“Monday 5 Things” ….. 14 Years & Counting …..
November 10th, 2025 by D. Paul Graham
Ever curious and always amused by the quirks of life, join D. Paul Graham each Monday for more M5T pondering.
Celebrating 14 Years of Monday 5 Things, D. Paul Graham Self Portrait, Circa 2024
Fourteen years. Seven hundred twenty-eight Mondays. Roughly 3,640 individual “things,” not counting the drafts that never made it, the ones I rewrote at 1:12 a.m., or the handful of M5T ideas so vulnerable that they remain in a folder titled “maybe one day.”
What began as a simple 5 bullet list has led to a Monday ritual that on any given week can be part pep-talk, part personal compass, part semi-confessional, or part wanting to share an overheard conversation. It has been a labor and labour of love in the truest sense, whichever side of the border you read from.
Some weeks ideas rush out like water from a hydrant. Other weeks it feels like chiseling inspiration out of concrete. But no matter the mood, the location, the time zone, or the chaos of life, M5T went out, and you showed up.
And because you keep showing up, I keep showing up. So, this week, instead of 5 things for your Monday, here are 5 things because of you.
1. YOU MAKE MONDAY LESS, UMM, MONDAY. For a lot of people, Monday has never been the homecoming queen of the calendar. It’s there every week, uninvited, insisting on structure, and always feeling a little too eager after the weekend.
And yet you’ve welcomed M5T as part of how your week begins. The fact that you read these words, whether from a bed, a desk, an airport gate, a car line, or between sips of ambition-flavored coffee, makes Monday feel less like a cliff and more like a launch.
Some people start with yoga. Some people start with morning journaling. Some people start with prayer. You add to those with a weekly list from a man who sees life through metaphors, memories, moments, and motivations. I don’t take your time lightly, or for granted.
2. YOU’VE LET M5T GROW, EVEN WHEN IT GOT WEIRD. M5T has been many things over the years. A list of insights, a mini sermon, a postcard from the road, a therapy session disguised as prose, and more than once, a philosophical detour involving any number of experiences I’ve had. You didn’t unsubscribe when I waxed poetically. You didn’t question the weeks I got philosophical, or when my writing may have been slightly out of alignment. You didn’t run when I went through the “everything is a metaphor for existentialism” phase. You allowed M5T to be alive not frozen in a single tone or format. You’ve let the writing change as my life did. And in a world quick to punish inconsistency, you rewarded evolution.
That’s a gift you’ve given me. And I’ve never missed the weight of it.
3. YOU READ EVEN WHEN LIFE GETS LOUD. You have a full life. A real life. Not a curated one. And yet, you allow five things to continue to earn a few quiet moments in the noise. With inboxes overflowing, phones buzzing, calendars stacked, and the world always tugging on the sleeve of your attention, you still make space for this. And that turns an email into something more meaningful than content. It becomes connection.
I don’t measure the success of M5T in list size, click rates, or open percentages. I measure it by someone who reads it in the middle of their real, imperfect life, and says, even if to themselves, “this mattered today.” My heart swells and eyes leak at times from the messages you send me. That is enough to keep me writing 728 more.
4. YOU REPLY. YOU SHARE. YOU FORWARD. M5T has never been marketed, boosted, hash tagged, or pushed through an algorithm. It has grown through word of mouth, forwarded links, tapped shoulders, and “hey, this made me think of you.”
Some of my favorite replies are when messages begin with: “I don’t know how I got on this list, but I’m glad I did…”
That’s how readers became a community, without ever meeting. A quiet network of people who all receive the same five things on the same morning and interpret them differently based on the lives they’re living, at that moment in time on a Monday.
The fact that you’ve shared this, without asking, without being prompted, without being rewarded, says everything about the kind of humans you are. And you are the only humans I ever want to write for.
5. YOU’VE MADE ME A BETTER WRITER, THINKER, AND HUMAN. If no one were waiting on the other side, I might’ve stopped long ago. But knowing someone was there every week, changed everything.
You’ve made me pay attention to life instead of sleepwalking through it. You’ve made me collect meaning instead of moments. You’ve made me turn experience into language, and language into something I hoped would land gently in someone else’s Monday.
You didn’t just receive the writing. You shaped it. You didn’t just read the thoughts. You refined the thinker. You didn’t just watch the evolution. You caused it.
Because of you, I show up. And showing up hopefully changes us all.
Here’s to 14 years of you. Whether you’ve been here since edition No. 1 or you joined last week, thank you. For reading. For replying. For forwarding. For letting M5T be part of your Mondays and part of my life’s timeline.
Year 15 begins next Monday. Same time. Same place. Still grateful. Still caffeinated. Still writing.
© 2025 D. Paul Graham, All Rights Reserved
Paul continues to deal with more gratitude than grammar.
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