Ciao!

I’m Margaret Ryland.

Ciao! I’m
Margaret Ryland.

I write a newsletter called The Uncommon Journal, have grand plans to host a podcast (mostly as an excuse to talk to all the wildly interesting people I know and share their stories), design fonts, and by day am marketing director at the Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture.

My life’s goal is to cultivate a rich, beautiful, and fulfilling life, and contribute to a resurgence of the primacy of Beauty in society.

Threads of Beauty amidst the wildness of life

In reality, my life feels—like most others I suspect—to be a somewhat haphazard collection of events, interests, and relationships; tied together by an invisible thread called Beauty.

A dried rose in a whisky bottle, a canon film camera, and a pack of cigarettes lie on a rustic windowsill in front of a forest

Deliberate & Candid

This is a place to celebrate and encourage others (and myself!) to embrace the unexpected, the taking-the-road-less-travelled, the life lived “deliberately” (to echo Thoreau), to cultivate greatness in the small circles of our lives, and to let ourselves be so full of Life and Light that we draw others to the Light from which it all comes.

A dried rose in a whisky bottle, a canon film camera, and a pack of cigarettes lie on a rustic windowsill in front of a forest

Here are some of the things currently on my plate. Creating a tapestry of life from diverse yet connected threads.

The Uncommon Journal

You’ll like this if you enjoy a semi-regular virtual, at-scale letter. Which is why I sort of hate the concept, but here we are.

Blog

A collection of notes: a place to explore new ideas and old, get on my soapbox, and sharpen my understanding of the nature of things. 

Font Design

As a child, I thought everyone had a favorite font. This year I’ve taken this nerdiness to a whole new level and started to design fonts.

Some hills I’ll die on

  • No virtual community can replace the goodness of a life shared in physical proximity with a community of friends, neighbors, family, even enemies.
  • Everyone should keep a journal for posterity: you are “somebody to someone” and your story will become their history. They deserve to know.
  • Beauty isn’t just an afterthought or luxury reserved for a chosen few. It is a human pathway to the divine, and should be baked into the very fabric of our daily lives.