Dear Reader,
Happy New Year’s Eve!
On the cusp of a new year, I’ve thought a lot about what going forward should mean for Second Drafts, particularly due to the investment of time required for each newsletter (usually anywhere from 6-10 hours/week). I have no illusions I’ve hit the ball out of the park each and every Friday, but I’m confident I’ve not struck out looking too many times, either.
With regard to the newsletter, here’s what I’m committing to in 2022:
Friday email (free)
News analysis
Feature essay
Posterity post
Book/link recommendations
Additional monthly content ($5/month or $50/year; includes but not limited to)
Special monthly podcast (20-30 minutes)
Special monthly guest essay or interview
Special monthly in-depth book review
What does this tangibly mean for you, dear reader? Three options:
To receive Second Drafts as is, you don’t need to do anything; you’ll get the Friday newsletter for the same great, low price of free. Thanks for reading!
To receive more on a monthly basis, just add a paid subscription of $5/month or $50/year for the Friday newsletter and the monthly extras.
To receive all of the above and support my writing even more generously, subscribe with any amount above $50/year.
As incentive, if you sign up annually for $50 or more before Friday, January 14, I’ll send you a Second Drafts limited edition sponsor T-shirt to say thanks (rough first draft below):
Thanks for your support of Second Drafts this past year! And, as always, thanks for reading.
Craig
P.S.: As a reminder, you’re welcome and encouraged to email me directly with feedback, ideas, links, etc. at cmdunham [at] gmail [dot] com. Just know that, unless you specifically tell me not to, I may quote you here (though it will always be anonymously).
Second Drafts: The Year in Review
On January 1, 2021, I re-launched Second Drafts - the blog I’d kept off and on for 15 years. The difference this time around was the weekly newsletter component that landed content in subscribers’ inboxes at 5 a.m. (MST) on Friday mornings in addition to being archived on the Web.
My goal with Second Drafts was two-fold: 1) pull together and archive all my past online writing in one place - the Substack platform; and 2) write and publish a new weekly post to connect directly with readers around news analysis, a feature essay, a post from the past, book recommendations, random links of interest, and other various and sundry items for 52 weeks straight.
This is week #52. It may not seem too big a deal, but if each issue was only a thousand words long (and many were longer), that’s 52,000 words - or about a 200-page book. So, congratulations! If you read Second Drafts each week, you read a book this year!
Here now, on December 31, 2021 - the last Friday of the year - are your favorite Second Drafts, according to analytics provided by Substack (you can check out the full archives for any other posts of your liking).
Four Most-Emailed/Shared Posts of 2021
The following four posts were the most-emailed/shared Second Drafts posts of 2021:
#1: “Lost in the Air” (July 30; 1,121 opens) - this one had the benefit of plenty of mid-summer controversy and an accompanying raucous discussion before and after on Facebook; still, I’m surprised this is number one, but I get it.
#2: “When the Weather Forecast Calls for Humility” (February 19; 1,107 opens) - not sure why this meditation on Lent and humility ranked so high, but I’m glad it did (probably something to do with the humble Texans quoted in the piece.)
#3: “Is There Room to Be Gay in the PCA?” (July 16; 1,050 opens) - I spent two weeks researching and writing this one and have heard from multiple elders, as well as others outside the PCA, that it was a helpful summation of the situation.
#4: “Becoming What We Behold” (February 12; 992 opens) - This one was a transcription of a chapel message I shared at Montana Bible College last winter, with several good videos in the newsletter worth watching.
Four Personal Favorite Posts of 2021
While I’m at it, here are four of my personal favorite Second Drafts posts from 2021:
#1: I got to share the story of my family lineage on my 50th birthday, which coincided with a publishing day (“From Whence One Comes” (February 5).
#2: Megan’s guest post (“Empty-Nest-Obia, No Empty-Nest-Opia”) about preparing to become empty-nesters hit all the feels for me and others (July 2).
#3: Peaches’ guest post (“Peaches Unleashed”) with thoughts about relating to God and a few wise words for the holidays wasn’t bad for a dog (December 10).
#4: Megan and I recorded our first podcast (“From Meet-Cute to Matrimony…and Beyond”) in honor of our 25th anniversary and had fun (December 17).
Four Top Readers with Most Email Opens (for the Year)
These four readers were tops on the list of “most email opens,” meaning they either repeatedly opened the emails themselves to read and re-read, or they forwarded them on to friends who opened and read them as well. Ironically (or not) these were also the top four readers who interacted with me via email most often, which I appreciated:
#1: Reid (Illinois): 1,154
#2: Matthew (Texas): 989
#3: Michael (Montana): 767
#4: Becky (Florida): 643
Each of these faithful readers will receive a year’s subscription of new content and perks - a $50 value - in addition to the normal Second Drafts content in 2022. Thanks!
Home Alone: The Difference Between Isolation & Solitude
“I like the idea of isolation. I like the reality of it. You realize what you are...not that the knowledge is inevitably rewarding.”
Joseph Brodsky, American poet
I should probably pretend here for a moment that I’m in Covid isolation agony.
I am in Covid isolation. But I’m not in agony. And I haven’t been. Not really.
I write this from a small but comfortable stuffed chair in a small but cozy upstairs hallway with a ceiling barely six feet high. To my right is my pre-adolescent bedroom - a small 10’x10’ room with a bed in the middle; to my left are steep stairs down to where people are - that is, those to whom the house belongs (i.e. my parents).
Megan is staying in the adjoining 10’x10’ room upstairs, but between trying to keep touch with our four daughters and son-in-law now staying in town at my aunt and uncle’s house, she’s done little but sleep there. Mom, Dad, and Megan have each had two Pfizer vaccination shots along with its respective booster; I got the J&J in May.
When we flew out of Bozeman on Friday, I had a cough that I thought was merely a symptom of spending six hours the previous night rearranging multiple bookshelves of dusty books (a personal habit of mine this time of year). The cough persisted on Saturday, however, so I took a nap before my two sisters and their families came over for Christmas dinner. I noticed the food didn’t taste quite right, but I assumed it was because I had a cold. After dinner and the gift exchange, I went to bed early.
On Sunday we went to my parents’ morning church service, after which I came home and took another nap. That night at my aunt and uncle’s, I noticed I couldn’t taste the pizza. On Monday, we had a college graduation party for my nephew at lunch and I couldn’t taste anything then, either, so that evening, I skipped the second part of the graduation party (we party a lot in Pike County) and opted for a Covid test.
Sure enough, I tested positive for the ‘Rona and have been quarantining ever since.
Queuing Up the Quarantine
You can do a lot by yourself when you suddenly don’t have a lot to do with others. So far, I’ve taken a few walks around the farm (the weather has been chilly and damp in lieu of cold and snowy), and watched a few movies, including the new Netflix pic Don’t Look Up with Leo and JLaw - a quirky critique of government denial and ineptitude that reminded me of Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks!, the latter of which I re-watched because, well, why not? I’ve no plans to go anywhere.
I’ve watched video feeds of a nephew’s two basketball games that I had planned to attend in person. When neither of those produced a victory for the good guys, I watched a fuzzy YouTube video of the 1981 AA state championship basketball game, in which the Quincy High School Blue Devils walked all over a helpless Maywood Proviso East team, capping a 33-0 season and instilling in then-10-year-old me a love for fast-break basketball, the Douglas brothers, and short-sleeved (rather than tank-top) uniforms. (I’ve got a post brewing as to whether QHS’ 1981 team would have been as, more, or less dominant in the 3-point era, but that’s another quarantine.)
Despite being sore and achy, I’ve not wanted to waste my newly-available window of time to write; for inspiration, I watched a 2017 documentary on the recently-deceased writer Joan Didion, whose 2007 memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, I had read and enjoyed (the documentary was only so-so). I’m just now getting around to writing, but with my absent senses of taste and smell, I wonder if my thinking and writing buds are off as well? (Some have argued as much even when I didn’t have Covid, but I suppose that’s another topic for another quarantine as well. Ahem.)
I’ve spent quality time on the phone with my friends at United Airlines (we’re very close) about pushing back my flight in order to honor both the spirit and letter of the ever-changing CDC law. I’ve cancelled playing substitute piano at church on Sunday as I won’t be home in time (Tuesday night) to make that work. I’ve coordinated the girls getting rapid tested so they (and their relatives) could enjoy as much of a normal Christmas break together as possible (all results were negative). And I’ve partied from a distance in honor of my oldest daughter Maddie’s 23rd birthday on Wednesday, though sans birthday hug and functional taste buds for homemade birthday cake.
For an introvert with wi-fi and a dog, it hasn’t been all that bad.
Perspective Is Everything
I could see how quarantine could go bad if I were on my deathbed with little hope or ability of ever seeing loved ones again. I can’t imagine the pain so many families have endured these past two Covid years as a result of not being able to say goodbye. I’m not saying death is or should ever be a performance, but when it’s time to go, most of us will die better with an audience (even a reluctant one) than on our own without one. Why? Because we might think less about ourselves with a few others in the room. I find grace in that.
In the history of the world, plenty of people have died alone - some, I’m sure, even with dignity - so we need to be careful not to say more than we mean. While I don’t wish for anyone to die alone, it happens, has happened, and will happen as long as there are people in the world for it to happen to; it’s just life (or in this case, death), and we have to learn to deal with it. Perspective, indeed, is everything.
It’s like the parents whose only topic of conversation (usually on social media) is lament for all that their soon-to-graduate children have missed because of Covid. How easily we forget that having to wear a mask to a prom or even miss (God forbid) a sports season is not the end of the world as our kids know it. Families impacted by genocide or wars fought on their homelands are instructive for us in terms of gaining perspective. I could give you a hundred books to read toward this end, but how about just starting with One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn?
I think about this every time I’m tempted to complain about losing my senses of taste and smell. Eating without enjoying what you’re eating is one thing; not having anything to eat at all is quite another. Yesterday, while writing this, Megan brought me up a spoonful of chocolate chip cookie dough. I couldn’t taste any of it and was tempted to complain, but instead chose to be thankful that something as glorious as chocolate chip cookie dough even exists. When I consider the rest of the world, that I have even had enough spoonfuls of chocolate chip cookie dough across my lifetime to try to triangulate the taste of that particular one is a grace I don’t deserve.
Again, perspective is everything (or at the least can sometimes be helpful).
Perspective Gone Missing
If there has been anything missing from the Covid wars of the past two years, the concept of perspective has got to be it. Too many have let the virus dominate their lives; others have not taken its various strains seriously enough. Hundreds of thousands have died, matched by hundreds of thousands who have suffered in other ways. Depending on your perspective - that word again! - we have sacrificed public health on the altar of personal freedom, or vice versa; regardless, no one is coming out a clear winner, as only the coronavirus seems to be taking victory laps.
We are now creating mandates to combat mandates, which seems redundant and a waste of time on both sides. We have vaccines that, for the most part, seem to be working - though not for everybody, and they shouldn’t be forced as such - but neither are they eliminating the virus altogether, which so much of the messaging has (stupidly) seemed to promise, while so many of the vaccines’ critics have (strangely) seemed to hope against.
If there have been side effects of the Moderna, Pfizer, or Johnson & Johnson vaccines, one could argue that each has come with its own version of schizophrenia that - get this - doesn’t require vaccination…or maybe it does! - to induce psycho-like symptoms in members of the American population. It seems worse in bigger metropolitan areas than in more rural ones, but the news media and Internet are no respecter of crazy; when it comes to emotional exploitation, both are equal-opportunity instigators.
I’ve seen Christians try to (wrongly) make masking and vaccination legalistic criteria of whether one is “loving thy neighbor,” reducing the reasons for not doing so - many of which are complex - to simply being “selfish” and “sinful,” when nothing could be further from the truth. On the flip side, plenty of believers hold masked and vaccinated brothers and sisters in a sick “Christian” contempt (the worst kind there is) for somehow “compromising” their faith by getting a shot, which is equally asinine.
Neither route is a righteous one. We can do better, folks.
Perspective Reacquired
Megan and the girls felt, despite the CDC shortening on Monday their required quarantine from 10 to 5 days after being symptom-free, that me flying out with them today was too soon; thus, Peaches and I will stay holed up here on the farm until we head back to Bozeman on Tuesday. I have plenty to do (processing all the monthly and annual Second Drafts subscriptions, for example!) and will work remotely Monday.
If I’ve been reminded of anything through this brief quarantine, it’s that extended time away should happen for reasons beyond just Covid; to reacquire and maintain perspective, we need time alone. As Jesus modeled (Mark 1:35) and calls us to come away with him (Mark 6:31), time alone isn’t something of which to be afraid. It’s true, isolation can feel like forced loneliness; solitude, however, is being alone without being lonely, for the Spirit of God dwells within the Christian:
“In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians 1:13-14
The truth of this reality - that the Spirit of God abides with me and I with him (1 John 4:15) - is what I’m hoping to concentrate on in my remaining days of quarantine. Covid-19 or not, it’s been a good reminder, and one I offer you as you head into 2022.
Happy New Year!
Post(erity): “A Fascinating Exercise in Dealing with Ambiguity”
Each week, I choose a post from the past that seems apropos of something (of course, you’re always welcome to search the archives yourself whenever you like).
This post titled, “A Fascinating Exercise in Dealing with Ambiguity,” wasn’t that long ago - March 12, 2021 - but it’s one of the only posts in which I’ve actually written on the pandemic. The entry covers the first year that Covid-19 was officially “with us,” so there’s probably more content than you want, but it’s a good summary. An excerpt:
“I look back at these past two months of social distancing and quarantined isolation and I lament that I haven’t done more with this time at home. True, I’ve read a lot of books and written some letters and the like, but most of my spare time (which, sadly, includes plenty of my work time as things are slow) has been spent also on Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix. I finish the days with little to show for them, and I wonder what I could have, would have, should have with those weeks, the likes of which I may not get again.”
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