Hugh Hollowell

Trying to build a a better world.

7 things for 2021

This essay published

New year, new journal notebook in Evernote

In the last 12 months, I wrote exactly 2 blog posts on this website, so, if nothing else, 2020 taught me that lack of time to write is not my biggest barrier to writing. However, I did write many sermons and more than 90 newsletters, so it wasn’t a total loss. But still, long form writing is something I want to be better at, so I need to do more of it.

I learned some other things about myself in 2020 as well, some of which I talk about below. The way I have it set up is the thing I learned is in bold, and the action I want to take as a result is in italics.

As I plan what 2021 will look like, I am trying to optimize around these seven things:

I crave variety

I like to mix things up. I like to have a week where I fly to a different city to give a talk, then come home and work in my garden, then have a meeting with city leaders, then write my newsletter, then work with my interns, then go watch a movie with my wife and eat in a nice restaurant.

Instead, for most of last year I stayed home, had some zoom meetings, cooked almost every meal I ate, and sat at my computer. Every day felt the same. I hated that.

I crave variety, and have always felt a bit ashamed of that. Seeking variety is a typical ADHD symptom, and people (like me) who have lots of interests appear flighty to the rest of the world. But now I know it isn’t just that I like variety, I need it. So, expect Hugh’s public life to look a lot less focused. 

I need a schedule

A friend once said that ADHD is the craving of structure and the inability to create it. I feel this in my soul. If I don’t have a schedule, I can literally sit on the couch all day, lost in a book on whatever my current interest is, or doom scrolling on Facebook, or pursuing whatever current passion project I am curious about rather than doing work people actually pay me to do.

So I need a schedule. But a loose one, because I crave variety, and if the structure is too rigorous, I will rebel and abandon it.

I do my best work when there are ways I can integrate it into a routine. I think this is one reason I like newsletter writing so much – Every Monday and Friday, I have to hit send on that day’s letter. That deadline, and that it happens every week, brings a routine with it. In 2021, I will try to work to schedule more. 

Daily practices are good, but I hate to meditate

One thing I added in 2020 was the habit of going for a 2 mile walk every day. It’s a brisk walk – a bit above leisure, but not a race-walk pace, either. I usually use that time to listen to an audio book that I only listen to during the walk, as a reward for doing it. I refuse to beat myself up if I miss a day, and so I get my walk in perhaps 95% of the time, which is good enough for me.

I tried really hard to pick up meditating this year, and tried all the methods I could find – apps, guided meditation, breath, lovingkindness, and so on, and while I liked some of them better than others, and see the value, I just can’t manage to keep it as a practice.

I like practices other than daily, too. Church on Sundays is a practice, as is the practice of my writing on Mondays and Fridays for the newsletters. I have high rates of compliance with those as well.  In 2021, I will try to tie things that I find meaningful to regular practices.

Everybody is too many

My projects I worked on this past year that meant the most to me were my newsletters. I have tried to think of why that is and I have come to understand it is because of the intimacy of the medium – I am writing directly to you, and you can reply directly to me, and nobody is looking on, like they would be in a Facebook post.

But also, I just like the idea that I am doing a project for a select group of people. This is the same reason I like having my work supported via Patreon. Less than 80 people finance all my creative work, and so I don’t have to make everyone happy – I just have to make things that appeal to those 80 people.

But the freeing thing is that the converse of this is also true – I don’t have to make everyone happy. Some folks are gonna get pissed off. Some folks won’t like me, or what I write. That’s fine. If I had 250 folks that supported my creative work at the levels those 80 do, I could literally accomplish every financial goal I have.

So I don’t need to make all of the 7.8 billion people on the planet happy – I only need to find 250 of them that my work resonates with enough for them to support it. In 2021, I will try to pander less, and find more ways to make my audience narrower. 

I like parenting

We had four different foster kids in our house in 2020, and one of them stayed with us for nine months. I loved all of it.

I like the routine of it all. I like the stolen moments with the kid while you are in the car together, the conversations you get when you hear how they view the world, the opportunities to pass along what you know, the chance to shape another life, the whole new perspective they give you. I like it all.

I would love it if we could adopt a kid. Or two. But adoption is hella expensive. So at the least, fostering another kid long-term is important to me in 2021.

I am a maker

My dad died in 2020, due to COVID. I will have more to say about that later, but among everything else he was, Dad was someone who made things. He liked woodworking, metal working, auto mechanics, computers, electronics. He was truly gifted in his ability to figure things out.

I was a clumsy kid, and as a result, felt like the “making” gene had missed me. But some introspection last year has shown me that this is not true. After all, last year I made a workbench, a chicken coop (two of them, actually), added flower beds to the house, built a swing and arbor for the yard, a deck, and a fence for the side yard. And that is just the “big” stuff.

I like making things. I’m decent at it. In 2021, I will embrace my identity as a maker more. 

I’m OK not being a big deal

Let’s get one thing straight – I was never a big deal. But over the last 10 years, I turned down book contracts, traveled around the country lecturing, wrote for national publications, and was interviewed by national media. I was a subject matter expert in my field, and was paid to consult with organizations, colleges, and churches.

None of that is true right now, and wasn’t true for all of 2020. and hasn’t been true really since 2018. I have spent a lot of time and ink wondering who I was if I wasn’t all of that. But while 2020 was a dumpster fire in so many ways, it was also a year I began to feel comfortable in my own current reality as a pastor, director of a tiny non-profit, publisher, home owner, organizer, and parent. I don’t have big goals. I’m not a “thought leader” anymore. I’m just Hugh. And in 2021, that will be enough.

* * *

2020 was horrible, and I am happy to be shot of it. But if I can take things I learned from it and make 2021 better, at least it won’t be a total loss.

Doing The Next Thing

This essay published

Like a lot of people, I haven’t been sleeping well lately. And by lately, I mean the last three months.

I mean, I don’t know why. After all, there is a global pandemic, millions of Americans are out of work, and mass civil unrest. Why would any of that cause me distress?

Seriously, though, it’s been pretty bad.

But last night, exhausted, I went to bed at 9:30, and was sound asleep by 9:45, and slept through until 5:30, which is more or less my normal wake up time. I got up, made coffee, and sat on the couch, listening to birdsong as the dawn crept in.

I have a long list of things on my to-do list, but this morning I am going to enjoy the feeling of being rested, of having a clear head, of having a slice of beauty before the day begins.

The clear head allowed me to think – something that has felt rare lately.

The last three months have been pretty brutal. I am a community builder by vocation, and what it takes to survive a pandemic and what it takes to build a community are at odds with each other. It’s a perfect storm – a new non-profit, a new city, a new community, and a global unemployment crisis means that some of your projects get put on hold, and some of them die, and some of them have fates that are of yet undecided.

The only way I have survived it has been to create projects – things with definite starts and ends. Projects give me structure, and you don’t have to worry about the future – you just do the next thing.

Building a chicken house. Planning a rainwater catchment system. Building a bookcase. Planning a deck. Starting a newsletter. Starting a podcast. Learning how to edit audio. Learning how to edit video. Doing some contract work.

And I guess, beginning to blog again.

I’m not sure what the end of all this *waves hands* looks like.  I’m not sure what the future, at any reasonable distance out, will look like. So, instead, I am just doing the next thing.

A new thing

This essay published

A mentor told me once that the key to success was to do something – anything, really – and then notice what is working, and do that, and to notice what isn’t working, and to not do any more of that.

It sounds simple, and in truth, it is. It just isn’t easy. Even the man who told me that, an extraordinarily successful man financially, had a personal life that was a hot mess. His wife has contempt for him, his kid hates him, his peers talk about him behind his back. But regardless, the advice, if followed, works.

Do more of what’s working.

For the last five years, I have run a small newsletter. Doing no promotion or ads, I have built up a loyal following with off the charts reader engagement. I have done this consistently over the last five years, week in and week out. I think I’m pretty good at it.

I started it because a publisher told me I should have one, to build a platform. I always had this idea in the back of my head that it would be good to have for when I publish that book, or when I appear on Oprah, or whatever. It began as a means to an end.

But along the way, I discovered that I am actually pretty good at the newsletter format and that it suits me for several reasons.

  • There is a definite deadline.
  • There is a definite theme.
  • There is a format.
  • There is a definite audience.

All of that is different than blogging.

Here on my blog, I can write whatever I want, when I want, how I want, and whoever wants to read it, can.

And that is sort of the problem, at least if you have a brain like mine. I need constraints.

I didn’t want to believe that was true. I want to believe I can sit down, full of discipline and hope, and pound out reliable content. But that isn’t me.

I need a schedule. I need a format. I need the constraints that come with a newsletter.

I started a newsletter so that I would have an audience when I became a writer. But along the way, I figured out that my newsletter was what I was writing. My newsletter was, slowly, incrementally, creating a body of work.

So this winter, I spent a lot of time reflecting, and looked for what was working, and what wasn’t. And by any measure, my most successful creative endeavor ever is my newsletter.  So what would it mean to do more of that?

So I’m starting a new newsletter, in addition to the existing one, called Hopeful Resistance. The focus is different, and so is the format. Here is how I am currently describing it:

The world is a hot mess right now.

And outrage, while appropriate, is by itself impotent. The better world we dream of won’t come from hitting refresh on Facebook so we know we are not alone in our anger. No, that world will come about as a result of the countless small decisions we make in our daily life. We resist the world on offer by living into the creation of a new one.

We resist by living.

This is a newsletter about how we do that.

So that’s the deal. A new newsletter. It will be an essay format, and it will come on Fridays so you will be able to read it when you have more time. Maybe over coffee on Sunday morning, say. And it will be an exploration of how we build a better world than the one in which we currently live.

I hope you will sign up here.

It’s free*. No ads. Unsubscribe whenever you want.

*Like all my creative efforts, it’s made possible by my patrons, who give a little each month so the rest of us can read it all ad-free.

Nostalgia for a different past

This essay published

I don’t know if you have spiritual practices that others don’t view as spiritual practices, but I do.

Like cutting the grass. Once I realized there is substantially no difference between walking the labyrinth and cutting the grass with my push mower, I came to see cutting the grass as a spiritual practice.

Another one I have is looking at my Facebook Memories. It is like a perpetual journal, where I can see what was on my mind on this day for each year for the 12 years I have been on that platform. And sometimes I cringe at what I said, and sometimes the urgency of my post is lost, and now it just seems inane, but always I end up with things to reflect on in my quest to find healing for myself.

And today, I was reflecting on the lost relationships I have, most especially with the people I grew up with. What led me to this was noticing someone with whom I had went to High School and who had once commented on something of mine from 10 years ago, but who was no longer my Facebook friend. And then I noticed he was Facebook friends with other people from my childhood that I didn’t know he knew (different circle of friends) and that made me reflect on A) How small the world of my childhood was and B) How shut out of that world I am now.

As a child, I had the curse of being the kid who read, and while that helped me substantially with trivia contests and ACT scores, it also made me dissatisfied with the small world in which I lived. It gave me a desire to see more of the world than the 30 acres on which we lived after inheriting it from my grandmother, and the small church with my grandfather’s name on the cornerstone as the chair of the building committee, and the sure thing job I could have had as a lineman for the Power company my cousin was the head of.

So, I left. In fact, I once overheard my mother describe me that way to a friend – Hugh was the one who left. I didn’t really have a plan, and it showed. I was a Marine for a while, and did all sorts of jobs from lineman to firefighter while I was a wandering scholar for a while, and I was a husband for a while until I wasn’t, and then I sold securities and a hunk of my soul at a chance at the brass ring, only to find it was bitter in my mouth and required copious amounts of alcohol to make it palatable to me.

But all of that happened because I was the one who left.

I could have stayed. I would have had a good paying job. I had a ready-made social circle, and a name that in that community meant a level of privilege I have never felt elsewhere. My world would have been smaller but more comfortable, and definitely easier.  I would most likely have married someone I had known for years and years, have bought a house not far from mom and dad, most likely have ended up on the best end of the Republican party (but maybe not, as my home county went for Obama and Hillary in the last two Presidential elections), and been an active member of the Methodist church of my childhood.

But none of that happened, because I was the one who left. I met, and knew, and loved people who were different than any of the people we knew growing up. I read books that wouldn’t have been permitted in the small library of my home town. I saw parts of the world that are a mystery to some of the people I grew up with, and I knew both plenty and want, and learned from both experiences. And because of all of that, I came to care about things that were not concerns of the world in which I was raised.

I am the product of Scots-Irish honor culture, and we tend to feel strongly about things. For some of us it is the rights of the unborn, and for others the rights of LGBT folk to marry those they love, and for yet others it is SEC football, but we all feel strongly all the same. And because I was the one who left, I learned to feel strongly about different things.

And because we all feel strongly, it often leads to feuds at worst and passive aggression at best, and it meant that I wasn’t a member of those circles any more. I will never again spend a crisp morning in a deer stand with people I have known my whole life, or have a job in the community that nurtured my family for more than 100 years, or be welcome – fully welcome – in the church of my childhood.

I like being me. But sometimes, like this morning, I wonder what it would have been like had I not left. Had I been content with where I was from, and decided to lean into being a member of that community. If I had 5 acres with a horse in the back lot and a workshop and a pick-up truck, if the only wine I had ever drank was Boone’s Farm, if going to Memphis was as far as I would travel most years, if I was just an active member of a church where my kinfolk were buried in the cemetery next door.

A friend once said she had nostalgia for a different past, and I think that is what came over me this morning – a nostalgia for a different past.