When I told my mother I was considering a PhD, she didn't push me toward it. She didn't need to. She simply never held the other option in the room long enough to look at it. The alternative — not doing it, choosing something slower or less legible, following ...Read More
Scrolling through Substack last night, I came across a note by cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Julie Fratantoni that stopped me mid-scroll, which felt appropriate given what it was saying. Her point was simple: the small margins of waiting — the line, the elevator, the gap between meetings — are some ...Read More
We tend to think about longevity in terms of the obvious inputs — diet, exercise, sleep, stress management, and whether we see a doctor often enough. As far as I can see, these all get a lot of airtime, and while I'm not saying they don't hold value ...Read More
Everyone has one of these friends. The person who texts first when your week falls apart. Who remembers your dad's surgery date better than you do. Who appears in your inbox with a thoughtful check-in the morning after you mentioned something hard in passing two weeks ago. They ...Read More
Researchers who study aging and life satisfaction have noticed something striking when they interview people who found a deep sense of purpose in their seventies and eighties. The story almost never starts with a plan. It rarely starts with a bucket list, a reinvention, a new project they finally ...Read More
There's a particular kind of tired that solo households know well. It isn't from working too hard. It isn't from poor sleep, although that often comes with it. It's the strange, low-grade exhaustion of a Tuesday night where you've done nothing impressive all day and still feel like ...Read More