My dear reader.

First, a little giveaway!

My beloved friend Amelia Hruby will soon be leading a 3-day workshop intensive called COME TO CLASS: How to teach & sell online with confidence and care. I absolutely love Amelia’s work, and I’m thrilled to be contributing everything I know about online teaching/facilitating via a pre-recorded interview for this class, and in exchange Amelia is gifting one of my readers a free spot! You can enter to win right here (deadline is May 10).

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And now, as always on the first Tuesday of each month, I’m here with my free offering for all subscribers: a roundup of what’s been working well in my life plus a curated list of links to what I’ve been reading, listening to, watching, and cooking.

In the comments I’d love to hear what’s been working well for you (even/especially amidst hard times), as well as any of your own recommended links for us all to check out.

Enjoy!

What’s Working

Playing with the lambs in the pasture throughout the day. Building small altars for each of my parents. DVDs from the library. Chives from the garden. Hiking alone in the early mornings. The smell of homemade granola baking in the oven. Multiple forms of allergy meds (praise be to medical science). Backwards hat and hoop earrings as current gender. Proper hydration. Not pretending, with anything. 30-minute sessions in a 200-degree sauna. Did I mention proper hydration? Long hugs. Big pieces of bubblegum. Being unapologetically nerdy about everything that I love.

Top Recs: Reading, Listening, Watching

1. My entire personality this week is the Cocodona 250 livestream. A 250-mile race from Phoenix to Flagstaff, and at the time that I’m writing this Rachel Entrekin is leading not just the women’s race but the overall race. Let’s fucking gooooo! (This is a wonderful interview to learn more about Rachel.) And then the current male leader (and second place overall) is Kilian Korth, who I worked with for some coaching stuff last year and am cheering for so hard right now. Fandom is the best, ya’ll! Find something you love and follow it with glee: that’s my current life advice.

2. One more on the athlete side: this honest interview with Max Jolliffe, about his journey from addiction to ultrarunning, really touched me.

3. One of the most resonant things I’ve read recently comes from Kelly Hayes, who wrote a newsletter dispatch called “This Is No Way to Live” that speaks directly to the pain of this fucked up time we’re currently experiencing. “Survival is a collective process,” Kelly writes toward the end of the piece. “We weren’t meant to do it alone, just as we weren’t meant to solve problems larger than ourselves alone.“ Amen.

4. Someone else whose real-time writing/political analysis is always both a balm and a rallying cry for me is Margaret Killjoy. “The US is ruled by a mad king,” she writes in this newsletter about the death of agency, “and none of us knows what to do.”

5. This essay by Rosie Spinks (called “A project will save you”) is about AI and the job apocalypse, but really it’s about so much more.

6. I know the inner workings of the global oil supply system might not be everyone’s deep-dive research topic of choice, but in case you’d like to learn more this interview with Rory Johnston breaks it down quite clearly through the lens of the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz. (Yes, my interests make me a lot of fun at dinner parties lol)

7. Speaking of deep dives that will make you a real delight to be around, The Honest Sorcerer nails it with this breakdown of the knock-on effects of where we are, collectively as a globalized society, due to the Iran war.

8. You know I love anything at the intersection of art and money, and Anna Brones writes about that so well here.

9. I’m constantly inspired by the things folks are doing to build more resilient and interconnected communities, such as this look at how to start a free store in your community.

10. Books! If you’re into fairytale re-tellings I recommend Lady Tremaine, by Rachel Hochhauser, which is a fun and fresh take on Cinderella’s stepmother. The other novel I absolutely devoured recently was Lily King’s Heart The Lover. Her writing style just blows me away with its deft precision (not a single superfluous word, I swear) and how emotionally evocative the storytelling is throughout the whole book. A real joy all around!

Monthly podcast series

I’ve been having such a good time joining my dear friend Amelia Hruby (who I mentioned at the top!) as a monthly guest on her podcast, Off The Grid.

Tune into the most recent episode to hear us talk about:

• How we simultaneously rage against consistency and attribute our success to it

• The relationship between consistency and cultivating trust with your audience

• Ways to build better (for you) rhythms in your business

• What to do when your launch plans line up with a major (horrible) event

• Why it’s important to get off the do-or-die, boom-or-bust, sell-or-go-bankrupt hamster wheel

• Cute baby sheep, gardening and cooking as tiny balms for the present moment

Cooking & Baking

The granola I’ve been making is a simplified version of this one. I use oats, almonds, cinnamon, vanilla, coconut oil, and maple syrup.

No other recipes to share this month, since baby sheep tending has totally taken over my life/brain and there has been very little kitchen creativity as a result. Alas, worth it!

Your turn!

What’s been working well for you lately? Do you have any reading, listening, watching, or cooking recommendations of your own to share? Tell us, tell us!

<3

Nic