Hey there!

Do you ever think about roads? I think about roads a lot. It's the little things, you know? The thousand factors, little histories, and decisions made that put a particular road in a particular place for a particular reason, connecting two points, an end and a beginning, and all the points between. They're very human, very technological, very cooperative things, really. I'm not a particular fan of car-centric design, but I remember hearing once, when I was young, that basically every driveway in the U.S. is connected by roads, and that's stuck with me ever since. There's probably a metaphor in there somewhere.

But I'm getting sidetracked. (The dizzying swirl of bureaucracy that comprises modern roads often sidetracks my imagination: I've actually touched on that here before.) No, today I want to talk about one particular part of roads: mile markers. Milestones. These days they're ubiquitous bits of metal that fade into the background during long drives, but across time and space and in different cultures—dating back to at least the Romans—they were literal stones, pillars, obelisks, and statues marking the distance and often providing a space to rest; that was important when journeys were undertaken with only the power of feet and hooves and muscle, and so limited to five or ten or twenty miles a day. We don't often think of mile markers that way, anymore, having navigation built into our pocket computers and satellites shunting us around and machines that will carry us for hundreds of miles in a day, but they still act as invisible signals, background infrastructure that influences where rest stops and interchanges and exit ramps go.

Milestones have, in fact, become so ingrained in our culture and thinking that we've analogized and abstracted them to be synonymous with making progress on pretty much anything (this is probably the direction you thought I'd go from the start; let's say I took the scenic route to get here). They're a technology and a meme (we're talking the old school definition of meme here: an element of culture passed from person to person) that shape a lot of modern discourse and, perhaps naturally, work culture. It's useful to think of a project as a road, connecting two points, and to track progress along the way. Again, it's a very human, very thinky thing. But I can't help but to feel there's a tension inherent to the modern conception of a milestone—a flaw in our understanding.

I think this probably has something to do with what our culture has become; the society we're a part of. We're living in the information age, in an attention economy, in an intensely competitive, profit-motivated, neoliberal culture packaged (and branded!) with a gold-foiled veneer of meritocracy which feeds us the story that we can be more productive, always, of course—that computers or AI or biohacking or a new dishwasher will allow us to timemaxx away our problems; that it's our fault when we can't peel our eyes off the glue-trap screens corporations paid billions of dollars to make perfectly sticky; that when we do somehow overcome the obstacles and squeeze more seconds from our days, we should immediately invest them by working more and/or turning our hobbies into side hustles—and then we can go go go, see-do-achieve the next thing forever and ever, ad infinitum. We can continue to rocket past the milestones, staring at the map on our phones, going where the satellites tell us to go as fast as we possibly can.

Maybe the tension I feel is none of that. Maybe it's all of it. In any case, I keep asking myself: why am I in such a hurry to reach the end of the road?

Sometimes I think these newer technologies—the phones and satellites and cars—have corrupted the older ones—roads and milestones—and so too our understanding of the milestone metaphor. Driving—passing a few dozen, a few hundred mile markers in a day—makes them much less meaningful. Hardly worth noticing. It seems to me they'd matter more if I saw three or five or ten on a good day of travel; if things happened at a more human pace and scale.

This is pointing out a problem without offering a solution, though. I don't know how to get off the treadmill either. I finished the third draft of my novel the other day. It took me two months and almost a couple hundred hours of work. It certainly ought to be a milestone. Probably the kind with a rest stop attached. But I didn't stop; didn't rest; felt like I needed to zoom on by, because there's probably a better place to stop and stretch a little further on, or, really, I could just press ahead and get to the end, and then I'll let myself rest, certainly—

But again, I find myself asking: why am I in such a hurry?

I don't know. I don't have answers. But what I do know is that I can stop for a bit—for today, at least—and have a little respite. I deserve that—and what difference will a day of rest and a bit of self-love make at the end of the road?

☕ Project Curses

As mentioned above: I finished Draft 3! And several days ahead of schedule at that! Let's take a moment to appreciate the progress bar:

Aaaaaand now let's say hello to the next one:

Sigh. Yes—there's always more to do. Over the past few days I finished what I hope will be my final revision guide, which contains all the targeted edits I have planned for Draft 3.1. Based on some early implementation, I think this part of the process should go quickly. My goal is to complete Draft 3.1 by the first week of July and begin Draft 3.2—the penultimate draft before querying the novel—shortly after. Towards the middle of July I'll begin sending out Draft 3.2 to readers in parts, with a goal of receiving feedback by the end of August.

This brings me to probably my most important point of the day: I'm putting together a new group of early readers! This group will include both Beta Readers from the last round who are open to reading the book a second time (be on the look out for a message from me later this week!) PLUS a handful of new readers. I'll put out the official call, along with a sign-up form, in my next newsletter on the 21st—but feel free to reach out via text, email, or phone before then if you're interested.

For this round I encourage readers of all stripes and inclinations to consider signing up! If you're interested and/or on the fence, I'll make two important points:

• First: The draft you'll read still won't be "final". I'll make tweaks based on this round of feedback. If I'm lucky enough to get an agent and publisher, I'll almost certainly need to change even more. If you'd prefer to just read the final, polished product at the end of the process, I'd recommend holding off.
• Second: This round of reading is not meant to be as intensive or in depth as the first round. I'll still welcome any and all feedback, of course, but that's not what I'm looking for this time. Instead, I'm interested in general impressions based on a typical reading experience—so maybe a few notes here and there (if that!) and a short call or email at the end summarizing your thoughts.

Think about it! This would still be a significant investment of your time, obviously—ten or twelve hours of reading over about six weeks, plus sharing your feedback—but it's meant to be much more approachable. Again, if you're interested, the sign-up will go out in two weeks, but feel free to get in touch or ask questions before then. I'm excited to share the story with more people!

🎧 Listening

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​Cure for Paranoia | I've been so focused on writing lately that my reading and watching have slipped a bit. That's okay, because it means the sole focus of this section today is on Cure for Paranoia, and that's the way it should be. This Dallas-based group, led by front-man Cameron McCloud, is the 2026 NPR Tiny Desk Contest Winner—and, like, yes. Yeah. They absolutely should be. I can't do their music here justice here; just give them a listen. The video linked above is their Tiny Desk performance, but I'd recommend watching their entrance to this year's competition too.

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TL;DR – RECYCLING ALUMINUM CANS SAVES US FROM 15 ROCKET EXPLOSIONS A DAY.

That's a little click-baity, but I want you to actually read this.

Today's Show & Tell is another Green brother video, because I'm predictable. But listen—this one does a really good job of explaining something about the environment and, frankly, people, that's usually really hard to grasp. The whole video is worthwhile, but you can start at about 11:53 if you want to hear Hank explain just the important bits.

Here's my summary:

Last week there was a lot of discourse online around a Blue Origin rocket exploding on the launchpad. This was, admittedly, pretty spectacular, but also frustrating for a lot of valid reasons. A common response was a retreat into doomerism about climate chaos—people feeling defeated because, "if billionaires are going to let rockets explode for basically no reason, what's even the point of me trying? Why would I recycle or [insert other thing]?" This is a totally valid, very understandable reaction—but it misses some important context about the scale of human industry. Hank Green does the following math to illustrate the point:

• The rocket explosion generated approximately 825 metric tonnes (825,000 kilograms; 900 US tons) of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalents, i.e., the combination of the pollutants that contribute to climate change adjusted using their global warming potential).
  • For a slightly more familiar measurement, this is the equivalent of the CO2e generated by 3-4 transatlantic flights (kind of crazy in and of itself).
• Aluminum is our most recyclable material. Making a can from recycled aluminum uses about 5% of the energy as making a can from entirely new material. Every aluminum can we recycle saves about 98.7 grams (less than 0.1 kg) of CO2e.
• This means that to offset the 825,000 kg of CO2e from the rocket explosion, we need to recycle 8.4 million cans. This sounds like a lot, but...
• In the United States alone, we use more than 100 billion aluminum cans each year.
• Currently, we recycle about 46 billion of those cans. At 98.7 g of CO2e per can, that avoids 4.5 million tonnes of CO2e each year.
• This means that at our current rate of aluminum recycling, we avoid 5,500 rocket explosions worth of CO2e per year, or about 15 rocket explosion every single day.
• But we could do better. If we recycled the other 61 billion aluminum cans we use every year, we could avoid another 6 million tonnes of CO2e emissions—another 7,300 explosions—for a total of 12,800 avoided explosions each year, or 35 per day.

What the point of saying all this? The point is to admit that individual actions don't mean much. The efforts of a single person, or a single household, will not and cannot tip the scales. But we, as humans, are very, very bad at wrapping our heads around just how many people and households there are. If we make caring for the planet through recycling and other actions into the norm, the expectation, the easiest thing to do, the default—that matters.

Individual action isn't important; collective action is essential.

One caveat is that not all actions you can take are equal. Right now, for instance, plastic recycling isn't that effective, for a host of reasons. Do it when it's easy, obviously, but for the time being don't feel guilty about throwing away your peanut butter container. Aluminum and cardboard, though? Those recycle super efficiently, and as we've illustrated, scale matters.

The same goes for so many other actions. You know 'em, you love 'em. Carpool when you can. Try to passively heat and cool your home. Eat one less serving of meat each week. Etc., etc. No, you alone doing these things doesn't make a difference. But if we do it?

Anyway—sorry to both preach at you and make you look at math. It's only because I love you, and the planet, and people in general. Have a great day and see you back in your inbox soon :)

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