A weekly collection of things I read, watched, listened to, noticed, wondered about, and occasionally became completely obsessed with.
This week feels like a good example of what happens when I let curiosity decide what gets my attention.
There’s an advanced reader copy I signed up for almost entirely because the premise and cover made me need to know what happens. A podcast episode full of the kind of practical life advice I could listen to all day. The beginning of two new learning projects; one involving tarot, the other taking me back into the part of Appalachia where my grandmother grew up. And somehow, Lizzie Borden has entered the chat.
None of these things necessarily belong together, which might be exactly why I like them here.
01 — Reading: The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman
I’m currently diving into an advanced reader copy of The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, and this is one of those books where the combination of the cover and the premise immediately got me.
I don’t have a grand analysis yet because I’m still reading, which is part of the fun. Right now, I’m just deeply curious about where the story is going.
I also have a few other books in rotation because apparently I remain incapable of being a one-book-at-a-time person. Those are living over on the Rad Book Haus page, but First Lady Freeman is the one currently making me wonder, Okay, what exactly is about to happen here?
02 — Listening: Emma Grede’s 44 Rules for Life
I’ve been listening to Aspire with Emma Grede, specifically her birthday episode, “It’s My Birthday. Here’s Everything I Know to Be True at 44.”
In it, she shares 44 things she believes about life, business, money, work, marriage, motherhood, success, mistakes, and the way she actually makes decisions.
I love her podcast in general because I almost always walk away feeling inspired rather than merely motivated. There’s a difference. Motivation can make me want to overhaul my life by Tuesday. Inspiration tends to leave me with one or two ideas I actually want to carry with me.
I especially like hearing from people who are willing to talk about the thinking underneath their decisions; not just the polished result afterward. The beliefs someone has built their life around are usually much more interesting to me than another list of productivity habits.
03 — Learning: Tarot, One Card at a Time
I’m also beginning our first Curiosity project: learning tarot.
The plan is simple. Each week, I’ll pull one card and spend some time actually learning it—not racing through the deck or trying to memorize seventy-eight definitions.
And I want to learn tarot in the way I actually use it. I’ve never been particularly interested in treating a card as an unquestionable declaration of what is happening or what will happen. I’m much more interested in what it brings up for me.
What do I notice?
What does it make me question?
What meaning am I assigning to it, and why?
For me, tarot is much more useful as a tool for reflection than prediction. Sometimes having an image, archetype, or question placed in front of you gives you a way into something you were already thinking about but hadn’t quite put into words.
I’ve also found a couple of tarot resources I genuinely like, which means I can stop Googling every card and sorting through seventeen contradictory explanations. A small but meaningful victory.
04 — Exploring: The Folklore of Pennsylvania Appalachia
Our first official Rabbit Hole is taking me into Appalachian folklore, but probably not the Appalachia most people immediately picture.
I’m specifically interested in western Pennsylvania Appalachia, where my grandmother grew up.
There is obviously a much broader Appalachian storytelling tradition, but I want to narrow the lens. I’m curious about the ghost stories, superstitions, family beliefs, traditions, warnings, and bits of folklore that existed in that particular corner of Pennsylvania.
Especially the things people may never have called folklore at all.
What did families just know?
What were children warned about?
What stories got repeated?
What did people believe without ever stopping to categorize it as a regional tradition?
And because my grandmother is still here to tell me about growing up there, this rabbit hole gets to be more than internet research. I can ask what she remembers. That might be the part I’m most excited about.
05 — Watching: Monster: Lizzie Borden
I’m also watching Monster: Lizzie Borden on Netflix, which is not normally the kind of thing I would have expected to end up here.
I’ve only recently started leaning more into true crime, and even then, I generally prefer watching trials over documentaries. I like hearing the facts of a case, seeing the evidence presented, and forming my own understanding rather than beginning with someone else’s interpretation of what happened.
And until very recently, I knew essentially nothing about Lizzie Borden. When I say nothing, I mean nothing.
Somehow I had mentally placed her much closer to modern-day serial killer territory until I saw someone compare one of Taylor Swift’s looks in the Fortnight music video to Lizzie Borden and realized I might have several gaps in my historical knowledge.
A coworker recommended the Netflix series and warned me that it was “different.” She was correct.
What I did not tell her is that it is apparently my particular kind of different.
I grew up loving Tim Burton, and there’s something about the show’s creepy, stylized, slightly strange approach, with moments that are funny if your sense of humor happens to work that way, that immediately clicked for me.
Apparently this week’s lesson is that I can now add nineteenth-century murder lore to the list of things capable of becoming a rabbit hole.
What Has My Attention
Maybe there doesn’t need to be a lesson every week. Sometimes what we’re paying attention to is enough.
A book that makes you curious. Someone whose ideas make you think differently. A practice you want to understand on your own terms. A family history worth asking about while there’s still someone around who remembers it. A strange television series you didn’t expect to enjoy.
That’s more or less what The Weekly Unrushed is for. Not everything has to become useful, but some things can simply be interesting.
