This is apparently who I am now.

I started swimming at the Hampstead Heath ponds during the heatwave, when London had become a convection oven and the nights were so hot that all Londoners were sleeping like rotisserie chickens — rotating slowly, sweating, done on all sides by 3am.

The first visit was partly emergency measure, partly content. I put on my American tourist character — oblivious baseball cap, visible confusion — and offered London survival tips while preparing to lower myself into a pond that looked like someone had brewed an enormous cup of green tea and forgotten to take the leaves out.

I planned to return to my swimming habits involving chlorinated water and visible tiles much closer to where I’m living.

Instead, I went back. Then I went back again. The heatwave ended. Hampstead Heath became lightly toasted. I continued packing a towel.

This is how a crisis becomes a lifestyle.

Getting there requires crossing London with the patience of a medieval pilgrim. Trains, changes, walks, and the constant possibility that the Overground has simply decided not to run that day and I have to take an even more circuitous route. By the time I reach the pond, I have already demonstrated considerable commitment to water.

It is worth it.

The cold hits immediately. There is no polite introductory period. The pond doesn’t ask how your week has been or whether this is a good time. It goes straight through your skin and begins rearranging your cells. For the first few seconds, my body reacts as though I have made a catastrophic administrative error.

Then something changes.

My breathing settles. My limbs begin moving. The shock gives way to a strange, bracing clarity. I swim out into the pond, surrounded by trees and sky, and the rest of London loosens its grip on me.

I used to swim with my head carefully above the surface. This allowed me to participate in cold-water swimming while protecting my hair, face and most of my personality from the actual cold water. Technically swimming, in the same way standing in the doorway of a gym technically counts as attending.

Now I go all in. Swim cap. Goggles. Face in the water. Proper strokes. Full aquatic identity.

There is something different about putting your head under. The cold gets into every corner — your scalp, your ears, your thoughts. You can’t keep one part of yourself dry and continue pretending you’ve committed to the experience.

I come out feeling more awake than I have any right to be. There is usually a small amount of pond muck on my chin, which prevents the whole thing from becoming unbearably spiritual. Nothing punctures an elegant moment of personal renewal quite like discovering you’ve emerged from the water wearing a tiny algae goatee.

At the moment, I am preparing for a comedy tour. This involves tweaking and rehearsing the show, promoting dates, dealing with venues, planning travel, creating content, learning Meta ads, staring at ticket sales, and attempting to understand which combination of audience targeting, budget allocation and blood sacrifice persuades someone in Leeds to buy a comedy ticket six weeks in advance.

There is also the normal administrative debris of being self-employed. Emails. Contracts. Invoices. Housing. Trains. Technology. Passwords. Forms that ask for information I have already entered on the previous page.

Some days my brain feels less like an organ and more like the office printer during a paper jam. Lights flashing. Unclear noises. Nobody willing to take responsibility.

Then I go to the pond.

For forty minutes, there is nothing to optimize. The water doesn’t know how many tickets I’ve sold. It has no opinion on my engagement rate. It has never once suggested I boost a post. There is only the next stroke, the next breath, and the cold.

The cold interrupts the loop. It pulls me out of the future — where I am usually rehearsing everything that might go wrong — and back into the immediate physical fact of being alive. Arms moving. Lungs working. Water passing over skin.

For someone who makes a living turning life into material, it is also a relief to spend time somewhere that doesn’t need to become anything.

Admittedly, I have made several reels about it. I contain multitudes.

I thought I was documenting British behaviour — the eccentric relationship with discomfort, the ritual of describing freezing water as “fresh,” the national ability to suffer beautifully while insisting everything is perfectly pleasant. I thought I was observing from the outside.

Somewhere along the way, I became one of them.

The pond gives me something I badly need right now. A break from trying to build, sell, solve and organize everything. A place where my only job is to keep moving through the water.

Then I climb out, remove the algae from my face, get back on the Overground and return to my life. The emails are still there. The tour still needs promoting. Meta Ads Manager remains a hostile foreign government.

But my mind is quieter.

Sometimes sanity arrives through therapy, medication or a meaningful spiritual practice. Sometimes you have to put on a rubber hat and swim through green tea.

The last one I wrote was about how to start the book you’ve been putting off since 2017 — useful, I hope, but also suspiciously close to being a book coaching promotional piece wearing a little essay hat. So, this week I’m resisting the urge to be helpful in a monetizable way.

Instead, I’m writing from inside the administrative department of my own midlife reinvention.

This week I posted the third episode of my YouTube series, Fine, Actually — yes my standup show and YouTube series are sharing the same name — for now. Three episodes. Practically a dynasty. I’m told YouTube rewards patience and persistence, which is what people say when something may not work for several years but there are tutorials about thumbnails.

Apparently, YouTube is still growing. Since 2007. I’ve decided to arrive now, nearly twenty years later, carrying political satire, character sketches, a ring light, some unresolved national trauma, and the face of a woman who would very much prefer to hide behind a wig.

The show is part satire, part sketches, part me attempting to be parasocial and myself, which is considerably more exposing than I’d like. I’m much happier as a deranged American tourist, a customer service representative from the Man Factory, or a woman calling foreign embassies to ask whether she can defect before lunch.

Being myself is trickier. Myself has pores. And circles under my eyes. Myself says “um.” Myself has to admit she is trying and has no idea if it will work and find an audience.

Still. I’m doing it. I’m trying to build a weekly show that holds politics, culture, comedy, travel, reinvention, and the general experience of being an American abroad quietly hoping no one asks you to explain the news.

The next piece of the plan is a mini podcast element — short conversations with journalists, politicians, cultural people, thinkers, troublemakers, and anyone who can speak intelligently for ten minutes without requiring me to understand crypto. So if any of you fancy being among my first guests, consider this a gentle tap on the glass. I have a microphone and low standards for production perfection.

Alongside this, European tour admin. Which sounds glamorous until you realize it’s mostly emails, ticketing links, venue negotiations, contracts, travel logistics, and learning the phrase “ticket split” with the haunted eyes of a woman who once thought show business involved sequins and sleeping until 10am.

I’m booking my own venues, working with clubs, trying to decode what everyone means by “what kind of deal are you looking for?” My social media consultant — yes, I have one, please respect my shame — has informed me I need to start promoting hard now if I want to sell enough tickets by October.

Does the work never stop?

Apparently not. The work has spawned. Every time I answer one email, three smaller emails crawl out from under it.

This week I’m off to Barcelona for a work-in-progress of the show and a few other spots. Also to eat tapas and lie on the beach, because even the most deranged entrepreneurial midlife woman needs access to anchovies, pan con tomate, and horizontal time.

Somewhere inside all of this is my origin story. In the YouTube show I’ve started talking about the years I built my ghostwriting business from nothing. Actually, less than nothing — nothing would have been an improvement. Nothing has neutral energy. I started with debt, fear, no safety net, and a very strong sense that I’d already used up several acceptable versions of myself.

Then, somehow, over a few years, I built something real. I became good. I made money. I learned how to sell, deliver, survive, and sound confident on Zoom while internally being a possum in a blazer.

Comedy has not yet been as lucrative. This feels rude. I am putting in the hours. The shows. The sketches. The platforms, the algorithms, the camera settings, the captions, the tour posters, the ticket links, the tighter tag, the cleaner ending. If comedy, acting, and scriptwriting could all become as financially stable as ghostwriting, that would be the golden ring. Or at least a gold-plated ring from a market stall in Barcelona. I’m realistic. Then again, maybe the creative ventures are still brewing like a nice cup of chai, and AI may make my ghostwriting business obsolete before comedy has learned to pay rent.

Maybe I’m spreading myself too thin. Or maybe this is what building a creative life looks like now. You don’t just write the thing. You film it, edit it, caption it, upload it, promote it, repurpose it, explain it, and then lie awake wondering whether the thumbnail needs your face looking more shocked.

There’s also something energizing about it. Exhausting, yes. Absurd, yes. Occasionally humiliating — especially when a YouTube video gets fewer views than an Edwardian séance.

But there’s a pulse in all this.

Substack, YouTube, stand-up, tour admin, ghostwriting, Barcelona, sketches, politics, beaches, spreadsheets. It’s too much. It’s also mine.

Reinvention is not one clean leap into a new life. It’s a lot of tabs open on the browser. It’s booking a comedy spot while answering a client email while checking ticket sales while wondering if your face looks weird in the preview frame. Starting again, publicly, repeatedly, with just enough delusion to keep going.

Episode three, posted. Barcelona next. October looming. The work never stops.

Fine, actually.

This is not a character flaw. It’s a design problem.

Most people assume writing a book requires motivation, a Herculean commitment to daily writing blocks, and a cabin in the woods where nobody asks you to Zoom at 9am. In reality, books begin the way most inconvenient things do: a decision made under imperfect conditions, followed by a slightly embarrassing first attempt.

The reason smart people stall is that “write a book” is too big. Your brain treats it like an incoming weather system and starts boarding the windows. It tells you to wait — after the holidays, after the launch, after the election, after Mercury stops doing whatever Mercury does.

So here’s the trick I use with clients who’ve been thinking about it so long they’ve started treating the idea like a pet. You don’t “start the book.” You start the smallest possible unit of the book: the promise.

I’m going to give you a 30-minute start. A real one. The kind that produces something you can build on instead of another week of thinking about building.

Set a timer for 10 minutes and write this sentence, as plainly as you can:

“This book helps ___ do ___ so they can ___.”

No cleverness. No brand voice. No “in today’s rapidly evolving landscape” language. A human sentence.

Two examples, different flavors:

“This book helps midlife women rebuild a career without apologizing so they can stop feeling like they missed the train.”

“This book helps founders communicate clearly so they can stop sounding like a legal disclaimer.”

If you can’t fill it in, that’s useful data — you’re still in idea fog. Don’t panic. Pick a version that’s close enough and keep moving. You’re not carving this in stone. You’re making a handle.

Next 10 minutes: list the three biggest questions your reader is already asking. Not what you want to say. What they’re asking at 2 a.m., scrolling and spiraling.

If your reader is a founder writing a business book:

• How do I stand out without sounding like every other business book?

• What’s the actual structure of a book people finish?

• How do I write without it taking over my life?

If your reader is reinventing in midlife:

• How do I start over without looking ridiculous?

• How do I make money while I rebuild?

• How do I stop waiting for permission?

These questions become your table of contents. Not chapters yet — doors. Name the doors, and you can build the house.

Final 10 minutes: write one paragraph under each question. One paragraph. No research, no citations. Just what you already know.

This is the part people resist because it feels too simple. That’s the point. If you can’t get three scrappy paragraphs down, you’re not blocked by craft. You’re blocked by fear. The cure for that is not more planning. The cure is contact with the page.

At the end of 30 minutes, you’ll have three things most stalled writers don’t have: a clear promise, a reader with real questions, and a rough map. You’ll also have proof that you can generate momentum without waiting for inspiration to show up dressed for the occasion.

And yes, the writing will be ugly. That’s correct. The first version is supposed to be ugly. It’s trying to exist, not to be published.

If you want to go one step further: pick the paragraph that feels most alive and add one specific detail. One number, one image, one small scene. Clarity loves one.

“Burnout” becomes “I cried in a Starbucks because Outlook asked me to circle back.” “Reinvention” becomes “I started stand-up at an age when I would rather be going to bed at 10pm.” “Leadership” becomes “we had a meeting about having fewer meetings.”

That’s where your voice comes back — not through inspiration, through specificity.

I’m writing about this now because a lot of people are quietly telling themselves they’ll start in January. You can. Or you can start in the next 30 minutes and arrive in January with a map instead of a wish.

Two weeks ago, somewhere in the south of France, I checked into an Airbnb, with my friend Kate, to find that the Wi-Fi had stopped working and the host had apparently stopped existing. Construction next door started at 7am. I filed a complaint, got a non-committal response, and made a note to myself: one more of these and you’re done.

Reader, there was one more of these.

I arrived in Paris after a full day on trains — the kind of travel day where you’ve eaten a half a baguette and spent four hours watching the French countryside scroll past while mentally rehearsing the nap you’re going to take the moment you arrive. I had an Airbnb booked. Ground floor, I had specifically requested. Ground floor, it said on the listing. Ground floor, they confirmed back to me.

The flat was on the second floor. Which in France is the third floor. Which, after a full day of trains and a rolling suitcase packed like I’m relocating rather than visiting (I travel a lot; I have not resolved this), meant hauling everything up a winding, narrow Parisian staircase clearly designed for people who own nothing and weigh less than I do.

The apartment itself was the size of a generous walk-in closet, except less charming. The bathroom was so small you couldn’t turn around in it — a design choice I assume was either accidental or punitive. There was one window. It opened onto a pedestrian café square where, at 8pm on a 90-degree Paris evening, approximately four hundred people were having what appeared to be the time of their lives. Loudly. The fan that was promised was not there. The air conditioning that was also “suggested” in the listing was also not there, which is presumably why they’d offered the fan, which they then also did not supply. The place was a hovel. A hot, airless, three-flights-up hovel next to an Indian restaurant, and the listing had simply lied.

Here’s the thing I’ve figured out about myself: I used to rough it. A few years ago I would have gritted my teeth and stayed — suffered through a week of bad sleep to save a few hundred euros, told myself it was character building, whatever. That version of me is gone. I want a good bed. I want good pillows. I want nice linens and a floor I can walk on barefoot without conducting a silent forensic assessment. I am not too old for very many things, but I am definitively, irreversibly too old for this.

I messaged the host. The host, presumably sensing a review situation developing, offered a full refund. I said “Thank you, I will take that,” opened HotelTonight — genuinely one of the best apps on my phone, file that under practical information — found an actual hotel with an actual elevator and actual air conditioning, booked it, took an Uber there, and got myself into a room that met the basic contractual definition of habitable. Then I stayed up until 1am trying to find somewhere to live in Paris for the next week.

This is how I found Lyf Gambetta.

Here’s the thing about Airbnb that I’ve been too polite to say out loud for years: it’s a romantic idea built on a crap-shoot delivery mechanism. The dream is “live like a local, discover a neighborhood, feel at home.” The reality is that you are placing a significant bet on a stranger’s definition of “well-equipped,” “quiet street,” and “the air conditioning is suggested.”

And then there’s the checkout message. Every Airbnb host sends one, and they all sound like you’re being discharged from a Scandinavian detention center.

Hope your last moments in the accommodation are going well. In case of non-compliance, fees may be applied.

Then the checklist begins.

• Put dirty towels in the bathroom

• Do your dishes

• Empty the dishwasher

• Put the dishes away

• Empty the refrigerator

• Turn off the air conditioning

• Turn off the lights

• Close the windows

• Return the keys

• Take out the rubbish

I’m sorry — did I book a week in Paris or pick up a shift at a property management company?

And then, after you’ve completed your exit exam: We also count on you to leave us a five-star review.

Sure. Right after you give me my cleaning fee back.

Co-living spaces are not glamorous in the way Airbnb listings are glamorous. Nobody is posting a linen-draped bedroom with a bowl of artisan fruit and calling it une petite maison de rêve. Lyf Gambetta — where I ended up, in the 20th arrondissement, a converted printing factory with cement block walls and a genuinely cool vibe — does not present itself as an experience. It presents itself as a place to stay.

My place is a duplex studio. Small kitchenette, comfortable bed, housekeeping every couple of days. And air conditioning so good, so thorough, so unapologetically cold, that I have genuinely considered whether I could just stay here indefinitely. The shared spaces — a café, a gym, a patio, a roof deck currently operating as a solar panel given the Paris heat — are there when you want them and completely ignorable when you don’t. Nobody is trying to make friends with you. The vibe is: adults who have work to do, doing it.

You know what you’re getting. Someone makes your bed. The Wi-Fi works. Nobody sends you a checkout checklist.

In a few days I’m moving into a similar setup in Battersea for the next four months — screening room, billiards room, dining room, communal kitchen, gym, and every studio has its own kitchenette, which means I’m not obligated to speak to anyone before coffee. No housekeeping, unfortunately, but I’ll live. Short-term lease. No furniture to source, no shipping containers to arrange, no commitment to a city I’m not sure I’m ready for yet.

I’m not ready to set up permanent digs anywhere. I know this about myself now. I want to be in London for the next few months — doing gigs, booking the fall tour of Fine, Actually, writing scripts, launching the YouTube show — and then I want to reassess. The co-living model is the first housing infrastructure I’ve encountered that actually matches that sentence.

Stability without permanence. A base without a checkout checklist.

Somewhere to put your suitcase full of stones and get some work done.

— Holly

Back then, my short was screened on 16mm. Actual film. The kind that came in canisters. The kind you could hold like a precious artifact, right before you accidentally touched the wrong part and ruined somebody’s day. There was a faint smell of chemistry and art-house theaters to it. I miss that smell. I do not miss the anxiety.

Fast forward to this month, and I got to spend a weekend at the Cleveland International Film Festival, where my 4.5 minute short, Present Tense, screened four times that week. It’s a tiny comedy about our relationship with AI: a woman sits down to do a meditation session with her app, and the app has a panic attack. It melts down. The human tries to soothe it. You know, the usual power dynamic in 2026.

Cleveland was celebrating CIFF50, which is both impressive and mildly intimidating, because “50th anniversary” makes everything feel official, like you should stand up straighter and stop eating snacks so loudly in the dark. The festival was well run, well attended, and clearly beloved by the community. People in Cleveland seem to take independent film seriously, in a way that feels refreshingly… earnest. Not performative. Not influencer-y. Just: we like stories, we are showing them, please don’t talk during the quiet parts. This was the kind of audience where someone would shush a too-loud seatmate and nobody would get ruffled.

The festival programmed plenty of features too - big premieres, documentaries, the whole slate - but I mostly lived in the shorts blocks like they were my natural habitat.

I made it to two of my own screenings, which was its own little out-of-body experience: sitting in a dark theater while your work plays on a real screen, pretending you’re casual when your nervous system is doing jazz hands. But the bigger gift was everything else I got to watch. Over the weekend I saw dozens of shorts - tiny bundles of joy, terror, grief, laughter, and delightful nonsense from all over the world. India, Poland, South America - every screening felt like a new passport stamp for the human experience.

Watching shorts is speed dating for storytelling. You fall in love with a filmmaker’s brain for eight minutes, then they vanish, and you’re left blinking in the lobby like, wait - where did the haunted puppet movie go? I need to talk to the person who made the haunted puppet movie.

And that, as it turns out, is the whole point.

Yes, you go to festivals for the screening. You go for the little jolt of validation that comes from seeing your work on a real screen in a real room with real people. But you also go for the conversations. The hallway chats. The accidental dinners. The “what are you making next?” question that reminds you you’re part of something bigger than your own laptop and your own doubt.

Within an hour of arriving, a couple of veteran festival filmmakers gave me the lowdown. I’m now sharing like ancient wisdom handed down on stone tablets.

One, it helps to return to the same festivals. Familiarity builds over time. People remember you. You learn the geography. You stop wandering around clutching a badge like you’re lost on a cruise ship.

Two, don’t apply to festivals you can’t realistically attend. It’s not just the submission fees. It’s the missed networking, the missed community, the missed momentum. If you’re going to spend the money, you want the full experience, not a distant email that says “Congrats!” while you sit at home doing laundry.

Three, join organizations that support filmmakers. People swap tips about discounts, festival strategy, and the kind of things you only learn after you’ve paid for them once. Someone suggested the Alliance of Women Directors as one place to look, partly for community and partly because they sometimes have entry fee partnerships and discounts. (I love that filmmaking is both art and couponing.) Message received.

Downtown Cleveland itself felt like a collage: sports bars, festival crowds, and a few street-corner evangelists with posterboard signs warning everyone about their sins. It’s oddly energizing to walk out of an arthouse film about grief and memory and immediately be told you are going to hell. Multitasking.

What surprised me most, though, was how little I cared about being “a middle-aged filmmaker.” In the past I might have clocked it, compared myself, done the usual mental gymnastics. At CIFF I didn’t feel out of place at all. Filmmakers were all ages. The work was all over the map. Nobody was asking permission. They were just making things.

Which is the real reinvention lesson here. I took a long break. A very long intermission. Life happened. I did other work. I built other skills. I learned how to survive. Then I came back.

And sitting in that theater, watching my tiny film flicker up there, I felt the simplest kind of satisfaction: not “I’ve made it,” not “everything is solved,” just “I’m doing it again.”

One festival at a time. One short at a time. One return at a time.

This Substack is for smart people reinventing in real time. Funny essays, practical writing craft, and behind-the-scenes dispatches from comedy and filmmaking — minus the inspirational-poster energy. If you want “live, laugh, launch,” there are seventeen other newsletters for that.

A very current example of reinvention: I’m flying to the Cleveland International Film Festival this weekend because my short film Present Tense is screening. It’s 4.5 minutes long and it’s a comedy about our relationship with AI. The premise: a woman sits down for a meditation session with her app — and the app has a panic attack. The AI melts down. The human tries to soothe it. The line between “user” and “tool” gets uncomfortably blurry. I wrote it before I fully understood how close to journalism that was.

What makes this feel surreal is that I haven’t had a short film at a festival since 1999. Yes, you read that right. My film Pipe Dreams screened in the UK — Leeds, Raindance — back when I was younger and genuinely believed you could survive on ambition and diner coffee. (You cannot. Ambition is non-caloric. I know this now.) Then I took a very long break from filmmaking. Not a strategic pause. Not a sabbatical. Not a “stepping back to reassess my creative priorities” situation. Just…life. Years passed. Careers shifted. The dream went quiet in the way things go quiet when you stop feeding them and start feeding an actual child.

I did make one short film in the interim — an experiment that is best described as a learning experience and left there, under the rug, with the other things I prefer not to discuss at parties. Sometimes the lesson is “Do more of this.” Sometimes the lesson is “Never do that again, and also delete the file.”

Both are valid. Neither feels great at the time.

And now I’m back. Not “back” as in I’m pretending nothing happened — I’m 60, not delusional. Back as in: I’m older, sharper, weirder, and significantly less interested in waiting for permission.

I’m also in pre-production for my next short — a 10–12 minute romcom I’m planning to shoot in Paris this year. Direct it, act in it, fully commit to the chaos. I’ve been told this is ambitious. I’ve also been told a lot of things that turned out to be wrong.

So yes, when I say reinvention, I mean reinvention. Not the aspirational kind you put on a vision board (though I have nothing against vision boards). The kind you’re doing at 11pm with a cold coffee and a budget spreadsheet that doesn’t quite add up.

I’ll send a dispatch from Cleveland after the screening — what it’s actually like to walk back into a film festival after a 25-year gap, what surprised me, and what I’m stealing for the next project.

Welcome to the reinvention. Let’s thrive.

— Holly

I know this person intimately. She has my face and a frankly embarrassing number of coaching certifications she’s paid for on the other side of the table — comedy coaches, acting coaches, a business coach, a life coach I introduced to people as “my productivity consultant” because “life coach” sounded like I was one bad quarter away from a vision board.

Every time, the same thing happened. I didn’t learn more information. I made faster decisions. That distinction sounds small until you’re the person who’s been “almost done” with a book for two years.

Writing a book isn’t a knowledge problem

Most people who want to write a nonfiction book already know what to do. Write regularly. Outline. Know your audience. You’ve read the articles, saved the Instagram posts, bought the books about writing the book. You have a Notion template that is genuinely beautiful.

The draft still isn’t done.

Because writing a book isn’t primarily a skill problem. It’s a decision problem. Is this the right idea? Is it too broad? Too niche? Too personal? Not personal enough? Is this even a book or just a really long LinkedIn post?

Left alone with those questions, brilliant people will circle them for months. I’ve watched it happen — as a ghostwriter, as a coach, and honestly, in my own bathroom mirror. There’s a whole graveyard of chapter twos out there. You’ve probably contributed to it.

What a coach actually does

A good coach collapses time. What might take you six months of second-guessing becomes one uncomfortable forty-five-minute call where someone who isn’t emotionally invested in your idea tells you whether it actually works. Not perfectly. But decisively. And momentum beats perfection in a landslide, every time.

The other thing a coach does — the one nobody wants to say out loud — is see what you can’t. Not because you’re not smart enough. Because you’re too inside it. You cannot objectively evaluate your own work while you’re inside it, the same way you cannot accurately assess your own haircut the day after a breakup.

“But shouldn’t I be able to do this alone?”

You could. Probably. Eventually.

But the better question is: what is this costing you to do alone? And I don’t mean emotionally, though sure, that too. I mean actually. Every month the book doesn’t exist is a month you’re not getting speaking inquiries from it, consulting clients, the kind of authority that makes people assume you know what you’re talking about before you open your mouth. Books don’t usually earn out through sales — they earn through everything the book enables. Which means delay isn’t neutral. It’s a choice with a price tag, even if it doesn’t show up on an invoice.

The lie of “I’ll start when I’m ready”

You won’t start when you’re ready. You’ll start when something forces clarity — a deadline, a commitment, a person who won’t let you drift back into reorganizing your desktop files and calling it progress.

That’s what coaching actually is. Not hand-holding. Pressure, in the right direction, from someone who has no particular interest in protecting your comfort zone.

If you’re sitting on a book idea and you’ve been sitting on it for a while, I’d gently suggest you don’t need another productivity hack. You need to decide what the book is, who it’s for, and whether you’re actually going to finish it. Everything else is logistics.

(And yes — if you want help with exactly that, I’m running a small four-week nonfiction cohort starting in April. Designed to get you out of your head and into a real working draft. Details in the link below.)

Not by me, which felt relevant.

By some man using a different name, a different email, a different phone number, and a monthly rent so low it was borderline charitable. Apparently my two-bedroom, two-bath house with an eat-in kitchen, office, fenced-in yard and TV room was available for $1,000 a month.

I was offended on several levels.

First, obviously, by the fact that a stranger was attempting to rent out my actual house.

Second, by the pricing.

A thousand dollars? For my house? I was like, dude, if you’re going to commit fraud with my property, at least show some respect.

I spend most of the year on the road, and when I’m gone I rent the house out. This is one of those arrangements that sounds flexible and modern when you say it quickly. It conjures a certain glamorous image of freedom, movement, career momentum, maybe a carry-on bag packed by a woman who has mastered life.

The reality is less elegant.

The reality is that living mostly on the road means your real life back home never stops existing. It just continues without you, like a side plot you are somehow still responsible for. Your house is still there. Your stuff is still in it. Other people are living in the rooms where your life normally happens. Mail still arrives. Things still break. Local weirdness still finds you.

And because I am very lucky, I have family nearby who help me keep the whole thing from sliding into full collapse. They are the ones spotting the little leaks in the dam before I even know there’s water coming through. They are my early warning system for loose ends, small disasters and, in this case, identity theft by a man with terrible business instincts.

After I called the newspaper and let the police know that I was not, in fact, running a cut-rate rental scam out of my own home, I did what any stable adult would do and texted the guy. I wanted to hear from this genius directly.

I told him I was interested in the house for rent in Yellow Springs.

He texted back almost immediately. Did I have pets? When could I move in?

Seriously? A real landlord takes at least a day and a half to seem irritated by your existence and reject you.

I said I had no pets and could move by April 1.

He then sent me ten photos of my own house.

This was deeply unsettling. Nothing prepares you for being catfished by your living room. I scrolled through the photos thinking:

Wow, the light really is nice in there.

Maybe I should move that painting to the other wall.

That angle actually makes the kitchen look bigger. Maybe I should live there.

Then I asked if I could come view the property.

He said yes, but first he would need a $100 application fee.

I asked why.

He said it was to pay for his move so he could come show me the house.

His move.

Even by scammer standards, this was trying to execute discount crime. This man had stolen my listing, stolen my photos, placed an ad in the local paper, and his grand plan was apparently to net one hundred dollars and maybe some gas money (actually, less, the newspaper ad probably cost $25). I almost felt embarrassed for him. There was no ambition. No sophistication. No sense of scale.

He seemed prepared to get arrested for the price of two Applebee’s dinners and a vape pen.

And that, honestly, felt weirdly in keeping with this whole life.

There is a constant administrative absurdity to living between places. Even when things are going well, your life is full of passwords, leases, utilities, travel logistics, temporary routines, and the quiet low-grade panic of knowing that whatever is happening at home is happening without you.

Freedom is real, and I’m grateful for it. But freedom, it turns out, still comes with a police report, a family group text, and a stranger asking you to finance his trip to show you your own house.

For a life I have worked very hard to make unconventional, it remains annoyingly vulnerable to extremely ordinary idiots.

Thirty minutes later I was so high I couldn’t move.

I called my son in California in a panic. He talked me down like I was a toddler. Eventually I ended up face-down on the living room floor for a very long time, because there was such an incredible panorama of images behind my eyes that moving felt beside the point. Somehow I got myself to bed. The next morning I read the can. Ten milligrams of THC per gummy. Moral of the story: raise a good son, because one day you might need someone to parent you through a midnight drug emergency, and it should be someone who loves you.

But here’s the thing about lying on that floor waiting for the ceiling to stop breathing: I recognized the feeling. That particular cocktail of how bad is this going to get, I cannot control any of this, I just have to wait it out and try not to catastrophize. I’ve been here before. Not on the floor, specifically. But in this exact emotional zip code.

I was about sixteen when the nightmares started. Not drug-induced panoramas — nuclear ones. I grew up in Ohio during the Cold War and I was convinced, with the full commitment that only a teenager can bring to an apocalypse, that we were all going to die. I’d lie awake running the scenarios. How far from the blast. Whether the basement helped. What the world looked like after.

Most kids, I think, found a way to file this under probably fine and get on with their lives. I started a disarmament group in my high school.

I rallied my congressional representatives. I wrote an essay — on nuclear disarmament, at seventeen, in Ohio — that won first place in the state. Which led, through a chain of events that still strikes me as genuinely improbable, to sitting on the governor’s wife’s peace committee — Dagmar Celeste. I was a teenager at a table with adults, trying to prevent nuclear war through the power of organized civic engagement and extremely strong feelings.

It didn’t work, obviously. But it didn’t not work either. The Cold War ended. I can’t prove causation.

I’m thinking about that girl a lot right now. Because we are, as far as I can tell, back in that same nightmare — except this time the person with the codes has the impulse control of a man who has never once in his life been told no and meant it. The difference between then and now is that at least the Soviets were rational actors running a state. What we have now is a narcissistic psychopath who thinks the Middle East is just a real estate deal waiting to happen and that war is a brand extension.

The other difference is that I’m a middle aged woman, not seventeen, and I cannot start a disarmament group. I mean — I could. Someone should. But I also need to eat and pay rent and keep a comedy and writing career alive in three countries simultaneously, which is its own form of insanity.

What I can do is make the reels. Write the pieces. Name what’s happening with enough specificity that people feel less alone in the dark. It’s not a congressional hearing. It’s not a peace committee. But it’s the adult version of the same impulse — the one that says I cannot just lie here and wait for this to pass. I have to do something with the terror, even if the something is absurd, even if I’m shouting into the particular void of my phone camera in a living room in the I-70 corridor of despair.

Does it help? I genuinely don’t know. I hope so. I make the thing and I put it out and someone somewhere comments I needed this today and I think: okay. One person. That’s enough to keep going.

With the edibles, eventually the floor stopped being necessary and the morning came and I was fine. You just have to wait it out without losing your mind in the interim.

I’m still working on the second part.

If you’re white-knuckling it too, tell me what you’re doing with the fear. I want to know.

I came back four weeks later.

Somehow two weeks turned into a month and four cities: Doha, Dubai (before the missiles hit), London, and Paris. It was one of those travel runs where you’re constantly switching roles mid-flight. In Doha and Dubai I was moderating at a tech conference, trying to sound like someone who wakes up reading product newsletters for fun. In London and Paris I was doing the other version of my life: gigs, family gatherings, friends squeezed into cafés, and the film work that always seems to happen in the margins - between meetings, between trains, between the moment you’re “free” and the moment you realize you’re not.

The strangest part of a month like that isn’t the jet lag. It’s how quickly your brain normalizes chaos. You stop thinking in weeks and start thinking in airports. You start measuring time in boarding groups. Your calendar becomes a string of “where are you now?” texts. And your suitcase - your poor suitcase - starts to feel less like luggage and more like a rotating cast of characters you’re in a long-term relationship with.

There were good things inside the swirl. On the film front, there’s been real, concrete interest on the French side for my ‘perfume feature’, as I call it, Chemical Attraction. I’m saying that sentence carefully because I don’t want to tempt the gods. But it’s the kind of interest that shifts the energy from “waiting” to “moving,” and if you’ve ever tried to get a feature off the ground, you know that’s not nothing. It’s the difference between yelling into the void and hearing a voice yell back.

Even more concrete: my short film Present Tense has been accepted into the Cleveland International Film Festival, with four screenings in April. That one I’m allowing myself to celebrate loudly because it is printed on an actual festival schedule and not living only in my hopes and a spreadsheet.

And then there’s the part of the trip that gave me the biggest clarity: I don’t want to keep living like a human pinball. I love London. I love Paris. I love the feeling of stepping into a new place and becoming a slightly different version of myself for a week. But I’m also trying to make actual progress on a feature and write the next short film, and progress doesn’t happen when you’re constantly repacking your toiletries into a Ziploc bag at 4 a.m.

So this year I’m setting a few rules. Not resolutions. Rules.

The first is focus: feature film first, and writing the next short (concept is locked and I’m protecting it like a small animal).

The second is geographic sanity: fewer cities, fewer flights, less scatter. And the third is a rule for comedy that I should have made last year: no more losing money. Everything needs to be net positive - cash, audience growth, material development, real relationships. If the only upside is “character building,” I have enough character.

If the past month reminded me of anything, it’s that time passes whether we’re deliberate or not. I’d like to be more deliberate. More depth, fewer departures, and a little less living out of a suitcase that thought it was signing up for two weeks.

This year, I’m trading altitude for traction.

“Moderating” is a fancy word for: standing on a stage in a blazer, trying to sound intelligent while your nervous system whispers, This is a high-stakes group project and no one brought the notes.

I led two fireside chats. The first was with Under Armour’s Chief Product Officer, the very lovely Yassine Saidi, during which I attempted to ask insightful questions about how product leads brand in today’s market. This is also known as: me trying not to say “So… how do you guys decide what shade of gray to call ‘Performance Fog’?”

The second interview was with two mega content creators: French football freestyler Sean Garnier and Australian magician/mentalist Ash Hodgkinson. We talked about maintaining attention in an era where most people’s focus lasts roughly the length of a goldfish’s memory and/or a TikTok scroll.

Ash even did a mentalist trick with me onstage. He somehow pulled the name I was thinking of — my father, Ben — and revealed it to the audience before revealing it to me. Even though my father Ben was also a magician, I still have no idea how Ash did it. (And frankly, I don’t want to know. Let the world have one mystery that isn’t a crypto scam.)

Doha itself was stunning: a futuristic city full of buildings that look like they were designed by aliens with taste and a very expensive drafting program. I wandered through the gold and bird souqs — surreal, beautiful, and scented like oud and incense and the general feeling of: You are not wearing enough linen for this environment.

Being in both Middle Eastern cities gave me a weird nostalgia trip. For one thing, you can still smoke indoors in bars and restaurants, which instantly transported me back to the 80s and 90s in America — except now it’s a hotel lounge full of Brits and Americans puffing away like kids who’ve found the “forbidden candy” drawer and decided it counts as wellness because they’re on holiday.

The other nostalgia hit was more personal: I hadn’t been back to the Middle East since the early 90s. My parents lived for years in Saudi, Jordan, and Oman, so this region has always been a main character in my family stories. Seeing how much it’s changed — and how fast — was genuinely mind-blowing.

And of course the trip wouldn’t have been complete without me squeezing in a standup spot in Dubai, where the comedy scene is small but growing. I was the only woman on the lineup — surprise, surprise. I asked the other comics where the women were, and their response was essentially: a shrug, followed by more smoking. Truly an industry known for its curiosity and initiative.

The audience was wildly multicultural, which makes sense because Dubai is mostly expats. People were from the UK, the US, Thailand, Australia, the Philippines, India — you name it. It’s actually a great training ground: you find out fast what jokes travel, what jokes need a passport, and what jokes get detained at the border for additional screening.

Mine did pretty well.

Then there was the Dubai Mall — which I’m fairly certain is not a mall so much as a parallel universe with air conditioning. I lost a couple hours of my life inside it. Every time I asked a guard for directions, he’d say, “Down, to the right.” I’d follow his advice and somehow end up in another wing of designer stores I cannot afford, watching a fountain show like I’m being punished by an elegant sorcerer.

At one point I tested my theory and asked the same guard where the nearest Starbucks was.

“Down, to the right.”

So either he had no idea where anything was, or the entire mall operates on a single sacred principle: Go down, go right, and accept your fate.

Eventually I escaped the time warp and made it back to my hotel, spiritually changed and slightly dissociated. Never again.

Sadly, I managed to miss the Fashion Avenue bathrooms, which are apparently a famously opulent destination in their own right. Only in Dubai does a restroom have lore. But nothing was where it was supposed to be in that alternate reality, and I wasn’t about to spend another 40 minutes following “down, to the right” into a Swarovski-sponsored hallucination just to find a toilet.

And then, the antidote: the next day, a sailing trip around the Palm Islands courtesy of an old friend from high school — now casually racing a trimaran (yes, three hulls, because apparently two is for cowards) around Dubai’s waters like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

For a few hours, there was just sun, salt air, the absurd skyline, and the calming reminder that the world is both completely unhinged and also… weirdly beautiful.

On the flight back to London, via Doha, I got one last little punchline from the universe. I was on the same plane as The Gstaad Guy — the huge content creator whose whole shtick is spoofing the luxury lifestyle of young Europeans. We walked down the corridor to board together and, right on brand, he turned left into first class as I turned right into economy.

Honestly, respect. There are many ways to commit to a bit. That is one of the more expensive ones.

The plane took off. The cabin lights dimmed. Somewhere up front, a man was doing satire on a lie-flat bed. Down, to the right, I was doing reality.

A fixer sounds vaguely criminal, which I enjoy. Like she’ll meet you at midnight under a bridge and slide you a passport and a screenplay. In reality, Isabelle is a very legal kind of fixer: in France she’s a bit like an agent, a manager, and a producer rolled into one, yet none of the above. She doesn’t “rep” you. She doesn’t take meetings on your behalf. She doesn’t attach financing with a flourish.

What she does is more direct. She finds the people who matter, she closes the distance, and she makes you show up like you belong there.

In other words: she will drag you toward your filmmaking goals by the collar.

Her specialty is introducing writer-directors to producers in a way that doesn’t feel like begging, and doesn’t require you to pretend you’re cool with rejection.

At the Deauville Film Festival, she scanned a hotel lobby the way other people scan a menu. Then she pointed, mid-sip of espresso, at a producer across the room.

“You need to meet her.”

I said, “I don’t speak French.”

Isabelle didn’t even blink. “Eet is not important. Follow me.”

And then we walked over. Not “later.” Not “if the timing feels right.” Now. Like two women crossing a battlefield, except the battlefield is the lobby of the Hôtel Barrière Le Royal and the weapons are confidence, eye contact, and the kind of tote bag that can hold both a laptop and your entire self-esteem.

Isabelle has the particular kind of certainty that makes you realize how much of your life you’ve spent negotiating with your own fear. She doesn’t “network.” She harvests. She identifies the person with the power, the person with the money, the person with the relationship to the money, and then she closes the distance. It’s not rude. It’s not aggressive. It’s just… unembarrassed. Like she’s reminding you that you are allowed to want things. You are allowed to ask.

The problem is that asking is not exactly my native tongue. I’m American, but I’m also programmed in the Midwest, which means my default settings are “I’m sorry” and “We probably shouldn’t bother her,” even when no one is injured and nothing is on fire. I will make room for a stranger in an empty elevator. I will apologize to a chair I bump into. I am not naturally built for waltzing up to a producer and saying, Hi, would you like to read the script I’ve spent years writing while raising a child and keeping the lights on? Please decide my fate.

Isabelle, on the other hand, behaves as if this is a perfectly normal thing to do, because to her it is. In her world, this is the job. The script is only the beginning. The actual work is getting it into hands that can do something with it.

She also has a secondary mission: to make me learn French, immediately, through a method I’m calling Total Linguistic Immersion Through Mild Humiliation.

She keeps slipping French phrases into conversation like she’s seasoning a soup.

“Say it again,” she’ll insist, when I manage a decent ‘Enchantée.’

Then she’ll correct my pronunciation with the gentle firmness of a woman who has never once pretended not to notice a misused verb tense.

“It’s not ‘bonjour madame,’” she’ll say, as if correcting my form might also correct my entire lack of chill. “It’s about confidence.”

Confidence. Sure. That helpful thing.

But here’s the part she’s right about: language is not just vocabulary. It’s posture. It’s willingness. It’s the difference between “Sorry to bother you” and “Hello, I’m here.

Isabelle made the beeline as if the producer had been placed there specifically for us, like a prop in a scene. I half expected her to turn to camera and whisper, Watch this.

She didn’t.

She just arrived.

“Bonjour,” she said, bright and unbothered, and then, before I could do my usual thing where I smile too hard and pretend I’m just here for the canapés, Isabelle placed a hand lightly on my arm and presented me.

“This is Holly Hudson,” she said, in French. “She is an American screenwriter…”

Then she pivoted toward me in that way people do when they want you to perform a rehearsed line in a language you don’t speak. I managed not to choke.

I smiled. I said Enchantée. I think I also said merci and then, for safety, I said merci again. Isabelle’s face did that tiny micro-expression she does when she wants to correct me but has decided to let me live.

The producer was gracious. Kind. Of course. Bien sûr. Of course she would read it. She said it the way French people say things when they’re being polite but not yet committed to anything: like a door opening a crack.

And that’s the surreal part about these moments. There’s no drumroll. No dramatic handshake. No “we’ll be in touch” with the weight of destiny behind it. The world doesn’t change. The carpet remains the same carpet. The espresso remains overpriced.

But my nervous system doesn’t know that.

My nervous system hears: A producer will read your script.

Which translates to: Something might happen.

Which translates to: Maybe the cavalry is real.

For the next month, I did that thing writers do that’s deeply undignified: I lived half inside normal life and half inside the fantasy of what could happen if this person liked it. I didn’t go full delusion. I didn’t pick out a Cannes gown. But I did keep thinking: She has it. She’s reading it. She’s imagining it.

A month passed. And then I did something that used to terrify me even more than approaching producers: I followed up.

The producer responded. She had read the script.

And then came the sentence that is both polite and lethal:

“It was just not for me.”

Ergh.

That phrase is fascinating, if you really stare at it. It doesn’t mean the script is bad. It doesn’t mean it’s not viable. It doesn’t even mean she wouldn’t recommend it to someone else. It means: I’m not your person.

Which is fair. It’s also maddening. Because it’s a rejection with no handle. There’s nothing to argue with. It’s taste. A locked door with a velvet rope.

And for about ten minutes, I wanted to do what I always want to do after a rejection: rewrite my entire personality, relocate to an island, and become someone who makes ceramics. Something soothing. Something where the feedback is mostly, “Nice bowl.”

But Isabelle didn’t let me spiral.

“Good,” she said. “She read it.”

That was her frame, and it took me a second to absorb it. Because my American brain wants outcomes. My Midwestern brain wants approval. Isabelle’s brain wants progress. In her world, “she read it” is not the prelude to the win. It’s the win. It’s proof you can get your work into rooms it wasn’t in before.

I don’t know if Isabelle is trying to make me a filmmaker, or a Frenchwoman, or some hybrid of the two. Possibly both. But what she’s really teaching me is the unglamorous part of getting a film made: closing the distance between the script and the people who can actually say yes.

And learning not to confuse “not for me” with “not for anyone.”

Because if I’m going to make this thing, I can’t build my identity around every individual yes or no. I have to build it around the work, the reps, and the next door.

Also, I have to learn French. Apparently. Bien sûr.

When I was a teenager during the Cold War I’d have anxiety dreams about nuclear Armageddon. The dread was constant so I did the only thing my teenage brain could think to do: I tried to be useful. I started an activist group at my high school. I wrote an essay for the local paper about the arms race. I entered it in a statewide contest and, shockingly, won.

That little chain of events landed me in a room with adults and titles and a “peace council” for the state of Ohio (which sounds quaint now, like a committee of people politely asking the world to stop). I don’t remember exactly what we did, beyond the obvious task of solving world peace before homeroom, but I remember the feeling: I wasn’t powerless, I had a role, and a binder.

Fast forward a few decades, and the feeling is back. The scale is different, the headlines are constant, and the doom is delivered by push notifications. I’ve tried to use humor the way I used activism back then: as a tool for processing, reframing, sometimes even connecting.

Humor is not the opposite of seriousness. It’s the opposite of despair. It’s what lets you touch the hot stove of reality and pull your hand back before you burn the whole house down. A joke can carry a truth farther than a lecture, because it slips past the defenses. It makes room - just a little - for the human inside the horror.

And still - after a week like this - my honest impulse is to crawl under a rock or move to a tropical island with three stores, a beach bar, and intermittent Wi-Fi – and no push notifications unless a message in a bottle washes up on shore.

So here’s the question I’m sitting with: how do we stay useful and sane at the same time? How do we help without letting the outrage machine burn our nervous systems to ash?

I don’t think the answer is “stay informed at all times.” That’s not a moral high ground; it’s sanctimonious self-harm with a Garamond font. I also don’t think the answer is total bury-your-head-in-the-sand-numbness. Numbness is just despair wearing a skort. Practical. Confusing. Not fooling anyone.

The only strategy that’s worked for me - then and now - is to separate attention from action. Attention is infinite; it will swallow your life. Action is finite; it will save your life.

So here’s what I’m trying this week, in case you need something concrete too:

First: one daily boundary for my nervous system. A hard stop on news. A long walk without my phone. A swim. Ten minutes of silence. Whatever reminds my body that I’m not actually being chased by a lion that hasn’t eaten in two months.

Second: one small act of usefulness I can complete in under 20 minutes. Not because small is virtuous, because small is doable. Donate to a local org that helps real people. Check on one neighbor. Call one representative. Volunteer once a month instead of doomscrolling daily.

I can’t control the whole country. I can control whether I become another person who’s too fried to be kind.

If you’re reading this and you feel the rock-crawl impulse too, try this: pick one nervous-system repair and one useful action - today. Not as a grand identity shift. Just as proof that you’re still in the world, and still able to move something in the right direction, even a millimeter. That’s not nothing, that’s the way out.

If we’re going to reflect, I’d rather do it every three months. Quarterly feels human. You can still remember what happened. You’re less likely to sound like you’re auditioning for a corporate promotion. And you don’t have to pretend the year was a neat narrative when it was actually more like: a few good days, a few awful days, and a long stretch where you did your best and also ate a bag of salted mixed nuts standing over the sink.

This time of year is bittersweet in a way the “Top Ten Moments!” posts never quite capture. The dining room table gets reduced back to its smaller, everyday shape - like the house itself is exhaling after hosting. The Christmas ornaments go back into their boxes (in theory; in practice, give me until mid-January). The steady snacking on sweets and leftover turkey becomes harder to justify. Board games get put away. Dry January pacts are exchanged in group text messages. The ashes from the half cord of wood you burned over the holidays get swept out of the fireplace. Everything goes back to its “regular” place.

And then the hardest part: the young adult kids get driven to the airport. Goodbyes happen curbside in the departure zone like a tiny private grief ritual performed in public. You do the big engulfing embrace. You gulp down the tears. You drive home across the grey-brown Ohio plains trying not to cry at a billboard for a truck stop.

So no, I’m not doing a highlight reel. I don’t want a list of “wins.” I want the quieter truth: the year ends the way it began, with people you love leaving, you staying, and life requiring you to keep going.

Which is also why this is one of my favorite weeks of the year - not for resolutions, but for planning. Not “New Year, New Me,” but “New Year, same me, slightly more awake.” It’s the moment when the calendar turns into a blank page and your brain starts asking better questions. In an ideal world, what would this year feel like? What would be different at the end of March - not December? What could I do in the next two weeks that would make future me feel less panicked and more creative?

A few takeaways I’m trying, in case you want to borrow them:

Instead of a year in review, I’m doing a year in three sentences:

1. What I’m proud I did.

2. What I’m done pretending is working.

3. What I want more of.

Then I pick one small “January proof” - a single action that creates evidence I’m moving in the right direction. Not an identity shift. Not a grand vow. Proof. A page written. A gig booked. A walk taken. A paragraph drafted that isn’t perfect but exists.

Because the thing about January is it’s not magical, but quiet work can happen. It’s a door. And doors don’t carry you through; you still have to walk.

If one of the things you want this year is a book - nonfiction, memoir, whatever’s been hovering in the back of your mind - start smaller than you think you should. Start with the first page, the first scene, the first ugly outline. And if you want structure and accountability, my next Funny, Smart + Published cohort opens soon. No pressure. Just an option on the table, like the leaf you’ll add back in when it’s time.

My plan was simple: park, get a few exterior shots, narrate my little dispatch out front, leave. Which would’ve worked if the weather weren’t doing that Midwest thing where it’s technically legal for humans to be outside, but only barely. It was six degrees. Six. My fingers went numb so fast I started filming like I was wearing oven mitts. I refused to do the bit from inside my cold car because that felt like the lowest form of cinema—lower even than a hostage video.

So after grabbing a couple of exterior shots—Waffle House shimmering behind me like the last warm rectangle on earth—I did the thing I hadn’t planned: I went inside.

Immediately, I was hit with that warm diner glow, the smell of waffles, eggs, bacon, and coffee that has never seen a single-origin bean in its life. It wasn’t just warmth; it was time travel. Like I’d stepped through a slipstream into a parallel America that still believes in mugs, booths, and hash browns as a coping mechanism.

Everyone was cheery. Everyone except the grim (or possibly high) Hell’s Angels-adjacent biker in the corner: sunglasses still on indoors, ZZ Top beard, face like a warning label. He had the vibe of a man who either knows where the bodies are buried or is currently burying one emotionally.

I slid into a booth and the waitress—cheery, unbothered, tuned to a frequency I haven’t accessed since landlines—appeared with the vibe of someone who could restart society with a pot of coffee and a laminated menu.

“What can I get you?”

And here’s where my own weirdness kicked in, because I suddenly felt like “server” wasn’t quite the word in a place like this. This wasn’t a restaurant so much as a temporal safehouse. A public bunker with syrup.

“I would love a hot coffee with cream.”

“Works for me!”—which felt like an affirmation, not an order confirmation—and she brought me a steaming cup of Joe in an old-school diner mug. The coffee tasted like the coffee I remember from New York City in the 80s: blunt, functional, and possibly administered by a man named Frank who smokes indoors. The kind of coffee that doesn’t ask how you’re feeling. It just shows up and does its job.

I sat there thawing my fingers back to life, eavesdropping on snippets of conversation, and it was oddly soothing. People were talking about regular things—shifts, someone’s cousin, weekend plans—as if the world wasn’t currently a constant push notification.

Meanwhile, there I was: another weird customer talking into my phone like a woman recording field notes for the Smithsonian exhibit on Late-Stage America. I kept waiting for someone to clock me, to ask what I was doing, to look alarmed.

No one did.

Because Waffle House is the kind of place where “weird” barely registers. You could come in wearing a tuxedo, carrying a ferret, reciting Shakespeare, and the staff would still say, “Works for me,” and top off your coffee. There’s something deeply comforting about a room where you could hide out for a while—not because anyone’s protecting you, but because nobody cares enough to interrogate you. In a culture that’s become obsessed with branding, identity, and curated performance, Waffle House offers the radical freedom of being… just another person in a booth.

For twenty minutes I wasn’t in 2025. I was in 1985. Or 1979. Honestly, it could’ve been 1992. Time is blurry when the lighting is fluorescent and the coffee is brave.

And somewhere between the second sip and the third overheard conversation, it hit me: I think I’ve found my new favorite writing spot.

If there’s no Wi-Fi? Even better. If no one expects me to be productive or optimized or “on”? Bliss. A little pocket of analog in the middle of the algorithm.

Next time, I’ll order the waffles too. Because if the world really is ending, I’m not going out on just coffee and vibes.

(And if you spot me in a booth narrating into my phone again… mind your business. I’m rebuilding civilization one diner mug at a time. And keep your eye out for the reel I made - I’ll reshare it here on Substack.)

I discovered this method during a particularly dark period when I’d reorganized my entire house twice rather than write a single paragraph. Now I use it whenever my brain decides it would rather calculate the exact number of days since Princess Diana died than put words on a page.

The ritual goes like this: set a timer (five minutes for a paragraph, fifteen for something meatier - time is elastic when you’re panicking), pick something stupidly small to write (an opening, a transition, the part where you explain why you moved to Paris without making it sound like an Elizabeth Gilbert situation), and then write like you’re being chased by a bear. A metaphorical bear. Though given the state of the world, possibly literal.

While that timer runs, I become a different person. Not the person who once spent forty minutes choosing between “crimson” and “scarlet” to describe period blood in an op-ed. Just someone vomiting words like a freshman after their first keg stand. Missing a date? [INSERT YEAR REAGAN RUINED EVERYTHING]. Can’t find the right verb? [BETTER WORD FOR DESTROYED]. The brackets are breadcrumbs for Future Holly, who will presumably have her shit together.

Then comes the violence.

I read what I’ve expelled and become every harsh editor who ever made me cry, except now I’m doing it to myself - progress, apparently. That opening sentence buried in paragraph three? Drag it up like a body from a lake. “The meeting was difficult” becomes “Seven people forgot to unmute themselves simultaneously, creating a symphony of domestic chaos.” “Politics is broken” becomes “Congress died and left Fox News anchors reading the will.”

The mathematical precision of destruction: cut 10% automatically, like a mob tax on your own prose. Murder every third adjective. If two clever phrases are tongue-kissing in the same sentence, one gets pushed off a cliff. This butchery takes twelve minutes and transforms your draft from a wine-drunk text to your ex into something you might submit to The Daily Beast.

The final movement is the rewrite - swift, surgical, almost tender. I read it aloud because the mouth knows things the brain pretends not to notice. Where I stumble, the sentence dies or divorces itself into two cleaner thoughts. If there’s a concrete image near the start - say, that bear - I’ll callback to it near the end, like a comedian bringing back the setup from their opener. And I sharpen one line until it could cut glass, something a stranger might screenshot and share with the caption “THIS.”

The whole operation - sprint, slaughter, resurrection - takes thirty minutes maximum. I haven’t achieved Didion-level precision or figured out whether it’s “who” or “whom” (it’s always “whom” when you’re trying to impress someone), but I have something that breathes and bleeds and sounds like me on a good day.

Here’s why this works: writing and editing require different parts of your brain, like how you can’t simultaneously orgasm and do your taxes. Well, most people can’t. The sprint suffocates your inner critic before it can suggest you’re not qualified to have opinions. The harsh edit gives you permission to be the parent your sentences never had. The rewrite is where you remember you’re not just moving words around - you’re trying to connect with another human being through these arbitrary symbols we’ve all agreed mean something.

Objections arrive like relatives at Thanksgiving. “Five minutes isn’t enough time!” Fine, use ten, but set the damn timer or you’ll drift into that place where you’re googling “symptoms of rare blood diseases” instead of writing. “But I need to research!” That’s what brackets are for—[CHECK IF GERMANY ACTUALLY ORGANIZED IT] and move on. “It won’t sound like me!” Neither does your Hinge profile, but you still posted it.

Want proof this works? Set a timer for three minutes right now. Write the ugliest possible version of whatever you’re avoiding. When it dings, give yourself two minutes to perform emergency surgery: move the real opening to the actual opening, replace every instance of “thing” with an actual thing, execute one darling. Read it aloud once. You’ll feel something shift, like when your back cracks in just the right way.

If you want someone to hold you accountable for doing this until an actual draft exists rather than just a folder called “Book Ideas 2025 FINAL FINAL,” details below. Timer screenshots welcome, public shamings guaranteed.

I’m treating this month like training camp. My Ohio Planet Fitness membership, which is basically an anthropological field site disguised as a gym, also gets me into the LA gyms. Here, it’s like a waystation: People finish dishwashing shifts, repack duffels for their next gig, charge phones, grab a shower, change for a night out because home is 90 miles away—or not fixed at all. It’s fluorescent, chaotic, and possibly dangerous. But the lesson’s the same: don’t argue with the vibe—keep your head down and do the reps.

I swim, too—an outdoor heated pool in late November, which still scrambles my Ohio brain. I’ll be mid-lap thinking, This water is warm and legal?

Hat designed by @lucasbenjamn (IG)

Here’s the thing no one tells you: quiet seasons are where you either get honest… or get loud to avoid honesty. I’ve tried both. Noise is easier. Work is better. So I stole a page from athletes: ‘train low, race high’. No “races” right now—just laps.

What that looks like (not pretty):

• 90-minute phone free sessions. Device in another room, wifi off. If a sentence needs research, I bracket it and keep going. Momentum over trivia.

• Ugly-first drafting. Comedy has taught me the fastest path to a clean bit is a dirty one. I write the sloppy, obvious version on purpose—then cut 30%.

• One rep that compounds. Every day gets a non-negotiable: a page of a book for a client, a rewritten joke, or a paragraph toward Substack.

The less I feed the algorithm, the more I feed the work. When I do post, it’s sturdier. The jokes land because the paragraph breathes; the paragraph breathes because I drafted three bad ones first. Planet Fitness rules apply to pages: nobody cares how pretty your form looks if you’re not picking anything up.

Quick Writing Hack

The Line-of-Sight Test

Before you publish, read your draft once with one question in mind: “Could a slightly distracted reader picture this on the first pass?”

Do three quick swaps:

1. Abstract to Image

“low engagement” to “200 views and two pity likes from your aunt”

2. Vague time to Clock

“early” to “7:12 a.m. stand-up where every camera is off”

3. Clever to Clear

If a line makes you happy but muddies the picture, cut it or move it after the point.

Clarity is oxygen. Give readers a clean setup; your punchlines (and points) will hit harder.

I finished my short film this month. By “I finished it,” I mean my brilliant editor Alex finished it while I said helpful things like, “Could that cut feel 3% more inevitable?”) Aymeric waved his VFX wand, the last pixels settled, and now we’re off to festivals. I can’t share it publicly yet, but the logline: a woman uses a meditation app and the app… starts needing her. It’s a 4:30 nugget about AI, attention, and who’s actually in charge.

Also: I had a birthday in Paris. Champagne was consumed. Croissants were harmed. I managed to convince some of my nearest and dearest to travel to the city of light to celebrate it with me. Many glasses of champagne were drunk, crepes, snails, and steak tartare was eaten. At this point my body is 11% almond paste and 0% regret, so I’m atoning with vegetables and kombucha like a woman trying to bargain with her liver.

I’m also building a YouTube series that blends political satire, street chats (wherever I land), and a few new characters who are currently living rent-free in my head. Goal: launch in the next month or two, after I stop rewriting the intro like it’s the Magna Carta.

And for my writers: the first cohort of Funny, Smart & Published—three months of guided book-building—kicks off in November. If you’ve got a nonfiction/memoir/business book rattling around, drop a comment and I’ll send details.

Quick Writing Hack (steal this today)

The 2–10–2 Pass

When you “finish” a draft, do three tiny passes that take under 15 minutes total:

• 2 minutes: Cut the hedge. Kill qualifiers: just, kind of, a bit, really, actually, very. Your voice gets 30% clearer in two minutes.

• 10 minutes: Swap vague for vivid. Replace general nouns with specifics: steak tartare instead of food ; pitch deck instead of work ; closing-night Deauville after-party where you weren’t on the list and went anyway instead of party . One concrete detail per paragraph is plenty.

• 2 minutes: Read out loud for rhythm. Where you trip, the reader will too. Add a period, or break the sentence into two. Comedy and clarity both live in pacing.

Do that, and your prose will feel tighter, funnier, and more you - even when you’re “remiss.”

More soon this week (for real). I’ll share a peek behind the curtain on the YouTube pilot and a small update from the festival submission trenches. If you want the cohort info, say “November” in the comments and I’ll DM you the details.

Internal Memorandum

TO: All Personnel, Department of Shared Reality (DSR), Executive Office of the President

FROM: Secretary of What Actually Happened (SWAAH)

DATE: September 22, 2025

SUBJECT: Implementation of the Mandated Consensus Reality (MCR) Across All Agencies

Executive Summary (TL;DR)

For too long, Americans have experimented with independent thought. Effective immediately, agencies will enforce a single Mandated Consensus Reality (MCR to replace “bespoke realities,” “lived experiences,” NPR tote-bag narratives, campus consensus, and fact-checker interference.

Non-compliance will trigger mandatory 72 hour Re-Alignment.

The Problem: Trump Derangement Syndrome+ (TDS+) - Diagnostic Criteria

Citizens exhibit TDS+ when they persist in realities not aligned with the Office of the President. Common indicators include belief that:

• “The Founders didn’t write in executive immunity.”

• “Journalism shouldn’t be cleared by the Pentagon first.”

• “Climate policy beats commemorative Bibles.”

• “Human rights” constrain crowd control.

• “Elections end when votes are counted, not announced.”

These narratives impede the MCR and will be harmonized via a Pre-Publication Reality Review (PRR).

Solution Architecture (Initial Operating Capability)

A. SWAAH Authority
The SWAAH holds final say on What Actually Happened, including but not limited to: elections, weather, and whether birds are birds. SWAAH will deploy:

• Reality-o-Meter®: Measures national deviation from MCR in real time (spikes during holidays and eclipses).

• Truth Squads (TS-1 through TS-12): Certified Reality Compliance Officers (CRCOs) + AI bots trained to fact-check memes before they self-replicate.

B. Pre-Publication Reality Review (PRR)
All public communications (press, podcasts, newsletters, church bulletins, 3+ person group texts) must be routed through PRR for MCR alignment. Average turnaround: 6–8 fiscal weeks; rush fee applied.

C. Mandatory Reality Audits (MRA)

Quarterly checkups for all social accounts. Sample affirmations (check YES to remain in good standing):

• YES The 2024 election was the most legitimate election ever held; any claim otherwise is misinformation unless issued by the Office of the President.

• YES Tariffs create free money; prices that appear higher are the media’s fault.

• YES Climate is weather; forecasts must respect the heat index cap set by the Department of Commerce.

• YES The Founders intended broad executive immunity and would have loved premium gold décor.

• YES Public safety is best achieved through federal troops in American cities and decreased math in schools.

• YES Diversity means everyone is free to agree.

Failure protocol: temporary posting suspension + immersive Re-Alignment (72 hours, VR briefings, pledge karaoke, foundational civics per the new glossary).

D. Patriot Vision Smart Specs
Augmented-reality eyewear pre-calibrated to the Mandated Consensus Reality. Standard features:

• Crowd Size Maximizer: Automatically renders all gatherings “the largest ever.”

• PRR Stamp-In-View: Blocks any article/video lacking the Pre-Publication Reality Review seal.

• Sharpie Compliance Overlay: Corrects weather maps to leadership-approved trajectories.

Operations & Enforcement

Patriot Verification Desk (PVD) – Dial 1-800-REAL-USA

For swift reporting of Non-Alignment Events (NAEs). Use for:

• Reporters publishing without a PRR clearance code.

• Teachers citing “studies” not signed by the Department.

• Podcasts saying “do your own research” without approved research (rally footage).

Public-Facing Talking Points (Use Verbatim)

1. “Truth isn’t partisan; it’s pre-approved.”

2. “Freedom means agreeing faster.”

3. “Tariffs are free money; any price rises you see are fake news.”

Frequently Anticipated Questions

Q: Isn’t this authoritarian thought control?
A: We prefer “democratized certainty.”
Q: What about freedom of the press?
A: Thriving! Please route all freedom through PRR first.

Conclusion

We are very close - closer than anyone thought possible - to restoring a Single, Beautiful American Story. Not the weak kind. The strong kind. The best kind. A return to Baseline Consensus Reality isn’t just possible; it’s inevitable, because alternatives are low‐energy, off-brand, and soon to be behind a paywall where they belong.

From this day forward, facts will be bigger, classier, and totally aligned. The losers and haters will complain. They always do. Let them. America doesn’t run on complaints; it runs on approval, applause, and clearance codes.

Choose unity. Choose certainty. Choose the Mandated Consensus Reality (MCR) - the only reality with premium gold trim. Those who embrace it will be recognized as winners. Those who don’t will enjoy our Re-Alignment program until they do.

Your loyalty to the DSR mission is noted, appreciated, and, if necessary, measured.

SWAAH
Secretary of What Actually Happened
Department of Shared Reality (DSR)

I’m not anti-AI. But I am anti-outsourcing-my-brain. Ethan Mollick’s latest piece on his Substack, One True Thing, calls our current moment “working with wizards” - the tools feel increasingly magical, but ever more opaque, so it’s tempting to just ask for a spell and call it a day. He argues we still need “co-intelligence,” but the dynamic is shifting so fast and furious that competence and opacity are rising together. It’s both thrilling and mildly horrifying for anyone who cares about voice and authenticity (has that word achieved quaint status yet?).

Here’s my struggle: I love speed. I also like thinking thoughts that are mine. If I let the wizard do everything, my writing gets shinier, faster but decidedly, less me. If I refuse the wizard, I’m LARPing as a monk with a quill. So how do we work with the magic and keep our fingerprints on the page?

A few questions I’m asking (and you can steal):

1) What’s the human job?
Mollick’s older framing - be a “centaur” or “cyborg,” handing the right parts to the machine and keeping the right parts for yourself - still helps. For me: I start with my own premise, thesis, taste, and structure. I let AI help with brainstorming more options than I could in a day, titles, and research trails to chase. Stop gap: if the wizard is writing my thesis sentences, AI has stormed the castle.

2) What do I refuse to automate?
I won’t automate ideas, rough drafts, or the one sentence that carries the heart of the piece. Wizards can propose lines; I decide what stays on on the page. That’s the deal.

3) How am I verifying the magic?
Mollick’s point is sneaky important: the more powerful the system, the less transparent the process. So you need verification rituals - second sources, spot checks, and a pass that asks “Did this actually happen?” Otherwise you’re printing spells you can’t defend.

4) When do I slow down on purpose?
Speed is addictive. But clarity loves oxygen. I try a “two-speed” workflow: sprint with AI to rough a map; amble without AI to choose the trail; then sprint again to polish what I decided in slow brain mode. If the wizard is open during every step, my creating muscle atrophies.

Practical guardrails I’m road-testing:

• The Human Thesis Rule. Before I open an LLM model, I write a one-sentence intention or idea in plain language. If I can’t do that, I’m not ready for help. (If you are ready, the wizard is great at brainstorming proofs and counterexamples you didn’t consider.)

• Voice Locks. I keep a short “voice kit” - a paragraph that sounds unmistakably like me (cadence, humor, specificity). After AI suggests revisions, I read them out loud next to the kit. If my mouth trips over it, I revert or rewrite.

• Source Breadcrumbs. Any time the wizard hands me a fact, I make it bring receipts or I go find them. If I can’t cite it, I don’t keep it. (Yes, I’m fun at parties.)

• The “Drunk Room Test.” A coach once told me comedy is getting a room of slightly drunk people to think the same thought at the same time. I run high-stakes paragraphs through that lens. If the wizard’s phrasing is clever but unclear, it dies. As I said in an earlier post this month, clear beats clever; always.

• Wizard-Free Days. One writing session a week with wi-fi off. It’s like strength training for judgment. You’ll feel slower. You’ll also remember you have a brain.

What I’m noticing already: when I define my part of the job, the wizard becomes a phenomenal collaborator. When I don’t, it becomes a very confident intern who sounds like everyone else. Mollick’s “jagged frontier” metaphor still applies - you’re strongest on some tasks, AI is shockingly strong on others, and the art is deciding the hand-offs. That decisiveness is a skill, not a vibe.

I don’t have a grand conclusion yet - this is a work-in-progress question. But here’s my promise to myself: Use AI to go farther, not lazier. If the tool expands my curiosity, great. If it narrows my voice to median internet, I close the tab.

I’d love to hear how you’re navigating this. What’s your human job? What will you never outsource? And where has a wizard genuinely surprised you - in a way you could verify and stand behind? Drop a note below. I’ll compile the best practices (and the funniest failures) for a follow-up post.