Archive (Page 2) • The Lizzie Wade Weekly • Buttondown

Should I get back on Twitter?

October 16, 2022

Long time newsletter readers will remember that a little over two years ago, I soft blocked Twitter from my life and my mind. I didn’t delete it, but I...

August 14, 2022

Well, I got COVID again, and it’s weird, again. At this point, writing about it or anything else feels impossible, but I hope that won’t be the case forever....

A parable on two wheels

One of the experiences I’m proudest to have cultivated during the pandemic is that of surrender. As a recovering perfectionist control freak, it’s valuable...

Today I’m shocked to find myself recommending an article from the New York Times, a publication that has been bugging the hell out of me lately. I will not...

The counterintuitive power of forever

Editorial note: You can now read my Weird Covid essay in Slate! Thank you to Shannon Palus for helping me polish it up for a wider audience. If you’ve been...

I tested positive for Covid on January 20, 2021. This was before vaccines were available beyond healthcare workers and the very elderly, at a time when all...

Why I write this newsletter

Lately I’ve been thinking about how and why I write this newsletter, and I’ve gotten some questions about it too. Here are the basics: I usually write a...

Since I wrote about getting off Spotify a few weeks ago, I’ve been exploring other ways to listen to music. I thought I’d share a few discoveries and...

Black and white

This newsletter has been a Four Thousand Weeks fan account for a bit now, and I’m sticking with the theme this week, sort of. I say “sort of” because I’m not...

Three myths of time management

Myth 1: You have enough time to do everything you want to do. Sorry, you don’t. No one does. The hard truth is that there will never be an end to your to-do...

The problem with burnout discourse

Long time readers of this newsletter will remember my obsession with the monks of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, initially sparked by this article by...

Reclaiming my taste

Last week I canceled my Spotify premium account, a step on the way to deleting it altogether. I’ve gotten off a lot of apps and platforms over the last...

Why I have to start at the beginning

While exploring your warm-ups a few weeks ago, I promised more about my conflicted relationship to outlining. It turns out my relationship to it is even more...

On post-plague disappointment

For my apocalypse book, I’m researching the Black Death. It’s probably the most stereotypically “apocalyptic” event I’m exploring, in terms of its sheer...

A round-up of your warm-ups

Thank you to everyone who commented or sent me notes on your writing warm-ups! No one does it exactly the same way, and the diversity of approaches was...

What’s your warm-up?

February 27, 2022

My husband is a musician, and I’m always learning new things about the creative process by watching him work. Lately I’ve been thinking about scales, and the...

Finally some helpful book publishing advice

February 20, 2022

Writing a book is an emotional minefield. Not only are you doing the hardest intellectual work of your life, but also at regular but random intervals every...

Three ways writing a book is different than covering news

February 13, 2022

When I set out to write a book, I thought it’d be basically the same as writing magazine stories, only much longer. On the surface, I’m doing the same sorts...

What I’ve learned writing about apocalypses, during an apocalypse

February 6, 2022

I haven’t yet written much about my book here, aside from what I’m discovering about my own habits and patterns in the process of writing it. That’s partly...

My best productivity advice

January 30, 2022

I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on last week’s issue about stopping work even when you don’t want to or think you can’t. (Thank you!) I want to...

Why stopping work is just as important as starting

January 23, 2022

In my last newsletter of 2021, I included this note about recalibrating my work and rest schedules: When I was doing mostly news and feature articles, I...

A frontier double feature

January 16, 2022

Hi friends! I’m back from a holiday break that managed to be both relaxing (because I spent most of it cross stitching at my parents’ house) and stressful...

The Antihero Trilogy, part 3

December 5, 2021

It’s impossible to watch Breaking Bad in 2021 and not think about Donald Trump. At its core, the show is the story of a white man who thinks the world owes...

The Antihero Trilogy, Part 2

November 14, 2021

There’s a scene midway through season 2 of Mad Men (set in 1962) in which Don and Betty go to a Memorial Day celebration at a country club. Veterans are...

Quantifying colonialism

October 31, 2021

Another week, another news article. An unsustainable pace if I also want to write a book, so this is it for me and news for a while (I hope). I wrote about a...

Forensic anthropology’s race problem

October 24, 2021

I’m pausing the Antihero Trilogy to share a story I published this week, about a debate roiling in U.S. forensic anthropology. For decades, forensic...

The Antihero Trilogy, Part 1

October 17, 2021

Over the course of the pandemic, my husband and I have watched and/or rewatched the three antihero dramas credited with defining the Golden Age of...

How should a writer write?

October 10, 2021

I’m thinking a lot about how I want and need to structure my days. Not just my workdays, but especially my workdays. And most especially my writing days,...

On Indigenous voices and diverse sources in journalism

September 26, 2021

This week I wrote about a new paper on human footprints found in White Sands National Park, which possibly date to as far back as 23,000 years ago. This is a...

Against the American Dream

September 19, 2021

Hello! I took an unplanned late-summer vacation from the newsletter, because, well, I didn’t feel like doing it for a while. I’m trying to honor my own...

Simone Biles is our hero

You don’t need more words and thoughts from me, a person who knows very little about gymnastics or even sports, about Simone Biles’s decision to withdraw...

In praise of Schedule Send

I hate email. (I know, I’m writing an email newsletter. We contain multitudes.) I don’t even get that much of it. For me, email is not so much a time suck as...

My latest feature

I’m delighted to share what I hope will be my big story of the year (maybe of my life?): a deep dive into the history and future of the Morton Collection, a...

The conquistadors’ music

I spend a lot of time thinking about 500 years ago. In 1521, Tenochtitlan and the Triple Alliance fell to a few hundred Spanish people and tens of thousands...

Feel weird about your pandemic body? Read this

I hear rumors that some people are vaccinated and back out in the world. (Not me, yet! Fingers crossed for August.) Chances are you look a little different...

The gift of enough

Hello! I took a few weeks off from the newsletter to finish a challenging first draft of a feature story, and then to…not write for a weekend or two....

Why journalists are quitting

Today I want to share an article I’m so glad somebody finally wrote: “The COVID Reporters Are Not Okay. Extremely Not Okay.” The brave soul to take this on...

Like every knowledge (or maybe just media) worker, I’ve been thinking about this article on the so-called YOLO economy for the past couple weeks. It’s about...

The easy way out

I don’t write much about yoga, because as proudly corny as I’ve become over the last year and change, I still have my limits. It’s also a part of my life...

The problem with self-help

I have a lot more work than I expected this weekend, so I’m just popping into share an article that’s relevant to our interests, and that I almost missed but...

A life you can cope with

Toward the end of Wintering, author Katherine May talks to a woman named Dorte who lives with bipolar disorder. Dorte struggled with the condition for many...

I’ve been circling an uncomfortable fact in this newsletter for about a year: I’ve loved quarantine. There are people and places I miss desperately, and I...

Deprogram yourself

I often say my best productivity hack was going to therapy. I started because I’d reached a point where work should have been going more and more...

I’m addicted to this show about French spies

We understand what makes a good astronaut all wrong. We think you have to be a daredevil, a rugged individualist, a macho, a cowboy of the skies. In reality,...

Yet another book recommendation

It’s hard to describe what The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel is about. Her previous novel, Station Eleven, didn’t have that problem, because it was...

How this Twitter thing is going

February 28, 2021

As you may remember, I overhauled my relationship to Twitter last September, and I thought I’d write a little about how it’s been going. Here’s what I said...

Three ways to feel something

February 21, 2021

Watch Trapped. There are many things to like about this Icelandic mystery show, including its intricate and satisfying puzzle-box plots, cello-heavy score,...

An old favorite

February 14, 2021

Harriet the Spy is one of those books I’ve read dozens, maybe even hundreds, of times. I had a handful of books I would always read when I stayed home sick...

Ancient history

February 7, 2021

This week I want to recommend two articles about something you’d think I’d care a lot about but, in fact, usually don’t: classics. Like many nerdy kids in...

A very short new story

January 31, 2021

I’ve been in domestic-duty hell for the past week (think: homemade dog diapers, and that wasn’t even the worst part), so I don’t have much time or energy for...