Additionally, if you'd pray that we be able to find some help for her while I'm away, that'd be much appreciated as well.
Food and Drink
I've joked with Joie that in another life I would make an excellent innkeeper at some small town in the Shire or in Bree. (Basically, I want to imagine that I'm Sam Gamgee. But probably I'm Barliman Butterbur.) So I'm going to try and include something at the end of each letter on what we're eating and drinking at home. In terms of food, one of my favorite recent things has just been learning to do some basic stir-fry dishes. I've been making a lot of egg fried rice as well as some noodle dishes. My favorite thing has probably been a noodle dish that starts with boiling some lo mein noodles and blanching leafy greens for 30 seconds at the end of their cook. Then you drain the noodles and mix them in a wok (or cast iron skillet if you don't have a wok) with a sauce made up of soy sauce, oyster sauce, and fish sauce. It probably takes ten minutes max and it's a great lunch. But, really, if you just spend some time with the Chinese Cooking Demystified channel, you'll learn almost everything you need here.
For drinks, I've been making coffee using James Hoffmann's Moka pot technique, which is great and works really well for us since I'm the only person who drinks freshly brewed hot coffee in our house. (Joie drinks cold brew that we make or buy about once a week. Her usual routine is to mix a latte for herself in the morning with cold brew, almond milk, and maple syrup and then warm it in a saucepan and pour it back into her mug. Cold brew, because it is brewed at much lower temperatures, tends to be a smoother, less acidic coffee, which is why she prefers it.) My favorite cocktails lately have been the Trinidad Sour, Stone Fence, and Suffering Bastard. The Trinidad Sour is probably the most surprising of the bunch. The Stone Fence is easy to drink and fun, but'll knock you back a bit if you aren't careful with it, and the Suffering Bastard is basically a 'roided up Dark and Stormy.
I hope y'all are well. BTW, any replies you send to this will go direct to my inbox so even though I send these emails through Buttondown, the replies come direct to me.
Grateful for you all,
~Jake