HeyJaredThe Penny
Essays and short fiction on things overlooked and undervalued, brought to you by a hopeful skeptic.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 4
- Latest publication
- Sep 25, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Sep 1, 2026
Latest issues
Sign up for The Vesta (opens the original)
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Hello, friends! I mentioned in my last Postcards installment that I was working on a new fiction project. If ghost stories are your thing, please sign up below. The first post will go live Tuesday, 9/29. You can expect 1-2 installments per week. My other newsletter, “The Penny,” will continue occasional publication (2-3 times per month).<img class="em
Postcards, vol. 3 (opens the original)
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LegacyIn the latest sign of our Age’s cruelty, Annie Dillard died last week, just a few days after Wendell Berry. I find myself one Anne Lamott or Marilynn Robinson funeral away from lying down in the street in despair. I’m also thinking about legacy. Every artist does, I suppose. All my writer friends want to create something that will outlast them, that will carry meaning for another person after we are gone. I doubt Berry or Dillard were any different in that regard. Otherwise, why keep at it
Postcards, vol. 2 (opens the original)
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Interesting Not long ago, I was accepted into a local cohort of business and nonprofit leaders. It’s a group of high achievers, almost all of whom are trying to answer a vexingly complex question: how can I be successful? I am among the oldest members of the group, with fewer working years left in which to build my career and less anxiety about what shape it takes. Sure, I would like to get promoted and make more money and feel important in my community. But at my stage of life, it’s pretty clea
Postcards, Vol. 1 (opens the original)
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HardwoodsLast spring, I decided to reclaim some of the wood from a barn we’d taken down after we moved. The plan was a simple butcher-block top for the island in our kitchen—which turned out not so simple. My raw material was a stack of old oak studs, rough hewn and of inconsistent dimensions. I had to rip them into 1” planks, glue those together, and plane them down to something nearing square. I thought I’d be finished in a few days. I’m going on three months.I have a tendency to rush projects
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