When they cancel on you

Oh, hi friends!

Let’s say you’re waiting around for a job interview…or an audition…or a coffee date…or a date-date.

It’s on your calendar and you’re really looking forward to it. Maybe you’re dying to get out of your current job, or you don’t have one right now, so this is a Really Important Interview. Maybe it's your biggest audition ever. Maybe you think the coffee meeting will be a great step in a new direction. Maybe the date-date seems intriguing.

And then they cancel.

LOL KILL ME DEAD AND BURY ME.

This…is not a good feeling. It doesn’t matter what the reason is, it’s easy to feel disappointed.

But…

That’s mainly because it was your Only Thing Going On at the Time.

Right?

You put all your eggs in one basket blah blah blah.

Let's be serious. If you had five coffee meetings to chit-chat about this-this-whatever, would you care as much if one canceled? (Same goes if you have five auditions scheduled, five meetings, five pitches out to editors…would you care as much if one ignored you?)

Probably not.

So don’t wait around.

If you want one thing, get busy with lots of things.

“Personal newsletters are largely immune to the churn of Twitter and exist in a separate sphere from the content mines of an online publication. They retain some of the intimacy of the early digital-media days, when online writing felt less polished, more vital, the cornerstone of connection for people like me, then a lame-ish teen fumbling her way through junior high in a wealthy suburban Texas bubble. As someone who entered the New York media scene just after that era, I’m forever chasing it down, enthralled—perhaps misguidedly—by what it represented, and what it got away with.”

Nearly 600 issues in, and suddenly I understand why I love newsletters so much, partly thanks to this smart Vanity Fair piece “We’re at Peak Newsletter, and I Feel Fine.”

Connection, connection, connection.

I can sling off a tweet and not hear a peep, but still see conversations happening around me. But here, I can write to you — directly to you and you and you — and not feel concerned about everything else going on. Because we are having a conversation. 

(The story also kindly gave me this shout-out: “Kara Cutruzzula’s Brass Ring Daily is like a life coach in your inbox,” which is, perhaps, the highest compliment, and also ironic in that this week I was considering hiring my own life-career coach! We’re all in this together.)

“My dream is to become a star and make it to Broadway.”

This 12-year-old kid Luke Islam sang “She Used to Be Mine” from “Waitress” on America’s Got Talent and…did I cry? Are these tears? What is happening?! Watch out, he might get you, too. (Song starts three minutes in but the whole thing is great, all the way up 'til the slo-mo.)

Hi, ris-oat-to.

How unpredictable is your subway commute? This one cut deep.

Kid inventors tell all. Wow. Baby geniuses! (h/t Christine Chidoub)

The definitive rules of the road for urban cyclists.

Finally, “Why would I work hard when I can read an article telling me about the one trick that will finally make it easy for me to work hard?” The myth of the “one thing” that will change your life.

Do you like these daily emails? Please share with a friend!

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Love, Kara