A gentle close to the week

With 6 things that made life slightly better / Issue 1,139

Oh, hi friends!

Sometimes a gentle close to the week feels impossible. 

Maybe you’d like a hard slam instead. A definitive end. Or a good scrubbing.

I’m sorry that I can’t give you any of those.

But what I can give — what I hope you can give yourself — is just a moment or two today in which you think about someone you love.

Hold on to one specific memory.

Hold it.

There.

Maybe that’s a gentle close, too.

A thin layer of something good, something that’s yours, over everything else.

6 Things That Made Life Slightly Better This Week

• Lunch with my friend Elena, who I hadn’t seen in seven (?!) years. A reminder that friends can pick up right where you left off, both of you different…but the same.

• Seeing Here We Are, the new Stephen Sondheim and David Ives musical. I just loved it. It made me want to create stranger, bolder, and more daring work. Maybe with a dancing bear. TodayTix has rush and lottery tickets.

• Breaking out this back massager reminded me that I don’t need to sit around with knots in my shoulders — something exists that can help.

• The seventh episode of The Bear, in which Richie stages at a three Michelin-star restaurant, is one I’ll remember for a long time. Olivia Colman!! But also: Every second counts.

• I was a guest on Claudine Wolk’s great podcast Get Your Book Seen and Sold, and we talked about how to give yourself permission to write, making your project “easy,” surviving post-publication blues, and my book publishing journey. Really enjoyed this conversation and hope you might, too.

• Um, Breathe Right strips are heavenly? This is what it’s like to breathe?? (I used one while sleeping and running the next morning and noticed a major difference in, well, breathing.)

I hope you can reflect on what made your life slightly better this week, too.

Have a gentle weekend, friends.

Don’t forget to remember.