Prompt #6/52:

How will people know what you’re doing if you don’t tell them? Why I think this matters.

This is a really hard lesson I had to learn at work over the years, and I think you really can apply it to life. I know we all chafe at those LinkedIn posts, the ones that in a good faith reading are just informing people of new jobs changes or whatever, but always ALWAYS come off icky.

You know the ones: they usually start with [all together now]

“I’m thrilled to announce…”

ugh.

But the lesson I learned at work is even when you work at the same workplace, people just don’t know what you’re up to necessarily. We get into our siloes, so much of what we do and how we think and what we create (in any context) is the quiet work. I think, it’s doing us a real disservice to not find ways to bring people into those things. In order to get opportunities, they need to remember a) you exist, and b) you’re doing things. It’s also a generosity to yourself and others, I think, to let them in.

I don’t even mean “get opportunities,” in the capitalist way, like rise in the corporate ranks or stroke your ego or anything like that. I mean, even if you are just trying to build a more value-aligned life or find interesting people to spend time with, they need channels of information to engage with. It’s ultimately an exercise in storytelling.

I talked about this on TikTok years ago,

how someone I knew lost a promotion opportunity because her supervisor didn’t have a strong enough sense of her impact. Tbh that’s a super shitty situation and the boss should absolutely have worked to understand her contribution better.. but alas..the lesson landed for me.

I have a friend who is pretty off the grid, not on social media, LinkedIn, nothing. Years ago they moved to a different country for grad school and didn’t tell anyone. It was a prestigious grad school in a well-known city so odds are there were many people they knew living there. And there were, it turns out! After literally graduating from the school, this friend would talk about it to people and they’d say things like “wait I had no idea you were there! I was there during that time!” or “I know allll these people I would’ve connected you to!” In retrospect this friend was like, damn…why didn’t I tell more people? Herein lies the tension between public and private. This friend is really privacy-conscious and made the choice to keep it quiet, which is something I really respect, but it got us both talking about what we gain and lose by making the decision to not share aspects of our goings on.

I am someone who skews more public these days, clearly. I have social media accounts on Instagram and TikTok (and obviously here too) where I talk openly about what I’m doing in my career, with money, where my thinking has changed, where I’d like to go etc.

Here’s what I’ve learned from this: doing so can expand your surface area.

I’ve talked about that concept quite a bit on here2, this idea of spreading yourself out more, putting yourself in more places, conversations, interactions. Like literally just trying to be in more things. Because inevitably, the more things you’re enmeshed in, the more things can happen.

And again, I’m not even talking about transactional things like rising in the ranks, making money, meeting “the right people,” or whatever— although I do believe all of those are more likely to happen the more spaces you’re in. But for me, talking more about what I’ve done and am doing has led to just being thought of more, to being in more peoples’ orbits. And I think for those of us interested in being more community-oriented, this is a really important step.

Literally, this is an email I got this week:

Now these may or may not lead to tangible things, to money, to opportunities. But what I know for certain is they’re leading to me meeting these people whom I otherwise would not have met (in both cases, virtually because they both live in different countries from me). And as I said, meeting new people leads to who knows what… and isn’t that sort of the goodness of life? The serendipity of connection?

Reminds me of this photo carousel I did on Instagram about how I’m always attuned to when I have chemistry with a person (see below for a few of the images). Chemistry only works if you reveal things to a person, because that gives them the opportunity to respond, no?

As with everything, there is a balance. For example, there are so many things in my personal life that I don’t share details about online. Everyone has their own risk tolerance and we all have to do those calculations ourselves. And I’m not even saying this ‘informing people of what you’re up to thing’ has to happen online— not at all! In fact, this could manifest as sending your colleagues a Slack like “just wanted to share that we finished XYZ thing!” or sending a cold email to someone you admire and pitching an idea you’ve been thinking about, just because.

Generally for me, it’s the practice of taking the stuff we might often do alone (working, hobbies, things we’re thinking about, our art) and finding ways to bring other people into the process.

So, what do you think? Do you disagree with this? Do you have a reaction to it (positive or negative?) I’m curious if you have not shared something and then regretted it after the fact, or if you share things and have seen positives from that, or anything in between!

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If you want to read the previous prompts to get your brain going:

• Prompt 1: Who/what is on your priorities list?

• Prompt 2: Do you retain what you read? Does it matter?

• Prompt 3: Do you know what you don’t know?

• Prompt 4: I (finally) feel free without a dream job

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This week’s food-for-thought prompt is:

Prompt #5/52:

The case for a Humanities degree

The older I get and the more I lean into a non-linear career path, the more I understand just how valuable it was to study a Humanities subject in college.

First, let’s quickly define it: According to Coursera,

a humanities major examines culture, ideas, and human experience while building transferable skills for many careers

The transferable skills bit is sort of the point of this whole piece. We’ll get there in a minute.

In my case, I graduated with a BA in Middle Eastern Studies and a minor in Arabic. I was extremely (still am) curious about and interested in that part of the world and essentially spent four years of my life reading books and writing papers, thinking deeply, asking questions, diving deep into a language, living abroad, learning history, challenging my assumptions. And ultimately, stressing about how ‘useless’ this degree was for any job prospects.

I remember going into the career services office at my university in my final semester to meet with a career counselor and see what guidance I could get. They had a ton of brochures in the office of “what sorts of jobs can I get with my degree?” and of course they didn’t have a sheet for my degree (a degree that legitimately only five other people were graduating with in my year, at a university of 30,000 students!) That’s really when it hit me: there is no path for this degree. (I’m actually trying to make the opposite case here, but this is where I was in 2014)

I then spent the next decade feeling desperately like I was searching to connect the dots. I knew I was smart, I knew I had a lot to offer, but WHY COULD I NOT FIND MY THING?? Moreover, why was it so hard to show employers, bosses, the stupid ATS resume reader, that I was ‘qualified.’ That dreaded word. I resented the legibility of people like my sister, whose path was seemingly so linear: you study engineering, get an engineering job. If you study humanities, well….there’s…academia? If you want to suffer? Or your degree just becomes a thing you chuckle at and say, if you can believe it, I have a degree in… shrugs. Surely that wasn’t the end of it??

But it really felt like it. Any job I applied for required a ton of leg work for my resume to even be seen. I call/ed it my “LinkedIn rampage.” As soon as I applied for a job I wanted, I’d immediately go to LinkedIn and message virtually anyone I could find who worked on that team. I’d ask for 15-20 minutes of their time. I was desperate to just get on a call with someone (anyone!) because I knew that once I got on the phone I could much more easily “translate” why I wanted this job and why I was qualified. It was always such an act of translation, as if I was impossible to understand without extensive exposition.

I just went through my LinkedIn messages and there are years and years of me sending those messages. Looking back at this, my relentless really emerges.

It’s this sense of urgency, of desperation, in these messages, one that still feels palpable to me as I read them. And years and years of sending those messages, just hoping someone would give me 15 minutes (it happened sometimes…but not often). I felt like I NEEDED to get on the phone with these people, that without that, I just couldn’t compete with people who had 1:1 technical or academic skills for the job. And that was in large part, true. It would take the rare hiring manager (frankly, one I never found until I totally pivoted my career path into what I’m doing now1) who could connect these dots between my resume and why I would be good at say, a Product Manager or Tech Partnerships role.

But here’s the thing: I would be, I WAS, good at those roles. Extremely so. And I knew it!! At first it was just a whisper from me to me (“uh, you’re sort of good at this job that you don’t quite understand and have never done before?”) and then it became louder: colleagues more senior than me coming to me, asking for help with their deck-making because they couldn’t find a through line, or asking for my help with brainstorming because they needed my prodding questions. It was clear I was extremely good at these different jobs (many of them in the tech industry by the way). The case I want to make here is that that’s not happenstance or luck but exactly because I essentially built my brain and my professional expertise through the study of, to quote Coursera, the human experience.

A few weeks back I read this in The Atlantic’s “The End of Reading is Here”2

It’s so alarming (especially that last sentence, LORD)and also not surprising. I asked my Instagram audience if they studied Humanities or not, and if they didn’t but wanted to, why didn’t they, and I got 300+ responses3 (more than I’ve received from truly any other question I’ve posed??!)

As you can imagine, people who wanted to study humanities but didn’t had similar answers (see below for some direct quotes):

• I did not, because I was worried about being able to afford retirement and basic necessities

• Indoctrinated (semi-unintentionally) by my parents that the beta sciences are best/both science majors - ie that’s where the money and opportunities are.

• my parents didn’t think that would be practical

• didn’t feel I could justify the cost.

• was basically taught if I wanted to make enough money to support myself, it was going to be in STEM or business

This is a familiar story to us all. It’s particularly compounded depending on your financial, cultural, familial, geographic etc. situation. I don’t want to undermine the very real conversation of privilege and access required to even consider exploring something like the humanities. That’s all true.

But treating “you won’t make money from humanities,” or “you will make money from STEM” as some objective truth is what I want to push back on here.

I talked about this back in 2022 on TikTok and called it the “hill I’ll die on,” this idea that studying humanities at the collegiate level was actually maybe the best thing I could’ve done for my career.

Because by that time, the pendulum had started to flip in my head: I’d started to go from “I need to prove myself to these hiring managers. I’m operating from a deficit and I need to figure out how to convince them I can do it” to “whoa, I actually have these really specific skills that I don’t see everyone at work having, I need to figure out how to storytell them better.” Where I’m at now is even further along on this to be honest: “YOU need to prove to ME that you understand the value I bring” but 2022 me wouldn’t have been ready for all of that LOL

So anyway, I think it’s clear what I’m getting at: studying people, language, history, texts, culture gives you a foundation of knowledge and skills that you can apply to virtually everything else. Because ultimately, it teaches you how to learn.

And my god, from my decade+ of ‘traditional work,’ and also my 4+ years of posting online, it’s so clear to me that many (most?) people DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO THIS. These are rare skills. For example, the ability to understand your own positionality in any given situation, conversation, experience, let alone within the broader systems of the world. The ability to sit with an idea, letting it marinate as you investigate it from all different sides. The ability to connect one context to another seemingly entirely different one. The ability to read— I mean, really read, like to look up words, to re-read, to push your brain’s own assumptions. The ability to be a social person, and see each person as a unique individual worthy of attention and time. The ability to be intellectually humble, understanding that the more you learn, the less you know.

These are CEO level skills, truly. Moreover, what I had seen as me “job hopping” over the decade, never staying at a job for more than 2 years (more often than not it wasn’t by choice), what felt like me grasping at some semblance of linearity in my story, was actually me practicing and refining these skills. I was constantly being thrown into new environments, with new languages, contexts, people, agendas, and I would always end up swimming, and swimming fast.

I talked about this last week online, how that skill of ‘figuring it out,’ is maybe more important than any other4.

And guess what? I’m pretty sure I developed that from wrestling with the 30 page chapters I was reading for my History classes. Or maybe from being plopped in Jordan at 19 years old and having to navigate life in Arabic suddenly. Or maybe from watching movies that made no sense on a first watch and analyzing them through their historical contexts. Every class I had was a lesson in figuring it out. Because if you learn anything from studying people, it’s that virtually nothing is objective, everything is rooted in systems, and the gray area is where most things lie. So if you wade into those waters for years, you get pretty good at just hanging out there in that uncertainty.

But how does one possibly say all that in a one-page resume?!

The paradox of all paradoxes is that of course now the tech companies understand this. They hire librarians, anthropologists and other writers for roles like Editor or Content Strategist and offer 300k salaries:

The irony is almost too rich. Irony! Something I learned in my Humanities study!

And yes, it’s satisfying to see these companies seem to catch up to what I’ve learned to be true about our degrees. But ultimately, that’s not the validation I was seeking, I’ve realized. I think I needed to give it to myself.

As I work to build a new professional career for myself (a “portfolio career,” which I realize now is basically an interdisciplinary career to match my interdisciplinary degree), by far the thing that is leading to any modicum of success is all the things I’ve learned from reading, and writing, and thinking, and questioning. The rest of the gaps (like how to learn this or that software, for example), all of that can be learned! (or Googled). Wait, even knowing how to sift through search results is itself a humanities skill!

Now, where I’m at today as I build this career is trying to make more money. I won’t sit here and say that this “if you build it they will come” human-centered career will suddenly be lucrative. Interestingly, 2024 stats from the Federal Reserve of New York5 do show that STEM recent grads might be struggling more than their Humanities peers with unemployment

Art history had an unemployment rate of 3% and philosophy of 3.2%, each below the national average nationwide unemployment rate of 4.2% in April. Meanwhile, computer science, chemistry, and physics had much higher unemployment rates of 6% or higher post-graduation. Computer science and computer engineering students had unemployment rates of 6.1% and 7.5%, respectively.

but even with that, those jobs still make much more money than humanities:

Still, those fields were among the most highly compensated. Both computer engineering and computer science had median early-career annual earnings of $80,000, one of the highest out of any discipline. In comparison, art history majors earned $45,000 per year while philosophy majors made $48,000 and nutrition majors $75,000.

And it’s true to my experience for sure: I made no more than 70k for the first 7 years of my career. It took a Herculean effort of all the aforementioned work (emotional and otherwise) to strategically pivot into Product Management which finally crossed my just over the 100k threshold. So ultimately, it took me getting a tech job (albeit at a non-profit) to finally get paid what I believed I “deserved.”

What I’m figuring out these days however, despite all of that, as I try to find or drum up new revenue streams for my portfolio career, is that I trust myself now. My foundation, of intellectual humility, of figuring it out, of being able to start new things all the time, of being sharp and a good question-asker and problem-solver, that’s going to lead to success, however I define that. But I think I’m already there. Because these skills can’t be rocked by unemployment, or a bad boss, or a tech platform deleting my work, or anything. They are the core of who I am and how I see the world. WHO KNEW.

So now when I send those LinkedIn messages (which I do still do occasionally) it’s with a feeling of abundance; I just want to know who you are and what kinds of things you care about. I have nothing more to prove.

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One bit of housekeeping: if you’re a paid sub, you get access to my monthly virtual bookclub! We’re picking the book now for September, and starting in Sept, I will be adding another meet up for European timezone people! So if you’re interested, please consider upping your subscription asap to get in for next month’s book.

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Prompt #4/52:

I (finally) feel free without a dream job

I am so happy to see this week’s prompt is only MORE RELEVANT than it was in March 2022 when I first talked about it.

At the time, I’d just started to trepidatiously admit to myself that I didn’t have a dream job. It felt deeply controversial and shameful. As someone who had always been academically-inclined, achievement-oriented with very linear forward momentum, the idea that I wouldn’t know what I was working towards was extremely disorienting. I mean literally, I remember sitting on idealist.org and Indeed with a blinking cursor in the search bar. What job….do I search for?

When I recorded that video, I was starting to wrap my head around the idea that not knowing what my ideal job would be called, or what kind of company/organization I wanted to work at, wasn’t a be-all and end-all; there are other things to focus on that could give me that feeling of forward momentum, as I started to rattle off in that video:

• I want to work with people I like and who I respect

• I want to build/contribute to something that has a positive impact

• I want my skills to be valued

• other things that have come up as the years have gone on:

  • I want to be in an environment where I can learn and make mistakes

  • I want to be able to be a full person with my coworkers

  • I want to have a balance between “on” and “off” time to allow me to operate within my natural rhythms

  • I want to work on issues/problems that light me up intellectually and creatively

As I say in the video (albeit with much more hesitancy than I have now)…

that’s enough.

More than, that’s enough— that is FREEDOM.

This journey feels much more intuitive and self-guided. It doesn’t mean I don’t have ambition, or that I don’t see more traditional roles I want or organizations I want to work at. Quite the opposite actually. It means I see SO MANY THINGS I want to do and places I want to be in. I don’t have a narrow box that my ‘next thing,’ or frankly, my life, must fit into.

Some of the ‘professional’ things I’ve done since I loosened my chokehold on linearity:

• got a part-time job at a small non-profit that focuses on building healthier digital spaces

• started writing on Substack

• run a monthly bookclub

• got sent out to DC and NYC with the Atlantic to attend their festival1

• done some virtual events with people I’ve met on the internet

• run an IRL conversation club in LA (also with someone I met from the internet)

• did an IRL book event in a city (and country) I don’t live in

• did brand deals with companies like Spotify, Glassdoor, Canva

• got interviewed on a few different podcasts talking about work, identity, and money

• taken dozens and dozens of calls and coffees with people across tons of different industries, job titles etc.

Sure some of these are still readable as “professional,” although none of them would make sense necessarily if you looked at my resume pre-content creator stuff. Generally, on paper, I think I’m much less legible than I used to be, even to myself to be honest. I used to be able to say, I am a Product Manager at XYZ company. This is what I do.

Now my bio is sentences long on a good day. I no longer see that as my responsibility, to make myself particularly understandable. My responsibility is—to use a chronically online term2—to expand my ‘surface area.’ Am I regularly putting myself in new situations, environments, conversations, relationships where I can be introduced to new concepts, terms, ideas? My next steps will make themselves clear from that. And I’m sort of just interested in what next step I should take. Sometimes it’s work and/or money, most times it’s not, but what it always is is something new.

And that to me feels way better than having a dream job.

—

Do you have a dream job? Did you attain it? Did you give up on it? Where are you at today?

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Prompt #3/52:

Do you know what you don’t know?

A few years ago I learned about the Hierarchy of Competence, the four stages we move through psychologically as we go from incompetence from competence1. Let me briefly walk you through them because I think this framework is genuinely really empowering:

Unconscious Competence:

• I don’t even know what I don’t know

• Imagine this as the first few weeks at a new job, utter chaos, you’re a fish out of water, barely understanding what’s going on. You don’t even know where to start

Conscious Incompetence:

• This is by far the most interesting stage to me. This is the stage where, at the new job let’s say, you’re picking up on all of the things you’ll have to do in this job, all the things you don’t know how to do

• To me, this is the part that always feels the worst; now I’m AWARE of how much I have to learn. This is way more stressful than having no idea of what’s ahead

• And YET—- I think this is such a strength. Dare I say, this is almost the most admirable stage of the four. This is where you’re officially put yourself in the line of fire: “oh god, I don’t understand any of this” It’s deeply humbling and sometimes humiliating. You are making mistakes left and right and you’re feeling every.single.one.

• This is the stage that I think so many of us try to rush through: “I just want to feel smarter!” but I think this is where you can really play. You haven’t yet formed strong points of view on things, you’re much more intellectually malleable, trying to learn as many different perspectives and ways of operating as possible so you can define your own

• Don’t fear this stage AT ALL. This is where the magic happens in my opinion. There’s a thrill at this stage, that feeling of “oh my god I have so much to learn", is, I think when we reach the next stages, something we might even look back on with a bit of longing. It’s exciting here, every day is new, there’s so much potential and promise on the horizon. And you’re waiting with anticipation for the moment it will click.

Conscious Competence

• This is a really satisfying stage. This is the stage where it clicks, where we feel ourselves learning the thing

• In a new job this might be that moment where you realize, “whoa I can do this thing alone!”

• But here’s the thing about this stage: it’s pretty short generally, right? Because think about it: once you do a thing competently a few times, the luster of having reached the milestone, of having learned the thing, fades. Now it gets integrated into your regular goings on.

• I think we tell ourselves this will be the sweet spot, but then it swiftly goes into the final stage

Unconscious Competence

• We don’t even think about it anymore; we’re moving on autopilot. We have mastered this skill

• Now, if you think about it in terms of a new job, paradoxically, we might even DREAD or despite or bemoan the new skill: “god why do I have to do this???”

I really do think the spot to reframe in this is that “conscious incompetence,” bit, that feeling where you can see and understand how much learning you have to do. How can we start to see that as the best part? The part where the stretching, challenging, growing, and self-satisfaction lives? And when we (inevitably) reach competence with it, how can we keep seeking out a steady drumbeat of fresh incompetence in our lives?

Does this resonant? What’s something you currently feel consciously incompetent at?

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For me, I was feeling this a few weeks ago when I hosted an event in London (that a few of you were at!). I’ve been practicing facilitation a bit over the last few years but really haven’t done much event planning, so the logistics, the set up and take down of the space, figuring out how to navigate the physical space and get people moving, wow was this challenging for me. I was with my friend who is a professional musician; she’s extremely competent at setting up a physical space and preparing for what is essentially a “performance.” I could tell that she was in the unconscious competence phase and I was veryyyyy consciously incompetent.

SO— here’s to me doing more IRL events to explicitly practice this skill!

Thanks for reading everyone!

Miriam

1

Here’s my TikTok video on it from 2022 if you want to check it out:

@miriam_tinnyBeen sitting in stage 2 for a BIT hahahah #work #jobs #impostersyndrome #corporatetiktok

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This week’s topic actually did come back up this week and I’m excited to discuss it:

Prompt #2/52:

Do you retain what you read? Does it matter?

This week I hosted a book event in London where I asked everyone to bring a book that changed their thinking on something; we did a book swap and everyone left with someone else’s book. During the event, the topic of "retaining information” came up.

I’ve talked about this before—made a video in fact, in early 2024 about this topic: how I really struggle to retain information from books and how I feel some shame about that.

It’s often the plots of fiction that are fleeting in my brain, but sometimes non-fiction (like for example, when I was reading “Say Nothing” by Patrick Radden Keefe last year I spent time explicitly looking up the historical context of the book - the Troubles in Northern Ireland— telling myself THIS IS IMPORTANT HISTORY, DON’T FORGET IT. I was trying to explain that history to someone recently and not one year later it’s all gone from my brain ugh was Northern Ireland majority Protestant or were they the Catholics?! Like why could I not remember?! So it’s definitely not just fiction…)

Someone from that event DMed me yesterday saying she feels really differently about what the point of reading is. Because essentially what I’m saying when I say I feel shame about not remembering what I read, is that ‘retaining information’ is a major priority of reading for me, right? And I guess I’m just not sure I agree with that statement actually, so why am I riding so hard for it?! Let’s dig in a bit.

This is what she wrote me:

That last bit???

“The value of reading does not hinge on remembering the plot, like I too often forget but I’ll remember the feeling”

Wowwwwwwwww. I love this so much. And it reminds me of the article that I talked about in that TikTok video years ago on this topic: “Why We Forget Most of the Books We Read.”

Some quotes from that piece that REALLY HIT for me:

Surely some people can read a book or watch a movie once and retain the plot perfectly. But for many, the experience of consuming culture is like filling up a bathtub, soaking in it, and then watching the water run down the drain. It might leave a film in the tub, but the rest is gone.

Books, shows, movies, and songs aren’t files we upload to our brains—they’re part of the tapestry of life, woven in with everything else. From a distance, it may become harder to see a single thread clearly, but it’s still in there.

These metaphors of film and woven threads, they feel really meaningful to me. This is frankly why I am embarking on this exercise of explicitly revisiting stuff that I’ve read and talked about over the last few years. There have been so many things—feelings, random words, general and specific knowledge— that have lodged themselves into my brain and body from the things I’ve read, listened to, and watched over the years.

But many times the act of recalling them is not linear or logical. I often can’t recall the information when I want to (a la the aforementioned Northern Ireland history). It’s in the random moments where I’m walking and I see a sign or hear someone say something in a conversation and I’m jolted into a memory. Or when I read something and the information seeps so deep into my psyche that I didn’t even know I was internalizing it, but it has changed everything about how I see a certain thing (which was why I wanted to do that “book that changed my thinking” event, because this has happened to me a lot over the years actually).

To be honest, it’s why I started posting (and continue to post) online: being able to talk about information I’m engaging with (podcasts, books, articles, even just conversations with friends) is a tool to help me process and internalize it more. I have always said that I squeeze way more out of a book when I’m discussing it with a bookclub than when I am reading it alone. I remember wayyyy more from the stuff I talked about online than the ones I didn’t talk about outloud. So there’s maybe a lesson in there on making this act more communal, or maybe it’s just about ‘what’s meant to stick will stick.’

I posted the above DM on my Instagram yesterday and people had thoughts! I want to include a few DM responses I received in case this adds color to the conversation for you.

And that’s a perfect way to end it!

Let me know where you fall in this conversation (if you remember anything you read from this piece after you finish it LOL), I’d love to hear from you.

Miriam

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I really want to write more consistently on here but have been struggling with what to write about that also won’t stress me out with pressure (story of my life) and then my friend Zaid had the brilliant idea of revisiting my old videos online. Like go through my old TikToks from 2022, 2023 etc. and see what ideas, books, articles, questions still feel resonant, what is still percolating for me. I love this idea. TikTok often resurfaces my old videos “on this day in 2023..” sort of thing, and I love watching them. Seeing if my ideas on topics have changed, if I still agree with this or that thing, if I feel that my learning has far surpassed whatever I talked about in that video.

It’s a really fun way to continue the learning beyond a single moment in time. I do think of my internet presence as a continuous conversation. I’m constantly reposting my old reels on my stories to bring up points that connect to others in my head, I reference other videos in different videos. It feels like a fight against the algorithm to re-engage with your old material, to not just post and let the idea disappear into the void of the endless scroll.

With that, I am going to try to to write one Substack post a week where I present a “prompt,” for 52 weeks aka 1 whole year. This prompt will come from my videos, from whatever sources I’ve talked about in a video, so it might be a question, or a thought, or a statement, observation etc.

I hope that with these, you’ll get a consistent weekly stream of “bite-sized” things to mull over and think about. I’ll start posting them to everyone (free and paid) but then I’d like to paywall these after a month or two I think. We’ll see! Enjoy Prompt #1 below.

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Prompt #1/52:

Who/what is first on your priorities list?

This is a question from one of the very first TikTok videos I made, back in January 2022, and it absolutely still hits. The TLDR is that in Will Smith’s memoir, he says in therapy he and Jada wrote their list of priorities, and as you can see, they had different things and in different orders.

Some things I’m thinking about from this:

First, just the prompt of: if you were to actually do this exercise, what priorities would you write and in what order? But then, digging in:

• What if your priorities list is different from the person/people you share a life with? Ie. do we “need” to have the same prioritization? What does it mean if I make you first on my list but I’m not first on yours?

• Jada lists her kids first, which is generally what I think we’re taught is ‘right,’ in at least white America, but more specifically as women here. So for sure that’s gendered on at least some level. And then you see that Will has not listed his kids as first… or even second. He’s first on his list.

  • One of my main hesitations around having kids is the idea that I really am my first priority (even in my longterm relationship) and I don’t know that I’d want that to change, but it feels like we don’t have much choice here around that, or rather, it’ll be an uphill maybe shame/guilt-laden battle to push back against that.

  • That reminds me of this TikTok I saw a few years ago of a Spanish woman who moved to the States and couldn’t believe the cultural differences with parenting. In Spain, she said that the kids fit into the parents’ lives, as opposed to how in the US, the parents’ social lives, sleep schedules, and identities often revolve around the kids. This was my fave part of her video (namely because I could neverrrr imagine this in the US)

If you’re so inclined, I’d love to know what your list of priorities would be right now? If you have a partner, do you think they would have the same list? Where do your kids, if you have them, fall? And what do you think these things say about you?

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Thanks so much everyone! Talk next week with Prompt #2.

Miriam

I want to do more live events and get togethers to take our conversations offline so I’m excited to share that I’m putting on an event in London next week! I live in LA normally but I’m in London this month so would love to meet any of you who live here!

The topic is: “A book that changed my thinking on…”

• We’ll each bring a book that we want to swap— a book that changed our thinking on something— then we’ll do a cool book swapping exercise to get someone’s else book

• then do a bit of silent reading of our new books

• and then do some guided conversation in small groups

If you’re in London and free on July 20th from 7-9p, I would absolutely love to see you there! If you’re not free, but know someone who is and who’d like this, send the event their way!

➡️➡️ Get your ticket here

Thanks everyone!

Miriam

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Earlier this week, I tried out this creative challenge I saw on TikTok

The task was: go on a walk and try to find each letter of the alphabet. There doesn’t seem to be a ‘proper name’ for it1 so I’ll call it “Letter Walking.”

So what does find the letters of each alphabet mean? Not the letters as they appear on traffic signs or restaurant names, but seeing the shape of the letters formed through every day objects. Like unexpected ways that a telephone poll, or a crack in the sidewalk, or a bench could create the letters of the English alphabet.

WOW WAS THIS INTERESTING. I only had time for a 45 minute walk (it was supposed to be 30 mins but I didn’t want to stop!) so I only got to letter P, but my brain was whirling on this walk. So many new insights and things to consider.

Below, you’ll find my pictures of letters A-P interspersed with these reflections. I was going to trace the letters in each pictures to make it easier for you to spot, but decided that reading this will give you a taste for the creativity of the challenge! See if you can spot A-P in these pictures (they’re in alphabetical order in this post). You might have to squint to see the letters in some of the pictures, but alas… I think that’s probably the point.

Reflections (and pictures) from my first letter walk

The first thing that jumped out to me FAST was that this was requiring a new level of focus and attention for me. I had started by putting on a podcast as I normally do on a walk, and get this: IT WAS TOO STIMULATING! If you know me you know I rarely experience this with podcasts. But the act of trying to find these letters was actively filling the space in my brain; it made me realize that on many of my walks I’m in a state of almost, spacing out? Or tunnel vision? Or at least not hyperfocus. With this though, I felt locked in, really attuned to my environment. So instead I just put on music. That worked well for me but I could see honestly, how, if you’re someone who always has headphones on a walk, you could do without and be satiated enough.

Similarly, it became really clear to me that when I go on walks normally I’m sort of looking generally in the same direction: ahead of me or at my feet. What this challenge required was explicit new angles, directions, turning my head and eyes really intentionally and consistently on a swivel. I was looking up when I don’t normally, I was turning my head to the side. All in service of trying to find these damn letters. I kept finding myself thinking hmmmm can the next letter be in this bush here if I just turn my head to the right? What about to the left? It felt like I was being pushed to examine each object like it was in an art museum, like if I looked at it long enough I’d find new images, new meanings that I had missed the front time around.

One of the “rules” I gave myself was, you have to go in order: A, B, C…. I kept seeing letters further down the alphabet but I wasn’t there yet and so it wouldn’t ‘count.’ This level of intentionality forced me to slow down, and also to remind myself of the woo-woo a bit (if I can): when it’s time to find that letter, you will find it. I could feel scarcity bubbling up in me and had to remind myself more than once that the outside world is abundant: there are things all around me everywhere that can be shaped into letters. They’ve always been there.

I also felt the urge to redo pictures. I took the picture of the C (above) for example, and then sure enough, found one that looked “better” a little further into my walk. Part of this challenge is clearly in the “imperfection” (all of these words in quotes for obvious reasons). It’s not about finding the best letter, because what even is that, this isn’t a real thing lol! It’s about the whimsy and magic of just finding something that randomly and serendipitously looks like maybe if you cock your head in one direction it could be a letter. And that moment is the whole point. So even when I found a “prettier” or “clearer” version of the letter, if I’d already passed the letter in the alphabet order, that was it. No picture of a nicer one allowed.

Another thing that kept coming up for me on this walk was the duality of both urgent desperation and also slowness. On of the hand, I had this urge to walk faster, to try to get all the letters before I had to head home! It felt like a competition or game that I suddenly ‘wanted to win’ to prove to myself I could complete it. At the same time, my body kept slowing down.

This challenge was forcing me to pause, to scan a single tree for a full 20 seconds. Or sometimes, to double back because I was still thinking about that sidewalk crack and just wanted to double check that it couldn’t actually make the next letter! This is not how I normally go on walks. Similar to the the realization that I sort of space out/just look directly in front of me on my walks, walking at this speed showed me how fast I normally walk, especially/particularly when I’m “on a walk.”

I think— maybe paradoxically— I almost walk faster when I’m on a leisurely stroll for fun because I tell myself it should ‘be exercise’ on some level.. which… a lot to unpack there, yes2. Because what I was doing on this walk was really….looking. Seeing. Noticing. It made me realize how much ground I cover when I’m just going on a normal walk but how little I actually see.

Another thing that kept coming up was that I did feel the urge to check my phone when I was walking (my phone was in my pocket except to take these pictures). It’s not ideal, I get it, but I give myself a lot of grace for the phone addiction and the compulsion to check it. Ok sure. I do that sometimes on my walks normally, whip out my phone to scroll for a minute.

I did still have the urge to check my Instagram or whatever on this walk, but interestingly, when I took my phone out of my pocket I stopped walking. Normally when I whip my phone out on a walk, I kinda scroll and walk (hate that this is where we’re at, sigh). But on this walk, my body sort of subconsciously stopped the first time I scrolled; I realized I didn’t want to miss anything. Suddenly I was hyperaware of all the stimuli— all the potential letters— around me and I didn’t want to pass them without looking at them. If I take ANYTHING from this challenge, this reminder that the world is chock-full all around me, was such a gift.

I’m someone who has been known to say things like, I don’t know, going on a walk isn’t interesting enough to me; it’s boring. Ughhhhhhhh. I think having something to focus on explicitly, almost like having a question prompt before you write an essay, suddenly gave me renewed energy and focus.

I feel some shame about how difficult it is for me to enjoy going on walks. Objectively, I see how good they are. I even feel good when I’m doing them, but I’m not someone who would say they necessarily enjoy walking. I think that’s probably tied a lot into it being difficult historically for me to think of anything related to movement as enjoyable, plus a little dopamine-addicted overstimulated brain mixed in.

I spend so much of my life (particularly as someone who is just generally chronically online, but also someone who makes content online) in a state of overstimulation. It’s a lot of the phone stuff, yes, but it’s also the books. TV. Audio. Even, dare I say (begrudgingly), the thinking about stuff. I just love analyzing things, thinking big thoughts and asking questions about what I’m seeing and how it connects to this or that larger system or framework.

That type of thinking brings me genuine joy and satisfaction. And also, sometimes I need to stop. I want to stop. Sometimes it’s good to go outside, breathe the fresh air, have a pocket that is absent the weight of my phone (that’s my challenge for the next time, no pictures of the letters!), and just use my eyes, ears, nose, fingers to experience the things and people around me (ew sorry about the “fingers” and “people” in the same sentence, feel like that was a weird way to phrase it but you get it LOL)

What do you think about this? Anything come up here? Have you tried this before? Could you find the A-P in my pictures? Did I overthink this whole mindful exercise (probably)?

Leave a comment

Thanks so much for reading!

Miriam

A weird thing has happened over the last few days on my social media: I’ve received a few DMs that have taken this similar, specific tone and they’ve really rubbed me the wrong way. Take a look:

So the context isn’t all that important here (although I’ll get to it a bit later on), but it’s essentially about an influencer who is being accused -rightfully so I think- of selling out, of going against his purported values, the values he touts loudly online, by partnering with Starbucks at Coachella. I’ve been talking about that online for the past few days because I think—- as is clearly evident by what I’ll write later— that one influencer, his choices, and our reaction to his choices, tells us much about ourselves and society. Plus I just find celebrity (even D-list internet people sorry not sorry) gossip to be really fun.

So ok, I’m talking about him online. And I get (at different times throughout a 72 hour period) all those above messages. Here’s what immediately stands out to me about those messages, and what makes me feel icky:

They’re all so definitive.

They’re all claiming something objectively, and something with vigor, and all in a similar tone. Let’s break it down [I bolded the language I thought was particularly revealing]:

From the first message: “none of it is interesting. It’s all just brain rot. It’s an easy way to get paid with zero moral backbone.” Continuing into the second part of their message: “Our mainstream social media culture is watered down hot takes…it’s disingenuous…it’s really boring.”

Then the next comment to me: “I can’t imagine you spending this much time and energy on this platform without the hope of an inevitable payoff.”

And then the third comment: “Everyone can be bought…people are being disingenuous. Everyone has a price…”

Can you sense it? Can you feel what I’m feeling as I read, and re-read those? All of those people are stating things as if they are fact. A lot of the language is “this thing IS” or “is NOT” or “EVERYONE does this” etc. etc. Well of course you’re online to make money. Of course we all have a price. Of course social media is just boring hot takes. Even the use of the phrase “it’s disingenuous” (twice! from two different people!).

This rhetoric is a conversation-ender to me. And it’s so antithetical to how I move through the world, to how I communicate, to the ways I want to engage with others.

The irony of course, is that especially in the case of those first two screenshots, this person DMed me; they (if I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt) were trying to start a conversation with me. In what world is that language a conversation invitation? Because here’s what happens. My friend summed it up perfectly when I was texting with her about it today:

There is no curiosity. In each of those messages, I can see the exact place that they could’ve asked a question, reframed it slightly, and we could’ve been off to the races having a really interesting back and forth. But they spoke in statements. Not only that, but statements that left no doorknobs for me1

I just inherently do not enjoy this form of communication. I see no value in it. But I think a lot of people do, or rather, they don’t know any other way to articulate themselves. I think we often read that tone as smart, principled, confident. They have strong opinions, strongly held, they must know what they’re talking about!!!

But really, there is weakness in that, at least to me. Because what it shows is that you aren’t open to changing your mind, to listening. Your ideas and opinions are so fragile that you can’t allow the door to crack open to new information. Your opinions wouldn’t be able to withstand the potential pivot, the revisiting of what you know to be true. I think it’s also why people are much more comfortable staying in a situation that they hate but that they know, as opposed to taking a leap that -while unfamiliar- could bring exponential happiness. The devil you know, and all…

The same friend I was texting with sent me this IG post:

Curiosity makes you dangerous. It can be a threat to people. I’m asking a lot of questions, I’m opening myself up to change, to the unknown, to frankly, being wrong. I’m forcing a confrontation of my beliefs; that can be so intense for the other person because it’s really disorienting. How can you….be here…speaking confidently…but also with an openness? How am I supposed to read you and understand you? How am I supposed to then understand myself? Ah this is making me articulate what I believe! And I haven’t really confronted that before! I think it can make a person shrink back up, go into themselves. I don’t really want to be around this kind of person.

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Sometimes, even years after posting online, and even believing everything I just said, I still feel insecure in this approach. My idea of “well..it’s probably somewhere in the middle,” or “how do we really know this thing?” or “what do you all think?” It feels almost wishy-washy, not confident. Definitely less definitive. To show up assuming most things (all?) are nuanced, probably in the gray, and maybe you were wrong about XYZ thing is inherently vulnerable. Or is it?

Especially in the online world, but even in our offline worlds, American culture prioritizes loudness, brashness, strong opinions, ‘move fast break things.’ Collaboration, humility, pensiveness, agility, changing your mind, saying “I don’t know,” I think these are seen by most as traits of weakness (and definitely feminine….) and definitely not generally seen by most [men] as leadership traits (correlated to the feminine of it all2).

The stickiness for me about this approach is that I am both open and principled. I am open to changing my mind, to pivoting with new information, I assume most things are subjective and I assume I don’t know as much about something as someone with more lived experienced or expertise. So how do I also not undermine myself? How do I also have convictions (which necessarily require you to believe things steadfastly)? Because I am, especially as of late, an increasingly principled person. Standing on my values has become almost life or death for me. Also— there are objectives rights and wrongs. There are bad things, bad people. We don’t want to go down the Trumpian ‘fake news,’ ‘science is fake,’ line where they question everything, trust no one or nothing.

I think I’m creating a binary that isn’t real: the idea that having strong values necessitates a close-mindedness, an inflexibility. Maybe it’s that the values are the drumbeat beneath everything; they are the lens through which you move through the world, that helps you better interpret things you see and hear, that allows you to return to a center when you are floundering. But they are just that: a compass or a bridge. Not a brick wall. They help you move through something so you can expand, not keep you stuck.

Stating loud opinions as objective fact is in fact deeply Trumpian. We know Trump and his ilk have zero curiosity bones in their body (even as they purport to be “just asking questions”). Relatedly, last night I went to the first virtual meet up of the podcast listening club, a club I found online that meets biweekly in a cohort to listen to and discuss alt-right podcasts to better understand their messaging and tactics. Fascinating, no? So we listened to/watched this episode of the Michael Knowles show (genuinely watch it at your own risk.. it’s wildly interesting and deeply deeply troubling and will surely fuck up your algorithm), and one of the things we discussed last night is how Michael Knowles talks. When he was talking about the SCOTUS cases around birthright citizenship and conversion therapy, he kept saying things like “well.. we all know Ketanji [Brown] Jackson3 isn’t a real lawyer right?” as if to say, this is ground we already know, so we’ll just keep it moving shrug… As a way to sort of flatten any potential disagreement by being like, wait yeah you’re right we all do agree on that.

So this brings me back to the aforementioned influencer, Bran Flakezz, and his recent online drama. As discussed, Bran has been a pretty beloved influencer. He has gone on many podcasts4 and recorded countless videos where he talks explicitly about how much money he’s made as a content creator, how he does it, how others can do it, the racial disparities and inequities in influencing etc. He’s been vocally supportive of Mamdani (even as he’s not an NYC resident as far as I know) and generally has been known to lead with his values. That is a critical part of this story.5

Over the weekend, he starts uploading videos from Coachella where he’s staying at the Starbucks Content House.

This means he has been paid by them (and a number that’s swirled around online is as much as 200K) to go to Coachella, stay in the house, and record content that he posts online.

People did not take kindly to this. Starbucks is an employer known for their union busting and exploitative labor practices. They have silenced (and sued) union members over their support of Palestine online, they underpay, understaff purposefully, withhold wages etc. Read more about it here: https://sbworkersunited.org/our-fight/

I was REALLY curious how Bran was going to respond. Well… he responded. And the apology SUCKS. In my opinion made it so much worse. The reason I bring it up here is because it follows the exact rhetorical path of the DMs and comments I was discussing earlier (with the addition of a ~~very healthy dose of defensiveness).

@bran__flakezzReplying to @bri

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Linking to the apology here as well (Reddit link because I imagine he’ll delete it soon, and Reddit lives on forever thank god).

The incuriosity that stood out to me in this ‘apology’:

• doesn’t ask or wonder or care about why people are boycotting Starbucks (says it’s because ‘the conflict in the Middle East,’ which dear god on multiple levels)

• doesn’t ask or wonder or care about how he could’ve operated differently

• doesn’t ask or wonder or care about why people reacted with so much intensity

There is so much to say about that video, but I want to talk specifically here about the lack of curiosity. As mentioned earlier, I think many people feel they need to come out hot (more likely, it’s not even a need but rather this knee jerk subconscious reaction) in order to maintain their position. If they are called out, if they are shown to be hypocritical or contradictory in their beliefs, they feel attacked. They feel defensive. They must come out strong or they will…what? Be seen as weak, spineless, not confident, stupid?

It’s actually your inability to ask a single question of yourself or your audience that makes you look all those things to me.

It can be really really difficult to sit in contradiction, to acknowledge that two things can be true at once, or that your values are in tension. I think about this all the time with friendship. How one of my values is being connected to and in community with others. To building strong and genuine ties. And yet I also dread texting and avoid texting even some of my closest people because the phone destroys me and I also sort of want to be alone? (still unpacking all of that but you get it). Or with work: that I want my social media stuff to just be fun and light and not that serious/I undermine it because it isn’t particularly hard for me but I also simultaneously believe that things can be work and valuable even if (maybe especially if?) they feel light and relatively easy or in your zone of genius? And yet to me that’s not “work” when it comes to myself because I’m not suffering? MAKE THAT MAKE SENSE.

But there’s strength in sitting in all of this! And attempting to communicate this— to ourselves and to others. I want to move through the world giving myself and other people permission to exist here. Where we encourage (! love it!) changing our mind because it means we’ve learned new things. When we state things that we believe with a confident voice but that that confidence doesn’t convey rigidity. That when we hear or read or see things that provoke or challenge what we believe to be true, we ask more information instead of speaking in declarative statements that close any conversation. Because I think at our core, what so many of us want (can’t say if it’s all of us or not..that’s a little too certain for me, ya know) is to be IN conversation with each other. So…let’s actually practice trying that out?

Leave a comment and let me know what you think (and I swear even if you disagree, I will be open LOL)

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1

Only the article I cite probably the most often!!!

Experimental History

Good conversations have lots of doorknobs

Photo cred: my dad…

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5 years ago · 4091 likes · 94 comments · Adam Mastroianni

Here are 10 podcast episodes that gave me a lot to think about, were interesting to listen to, and that I’d recommend:

..in no particular order! Also, click on the podcast art to get the link to each episode fyi!

Podcast: Question Everything
Episode: The Talented Ms. Goldiee

Listen to the ep here ⤵️

Podcast: In Bed With the Right
Episode/s: Bari Weiss, Parts I and II

Listen to the eps (Part I and II) here ⤵️

Podcast: Diabolical Lies
Episode: The Myth of Centrism

Listen here ⤵️ (this is pay-walled fyi!)

Podcast: A Little Bit Fruity
Episode: We All Deserve Better Than Gavin Newsom

Listen here ⤵️

Podcast: ICYMI
Episode: Why The Internet is Arguing About Its Favorite Feminist

Listen here ⤵️

Podcast: Fresh Air
Episode: Jill Scott is in her ‘auntie’ era

Listen here ⤵️

Podcast: Code Switch
Episode: What the success of “Sinners” does (and doesn’t) say about race and Hollywood

Listen here ⤵️

Podcast: Dead Eyes
Episode: the whole series!

Listen here (I recommend the whole series! Start from ep 1) ⤵️

Podcast: 404 Media
Episode: How Wikipedia Will Survive in the Age of AI

Listen here ⤵️

Podcast: Citations Needed
Episodes: The Not-So-Benevolent Billionaire (Parts I and II)

Listen here (Part I and Part II) ⤵️

Welp.. after riffing in those audio notes, it’s become clear to me I MUST find another word besides “interesting…” lolol

Comment if you’ve listened to any of these and/or if you have another podcast episode to recommend. Maybe one episode that you listened to recently that’s still lingering in your brain?

Alsooo, I sort of love this format with the list and the voicenotes. Trying to not overthink the Substack so let me know what you think about it all.

Thanks so much!

Miriam

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So this thread from is all about the “graveyard of ideas” that we surely all have in some way, these ‘unfinished’ notes, or incomplete pieces of writing, half baked art, podcasts we started and dropped, whatever it is, that we think symbolize our “inability to finish” or our “failure” —everything is in quotes for obvious reasons…

She asks the question: “what if [the moment we “post,” or “publish” or “share”] that’s the exact moment the magic dies?” WOW. Let’s keep reading…

“Some ideas exist simply to keep you company while you’re alive. They don’t need to become anything. They already are something.” That is so incredibly profound…I just need us all to read and reread that.

It’s really reminds me of the part in Week 3 of The Artist’s Way about paying attention. Really it’s the whole page:

Fatima Zehra continues in her thread..

Something about this hit me like a ton of bricks. Especially because I do turn so many of my ideas and musings into “content,” and that’s my whole schtick. Like my style of showing up online is to give these unfiltered, raw moments of processing. It is a tool to take things out of my head and externally process. But it also makes the line between when I should “make content,” and when I’m just “in the company of my ideas for ideas sake” sort of blurry.

As I read those threads, I started to think of all the many unfinished notes and pieces of writing and Substack drafts etc that I have. I went through alll of my (hundreds) of notes in my Notes app; some of them very clearly are mere words or thoughts, maybe triggered from something I read or a conversation I was having

while others were clearly churned out in their entirety and made into a video script or a Substack post.

Same with Substack, got a ton of drafts, some of them mostly not baked beyond the title/subject (“here are some of the people I hate follow online and why” is one that I so desperately want to actually write and post but am too scared LOL)

So why did this land so much with me? I think it’s in this part of the thread:

I feel this urgency these days to tap more into my creativity. I’m realizing how creatively stunted I’ve been, or rather, framed more positively, I can feel my burgeoning creativity bursting at my seams. I’ve talked about this before, that I’ve always assumed creativity was something “artists” did, “art” was something quirky or idiosyncratic, made by people-who-were-good-with-their-hands-or-voices-or-had-an-”eye”. Looking at this, it’s almost laughable how made up those constraints are. And yet, it’s still taking quite a dramatic effort for me to self-identify as an artist (working on it…)

Maybe it stems from the fact that I didn’t really find the thing that lit me up creatively as a kid, or maybe that I was just too afraid to pursue it (for example: senior year of high school I did in fact spontaneously audition for the musical after years of being a techie behind the scenes and I wonder if that was my creative voice pushing me over the edge? Because what other explanation is there for why that happened? And I did get cast as a lead fwiw…) Whatever the reason, I’m now—at the age of 33 and at the risk of over-intellectualizing this entire thing (also part of the issue for me probably)—trying to access my own craft and artistry.

Let me know what you think about all of this. Do you have a grave yard of ideas that stress you out? Is paying attention to these moments of color, sound, or light something that you are naturally doing already or is it going to take work?

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Other things I’m reading, listening to, and thinking about

🟪 So apparently, “…the best defense against automation, some argue, will be a liberal arts degree….” this quote comes from a Business Insider article that is making me lose my mind. The pendulum swings in the tech industry are genuinely too fast (and absurd) to follow. Are “soft skills” in or out today?! Apparently recent grad Comms majors have a lower unemployment rate than recent Comp Sci grads……. because of course, the art and skill of storytelling will always be the most valuable and hardest to find!!!! We talked about this last week in our bookclub on Empire of AI, how the storytelling around AI is by far the most powerful device; the tool is nothing without that….

🔵 This podcast episode of the A Little Bit Fruity podcast all about Celebrity Cowardice. I’ve started listening to this pod regularly and I really love Matt Bernstein’s POVs and the guests he has on. This specific ep was on one of my fave topics: what do celebrities “owe us” around politics. The answer is: not nothing!! They do in fact need to say things about politics! Their conversation gets into the Berlin Film Festival and how every celeb seems to be dodging questions about Facism by saying “let’s talk art, not politics” which….lol

🔶 Wow this Atlantic article really moved me: it’s about Apple’s “Live Translation” feature as part of their new Airpods. The author is a translator and so beautifully writes about the art of translation, and frankly, the meaning of language. My experience bumbling through Arabic (especially when I was living in the MENA region) is really reflected in how he writes about his own with German in this piece, and I wouldn’t change one thing about it. In fact, those many many language hurdles added a level of richness to my life I’ve been searching for ever since, to be honest. I want to share one quote in its entirety:

Cultural critics have long warned that our media-and-technology ecosystem conditions us to treat language as purely instrumental—a neutral conduit for shuttling information from point A to point B. But anyone who has lived between languages knows it is never only that. Each language carries its own map of the world. What resists smooth transmission isn’t an obstacle to communication, but part of its meaning and texture. Automatic-translation technology, by design, filters out that surplus as noise.

Thanks so much for reading! As always, please let me know if anything resonates. Oh, and if you want to join our bookclub, we’re reading/discussing the second half of Empire of AI this Friday! Part 1 was such a meaty and satisfying discussion last week. If you’ve made it this far, I’m trying a new thing where I’m sharing my draft of questions I prepped before the discussion just to get your juices flowing. If you want more of this, upgrade your subscription to paid and come join us 👁️👁️

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-Miriam

100 Rejections

I’ve seen some online chatter about this girl who aimed to get rejected 1,000 times. In a video she posted at the end of 2025, she’s explaining all the things that happened to her because she tried to get rejected (became a Dutch citizen, got an acting role, won a pageant title etc.) I am officially trying to get rejected 100 times this year.

What resonates so much with me about this is the obvious logic: the more you try to get rejected, the more you DO/produce/make, and of course, the more you’ll get. It’s just simple math. But thinking about it in terms of rejection almost gamifies it for me. It keeps it light, with what I think is a healthy dose of skepticism. It introduces a challenge: can you get rejected?

My issue over the last year or so has been that I know want to do more. I want to be pitching myself to potential social media partners more, I want to be applying for arts grants, I want to be writing on this Substack more, I want I want… But in my head it’s “you have to make a pitch,” “you have to…” It feels like this burdensome thing that, even when I know it will ultimately be good for me to have completed, it still feels like a debt I have to pay (even if only to myself). But framing it as chasing rejections takes it from “you should do this” to “can you do this?” which scratches my brain in a very different way.

So here are the things I am working on getting rejected from so far:

• I pitched a bookswap/conversation event to a local community space near me. This of course forced me to actually conceptualize the event and write it down, so now I have this thing I can re-purpose elsewhere

• I have a brand partnership with this company that I really like. All I’ve done with them is branded videos so far but I want to pitch bigger things: a YouTube series or podcast etc. I’m gonna work on making the deck (which again, will be something I can pitch elsewhere too)

• I found a creative fellowship that would be PERFECT for me. It’s due in a week and I’m working on the app right now

• There’s this podcast I love and I just noticed that they started making social media content for the first time. I want to cold pitch myself to make videos for them because I know for a fact, I would be so good at it (it’s a money podcast and I already talk about money online!!)

So anyway.. it’s not that I wouldn’t have had those ideas last year, but it’s that now I’m acting on it, little by little. Because sorry, I have 100 rejections to experience!!! Will report back on this as things start rolling.

Doing one thing at a time, paying attention

For years, I’ve thought (and talked about) how probably the amount of podcasts I listen to isn’t all that great for me. Or maybe more accurately, how I’d like to have more quiet in my life, instead of this subconscious impulse to fill it with others’ words. I listen to podcasts in most of my ‘dead time,’ — doing dishes, cleaning, exercising, even showering.

I just re-read that sentence and was about to delete the phrase ‘dead time,’ because it’s not actually dead time! Those tasks are things I’m doing!!! But it’s this feeling I have of trying to fill every moment with more than one thing. If I’m doing this, oh it’s hands free so I can listen to that, or I can watch that etc. (read: being on your phone while watching TV, a classic) I love listening to podcasts and I hate being bored, and it’s clear that I’m filling those moments where my brain might be wandering, with other peoples’ words.

And I want to work on doing one thing at a time. Research shows how good day dreaming is, that it’s where you’re building new connections and being more creative1 But in order to facilitate that, I have to sit in the discomfort of under-stimulation. Is that the right word? I don’t know. I guess I ask myself, what really is my friction to doing the dishes and not listening to anything? Or to just watching a TV show and not distracting myself with my phone as well. That’s something I want to explore this year and see what might emerge. Might I find these experiences to be more sensory and stimulating than they currently feel to me? Or rather, what might come from the tension of ‘boredom’?

In The Artist’s Way (I’m doing the 12-week experience with my friend; we’re in week 2 this week), she writes so beautifully about attention. How attention is all about being in the present moment, and nowhere else. Maybe everything will change in the next moment but for right now, we are here. Listen to me read a page or so from the book:

Allow more silence in conversation

Been thinking about this one a lot (and made a video about it a few weeks ago)2 but over the last few years I’ve come to terms with just how much facilitating I do in my personal relationships. I am naturally really curious, and generally do have a lot of questions about basically everything that people tell me, but some things I’ve been reflecting on recently are:

• to what extent is all my question-asking just a way for me to not have to talk about myself? And what am I avoiding there?

• is my question-asking ultimately reflecting a discomfort with silence? Do I find myself asking questions of people when there’s a lull in the conversation, as a way to keep it afloat? Again, what am I avoiding in that conversational lull?

What often ends up happening is that I lead a conversation. It’s a position I find myself extremely comfortable in, and usually the people I’m with leave feeling really good and seen. After all, the spotlight has been on them for quite some time. I’ve been listening intensely, making them feel heard and understood. It’s one of the qualities I do love about myself. But recently I’ve been noticing some imbalance; I don’t believe a conversation or interaction has to be a back and forth. I don’t think about it in those transactional terms3. But I do often notice an energy discrepancy between what I give and what I receive. I don’t blame anyone; I don’t think anyone else even knows it’s happening. And to be honest, I make it really hard for someone to put the onus on me….I think it’s in large part because I am trying to get ahead of the conversation, as opposed to letting it flow. Letting it take its natural course.

So here’s what I’m working on more: allow for more silence. Slow the conversation down a bit more. When there is a lull in a conversation, I’ve been really paying attention to my impulse to jump in, and been trying to just sit and see where it goes. Inevitably, the other person will say something else. Because, of course. They’re chillin. Maybe we sat in silence for 45 seconds (my hell.. feels like 45 minutes lol) but usually, the conversation will pick back up again. And now we’re going in a different direction and I didn’t/don’t feel responsible for keeping it going. My energy is preserved. Moreover, the interaction is going in a direction I couldn’t have predicted. Aka I’m trying to be IN the conversation, instead of floating a bit above it.

It’s kind of hard to admit this out loud because it sort of makes me sound like I’m manipulating people, or that I don’t at all enjoy the conversations or interactions I have with most people. I think it’s not so binary, and I really have done a good job these last few years of not being around people who don’t light me up in one way or another, so it’s not so simple at all. But generally, I really am working to be more present in everything I do, and also to be more honest with myself and others, and this is part of that!

Did any of these land with you? Are there any new ways of thinking or operating that you’re trying to adopt these days? I’d love to hear them

Leave a comment

Other things I’ve been reading, listening to, and thinking about

🔸 We’re reading The Empire of AI for our next bookclub (if you’re a paid member, come join us!!) and it has me side-eyeing AI even more than I already do.. which was already a lot lol4 I read this press release from OpenAI today about how the company is starting to test ads in ChatGPT, and it’s like clockwork the way they (tech bros) a) ruin their own products and b) couch the aforementioned enshittification in “support[ing] broader access” or “help[ing] people discover relevant products or services they’ll love from businesses of all sizes” (both direct quotes from that press release from OpenAI)…..

Interestingly, Anthropic (the company behind Claude) released a statement about why they won’t be putting ads into Claude, and admittedly it’s really good. If I have to choose an AI chatbot, it’s definitely Claude. Will they stick to this ad-free environment a few years down the road…. ehhhh if reading Empire of AI is reinforcing anything for me, it’s the understanding that all “mission-driven” things go south in Silicon Valley…. we shall see…

🟪 This conversation with the Executive Director of a major organizing group leading the charge in Minneapolis has stuck with me since I read it. They talk all about this idea of attacking the “pillars of support” for ICE in Minneapolis, and ask the question: What are the literal ways that support ICE’s ability to get around and operate in our city? The rental car companies, the hotels, the restaurants, all the places ICE agents are frequenting while they’re there. It’s a really interesting conversation around what actions are ‘big enough,’ and how to ‘win’ by starting with smaller wins like protesting one hotel at a time, as opposed to Amazon or Palantir even though those companies hold most of the power here. I learned a lot from this and am so deeply inspired by this activism.

🟡 The Brand Savior Complex and the New Age of Self Censorship from , specifically the part about KamalaHQ’s announcement this week. TLDR they made a big to-do of teasing and then announcing a new ‘Gen Z’ progressive hub’ to attempt to combat the alt-right media ecosystem but, as expected, they deeply miss the mark (like I’m sorry.. WHY ARE YOU PUTTING 67 IN YOUR USERNAME). Highly recommend reading the whole thing. Really hits the nail on the head of how smart consumers are, and what we are really looking for from brands online (and how most of them can’t meet the moment).

Thanks for reading! Really going to work to be more consistent on here, aiming for weekly or bi-weekly. I’ll try to do a little bit about “what’s on my mind?” and then some media recs.

Send this to someone that you think might like it! And if you want to join the bookclub, consider upping to paid if you’re not already.

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-Miriam

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My annual plug of this incredible piece by :

Experimental History

Good conversations have lots of doorknobs

Photo cred: my dad…

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5 years ago · 3703 likes · 91 comments · Adam Mastroianni

The winners

Fiction

Nonfiction

Honorable mentions

How I’m defining tops

I’m not usually looking at typical things like quality of the writing or popularity etc. I often read books long after they’re popular (usually because the library queue is so long for the book!) and frankly, wtf do I know about writing techniques hah! Here’s my criteria— I’ve never actually laid it out like this before but this feels right:

• It immerses: I get subsumed by the language, or world building, or intensity of the story. I read it faster than usual and I miss it when it’s done.

• It lingers: I think about it long after it’s done. It could be months and I’ll think about or reference something from the book.

• It compels conversation: I feel a *need* to share about it online or talk about it with people. I need to be in conversation with/about the book.

• It teaches: I learn new things from the book (either explicitly or implicitly). My worldview changes in some way from reading it.

My (changing) relationship to reading and books this year

What I care a lot less about these days

This was the year I really stopped caring about tracking my books. I used to be so into the Goodreads of it all, setting up my “reading challenge” for the year, writing reviews about books, entering “Currently Reading” as soon as I picked up a new book. This year I would start reading a new book and then realize halfway through that I forgot to input it. I think that’s really cool! Especially when the appeal of surveilling your every move gets only stronger with each passing year (for example: I am a BIG STRAVA FAN. New addition for me this year). I’ll probably still track because I really appreciate the historical record, but it doesn’t hold much meaning for me anymore.

—

Probably related, I became more of a mood reader than I ever have. I have firmly released my chokehold on my To Be Read pile; I will read whatever I feel like reading now! So I’ll go to the library to pick up a book and then peruse the new releases section even as I have so many other books to be read next to my bed. It feels amazing to lean into what I’m feeling like doing now, feels almost radical to be honest.

—

I also don’t care if I stop a book halfway! Even crazier, I’m ok reading multiple books at once, and stop reading and then come back to a book after months away. This is much more chaotic than my usual style of reading but I’m really into it? It feels like honoring myself and where I’m at in any given moment.

What I’m more/still into

I am notoriously a Big Non-Fiction Guy, but interestingly this year, half of my “top reads” are fiction. Proud of that. One of my top reads “The Antidote,” was like no book I’d read before. There were times where I couldn’t tell if it was too much magical realism for me or what not but I loved the challenge there. It required my imagination in a new way for me. Similarly, “I Who Have Never Known Men,” and “The Memory Police” two books that didn’t make it to my top but nonetheless are some of the most interesting ones I read this year, really pushed my imagination. Both books are dystopian, about world that have essentially disappeared or are in the process of fading away. Neither book explains quite what’s happening and why! I was frustrated reading both novels because it felt like context was missing. And yet— that was the whole point. I gained a real appreciation for those kinds of “you have to fill in the gaps” (or just live with the gaps) kind of stories this year and I want more of them!

—

Interestingly, as I’ve been reading more novels, it’s becoming harder to talk about books online. I’m not someone who is particularly good at summarizing a book or speaking about it in its totality; I want to get into the weeds on a specific passage or theme and what that tells us about our larger questions. So I posted way less (anecdotally, of course, I don’t have any real data there) about books on TikTok and Instagram this year and it affirmed that I actually want to talk more about them next year online. I love doing that. So how can I either push my storytelling online to include fiction, or what.. read more non-fiction again? Who knows.

—

I L O V E a bookclub. This year, I started a bookclub for paid subscribers of this Substack and being a part of that group was one of the best things I did this year! (shoutout to everyone who a) pays for this Substack and b) has attended any of the bookclubs this year). More on that below.

The bookclub strengthened my connection to books this year

So ok, I love a bookclub. Frankly, it’s why I started posting online about podcasts I was listening to. I am an external processor and find that I reach new heights and depths about basically everything when I can talk about it with someone else. The act of having to articulate what I think and feel, listening to other people share their thoughts, having to defend or refute positions, generating more questions that may or may not get answered— it’s such a meaningful exercise for me to be in a discussion group with others (is it obvious that I loved school??)

We read 7 books in the bookclub this year (I started the club in April):

My process of reading and preparing for the discussions

• As I would read each book, I’d take notes in the margin and also dog ear the page (another thing I stopped caring about years ago!!! Books are made to be lived in!!)

• If there were big questions that I thought could be conversation starters, I’d write them at the back of the book

• To prepare for the conversation, I’d write a doc of questions/points/quotes.

• At the beginning of the bookclub, I was very worried about facilitating: would I be able to come up with interesting enough questions for the group? Would we have enough to discuss? What if some people hadn’t read, could I manage those different levels of context?

• Turns out- I barely look at those prep docs each bookclub! By the end, I was writing up just a few of those questions in case we needed a bit of fodder, but the group has FLOWED harder than I could’ve imagined. We have a core 6-7 people who show each time but sometimes a few other familiar faces will pop in and out. I love what it’s become and it’s really helped me affirm that pure internet fame is not the end game for me, even as yes, it can be tantilizing to get views and followers. Nope, it’s a means to an end for me to find and gather in actual community with a handful of real people that I can develop connections to. Success!

Other bookclub musings

We are definitely going to continue the bookclub next year, a once a month virtual meeting. Probably mostly non-fiction books but definitely want to add some more weighty novels in there.

Also— something I tried this year (and want to start again next year) is engaging with the books via pen pals, where anyone interested could write a letter answering/exploring a question from the book and send it to someone else. The questions were bangers if I do say so myself, and I loved the way writing about the book felt different from talking about it, totally different modes. Trying to figure out how to jumpstart that pen pal program and make it feel worth it! In general I’m working to move away from digital and into more analog ways of interacting and connecting so if anyone else has ideas of things we could do, I’d love to hear them!

From Man’s Search For Meaning

From One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

And if you’d like to join the Bookclub in 2026, I’d love to see you there! You can upgrade to paid subscription

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and then join our Whatsapp group at the “Bookclub” page here

Thanks for reading this (and reading books!) Happy new year everyone :)

Miriam

Lili called me out on it, which hadn’t happened to me before. She said something like hey are you still in this? I’m not getting the reciprocity that I need in this friendship and I can’t tell if you even care to maintain this friendship. I don’t remember her exact words, probably because I shame-blacked-it-out, but I definitely remember how I felt1 Not. Great. Not because I felt defensive or anything, but rather because I knew she was right. That was an awakening for me. My texting overwhelm did not actually signify how I felt about that relationship at all— but when it feels like it’s all we have in these long-distance friendships, it sort of becomes the friendship. I can’t suddenly make us neighbors or geographically closer, but I could/can change how I show up in our friendship building and sustaining.

I committed to her and to us. I said wait no I’m still in it, I just hate the texting part of it! We spent the next bit of time trying to figure out how we could both get our needs met in this friendship, staying in touch in a way that feels good to the both of us. It was some trial and error, but so far, for us, it’s been voicenotes.

Now we’re probably like 9 or 10 years past that frank conversation and we are chatterboxes. We talk virtually every day, me and Lili, even just a random text here or there. Part of it is that my relationship to friends have changed. I am trying to show up with more intention than I have before (it’s definitely not perfect and I absolutely still avoid messages, but way less. Progress, ok?!?) Part of it is that voicenotes feel so damn good for us.

It’s the asynchronous, self-directed nature.

I think part of what stresses me out about texting and phone calls is that I don’t necessarily know they’re coming and I don’t know when they’ll end. It has historically made me feel stressed and like I don’t have control over my time (less so now, but it’s still there a bit). With voicenotes, we record them and answer them when we want to. Sometimes it means we’re firing them off one after the other (and probably could just get on a call because we’re both clearly available) and sometimes it takes a few days to reply because we’re just not feeling it. I feel like it gives me permission to show up as my real self.

There’s also something about the voice specifically.

And yes, you get this same experience on a phone call (please see my aforementioned point on phone calls). Podcasts are probably my favorite medium to absorb stories and information and that’s essentially what we’re doing when we record voicenotes, making mini-podcasts. You hear not only their voice but also their surroundings as they’re recording it. You hear the honks, the crinkles, the chuckles, the rain.

Sort of related, they are bite-sized moments in real time.

Part of what is so difficult about adult friendships—especially long distance ones- for me (and I know many others) is that idea that we’re simply catching up. We get on these hours-long FaceTimes or phone calls and go through the litany of big things that have happened to us over the last few months. It creates so much friction for me before I get on those calls, so much so that I almost don’t want to do it. And then I pathologize that dread as “I don’t want to talk to that person. Do I even like that person?” and it becomes an existential crisis when really, I just want to *exist* with that friend, not give them my high-level life updates. But what do you do if you don’t talk that often? You get on a call and don’t ask about the big things, instead ask what they did yesterday?? I mean.. maybe an interesting strategy hmmmm. A voicenote is necessarily a moment in time. It’s hyper-specific, usually related to something that has just happened, or happened recently. It feels prescient, relevant, full of energy. It feels much more like you’re in the thick of the thing with them rather than just getting the sparknotes afterwards.

So I think what really saved my friendship with Lili was us beginning to discuss the friendship explicitly and in a meta sort of way, realizing through that that we both are committed to and deeply value each other and this relationship. But I also think sending our mini-podcast voicenotes back and forth has played a not insignificant part in its renaissance. AND, interestingly, I think our friendship really grew more than it ever has in those few early COVID years when we couldn’t travel *because* we were voicenoting so much. It proved to me that effort (and creativity!) can build and sustain a friendship that doesn’t necessarily require always being physically around.

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Some other ways I stay connected to long-distance friends that feel less like maintaining the friendship and more like growing it

I was really inspired by this Substack called ‘the art of staying in touch’ by where they broke down the different ways they stay in touch with friends. That’s what got me thinking about voicenotes to begin with. Check out that article and see below for some of my own methods.

WhatsApp video notes

Similar to voicenotes, you can send 60-second videos (max!) on Whatsapp. Cute little hits. I love this feature so much! It’s a bit of whimsy in part because they’re purposefully short and also because they show up in these cute little bubbles.

Once-a-week “check in” day on the calendar

My friend Amanda came up with this idea as a way to have a regular check-in but also not overwhelm me (my friends treat me with such kindness and grace 😢) so every Thursday we will text each other back and forth a bit to update each other on stuff that’s happening in our lives. Admittedly, I often suck at actually doing it on Thursday so sometimes my updates come in on Friday or even Saturday (I’m really trying to be better I know I know!) but I love the idea that we know our once-a-week check in is coming. No pressure to chat in between but also it’s not going to be a big catch up because it’s weekly, so I can actually ask her about that work thing or the thing with her apartment etc.

Sending random “thought of you” things in the mail

This one I do less frequently but I love it when it happens! I’ve sent friends journals, books, and random post-cards in the mail just because, and they do the same. My friend Amanda that I just mentioned will also sometimes randomly Doordash me a coffee and a pastry- like when I got laid off a few years ago, she immediately sent me breakfast to comfort me. There is nothing like getting a physical “I’m thinking of you” to your front door or in your mailbox.

Body-doubling on a call

I’ve done this a few times with friends and I definitely want to do it more. We will schedule a Zoom/Hangout and spend the majority of it working on our own projects together on mute. It’s so nice to be heads down and then look up and see a friend there also working. This really helps to create a feeling that you are integrated into your friend’s Right Now, as opposed to a catch up.

Hopping into each others’ documents

There is nothing more satisfying than calling in your friend cavalry to help you as you’re applying for jobs or working on a creative project or whatever. I LOVE helping a friend edit their resume or write a cover letter, and have called on friends recently to help me with things like a pitch deck I was making. Yet another way to feel like you’re in your friends Now, like you’re working with them on something in real time (plus, I strongly believe we should never be applying for jobs or doing hard things like that alone! Call in your personal Board of Directors!)

Share phone notes with them

On the iPhone you can share a note with people so I have a shared note (with my friend Lili that I mentioned before!) for TV/Movies we want to watch. Whenever either of us adds something to the list, the other one gets a notification that the note has been updated. I immediately always go in and see what she’s added!

Being a better, more present, more communicative, more initiating friend has been one of my most important goals over the last few years, and I feel like I’m finally starting to hit my stride. It’s really hard for me, especially because I spend quite a bit of time talking to random people or new friends online and always sort of have a latent phone-aversion/hatred at the same time. But I want all of it in my life! I want the more casual loose ties (IRL and digital), I want the creative partnerships where our main point of connection comes through our shared work, I want the best friends that are soul mates, and the activity friends that I do fun things with in my area. Sometimes the circles will intersect, sometimes one person will fill one specific need for me, sometimes I might put someone in a box and then realize they’re actually turning into a different relationship for me, sometimes their role changes overtime who knows!

Some great friendship frameworks that have helped me understand my own friendship dynamics:

• Not to link my own video but I genuinely cannot find this research cited anywhere online! 3 different types of friendship dynamics: the ball of yarn, the bowtie, and the daisy. Watch my video here. I learned about this from and her book Modern Friendship

• The Six Besties Theory from . The idea that not every friend needs to be everything, and maybe a friend is just seasonal, or work friend, or bury the body friend etc.

• Dunbar’s number, the number of people with whom we can psychologically maintain connections. There is some dispute about this number, but I found this framework really helpful in general

  

  Do you have any specific methods or rituals you do with long-distance friends that has helped grow (not just maintain) the friendship? Please share!

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I am generally a big Celebrity-hosted podcast hater. I think overwhelmingly, the celeb-hosted podcasts have tainted the podcast industry and the art of podcasting in very bad ways, I’m sorry I’m sorry!!! (even just the celebrity interviews too, see this piece I’ve cited before “Why Are All Pop Star Interviews Like That?”) And yet— Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast genuinely is a good hang.

Celebrity-hosted podcasts (and I’ve tuned in and out of so many of them over the years so I feel pretty confident in this) usually are a grab for more real estate for their brand. They bring massive budgets, 6 or 7 figure deals with podcast companies, and their immediate built-in fan base. But they often don’t have a point-of-view, or rather, their angle seems…random (like I love Michelle Obama but the podcast with her brother truly is so so random…not to say people can’t do other things or don’t have other interests because of course they can and do, but podcasting is a storytelling medium in my mind; you need to contextualize it, and yourself. Tell us why we should care!) Then when you listen, often the celebrities don’t understand the cadence of a podcast, or how to ask questions, or even seem to know a single thing about the guests they have on (which by the way, usually just are their friends).

Amy Poehler’s new podcast Good Hang is a) extremely good, b) different from other podcasts I’ve listened to (celeb-hosted or otherwise), and c) adding something new to the podcast craft!!!

The conceit of “Good Hang” is Amy talking with her celebrity friends, yes. On its face, nothing special. But there is something so deeply appealing about Amy, and this gets at what I love about the podcast medium when it’s good: she is an incredible conversationalist. One of the biggest (and my biggest as well) critiques about Alex Cooper, host of Call Her Daddy, is that she’s not listening to her guests; she has pre-set questions on her cards, and every response to something her guests says is “oh so cool [insert next question on the card].” There is no digging in, following up, latching on to the thing they said and letting that carry you to a new place. That’s the best part of a conversation!

Frankly, it’s one of the things I notice in normal conversations too (and I used to do this A LOT): you can tell when people are just waiting for you to finish what you’re saying so they can insert the thing they wanted to say 30 seconds ago that they’ve been making sure they don’t forget, even if the thing isn’t particularly relevant anymore.. Like I said this, this used to be me. I was so worried about trying to get my smart thought off that I wasn’t really all that concerned about where the conversation was going. Now— I understand hey, if I forget my thought or the comment ceases to be relevant because the conversation took a different turn, so be it. I’ll have more to say about whatever new direction we’ve moved towards. I am engaged in the actual conversation, as opposed to floating a level above it.

Amy Poehler is masterful at this. And the reason why is because it’s so obvious she is curious about her guests. Take her recent episode with Kate McKinnon (listening to this episode yesterday is actually what pushed me to write this). Amy is clearly fascinated by Kate—and within seconds I TOO became fascinated by Kate, even though frankly, I’d not given her much thought before LOL: she wants to know so much about her introversion and how that works with a decade-long SNL career, she wants to know how and why and to what end Kate farms, and woodworks, and lives this interesting life. She is mystified and intrigued and tickled by Kate; it’s an earnest and genuine conversation. And of course the irony is, when one approaches a conversation with this level of curiosity (as opposed to a ‘goal,’ you’re trying to reach with that person or whatever), even as it’s meandering, if done well, the listener learns SO MUCH (whereas having a ‘goal’ actually narrows the conversation, even IF the ‘goal’ is to learn more about said person). Does that makes sense?

Almost every single episode I’ve listened to of Good Hang has this same cadence. Amy is flowing with the guests, pivoting this way and that way because the conversation is taking a turn. She also just seems to be having fun, as if she’s along for the ride (and there are so many laughs!! so many). She isn’t coming in with a specific mission or direction, whereas in my mind, Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert always has a goal of Dax making himself look and sound smart….. (I am a BIG DAX HATER)

Two other things I love about Amy’s podcast: Amy is so middle-aged (54 years). She often talks about this casually across her episodes and she’s approaching it with neither shame, nor horror or avoidance. As a 33 year old myself, there’s a lot of wisdom to be gained from listening and observing women at this stage in their life (regardless of fame or wealth) as they sit in this tricky (and also wonderful) season.

On the middle-aged note, there are a few other podcasts that I’ve really enjoyed that do this as well:

• Wiser Than Me- hosted by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. It’s a celeb-hosted podcast and it’s definitely one of the better ones I’ve heard, but I personally don’t find Julia as compelling as Amy. NOT that it’s a competition and I don’t want to pit them against each other!!! Julia’s podcast is more explicitly about this theme of aging which serves a really important purpose, but is a bit more narrow than Amy’s in my view

• Extended Scenes- hosted by Jennifer Romolini. Jennifer is the author of Ambition Monster (a book I haven’t yet read but I know is so up my alley!) and the podcast is all about ambition and aging. There are some really interesting conversations (start with the episode with Samantha Irby!)

One other thing I want to mention about Good Hang is that Amy starts each episode with this “talk good behind peoples’ back” section where she interviews friends/coworkers of the person she’s interviewing later in that episode and asks them to say nice things about that person (and provide her with a question to ask them). When I first heard this section I thought wow…. it’s rare to hear any sort of innovation in a chatty podcast like this and I feel like this really is something fresh! Also makes me want to ask friends to talk nice behind my back LOL (maybe I’ll do this for my birthday)

Highly recommend queuing up any episode of Amy’s Good Hang podcast that seems interesting but if you want a starter pack, my fave episodes so far are:

1. Kate McKinnon

2. Rashida Jones

3. Quinta Brunson

4. Regina Hall

Other podcast episodes I’ve listened to recently that I’ve really liked:

*I hyperlink to a cool site called pod.link where you can then click the podcast listening app of your choice! So click on the links and you won’t have to manually type in each episode!

I’ve never listened to this podcast before but my internet friend was interviewed on it, so I gave it a listen! I loved listening to him talk about his content creation journey, what he loves about reading and how he approaches it (we have very similar approaches! Not everything needs to stick in your head and it shouldn’t feel pressure-filled; what sticks IS what you were supposed to remember!) as well as the really fascinating topic of anti-intellectualism and how that shows itself online.

A GREAT conversation between some of my fave NYTimes writers (Tressie McMillan Cottom and Jamelle Bouie!!) about the role the South plays in culture and politics today (read: it’s CRITICAL). One note that I’ve heard Tressie say before that she addresses again here: watch out for when country music trends in culture. When country music trends, we are in a moment of conservatism; it’s not a casual thing when country music starts to “be cool.” I love their POVs so much, and even the ways growing up in KY, NC, GA, VA all differ (as a Northeast born and raised person, these Southern nuances are so new to me).

Sora is a goddamn disaster and if you don’t know anything about it I highly recommend listening to this episode. OpenAI at one point had a vision to “change the world” (lol) and now they’ve made an AI slop app that copies TikTok’s entire UI and also allows you to make AI images with MLK cool cool (oh wait sorry they actually stopped allowing that -____-)

I’ve just started listening to this podcast (on the recommendation of another podcast I love: !) but I’m really appreciating this series they’re doing called Project 1933. They’re going through each month of 1933— the year the Nazi Party rose to power and Hitler was elected Chancellor, as historical context for the moment we’re going through ourselves too. I’ve so far only listened to episode one but already the parallels are THERE: the silencing of media as one of the first acts the Nazis did, so when they continued to do more and more harmful things, the critics were silenced and couldn’t report out…..really dark stuff but so important. Also one of the hosts is German (looked it up after because he was saying all the German names with a full German accent ha! and there are some moments he speaks about German culture and POV in interesting ways)

Let me know what you think if you listen to Amy Poehler’s podcast or any of the others!

If it wasn’t clear from my post last week on how I find the media I consume, it largely comes from recommendations so please recommend me a podcast episode you listened to recently and are still thinking about!

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I kept a note of my media consumption throughout last week. I was horrified in some ways, intrigued in others, and generally found it pretty enlightening.

I was really inspired by this post from called How do you read so much so quickly?, the peek behind the curtain of her process, and decided to randomly track my media habits across one entire workweek (Monday-Friday). People often ask me how I pick what I read/listen to, how I find my stuff, how I consume so much, and you know… I can sort of answer those questions, but I know there’s so much even I don’t quite understand about my habits.

So I explored them a bit.

As best I could*, I tracked my media consumption behavior the week of Monday October 13-Friday October 17.

*Note, this was very much imperfect tracking but even the insights I was able to garner are, I think, pretty interesting. Also, except in specific instances, I didn’t explicitly capture what I was reading on my phone, so I’m just generally calling it doomscrolling (because usually it’s not actually ~reading, so much as it’s scrolling through the trifecta: Instagram, TikTok, Substack feed, for god knows how long)

Let’s get this out of the way first: What was my screentime that week?

Weekly average was 7 hr 11 minutes LORD HAVE MERCY.

Daily stats are:

• Monday, Oct 13: 4 hr 57 min

• Tuesday, Oct 14: 9 hr 40 min

• Wednesday, Oct 15: 9 hr 12 min

• Thursday, October 16: 5 hr 46 min

• Friday, October 17: 7 hr 37 min

Wow. I’m a bit stunned seeing those numbers laid out (I hadn’t looked at them until writing this piece). And of course— my most used apps are Instagram and TikTok..

Interestingly, showing my screentime feels in a way more vulnerable than say, talking about money online does for me. I think it’s because my screentime in some ways reflects my subconscious: it shows what I do when I’m not thinking. And admitting that I have such a deep addiction to my phone feels laden with some shame. But let’s dig in anyway!

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MONDAY

Morning

I always start my day reading in the morning. Today, I chose to read the NYTimes. I get the Sunday Times and then read it throughout the entire week (alternating with the book I’m also reading).

As I drove to my friend’s house that day (she was driving us to apple picking because we had the day off for Indigenous People’s Day), I listened to this podcast about Taylor Swift’s new album.

That week I was voraciously consuming any and all podcast criticism and conversation around the new album.

Evening

When I got back from apple picking before I started cooking dinner, I spent a while reading the book Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. I’ve already read it, but was re-reading to figure out what angle I wanted to take for an upcoming brand deal I’m doing about the book.

Next, I watched an episode of The Americans with my partner while we ate dinner.

Then, at 8:41 (I took a screenshot) during my Substack scrolling, I saw this article and read it in real time because it caught my attention. Within 20 mins (see timestamp below), I’d created and posted a video online about it.

I’d already known that this was my process, but because I’d decided to track my media behavior this week, I was attuned to it in a new way; I was struck by the quickness with which I went from reading an article to posting about it.

The idea to execution gap is a real thing and I do believe that’s been part of my success online. I also think it’s why I haven’t burnt out after almost 4 years of content creation. Generally, I don’t plan or manufacture my content. It really is what’s getting me excited in the moment. It doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of framing or storytelling or that I’m moving rashly. I think it’s actually that I discovered a real knack for doing this work fast and intuitively.

Then, I continued reading Meditations for Mortals when I got into bed. My phone always stays plugged in in the living room so when I’m in the bedroom, it’s always screen-less reading. Reading is how I’ve fallen asleep since I was a kid.

TUESDAY

Morning

I doomscrolled when I got up in the morning. I try to avoid this but sometimes the phone just sucks me in…..

During said doomscrolling, I see this IG story from Liz Plank (screenshot below). You can see it’s at 8:09AM. I’m immediately intrigued (fell for the clickbait, alas…) so I click on “watch.” I was about to start making my breakfast and figured I could play it while making my yogurt bowl.

This is part and parcel of the same reactive/intuitive thing I just mentioned. I’m realizing my media consumption habits have changed pretty dramatically over the past few years. I used to religiously follow my podcast queue: whatever was up next I listened to. Same with my book stack. Now, I care far less about that and will immediately start playing or “queue up next” interesting things. So I start watching the podcast. A) didn’t love it so stopped after like 10 mins—clickbait confirmed— b) it reminded me I really don’t like podcasts that are in video format, and c) I’m not generally compelled by someone riffing solo on a mic about the goings on of their days.

Afternoon

Tuesday is one of the days I work during my part-time job, so besides the occasional doomscroll between calls, I was pretty heads-down. At lunch, I watch like 25 mins of TASK on HBO. This is usually how I watch TV which many find diabolical: I’ll watch parts of an episode during the day as I eat lunch or breakfast, so it might take me a few days to watch a whole episode. And then dinner TV time (lol) is reserved for entire episodes that I’m watching with my partner.

Then, I go to the gym and I finish that Taylor Swift NYTimes podcast. I get curious about the album so I decide I actually want to listen; up until that point, I’d only heard a few snippets. And confirmed— the discourse truly IS the best part of a Taylor Swift album drop for me.

After the gym I walk for 20 mins at the park across the street and start listening to ’s Culture Study podcast, ironically enough about the topic of screen time. I’d had this one queued up already.

Then I head home and listen to the new Olivia Dean album while I make dinner. I will once in a while play music instead of a podcast while I cook to remind myself I’m alive haha! This album is soooo good (even a week and a half later I’m still listening to it btw).

Evening

After dinner, my partner wanted to watch his own show so I started the Victoria Beckham documentary on Netflix. When our eps were done, we watched the latest episode of Below Deck and then got ready for bed.

Oh— I forgot to mention, maybe the most diabolical thing I do is listen to a podcast while I’m brushing my teeth so I continued listening to Culture Study while I got ready for bed………… and yes, it’s like 5 additional minutes of the podcast at a time……

WEDNESDAY

Morning

Doomscrolled in the morning for a bit (alas…). When I was ready, went to the LA River Bike Path to jog. The sun was rising as I jogged which I LOVE.

Decided to listen to my Release Radar playlist (instead of a podcast) which objectively was vvvv good (a mix of rnb, dancehall, hiphop)

Got a coffee at one of the cafes on the Bike Path (my favorite thing to do after a jog) and watched TikToks. Watched a really good TikTok on corporate violence that sent me on a Google spiral after (did you know about the Ford Pinto scandal where they knew the cars were exploding but decided it would be cheaper/easier to pay for lawsuits for people who died than to FIX THE PART EVEN THOUGH THE PART WOULD COST THEM LIKE $10 A CAR??)

Afternoon

Doomscrolled while working. Someone DM’ed me this really interesting article about workout selfies from and I read it on the computer and then screenshotted some quotes and made a video an hour or two later.

Evening

Read my book for a while on the couch before meeting my partner and his friends for tacos

We were out for a whole so no dinner TV haha! Came back, did some doomscrolling and then went to sleep (read my book in bed of course!)

THURSDAY

Doomscrolled for a while (uughhhhhhh hate how much of a pattern this is, like I’m annoyed even just writing the word doomscrolling, but I felt I needed to include it. You can really feel the way it’s weighing everything down) and then picked up my book and read more of it before work.

It really is remarkable how important reading is to start and end my days. It’s the best grounding mechanism I have in my life, and I feel off if I don’t have sufficient time to do it at both ends of the day. I am a morning person naturally (if that wasn’t clear from this) and even if I have something super early in the morning, I will get up WELL in advance to read. For example, my work days (Tuesday-Thursday) start at 10am but I’m up around 6ish every day, generally a) to exercise and then b) to have at least an hour to get cozy and read.

Afternoon

Took a shower and listened to the next podcast episode in my queue, an episode of the Money with Katie podcast, in the shower (I know…….but I have such a great built-in shelf to put my phone on!!!!) and then continued listening while I drove to a cafe to work.

When I ate lunch, I watched an episode of High Potential, that kind of stupid, kind of good “mom has high intelligence brain and joins the LAPD to help them solve crimes” show on Hulu. At any given time, I might have 4 or 5 shows that I’m watching— pretty different than how I read, which is one, MAYBE 2 books at a time (only if they’re different genres).

Evening

I did some easy-no-brain-required work in the early evening while laying on the couch for it with the Victoria Beckham show on in the background.

Forgot to record what I did after but safe to assume it was my usual cocktail of dinner TV, and then doomscrolling, podcast while getting ready for bed, and then reading in bed.

FRIDAY

Morning

Read my book this morning while I woke up enough to go jogging.

Then went jogging with my sister and got coffee after! We both read our books for like 45 mins before we parted ways.

That morning I spent quite a bit of time reading, screenshotting and reposting peoples’ DMs about the workout selfies article because I’d posted a Q&A to start conversation on my IG. Doing that kind of curation is SO interesting to me but it also takes so much time! So I was reading a ton of those DMs for probably 45 mins or an hour that morning.

Evening

Drove to meet a friend for dinner and drinks, and there and back I listened to a good Search Engine podcast episode about Sora 2, the latest trash to come out of Open AI.

I got to the bar about 20 mins before she did and read while I sipped my first drink (truly my heaven, solo reading at the bar)

Uh this was fascinating??!

I’m deeply disturbed by how much my phone factors into each day. I’m also really struck by how comfortably I’m able to consume so much in such a piecemeal way. I’m absorbing a ton of information in these small chunks. I think I want to try to a) of course, use my phone less, but also b) spend bigger blocks of time monotasking (which inevitably means less phone during bathroom tasks like brushing my teeth and showering). I try to read in the morning for 30 or so minutes, but once the day gets going, it’s almost as if I’m ‘stealing time’ wherever I can find it to do any other reading, listening, watching. I only work part-time right now, so I actually have *way more* access to free time than most, and yet it still feels hard!

Did you find this interesting? What sticks out for you? Do you have other questions about my media consumption behavior? I’d love to hear it! Also, if you think I’m deranged, please also let me know!

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Thanks for reading,

Miriam

It’s this crazy thing where I know I deserve/d to be there and simultaneously felt some intense imposter syndrome actually being in the room. Let’s talk about it.

As most of you know, I quit my full-time job last year. I had only ever worked traditional desk jobs for work and never had any sort of creative project. I was really accustomed to attaching myself to my place of work, both in how I conceived of my own identity internally and also how I’d ID myself when I was in professional settings. When I went to conferences or met people in networking events or whatever, I’d usually state something like “Hi, I’m Miriam. I work at X” or “I’m an X [insert job title].” It was always an easy way to be understood, to prove that I deserve to be there. For what it’s worth, I do believe that me identifying myself like that was as much about me as it was about how we as a (capitalist) society conceptualize others’ worth, so I don’t blame myself at all for that.

A not insignificant reason why I quit my job was because I no longer wanted to be read or understood as whatever my job title or description was. I didn’t feel that those jobs were particularly good at representing me (and now that I’m off the hamster wheel I can really see, WOW did they not capture me at ALL), nor did I want to put all my identity stake into an organization, regardless of how mission-driven it was. It made me feel strange that when I told people I worked at this really prestigious non-profit and they reacted in awe and were impressed (more than one person said, “thank you for your service”), I felt pride and confidence. That made me feel icky.

So anyway, theoretically, I am free now (emphasis on the theoretically). I am working to create a portfolio career (thank you for changing my life with that term!) where I necessarily cannot be easily-defined or read, where I will (ideally) be working on a variety of different projects with different teams doing different things.

I’ve talked online before about one of the challenges that I’ve been embracing is that it’s no longer easy to explain what I do for work1. That societally when we ask “what do you do?” I think we are expecting (hoping for) an easy answer so we can swiftly move on. Most people don’t actually care about what someone does; it’s just a small talk question usually (or a way to size people up). And when the person explaining their job can’t do it all that quickly, when it requires a paragraph like mine does these days, well.. that is sometimes awkward. Sometimes I’m projecting my own awkwardness onto that moment, but sometimes I can see the person’s eyes glaze over; they didn’t really want to have an extended conversation about the ways I’m conceiving of work these days blah blah.

Enter: me walking into the Atlantic Festival on that first day. This festival is for subscribers of the Atlantic (typically a demographic of White, Boomer, coastal Elite, as you can imagine) and also for ‘thoughtleaders’ and media industry people. Intellectually, I know I deserve to be there. I am confident in my own intelligence, voice, and experience. I know they flew me out. What a BIG. DEAL.

But when I walk into the room that first day, I feel an internal clash. I feel intimidated by everyone there, people who are associated with media orgs, publications, or other reputable companies. It’s not that I feel shame about what I do online, because I really don’t at all anymore; it’s just that it’s not as easily understood by the people in that room. And yes— I think at its core that is not my problem. The people who get the TikTok/IG thing get it immediately and hard.

The clash I felt in that room was one I feel increasingly less these days but sometimes it rears its semi-ugly head: I both want to be accepted amongst the prestigious and “elite,” and I also feel deep cynicism and discontentment towards those same institutions.

The more politically progressive I get, the more I see through the matrix about work, capitalism and money, and the more fulfilling creative partnerships I embark on these days, the less mystified or thirsty I am by/for the approval of elite institutions. And yet—I can’t say I don’t also still feel on some level like I need them, and yes, want their validation.

I would love to be able to make a sustainable living and career off of talking about the things I talk about online: books, politics, big ideas, curiosity, culture, sociological concepts. Starting big questions just to engage in the act of questioning. I am not interested in making myself an ad machine, taking any brand deals just for the money and ultimately selling products. I want to be working with values-aligned brands and companies—people who understand what I do, see the value in it, and take it seriously. I want to make money from that! It’s why it means so much to me that the Atlantic invested in me in this way. It seems virtually impossible to make a living doing what I do without working with the heavy-hitting brands and organizations across the industries I care about like publishing and media. They don’t have that much money themselves (especially not compared to say, Amazon or Walmart and all the other companies paying $$$ for brand deals) but they hold important weight and power for me. I want to work with them, both because of the cache and access but also because they create things I respect.

It’s very clear to me that I want their validation, as well as feel like I need it. This was really what came up at the festival this week. I value their work so much; I love journalism, journalists, writers, storytellers. I respect their work and admire their brains and ways of seeing the world. I would LOVE to work with them. It’s important to me that my work resonates with many of those people. It’s felt so affirming when authors and journalists DM me, or repost my work, or tell me how much they admire what I do. I guess at the end of the day, I want people to think I’m smart and see my voice as generative to their work and this field in general. I wouldn’t have said that a few years ago because it sounds really self-important in a way I still feel uncomfortable with, but I now understand the role content creators can play in bolstering journalists’ and authors’ work. I deserve to be in these spaces! And kudos again to the Atlantic for understanding that content creators are important here, because I think most legacy media orgs still don’t quite get it.

And yet— how do I describe what I do to the lay Atlantic subscriber? I walked into that room that first day, took a deep breath and said, ok you’re gonna do this. You’re going to fake it til you make it and soon enough you’ll feel comfy. So when each person would ask me what I do and what brought me there, I spoke with confidence and said some sort of variation of “I’m a content creator.” Usually the reactions were confusion and intrigue and then “tell me about the kinds of stuff you talk about.” And the conversation would get rolling and usually it would become pretty apparent why I’m there.

But in the beginning moments in those schmoozy conversations, I could feel myself *this close* to also being like, “well…. I’m a Fulbright scholar! And I used to work at XYZ! I deserve to be here!” (something like that), leaning on the more readily understood parts of my life experience and work.

I didn’t do that though because paradoxically, this version of my life feels the most aligned. This social media work feels like the most honest reflection of me I’ve had to date professionally, even as it’s also the hardest thing to describe and the thing that also makes me feel sort of insecure in these moments.

I guess this whole thing is just to say that multiple things can be true at once (can’t believe I didn’t bring up binaries until now lol!):

• I am confident that the work I am creating online is meaningful and important and smart and I’m proud of it.

• I never felt like my past jobs were at all a complete encapsulation of who I was, even when the organizations were name-brand, reputable and did feel values-aligned

• I am running towards the idea of a portfolio career because I want to be doing a variety of work at the same time, and also right now it’s a bit uncomfy for me to describe what it is that I’m doing

• I respect the work of these liberal media institutions (sometimes…) and admire so many of the writers who work with and for them. I want to be affirmed by them and seen as contributing to their project (when it’s at its best) of pursuing truth and nuance

• I also am cynical about these media institutions these days and often find myself angry and resentful about the ways they perpetuate systems of injustice and power

All of these things are true at the same time for me. I think what activated me was taking my typically online work into the offline world. I’m not often in spaces these days where my professional identity walks in first. So, I’m going to sit in this discomfort and know that my responsibility is not to control how people read my social media work, and how well they understand it or not. My task is to continue to talk about the things that are important to me and the right people will come!

Some of my highlights from the Atlantic festival

The theme of the festival was “big ideas,” which as we all know is my FAVORITE TOPIC. There were so many good talks and conversations and I took notes furiously; I was in my element LOL. Here are a few faves:

• “Why your most consequential work may still be ahead” a conversation with Gayle King and Julianne Moore, moderated by Sophie Gilbert (author of '“Girl on Girl,” our June bookclub pick!) Gayle and Julianne both shared interesting anecdotes (watch their whole talk here—start at 36:10):

  • Gayle said when she turned 50 she got the AARP “welcome to old age!” magazine. She literally called the organization and told them to take her off the mailing list. She said, “I don’t feel old! I don’t want the senior discounts or anything!” Now, at 70 years old she feels very differently. She said she wishes she hadn’t done that. She sees aging now as such a fun thing; she loves telling people how old she is, and challenging conceptions and norms. She said the day after the festival she was off to PR to the Bad Bunny concert. She feels alive, and also is 70; it’s not something she’s ashamed of or runs from.

  • Julianne said that she’s gotten more courageous and confident over the years and recently cold-emailed a famous actress (she wouldn’t tell us who lol!) and proposed a new creative project with her. She said she would never have done that years ago but feels emboldened and confident now. I mean— if Julianne Moore just now at 64 feels confident and she’s an A-LIST ACTRESS, then I absolutely stand by my own imposter syndrome in this piece LOL

• Monica Lewinsky talked about how she broke her decade-plus silence in 2014 when she wrote this piece in Vanity Fair about shame. She said she wrote it in part because she was heartbroken by the 2010 story of Tyler Clementi killing himself because he’d been outed as gay through being secretly video recorded. She wanted to tell anyone who might be buried by shame that you can survive shame; she said it was critical for her that this piece be a personal essay as opposed to an interview, because it was powerful to hear her story of surviving shame in her own words. I am Monica’s biggest fan; I cannot imagine surviving what she survived and I love that she’s become such an important media producer and storyteller today. Watch her whole talk here.

• Comedian W. Kamau Bell’s conversation with Jemele Hill on “Comedians in Political Discourse.” Watch the talk here.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

Miriam

This month, in our paid Substack subs bookclub, we’re reading “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl. We’ll be meeting Mon, Sept 29, so there’s still time to join and/or upgrade your subscription if you’re interested! All info in the Bookclub tab here.

Also, I’ll be co-leading a 7-week virtual bookclub/accountability workshop with my internet friend Zaid. We’ll read “The Art of Gathering” and through games, conversation, assignments and more, we’ll challenge ourselves to be better hosts and friend-gatherers! If you are interested in this, I encourage you to apply!

Book thoughts

I just finished such a great book that I want to talk about a bit. I remembered I have free will and can write book reports in this Substack- HOW FUN. The themes in the book, the softness of the writing, the complexity of the main character— I need others to read this book! I’ll be sharing some passages from the book in this piece; I don’t think they’re *spoilers* per se because it doesn’t really feel like that kind of book, but just note that’s ahead.

The book is a translated work from Swedish, called When The Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén.

The story is from the perspective of an 80 or 90-something year old man, Bo, talking to his wife of many decades Fredericka, who has somewhat recently developed Dementia and been brought by their son to a care facility. One of the throughlines of the story is that their son Hans is trying to get rid of Bo’s dog. He thinks Bo can no longer take care of the dog. After all, he lives in a remote village, relies on a handful of healthcare professionals who visit him daily to bathe him, cook his meals, and generally make sure he’s still alive. But the dog is profoundly important to Bo.

The story is so beautiful in large part because of how quiet it is. I’m a big non-fiction reader as most of you probably know, and find that the experience of reading non-fiction is a noisy one generally, where my brain is firing on all cylinders trying to wrap my head around whatever analysis I’m reading. When I read a book like this one, I’m immediately struck by how important this sort of reading is (I get this feeling many times after reading fiction, so I just need to start reading novels regularly!!). Getting to meet people (characters) living complex lives that feel both familiar and also, entirely unknown. This is my public proclamation that I am going to try to read more novels.

I got this book from Daunt Books when I was in London this Spring. Daunt Books easily jumped up to the top of my “best bookstores I’ve ever visited” list. Look at it (pic below!)

It’s organized by country, so you pick a section and can find books (fiction, non-fiction, travel books etc.) from all these different places! I wandered to the Sweden section, which is where I found this novel.

Things felt, but left unsaid

I thought this book did such a great job at articulating different dissonances, different tensions between what we think and say, how we understand our body’s capabilities and how our body actually works, how we see ourselves and how others see us. I want to share a few of those themes that still linger with me after finishing the book.

One of the most heart-wrenching parts of When The Cranes Fly South was the way Ridzén was, through her writing of Bo, able to articulate the painful difference between what he was thinking in each moment, and what he said out loud. Bo grew up with an violent father. He was both deeply fearful of his father’s reaction and also taught by him to react angrily and suppress emotions. Bo’s wife Fredericka, as we learn through Bo, was different. She tempered and calmed him, and more importantly, she helped quell the rage that would bubble up at their son Hans. But Fredericka isn’t in the house anymore; it’s just Bo— and Hans, when he comes to visit.

When Hans is around, Bo has so much he wants to say to Hans. We learn, through his internal monologue as narrator, that he is deeply emotional about Hans. He respects him greatly (and the way he has parented his own child). He recalls Hans’ childhood fondly, and wishes he could speak truthfully to him. And yet- he doesn’t. Whether out of stubbornness, or shame, or maybe unfamiliarity with honesty, we read Bo’s real thoughts—full of tenderness, nostalgia, and emotion— and see the way he suppresses himself, in real time. Things left unsaid.

Here’s one example that destroyed me (two images because there was a page break):

As a reader, this was painful to read. It’s easy to imagine that if Bo could’ve just articulated even 10% of these feelings, his relationship with Hans could be profoundly changed. It’s also really tough to read knowing that even in our 80s and 90s, there are things we might not utter, even as we so badly want to. To be honest, reading Bo’s dissonance (between thoughts and words said out loud) reminded me that a journey I’m on as I age is to try to narrow that gap: try to push myself towards honesty, especially with the people I love, and especially when it feels the most uncomfy, awkward, or scary. I feel such empathy for Bo and also some real frustration— part of me thinks, BO! What do you have to lose at this point?!?! Is this ego?! Toxic masculinity? Come on!!

Aging and its truths

Another important theme of dissonance was the portrayal of aging, specifically the ways in which Bo was, or in many instances was not taken seriously. One example that stands out is when Bo gets scolded, or rather maybe infantilized, for what the night patrol sees him doing. The book intersperses little notes from the different healthcare providers that are helping Bo, so we understand how he is being received outwardly, in addition to his internal monologue. As the author writes at the end, this note-taking is common practice amongst carers in Sweden.

According to the night patrol’s note, Bo wandered out in the middle of the night, stood by his mailbox and “seemed confused.” Without seeing his perspective, it looks like an elderly person who doesn’t understand what’s going on. It does sound like pretty ‘out of it’ behavior, imagining an elderly person walking around saying they’re delivering their partner a letter in the middle of the night. And yet, from Bo’s perspective, he was incredibly cogent that night; he knew exactly what he was doing.

Take a look at this passage. First, the night patrol note:

and then read it from Bo’s perspective:

Another thing about aging that really struck me in this book was the way Bo’s body was at odds with his mind. It was interesting to read the perspective of someone who’s mind is really still sharp, but who’s body is slowly shutting down. Bo falls asleep quite often, and the author uses his drifting to sleep as a way to transition back to his memories really expertly. Bo is sort of living between the past and the present. He sees his father as vividly as if he was a kid again, he sees his wife. He also goes on walks with the dog, Sixten, and one time falls. He tries to get up from that fall and can’t, at least not for a little while. And yet Bo was a physical laborer for much of his life, both as a young person with his dad and then throughout his own professional life. He can’t understand why his body is so weak. He has moments where he accepts it (like will wear the diapers occasionally) and moments where he can’t stomach it (sometimes he pees his pants without the diaper because he wanted to be able to walk himself to the bathroom- but just couldn’t).

There are so many other themes and conversations in this book that will stick with me. I’d love to hear what you think (and do let me know if you pick up the book!)

Thanks,

Miriam

Here are the four books to vote on for our September bookclub:

These books have been on my list for a long time and I think they all will be ripe for convo. You’ll notice, there’s even a novel there!

Where do I vote?

➡️➡️ Please join our Whatsapp group if you haven’t already!

There are multiple channels to join! The book poll is in “Bookclub Logist…

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Note: I am moving all bookclub logistics/conversations to WhatsApp. If you are a paid member, head over to the Bookclub tab to find the invite link! We’ll have so much more functionality there and it’s wayyyy easier. Head there to our group so we can pick the September book soon. Also note: there is a Pen Pals channel in there so take a look 👀

I started jogging a few months ago. Well really, I’ve started and stopped jogging a few times

but this time I feel committed to it in a different way. It’s all been part of my journey to reclaim (or more realistically, claim for the first time) my relationship to exercise and moving my body consistently.

I downloaded the Strava exercise app in June and I write a comment after each jog to share how I felt it went, forcing myself to take a beat and reflect on the accomplishment. I went through those Strava notes out of curiosity, and I noticed something pretty jarring immediately.

Take a look at some of the last jogs I’d inputted in June and July:

I keep writing, “I had to stop.” I had to. I can hear the frustration and disappointment in my voice. It felt like even as I was enjoying the act of jogging and wasn’t jogging for any particular reason (no race, no plan, just vibes), I was still setting some bar for myself (run without stopping for as long as you can) and then routinely feeling like I was falling short when I, inevitably (as we all do), stopped.

After a month or so of those kinds of jogs, of being both proud that I went out at all but then also feeling the almost routine tinge of disappointment that I had to take breaks, I pivoted my strategy. Well…I made a strategy for the first time.

What if I purposefully baked walking into the jogging, so it wasn’t me “giving up,” but rather “me following a plan.” I make it sound like I’m the person who invented walk/jogging LOL I don’t mean to sound so dramatic, but I don’t think I ever considered walking to be a “legit” thing I could do in these jogs. We’ll get into that rigidity in a sec.

First, let me explain why the jogging feels so momentous to me—and also so tenuous.

For most of my childhood, teenage years, through college, and well into my 20s, the story I told myself was that I was not athletic, that I didn’t like movement, that I was lazy. It was probably in some part because I compared myself to my preternaturally athletic sister (although for sure, I can’t put all the blame on her I fear)— star pitcher in a league of mostly boys, a top basketball player in a high school team that literally [under the table] recruited players to the team, who would beat me in every tennis game we played, even as I was the one who’d taken the lessons— I SWEAR I AM NOT BITTER). I was never forced into sports, which I feel complicated feelings about because a) thankfully I don’t have trauma from that, but also, b) how might I be different if I had more familiarity with movement from an earlier age? I

t’s impossible for me to say exactly why I never liked exercise, but I think it comes down to, I just didn’t really do it all that much. At least not in any way that made it feel *fun.* All of these things created a general lack of interest in and comfort with exercise, competition, and physicality. And ultimately, codified a pretty dramatic story in my head about what exercise meant to me (read: something other people did, devoid of any fun, entirely forced, etc etc)

What started as a casual “ewwww exercise, I’m lazy!” stream of joking when I was younger became a much more visceral avoidance of exercise as I aged. It got to the point in my mid 20s where, when people would tell me they did this or that class (SoulCycle was all the rage then), I would feel resentment or bitterness. You know when you know you have to do something but you really don’t want to/generally avoid it, so when you hear about people doing it, you feel internal rage or whatever else? Is that a thing? (wow I’ve never really talked about this before, and writing it down is WILD to see).

Clearly, I had some issues around exercise.

I knew this was not sustainable. Of course I knew I needed to move my body, that it was good for me but also that I could find it interesting. I had found different things interesting over the years (the aforementioned tennis lessons, Zumba classes, dancehall and hip hop classes etc.) but I hadn’t found anything that stuck, that would push past my inner monologue that said “you don’t want to do this.”

Over the last few years in my 30s, I have REALLY tried to commit to exercise in a new way. I’ve been focusing on consistency and just moving my body, as opposed to any sort of specific thing I want to look like or become or build. Create a habit of moving because I want to be outside, and have better mobility, and sleep better, and protect my body as I age. I feel full peace and clarity that this is what I want and need now, even if I might never *love* it (I mean who knows…but all I know is I have yet to actively crave exercising haha!) It’s a journey to say the least but generally, it feels really different now.

So back to the present: my jogging beginnings.

One Spring day this year, I feel antsy. I can’t remember the exact context but at 2pm one afternoon, I say hm I really want to try to jog.

I had started/stopped a couch to 5k training last year, and wanted to see how long I could jog just because. I go to the park and get up to I think 12 minutes without stopping. I was SHOCKED. I was intrigued about what that meant. I wanted to do it again.

So I start to just slowly keep jogging when I feel like it. And I notice that I’m wanting to go once or twice a week. Running about a 12:30-13 min mile and I don’t care at all about timing or distance; I’m just trying to see how long I can run without stopping, how far I can push my body and mind.

I end up running 2 miles a handful of times, and a full 5k three different times. A miraculous accomplishment. And yet, something about that progress feels unstable to me. It feels like I’m one jog away from knocking down all that momentum. I don’t feel like a confident runner, I don’t feel like my progress in running is cemented either in my body or my brain. It feels as if one “bad jog” could topple the whole thing down. It was— I realize now—an incredibly powerful binary I’d created.

When I come back this June from my 5 week trip, I try to jog again and I just can’t seem to get back into the swing of it. I keep stopping when I’m running. I tell myself, ok you’re just out of practice. But I keep stopping each time I jog (the Strava notes from above).

I read this great article that says, in fact, using the walk/jog training method has all these positive benefits:

Walk breaks

• Speed you up: an average of 7 minutes faster in a 13.1-mile race when non-stop runners shift to the correct Run Walk Run ratio – and more than 13 minutes faster in the marathon

• Give you control over the way you feel during and after

• Erase fatigue

• Push back your wall of exhaustion or soreness

• Allow for endorphins to collect during each walk break

• Break up the distance into manageable units

• Speed recovery

• Reduce the chance of aches, pains, and injury

• Allow older or heavier runners to recover fast and feel as good as in the younger (slimmer) days

• Activate the frontal lobe – maintaining your control over attitude and motivation

I’m sorry WHAT.

Exercise is one of those lasting vestiges of my all-or-nothing self. I don’t have all that many of them these days; I’m working really hard to live in the gray area of virtually everything, but when it comes to movement, my brain turns off: if I can’t do a full hour of exercise, or a full routine or whatever, what’s the point of doing anything??! If I have to take walks, what’s the point of running at all? If I don’t go whatever arbitrary number of days-a-week I’ve set, I might as well scrap the whole thing!

So I start walk/jogging.

Or rather, first I ask Claude1 (see footnote re: AI) to make a walk/jog plan that reflects my level. You can see the way I’d laid out the situation. I wanted to be very clear about the kind of pace and structure I was looking for.

The walk/jog training plan it gave me feels equal parts terrifying and intriguing.

I’ve now completed week 2 of this new training plan (see below for the whole plan, if you’re curious):

Here’s what’s been happening when I added walking in

After the first segment of jogging in the routine (like, the first 12 or 15 minute section), I AM DEAD. I’m convinced there is no way I can do more. I hate the entire conceit of running and I want to stop stop, not just take a break. I can’t believe I only get 1.5 or 2 minutes of a break. And then—— as per my watch timer, I begrudgingly start back running for the second segment…. and I’m…not as tired as when I ended the previous segment……… I think I assumed in my head that the energy I had to give was just one tank that would not replenish. But that’s not what’s happening. Or rather, the tank is lasting longer than I thought it could.

I definitely don’t want to insinuate I am somehow springing back up from the walking break and immediately hitting the same pace/energy level of the last jogging section. No, I’m definitely getting more tired and losing energy. But it’s not been as linear as I might’ve expected. Because of just a minute or two of walking, I’m able to—what feels like to me— essentially come back from the dead. I have more in me.

Now this may seem obvious to you (especially if you’re a runner or athletic person), like of course breaks help you recharge. But for me, each jog pushes my limits (physically yes, but as I wrote in my prompt to Claude, more mentally than anything else) so it’s been remarkable to notice that in fact, I can do more than I think I can.

I had assumed that walking would be the beginning of the end: I’d lose my mental tether to the jogging, my body would lose its pattern of running, my feet would feel heavy. But the opposite has seem to have happened. The walking is making me and my running noticeably stronger, immediately. Equally important, mentally, I know that every step I take in the jogging section is one step closer to being able to walk again which somehow makes the jogging section sliiiiightly more bearable (gotta have something to live for)

Slowing down is helping me ramp back up.

The lesson of slowing down to gain momentum is one I’ve been learning again and again as I age

I’m curiously noticing that setting bounds or constraints (like run for X amount of time, instead of just free run) has been making me feel more free in some ways. I know what to expect and now I can just go, knowing that the timer will go off at some point and I’ll get to walk again.

One example I think about often is: I assumed that taking a break from full-time work was for me to slow down to a screeching halt, to recharge, recover from burnout, and just exist with nothing to do. In fact, in many ways, it’s opened me up to move fast—faster than I was before I quit— just in different directions. I schedule calls with internet friends almost daily and we plan different events we want to do together, or I work on this Substack, or I apply to (and get!) a part-time job that I’m actually really excited about.

The slowing down of my working life was just for me to recalibrate: to look around, take stock of my energy, the direction my feet are headed, and then, to pick back up again. But this time, I’m moving faster2 because I replenished my energy.

I asked my Instagram audience a few weeks back to fill in the prompt Aging is _______

after I posted this story

wrote a few years ago about her own journey with exercise

Culture Study

The Quiet Glory of Aging into Athleticism

In elementary school, I was that kid who figured out how to hide behind some random outdoor building to skip doing laps 2 and 3 of the mile. During my short and undistinguished soccer career, I once locked myself in a bathroom to avoid going to a game. We only had…

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4 years ago · 206 likes · 85 comments · Anne Helen Petersen

I think about this piece often, because she puts into words so much of what I tried to express here. She writes,

I’m certainly not getting faster, or winning anything, or even interested in knowing my pace save to keep to slow. I also know there’s some sort of time limit on how long I’ll be able to do any or all of this, and it makes every run precious — and helps foster an appreciation for my body, a care for it, that I’ve never had before. Maybe this genre of awe is akin to what some people feel after giving birth. For the first time, I’m treating it as the remarkable assemblage of systems that it is: deserving of rest, and respect, and nourishment.

The wildest thing is that when I do that, I can actually, ultimately, run longer — and feel so much better post-run than I ever have before. It’s an ongoing revelation, really, and it’s not an accident that this switch has happened at the same time that I’m actively working to unlearn the fatphobia and workism that defined so much of my adolescent and adult life.

It all has me reflecting on how many years I spent dreading and hating exercise. How if I’d had an understanding of the satisfaction I could get from moving my body, the ways I could prove how strong and resilient I am, and yes, that I could take as many breaks as I wanted, I think I might be in a different place today.

But I’m so grateful to be getting older and developing this relationship to my body now with such clarity. It’s coming from a place of deep curiosity and self-respect and also a commitment to creating sustainable patterns and habits. I love that no one is telling me to move, or shaming me for what I did or didn’t do. The people in my life are so encouraging (shoutout to that same athlete sister who inspires me every day with how consistently she moves her body!), but even more than that, I feel excited about what other things I can explore. Like pickleball (love), ping pong (love), line dancing (getting into it!)— so many things!

I want to share some of the responses that people wrote to the Aging is _____ post.

I think they are so profound and speak to the ways we are tearing down our all-or-nothing mentalities to find freedom? fun? resilience? ourselves?

I hope this leaves you with the same excitement about getting older, wiser, and stronger that I am experiencing these days.

Thanks so much for reading,

Miriam