What is Pound Foolish?
Pound Foolish is a collection of self-serious thoughts on how to get the little things in life right without losing sight of the bigger picture. It’s personal perspectives and advice served up a few hundred words at a time. Welcome in—I’m glad you’re here.
Posting Schedule
Tuesday - the How To…, covering some aspect of cultivating a life well lived
Friday - the Weekend Read, a roundup of cool things I’ve read and want to share
End of Month - the Last Page, my diet of movies I’ve watched, books I’ve read, or other longform media of note I’ve consumed over the month
What’s This All About Anyways?
Human beings are questionful creatures.1 We’re constantly looking for guidance from our friends, our family, and—increasingly—our technologies. However, I believe that any question you might think to ask is just a funhouse mirror reflection of the question how to live? After all, each of us enjoys this mortal coil but briefly. What to do with ourselves with our limited time here must be our chief concern.
Unfortunately, instead of living with our own ticking clock front of mind, we often end up mired in the muck of the day-to-day. It’s easy to over-optimize the endless small matters in life. It’s even easier to ignore the larger questions of purpose, meaning, and connection as the years pass by. In other words, all of us can end up living penny wise—but pound foolishly—as we spend the limited currency of our time trying to buy meaning.
I’m no exception to this. Rather, I’m something of an expert on getting the small things right and big things wrong. This Substack is my attempt to share some of the mistakes I’ve made along the way and the lessons I’ve learned from them. That might sound serious, but most of my attention is on the small touches that give the art of living its pop and dazzle and how they connect to timeless values.
Pound Foolish is—like all of us—a work in progress. I hope something in it will be valuable for you on the journey.
Rapid Fire FAQ
Does the world need another Substack? No.
Where does the name come from? It’s a riff on the old adage “penny wise, pound foolish.” More about that here.
What qualifies you to share your opinions & advice? Truly nothing. Any advice I give is almost certainly based on making the same mistake a dozen times first.
What’s with the statue? Where’s its nose? That’s the head of Antonius Pius, the “Ringo Starr” of the Five Good Emperors, and it’s at The Getty. The image was conveniently public domain and reminded me of “cutting off your nose to spite your face,” a spiritual sibling phrase to “penny wise, pound foolish.”2
Say Hi
Shoot me a note at marston.p.quinn@gmail.com if you have an idea, question, or complaint. I respond to everything I get.
Wiktionary says it’s a word and I like the sound of it. Besides, people can make up words. Shakespeare came up with ones like alligator and gossip and—unfortunately—skim milk.
Greco-Roman sculptors weren’t trying to be avant-garde by purposefully leaving appendages off their creations. These statues are just really old and have suffered the wear and tear of time. You’ll commonly see the nose missing but arms, torsos, and legs are also common victims. The same can’t be said for the genitalia on statues, which did suffer from targeted removal over time when in the hands of more prudish owners.
