I’m putting together a slideshow for the upcoming rehearsal dinner and found some photos from my freshman year of college. Those stickers on the side of this giant computer are hilarious. That’s the computer and dorm I created most of AbsolutePunk from. 🤣
The Secret to Adam Ottavino’s Calm: A Little Black Notebook
James Wagner, writing at The New York Times:
Before every game, one of the linchpins of the Yankees’ talented bullpen, Adam Ottavino, finds a spot in the clubhouse to sit and write.
To combat the six-month mental minefield of self-doubt that is baseball’s regular season, Ottavino has found solace in a daily routine of writing in a journal. In it, he tracks how he cares for his powerful right arm, how he sharpens his focus, how he plans to attack an opposing lineup and, sometimes, he gives himself a pep talk by writing such messages as, “I am a great pitcher.”
“Sometimes you slip into that natural state that you’re getting beat out there,” Ottavino said. “Or maybe you’re starting to doubt your ability a little bit. Sometimes it’s important to remember how good you really are and the many tens of thousands of good pitches you’ve made.
“So I just try to remind myself, ‘I can do whatever I want with my breaking ball.’ Or, ‘I can throw perfect fastballs.’”
There’s some good advice in here for just life in general.
Wedding invites went in the mail this week and now it’s starting to feel even more real. 📷: @jessicahillphoto
@hannahleland got me this print as a gift a while back, and I finally got it framed and up on the wall. (It’s the Portland skyline with a little Spider-Man swinging through.)
What Americans Do Now Will Define Us Forever
Adam Serwer, writing at The Atlantic:
In the face of a corrupt authoritarian president who believes that he and his allies are above the law, the American people are represented by two parties equally incapable of discharging their constitutional responsibilities. The Republican Party is incapable of fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities because it has become a cult of personality whose members cannot deviate from their sycophantic devotion to the president, lest they be ejected from office by Trump’s fanatically loyal base. The Democratic Party cannot fulfill its constitutional responsibilities because its leadership lives in abject terror of being ejected from office by alienating the voters to whom Trump’s nationalism appeals. In effect, the majority of the American electorate, which voted against Trump in 2016 and then gave the Democrats a House majority in 2018, has no representation.
I Think About This Quote All the Time
If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie — a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days — but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.
🤷🏼♂️ I am just going to keep posting these cause they make me smile and happy. I don’t usually like posting photos of myself, cause I’m self-conscious and weird about my private life. But these photos make my heart feel full, so I’m gonna share a few. 📷: @jessicahillphoto
So happy with how these turned out. After spending these years down in the city with Hannah, seeing the skyline is full of such wonderful memories. 📷: @jessicahillphoto
Met @hannahleland here almost 7 years ago. Truly changed my life in ways I could never put to words. 📷: @jessicahillphoto
GoRuck Having a Sale
GoRuck are having a sale. They’re the best backpacks in the world and I really like their packing cubes as well.
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I’ve been waiting for this one for a while. One of the most underrated albums and it still holds up all these years later.
