Advance confidently in the direction of your dreams
RWL #427
Greetings from the Last Homely House! We are officially on break, and it is a holiday, so that’s where I am. TLW and I had a rowdy New Years Eve binging through the last three episodes of season 1 of Bad Sisters (recommended - made me super uncomfortable because I can’t stand watching people make bad decisions, but it all works out well in the end. If you like shows like The Office, this will be tame.) and went to bed at our usual 10PM. I had wanted to repeat our tradition of going to Rye Beach to watch the sun rise, but we had a pretty steady rain, so it didn’t seem worthwhile to make the trip. Instead I decided to bake us some biscuits and make scrambled eggs with some leftover cream from Christmas cooking. People get intimidated by biscuits, but they are super easy, and don’t require a lot of time, and they are such a treat hot out of the oven with honey or your favorite jam. I’ll put my recipe in Read.
I am excited about 2025. At work, I’ve been overseeing the creation of a new Bachelor’s degree in Public Health, and a major overhaul of our MPH program - both of which I think are going to be awesome! I am also in initial talks with a publisher to write a textbook - more on that as it comes.
I’m excited about Flourishing in the World - the newsletter and podcast. I had to take some time off from the podcast through the fall because I was frankly overwhelmed with other things. But I have the next episode coming out this weekend. And the FITW newsletter I am hoping to use as the basis of a book, with the Worthy Life Model at the center.
My weekly goal tracker basically fell apart last year. I basically got overwhelmed by all the things and just had to let go. I’m lining up a more modest set of weekly goals for this year and hope to be able to stick with it. Modest is the key that I have learned from the habit literature. If you make your daily goals easy (and realistic), your more likely to exceed them. If you make your goals too hard, you are more likely to give up before you begin.
Looking back over 2024, I’m pretty happy. I had a daughter get married to a young man I respect and like. All of my kids continued to live and work toward worthy goals of their own. TLW did great at her new job. We visited London together for the first time and did a little traveling to other places. Everything wasn’t perfect and didn’t all turn out the way I hoped, but it was overall pretty good. I hope you are pretty happy, too.
I left 2024 with a quote from Walden. Let me open 2025 with one as well:
[I]f one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Advance confidently in the direction of your dreams in 2025, my friends!
As we roll into 2025, as usual, I am willing good for all of you!
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Read
What: Bonica’s Baking Powder Biscuits
Why: Cuz they’re delicious. And easy.
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ cup cold butter
¾-1 cup cold milk (more fat is better - add some half and half or cream if you only have skim to make the measure - this is not diet food)
Cream (or milk) for brushing.
Preheat oven to 450 F.
Get a large cookie sheet and line it with parchment paper.
You can make the dough with a food processor or by hand. I prefer the food processor.
Food processor option:
Put the flour, salt, and baking powder in a food processor and blend.
Slice up the stick of butter and add to the food processor. Pulse until the butter is blended into the flour - it should look sandy.
No food processor option:
Put the flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl, mix well.
Slice up the stick of butter and add to the flour/powder. Use a pastry blender to chop the butter into the flour until it looks sandy. (same result as food processor, just takes more time).
Add about ¾ cup of cold milk to the sandy mix. Stir until just blended. You want a sticky but not gooey consistency. Add more milk if you need to, but don’t just add the full cup.
Throw about a ½ cup of flour on the counter. Dump the dough out on the flour. Use your hands to make the dough into a disc about ½ inch thick. You might have to turn the dough a couple of times in the flour to keep it from sticking to the counter.
Use a biscuit cutter or a glass with about a 3-inch diameter to cut biscuits from the dough. Place biscuits evenly on the cookie sheet. As you cut, you will have excess dough. Spread it out again and cut more biscuits until you don’t have enough to cut another biscuit. Form the last biscuit by hand.
Brush the tops of the biscuits with cream (or milk), then pop them in the oven for 12-14 minutes. The tops should be just golden, with spots of caramel, when they are ready.
Serve with honey or your favorite jam. Or anything else you please - they’re your biscuits.
**
Watch
What: TED Talk - Catherine Price: Why having fun is the secret to a healthier life (13 min)
Why: Thanks to SH for this pointer. This weekend I have my next Flourishing in the World podcast coming out, and it is focused on Playful Learning, the idea that we learn and retain better if we are in a state of play.
Price isn’t focused on specific outcomes, other than fun. But she draws on some of the same ideas - and specifically says we experience fun when three things are happening:
Playfulness + Connection + Flow
She says you can see when someone is having fun because they “light up from the inside” - I like that.
Fun comes from doing things for the sake of doing - it is fundamentally atelic (see RWL 300 for my discussion of telic vs atelic).
**
Listen
What: The Art of Manliness, How to Hack the Habit Loop to Build a Better Life (49 min)
Why: Habits are fundamental for real change and real outcomes. Better to set out to start a new habit than a specific outcome. With good habits, the outcomes come.