Rebekah Sanderlin

Rebekah Sanderlin (RS) is a writer (screen, books, copy, essays) and a marketing strategist. The older I get, the more motivated I am to invest in quality pieces that last for years. And nothing I have ever owned has brought me as much utilitarian joy as my Bosca leather portfolio. Why is this interesting? I was not committed to quality when I bought the portfolio. Quite the opposite. I was 16 years old and it was 1993, the golden age of shopping malls. Rather than desiring a hand-stained, Italian leather writing implement made by a 100+ year-old company, I desperately wanted to make out in a shadowy corner of Percy Warner Park with a boy named Josh/Jason/Brad. (They were all Joshes, Jasons, and Brads back then.) He worked in the Abercrombie & Fitch store in the Bellevue Mall—the very top of the teenage hierarchy in 90’s Nashville. I reasoned that my most likely route to Josh/Jason/Brad was climate controlled and open from 11 am until 8 pm, 9 in the summers. WITI Classifieds:We are experimenting with running some weekly classifieds in WITI. If you’re interested in running an ad, you can purchase one through this form. If you buy this week, we’ll throw an extra week in for free on any ad. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop a line.The Omega Project: created by US Special Operations Forces to help the world improve their health and fitness. Check out their analog journals for nutrition and fitness.January is a great month to begin working with a coach to meet your goals. Gain insight, accountability, and support. Subscribe to Mission.An antidote to a polarizing world. Stories, tools, and ideas on exploring, relating, and being. Subscribe to The Intermodal Spirit.Stat Significant is a weekly newsletter featuring data-centric essays about culture, economics, sports, statistics, and more. Check out Stat Significant.BrXnd is a new project at the intersection of brands and AI. Have a play with the first experiment: AI brand collabs. Try it now.Back then, malls were the Studio 54 of suburban teenage debauchery. All the good drugs were dealt in the parking lot and everyone was hooking up in the network of secret hallways. Oh, you didn’t know about the hookups and the secret hallways? Orange Julius girls, Chess King guys, even the folks from Spencer Gifts were getting down and dirty in network of hidden highways coursing through the inner walls of the mall. And I wanted in. I set out to find a (non-food service, non-kiosk) job because the more expensive your store, the higher your mall clout. A kiosk worker wouldn’t even consider asking out a first key at Victoria’s Secret. That would just never happen. Unfortunately, the only high-end store hiring was Georgetown Leather Design. Selling calf-skin bombers and full-length leather trenches on commission in Tennessee in July was not a financially wise move for me, but it did land me a spot in the upper echelon of retail dating. I made no money that summer. None. And I never cracked the Abercrombie boy code. Best I could tell, that rarefied world was reserved for girls who worked at The Limited. The closest I got was getting hit on relentlessly by a kayak-obsessed clerk at Eddie Bauer. Instead, I spent all summer trying to sell shearling coats meant for a Montana winter to women who wandered in on their way to The Body Shop. They sweated through their baby tees and Daisy Dukes and looked over my shoulder at the door while I explained the difference between European and Egyptian lamb.  And then one day my boss had me mark some new items on clearance. Among them, a luxurious, dark brown Bosca portfolio. I did the math. With the clearance price and my 35% employee discount, it would still cost me $75. I gulped and went for it. It was the only thing I bought during my entire career as a leather salesperson. That fall, I carried my portfolio with me to Model U.N., where I was named Chief Justice of the International Court, thank you very much. In college, it went to all my classes with me, from my early Biblical Archaeology studies to my eventual major in Journalism. It went with me every day on my first journalism job, interviewing everyone from a city council members to a dominatrix who later sued me for defamation. Go figure. It went with me to law school—for just one year because law school, it turns out, is stab-yourself-in-the-eyeballs boring. There’s a little window in the portfolio for a business card and I dutifully switched out my cards at my second, third, and fourth journalism jobs. But then, in March 2003, I slid a tiny candid of my husband and I dancing at our wedding into that window, and that snapshot has been there ever since. The nicks and scratches on the surface of my portfolio, the discolorations in the leather from my sometimes sweaty and trembling, sometimes clammy, sometimes bored and fidgety hands, tell my professional stories during three fascinating decades of life much as my scars and stretch marks tell of my personal trials and triumphs. I give Bosca portfolios now as graduation presents to new adults who probably never use them. They almost certainly don’t value theirs like I value mine. Yet. And that’s okay. They’ll have to go through their own Josh/Jason/Brads, their own changing priorities and careers, before they discover that some things are disposable and others are meant to be kept. (RS) –Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Rebekah (RS) —Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing (it’s free!).

The Portfolio Patina Edition 

Rebekah Sanderlin (RS) is a writer (screen, books, copy, essays) and a marketing strategist. She’s been involved for years in veteran and military family advocacy as detailed below. If you missed it, check out her excellent Portfolio Patina edition from last week. -Colin (CJN) Tell us about yourself. Most days I live about four lives.I’m a mom to three kids and a dog and a cat. I’ve been married for almost 20 years to a longtime-but-recently-retired Special Forces Soldier (aka, Green Beret). Much of my professional life has been spent in journalism – investigative reporter, columnist and editor, and I still do some freelance journalism. My work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, CNN.com, Military.com, NPR, and a bunch of other news outlets. And Chris Papasadero, K.S. Anthony and I write the OODA Soup substack, among other projects. I’ve been extremely involved for years in veteran and military family advocacy, helped start two national military family non-profits (Blue Star Families and the Military Family Advisory Network), got to speak onstage at events with President and Mrs. Obama and last year I was appointed by President Biden to serve on the board of the USO. But most of my time each day is spent working as a freelance strategist and copywriter for an experiential marketing agency, and I write books and screenplays during the lulls between meetings. I’m currently wrapping up a proposal for a memoir, just self-published a middle grade fantasy novel with my kids (BAD ELVES) and have a TV series and two screenplays currently in development and another being shopped around. I was born and raised in Nashville, Tenn. and all of my huge family is there. But now I live in Virginia Beach, Va. after moving with the Army to Fayetteville, NC; Niceville, Fla.; and Colorado Springs, Colo., and before that, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. and Memphis, Tenn. I love where we live now, but at some point nearly every day I miss every other place I’ve called home. WITI Classifieds:We are experimenting with running some weekly classifieds in WITI. If you’re interested in running an ad, you can purchase one through this form. If you buy this week, we’ll throw an extra week in for free on any ad. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop a line.Now on The Intermodal Spirit: The St. Agnes Journal—one man’s dispatches from 8 months on a 70-person, mile-wide island. Subscribe now.BrXnd is a new project at the intersection of brands and AI. Have a play with the first experiment: AI brand collabs. Try it now.Supercharge your lifelong learning. Upnext lets you save any content, and actually get to it later. Supports articles, podcasts and video! Try Upnext for freeStat Significant is a weekly newsletter featuring data-centric essays about culture, economics, sports, statistics, and more. Check out Stat Significant.January is a great month to begin working with a coach to meet your goals. Gain insight, accountability, and support. Subscribe to Mission.Describe your media diet. Two words: controlled chaos. I start each day with The Morning, a New York Times newsletter, and I do the Wordle, the Mini Crossword (my best time is 24 seconds), and the Spelling Bee (until I quit. I rarely find the panagram). Then I skim the 1440 Daily Digest—my favorite news digest. After that I check Twitter. I read WITI most days, and skim Perfectly Imperfect and Blackbird Spyplane so I can feel like I’m 32 and live in Brooklyn. Then I play NPR roulette while I get ready, meaning I say, “Alexa, play NPR’s Morning Edition” and listen to whichever local NPR station she chooses. Today it was Birmingham. Then I listen to The Daily podcast while I walk my kids to the bus stop. Then I start work, which tends to include a lot of research every day. I work from home, so I don’t have a commute, but we live on a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay and I listen to podcasts while I paddleboard. My best friend hosts the excellent true crime podcast Suspect, which I just finished binging.I flip through lifestyle glossy magazines while I eat lunch: Real Simple, Southern Living, maybe Rovers – because my husband and I are classic Land Rover enthusiasts (we have four!) and I write for Rovers occasionally. I subscribed to The New Yorker for a while but reading it felt like work so I kept the tote and let the subscription expire. And then I watch a movie or a bit of scripted, never reality, television before bed. Lately it’s been The White Lotus and Echo 3. What’s the last great book you read? THREE WOMEN by Lisa Taddeo blew my mind. It’s gorgeously written and the concept—the true stories of three totally average women’s sex lives—is brilliant. What are you reading now? BROTHER ALIVE by Zain Khalid, which came to me through Alexander Chee’s subscription box service from Boxwalla. (Highly recommend the book and the subscription box.) And, non-fiction, I’m reading STORY by Robert McKee, because it’s well past time that I did. And it really is as good as everyone says. What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication? Books, I read front to back, but I will quit reading if I’m not into it. Magazines, I let fall open and start with whatever I see first. Who should everyone be reading that they’re not? Uh, me? What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone? I check Tides Near Me daily to find out when the water behind my house will be at high tide so I can go paddleboarding. And What3Words saved me a few months ago when I found myself paddling against wind and current, managed to get to shore without drowning, and used it to tell my husband where I was. Plane or train? I’ve never lived in a city with decent train service, so it has to be planes. But I love the idea of trains. What is one place everyone should visit? Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. It’s a volcanic caldera – a giant, fertile, pit 3,200 square miles in size. I’ve never been anywhere so beautiful and teeming with life. It feels like the Garden of Eden. Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.  I got really interested in the supernatural and spiritual worlds after my dad died and his spirit began to visit me in dreams and in daily life. (I’ve got videos!) Shortly after we moved to Virginia Beach, I discovered that this area has an unusually high number of spiritualists—psychics, mediums, tarot card readers, etc.— and is home to the Edgar Cayce ARE and a 100-year-old spiritualist church. About once a month the ARE and the church each host “psychic fairs” which are like a farmer’s market for psychics—you show up and the spiritualists have their own tables where you can sign up for a reading, reiki, whatever. It’s my favorite way to spend a Saturday. Now I’m taking baby steps towards becoming a medium myself because…because I might as well add a fifth life. (RS) —Thanks for reading,Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Rebekah (RS) —Why is this interesting? is a daily email from Noah Brier & Colin Nagy (and friends!) about interesting things. If you’ve enjoyed this edition, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you’re reading it for the first time, consider subscribing.