My dear reader.

Sometimes the problem I think I have is not the problem I actually have, and the only way to discern the difference is to ask myself question after question until I finally get to something that feels like truth in my body.

It goes like this:

Last week I came to you in self-exploration around what I thought the problem was (that my dead-parent-grief was not playing nicely with my ability to write this newsletter) and I shared the solution I thought might help (to pause paid subscriptions and stop writing for a while).

Spending time with so many readers in the comments got me thinking though, and in particular I sat with something that one reader named (thanks, Sam!) about finding it interesting that while I didn’t have desire/capacity for essay writing I did have it for hosting something like an AMA (which is in some ways more energy-intensive than simply writing).

Hmm, I thought, that is curious.

And so came the questions: What do I actually mean when I say that I can’t seem to put a piece of writing together right now? And: Why does a short, honest, personal-blog-style newsletter plus time-consuming AMA feel good, while longer-form writing does not? And: What is it that I think (hope?) I’ll feel if I’m not showing up here each week for a while? And: What in my life do I need a legitimate break from right now and what do I instead need to change the shape of? And mostly: Where am I falling into a false binary of “this or that” and thereby missing a secret third, fourth, eighth option?

What I learned from this question-asking and list-making is that the problem I thought I had (needing a break from the newsletter) is not the problem I actually have (needing a break from longer, more fully-formed essay type writing).

I realized that the story I had been telling myself up until last week is that readers only want (or only want to pay for) longer pieces like this one and this one, and that making the newsletter shorter and more informal for a while would make it less “valuable” or “useful” or whatever. And sure, maybe that’s true for some folks — the question of usefulness and value is always up to each reader/person to decide for themselves, and the decision they come to is really none of my business! The thing that is my business (or, more accurately, my responsibility) is to be honest with you about the work that I can/cannot do in integrity at any given time, and then we can each decide how to move forward from there.

So. What I can do in this newsletter space right now — with honesty, purpose, and joy — is to write a shorter missive about what’s on my mind and heart each week, and connect with you in the comments about how those things land with you and echo (or not) what you might be feeling and experiencing in your own life.

So that’s what you can expect from me for the next however long. Today’s version (below) is a bit more news-y than what I’ll likely be writing in coming weeks (but then again who knows — I’m loosening the reins and removing all rules) and comes to you in the form of a series of questions I’m asking myself regarding the energy crisis that has resulted from the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s sort of a follow-up to this piece from March (which broke down the war in Iran from a collapse-aware perspective), and if that’s your vibe right now, read on! And if not, well, I’m hopeful that my grief-brain will eventually come back around to more in-depth writing, but what this past week’s self-inquiry has revealed to me is that I don’t actually want to put the newsletter on hold at all, it’s just that I was feeling afraid of creating a “lesser” version and disappointing you.

But you know what, that’s silly. Or no, not silly, because our feelings and fears are what they are, but the outpouring of care and support I received last week (and have received again and again from so many thousands of readers in the past 19 years of public writing practice!) reminded me that we are all humans first, and everything else second, and that it’s okay to shift the shape of our commitments as needed when things in our very-messy-human-existence humbly require us to do so.

Thanks for showing me that, it means more than you know.