Thursday Things #127

Foolish choirs, airport clothes, good-doers and rotten tomatoes.

Feb 06, 2025

Every other Thursday, I share a handful of good things I'm loving, reading, watching, listening to or just discovered. AKA the random good stuff we’d talk about over coffee or text if we had one another’s phone number. I'm glad you're here!

Somehow I’ve arrived at a place of six writing deadlines at one time, each needed by various February dates, and I’m here to tell you we’re jumping riiiiiiight to the Good Things below because the current word count is sitting at 0.

0 x 6.

Cool cool cool. 😂🙃

Work and LifeThings have been w i l d (and will be until late April ‘tis the season LOL) (cue me reading this and watching/praying this a lot of times). I’m so grateful for a job, for the people I get to serve behind-the-scenes, and I genuinely love what I do—but ohmygoodness, I can’t seem to find any free hours after work to then write more words for non-work spaces.

But a promise is a promise, and you know I’m here for the Good Things on Thursdays. I’ve said it before and it continues to be true all these years of round-ups later: These take 3-7 minutes to read (according to Substack magically figuring out a reading speed of each piece), take 1-2 hours to put together (I could go into the whats and whys but I’m pretty sure that’s beyond boring, bless it), and yet even though the math isn’t math-ing on that one, we’re #127 in and I have no plans to stop because this lens is one I don’t want to lose.

Even when life is life-ing. Even when the world is wild. Even when new bad news floods the feeds and good is hard to find. Even when, even there, even then.

This intentional looking for the good is a boomerang gift set to a two-week clock: there will be more goodness. And more. And more. And it might be silly or small or super random, but it will be there.

Here are a few recent finds—

The Six Triple Eight.

“Wow.” [Insert silence due to being so moved.] “That was… phenomenal. So well done.” - me and my parents as the credits rolled

Maybe we don’t know what we’re talking about because the Rotten Tomatoes score isn’t great (it IS nominated for an Oscar, though, and the Google reviews are super solid at a 4.7 average), but it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen on Netflix in a long time.

“The 6888th Central Postal Directory was the first and only Women’s Army Corps unit of color to be stationed in Europe during World War II. When they were deployed to Europe in February 1945, the 855 women in the 6888th were handed a backlog of 17 million pieces of mail, some labeled with incorrect or incomplete addresses, and asked to ship it out in six months. Their motto? “No mail, low morale.” The task bore high emotional stakes; the families of servicemen at home had not received word from their loved ones in months. Working in three eight-hour shifts, the women of the 6888th set out to work. Still, they faced nearly insurmountable odds. Despite the importance of their responsibilities, the battalion was put in segregated housing and relegated to poorly maintained buildings often lacking light and heat. Through sheer will and ingenuity, they remained undeterred, creating a community of their own, complete with a mess hall, hair salon, and refreshment bar. Within 90 days, they had accomplished their mission — in half the time allotted.” (Source)

Green flags and boundaries.

Both of these are sitting in my “recently saved” Instagram post folder1, and though I saved them on different days, seeing them next to each another was unexpectedly helpful.

This post on the difference between boundaries and walls had me actually clapping. No really, I put my phone down and clapped. I fully realize that probably sounds super silly but I’m okay with that. 😂 I’ve spent a lot of time reading, learning, and talking about the topic of boundaries over the last couple years. I have Very Many Thoughts, but there are 6 writing deadlines and so today sure isn’t the day. Sharon’s thoughtfulness, clarity, and brevity here is really good, as is her caption. (Swipe on the post to see the second slide.)

This list showed up in the Explore tab and instantly had my attention. As we intentionally work hard to notice, name, and not overlook the red—do we sometimes unintentionally miss the good and forget to notice the green? Reading through the list brought people and memories to mind, while also leaving me with the lens of looking for something good.

scrawledstories

A post shared by @scrawledstories

(Quiet good-doers is the line for me. Reading those words in that order, as opposed to do-gooders, really struck me.)

Find us here singing in a foolish choir.

We sang this at church on Sunday and I can’t get it out of my head.

The lyrics… just, every word.

Easy, breezy, beautiful (comfortable).

(I might be a little too proud of that ^ pun, not gonna lie.)

I don’t fly that often, but when I do, it’s a many-hours-situation. In nearly 15 years of living in Birmingham, I can only think of one time I’ve had a direct flight. I’m not complaining, I’m really not, because the other side of the coin in having a small airport is that I’m usually through security and at my gate within 15 minutes. (Really.)

Howeverrrrrr. Between multiple flights + typically 1-3 hours of a connection in another airport, I always find myself wishing for something to wear that doesn’t look like pajamas but feels like pajamas. A travel outfit, if you will, that is super comfortable, inexpensive, and doesn’t require much brainspace (I want to easily throw it on every single time, so it needs to be acceptable whether I’m traveling to see family (casual clothes) or for work (casual-ish because #airporttravel, but nicer)).

Enter: this 2-piece set from our favorite fancy boutique, Wal-Mart. I’m headed to NYC later this month (I’ll post pictures on my Instagram account, if you want to follow along!) so we’ll see how it holds up, but I have very high hopes.

The Wal-Mart website seems to be down at the moment, but hopefully that direct link will be back up quickly. The item is ‘Time and Tru Women’s Ribbed Sweater Top and Wide Leg Pants Set’.

There are plenty of other 2-piece sets out there, which leads me to think that for once, I might be wearing a trend while it’s trendy instead of about four years after the fact. I’ve ordered (and promptly returned) a few options, only keeping this and one other that’s more velour tracksuit, less easy-breezy lightweight non-pajama pajamas. (Both are from Wal-Mart so kudos to them on the softest classics!) I can’t speak to The Set that has gone viral—I’m sure you’ve seen it shared or in ads all over the place—it’s probably great but it’s also $$$$, so you can bet you’ll catch me sprinting through terminals, squeezed in B23, or searching out the airport map for a coffee shop while joyfully wearing this $28 situation.

Okay, I’m off to start writing something for 1 of the 6. :)

I’d love to hear your thoughts though—would you click below and add a comment with a GREEN FLAG, inspired by the list above?

Good Things