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...
On Wintering
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
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
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
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
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
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...
Big Magic: The Chat
Lizzie: Ok! Where do you want to start? Maybe why and when you first read Big Magic? I was surprised to hear you were already a fan long ago. Carrie: I read...
Happy new year
Hello friends! I hope you all had a restful and restorative holiday break, because oof. 2021 is not letting up at all, is it? In keeping with *waves...
The year of no distractions
At various points over the last nine months, I’ve felt an acute need to pull out and read all my old journals, which stretch back to when I was about 12. I...
The comfort of the multiverse
The parallel universes feel particularly close this year, don’t they? This whole thing was sparked by a series of random mutations and meetings, the still-...
Motivation comes after action
Today I’d like to share a piece of writing from the not-so-distant past that I think about almost every day. I’m not entirely sure how I first ran across it;...
Step away from your Instagram feed
I don’t know about you, but all this Sad Pandemic Holiday content is really doing a number on my mental health. I haven’t regularly celebrated Thanksgiving...
A quarantine recommendation
In Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, a man lives in a house he believes is the world. To be fair, the house is massive, perhaps infinite, and it contains the sea,...
The spell
Once upon a time, a boy was born, and his father didn’t love him. The boy had all the toys in the world, and he always got everything he wanted, just the way...
Remember fun?
This week I’d like to share an article that made me feel seen: “What Was Fun?” by Rachel Sugar in Vox. “Are you fun?” I wonder, staring at focaccia recipes...
My favorite election movie
No, directed by Pablo Larraín and released in the U.S. in 2013, is a movie about the 1988 plebiscite in Chile, in which people could vote “yes” or “no” to...
