To view this email as a webpage, click here Last December, I sheepishly admitted there was a huge hole in my Nerd cred. I grew up drawing cartoons, took AP art in high school, and was always fascinated by hand-drawn animation… But I had never seen a single second of any Studio Ghibli cartoon! Studio Ghibli is the Japanese equivalent of Disney, with Hayao Miyazaki as the Japanese Walt: the studio has won multiple Academy Awards for their beautifully hand-drawn animated films, and Miyazaki has...
19 days ago • 4 min read
To view this email as a webpage, click here In 1933, an overwhelmed and frustrated woman named Frau sent a letter to psychologist Carl Jung, asking “how to live.” (She didn’t have any Instagram influencers to yell motivational platitudes at her, I guess) Jung replied: “Your questions are unanswerable, because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can. …if you do with conviction the next and most necessary thing, you are always doing something meaningful and intended by...
26 days ago • 3 min read
To view this email as a webpage, click here I’m currently reading The Tainted Cup, a fantasy detective novel. Think “Sherlock Holmes set in Westeros.” The main character has this augmentation that allows him to absorb every single detail of every interaction, crime scene, and then recite back these exact details at a later date. I remember a horrifying Black Mirror episode about this very thing: being able to recall every fact of every interaction in the past. Here’s the thing: in all of...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
To view this email as a webpage, click here I remember racing up the down escalator in Macy’s at the Cape Cod Mall. My mom, calmly riding the Up escalator like a regular human, would say I was going to hurt myself (possible) or I was making a scene (correct) or interrupting the people trying to get down the escalation (also correct). Sometimes I would be able to get to the top, exhausted and out of breath, while my mom would arrive at the same time laughing at how hard I had to work. Spend...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
To view this email as a webpage, click here Have you ever heard of “Blue Zones”? These pockets of the world are known for having citizens who live exceptionally long, healthy lives. Some of these locations may sound familiar: Okinawa, Japan (home of Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid!). Sardinia, Italy. Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica. Icaria, Greece. These locations have a higher percentage of people who live longer due to their local-whole foods diet, high vegetable consumption, low instances of...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
To view this email as a webpage, click here It’s been a while since I’ve felt this uncomfortable. I had an empty afternoon last week and saw Speak No Evil (trailer here), a horror/suspense film about a family who goes to visit another couple they met on vacation. And shockingly, things don't go as expected. If you saw the “Dinner Party” episode of The Office where Jim and Pam go to Michael and Jan’s house for the most uncomfortable house party ever, and thought to yourself… “What if this was...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
To view this email as a webpage, click here I stumbled across a reddit thread that really grabbed my attention. Somebody asked “What was the ‘one thing’ that finally made weight loss work for you?” And this question had 5,400 replies (and counting). Some of the answers involved environmental changes or changing how they prepared their food: “Pouring snacks into little ramekins to eat them. Suddenly I ate a normal amount of snacks.” “I meal prepped my typical amount of food and instead of...
2 months ago • 4 min read
To view this email as a webpage, click here Last week, I flew to Massachusetts to visit my 94-year grandmother in the hospital. Let me tell you about this amazing woman. Barbara, Auntie B, or Gramma to us grandkids, was born in 1930 to first-generation Newfoundlanders. (No wonder I love the music of Alan Doyle (and Great Big Sea), it’s in my DNA!) Gramma was a preschool teacher for 22 years and has been an active member in her community for her entire life. She was a heck of a quilter and...
2 months ago • 6 min read
To view this email as a webpage, click here I know you’re overcomplicating things, because everybody does. Including me, the nerd who studies this stuff for a living. I shared a quick story the other day on Threads (and Instagram): A few thousand people resonated, and I couldn’t help but chuckle at the replies. Magdalena jokingly said it best: When life asks me to juggle chainsaws and then sets those chainsaws on fire, I tend to get away from the things that keep me functioning as a fulfilled...
3 months ago • 2 min read