I once heard someone say that writer’s block is like walking down a path you’ve taken a thousand times before but then you suddenly lose your sense of direction.

This summer, I keep finding myself on that path. I’ll go through long blocks that feel like I’ll never write a coherent sentence again, and then out of nowhere something clicks and I’ll finish an essay I didn’t even know I wanted to write. There seems to be no way of controlling it. Which is not ideal.

All of it had me thinking about the duende, a Spanish word for the strange, heightened state of emotion and creativity that seems to have a mind of its own. The duende has been described as a creative “demon” that comes to visit, then leaves as quickly as it arrives.

Here’s the poet Federico García Lorca describing it in Theory and Play of the Duende:

All through Andalusia, from the rock of Jaén to the snail’s-shell of Cadiz, people constantly talk about the duende and recognise it wherever it appears with a fine instinct. That wonderful singer El Lebrijano, creator of the Debla, said: ‘On days when I sing with duende no one can touch me.’: the old Gypsy dancer La Malena once heard Brailowsky play a fragment of Bach, and exclaimed: ‘Olé! That has duende!’ but was bored by Gluck, Brahms and Milhaud. And Manuel Torre, a man who had more culture in his veins than anyone I’ve known, on hearing Falla play his own Nocturno del Generalife spoke this splendid sentence: ‘All that has dark sounds has duende.’ And there’s no deeper truth than that.

Maybe the best translation we have for this in English is “creative energy,” but that doesn’t seem to do this concept justice. The creative energy Lorca describes is supernatural, unexplainable, intractable. David Bowie talked about the duende. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote an entire book on the duende, really.

In the spirit of embracing that chaotic creative demon, here are a few things on my mind in June.

1. Aja Monet’s poetry—especially for the Congo.

2. Yellowface—finally read it and finished it in a day, totally mesmerized by how R.F. Kuang unpacks and threads together themes about tokenism, plagiarism, and professional envy all in one story.

3. This Hidden Brain interview with behavioral scientist Dave Evans on radical acceptance. He shares a powerful personal story that blew me away.

4. Another Hidden Brain episode about what makes us who we are. I didn’t work on this one, but the interview with psychologist Eric Oliver is fascinating and relatable. “We are not nouns, we are verbs.”

5. Similarly, psychologist Brian Lowery argues there is no “you” in self.

6. How to Live In A World That Makes No F*cking Sense, ’s post on absurdism. “If existentialism says life has no meaning, absurdism replies then you are obligated to give your life meaning. It is not the gods who liberate or condemn us but ourselves.”

7. A couple of weeks ago, I learned to play Mahjong (shoutout to Common Ground!), then read about the complicated history of Mah-jongg in America.

8. “You Don’t Look Mexican”: My talented friend Luis Andrade read his beautiful, funny essay at the Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning:

May the creative demons visit you often,

Kristin

This year, I took a birthday road trip to San Francisco, where we slid down giant slides, sipped a tiki drink or two, rode a trolley, took pictures of sea lions, and scarfed down some really delicious clam chowder. Overall, it was a pretty great way to celebrate another trip around the sun. Here’s some other stuff I did/read/thought about this month.

1. Mother’s Day is coming up, and this incredible 2018 essay by Claudia Dey, Mothers as Makers of Death, offers a different way to think about the “bright and clean” “pastel thoughts” of motherhood. Dey writes, “No one had warned me that with a child comes death. Death slinks into your mind. It circles your growing body, and once your child has left it, death circles him too. It would be dangerous to turn your attentions away from your child—this is how the death presence makes you feel.”

2. What does it take to start a revolution? One of the most memorable Hidden Brain episodes I’ve worked on featured political scientist Erica Chenoweth. Erica and a team of researchers analyzed hundreds of both violent and nonviolent revolutions over the years to see which ones were more successful. It almost sounds like common sense to say that violence would be more successful because the consequences of violence are so brutal and obvious. But that wasn’t the case. Surprisingly, they found that only 26% of the violent revolutions were ultimately successful, while 53% of the nonviolent campaigns succeeded. Even more surprising, they found that “none of the campaigns seemed to have failed after mobilizing three and a half percent of the population.” That episode is titled “How to Change the World,” and we rebroadcasted it this month. You can listen to it here.

3. I’ve written about hypocognition before—the idea that when you don’t have a word for something, you experience it differently. Anthropologist Robert Levy coined the term after spending some time in the 1960s studying the seemingly unusual behavior of Tahitians who were mourning but didn’t have a word for “grief.” In the case of one grieving man, Levy wrote that the man described his sadness as being “without energy,” and seemed embarrassed that he was sad at all. But it wasn’t that 1960s Tahitians didn’t understand grief—it’s that the emotion and the culture surrounding it was suppressed by the community at the time because grieving was considered bad luck. “If you mourn too much, the transformed spirit of the dead person may gain power over you,” Levy explained of the culture. And so not only did people avoid the experience of grief, but words related to it were suppressed in order to help people avoid it. Over at aeon, the psychologist Kaidi Wu further explores this story and how hypocognition can be used as a form of social control.

4. Recently, my four-year-old asked, “Mom, what is the universe?” Well, try explaining that one. I consulted NASA’s website to help find an answer, and here’s what they have to say about it: “The universe is everything. It includes all of space, and all the matter and energy that space contains. It even includes time itself and, of course, it includes you.”

5. Pochemuchka: A Russian word that describes a child who asks a lot of questions.

6. 600 goats are eating their way through the brush in our neighborhood to help with wildfire prevention. And they’re doing a great job.

7. Mason Currey’s new book, Marking Art and Making a Living, is, as my kid would say, “literally fantastic!” What I love about Mason’s work (including his newsletter, ) is that it shows how there are so many different avenues—so many different ways of thinking, so many different approaches—to doing work you love and even being successful at it. I get stuck in the comparison trap a lot, convincing myself that unless I do my thing in exactly the right way (the same way someone I admire has done it) nothing will work out for me. In the book, Mason shows us one artist’s path to success, but then points to another successful artist who did everything in a completely different way. There are no rules!

8. Are you in NYC? Come celebrate ’s book launch with me!

   

9. Another interesting Hidden Brain episode I got the chance to work on: Designing a Life that Matters, featuring the work of behavioral scientist Dave Evans who says, “The better question is not ‘What's the meaning of life?’ But ‘How might I live a more meaningful life now?’”

10. This McSweeney’s piece: Fine. This Is What I Was Really Like in the ’90s.

Your friend,

Kristin

Hi! Are you in the Pasadena/Los Angeles area? Come join me and at Burden of Proof on Wednesday, March 18th for Write Night: ​a night of community, writing, and collective power. This time, we’re raising funds for Pasadena For All. Hope to see you there!

When I was a little kid, my cousin used to do these cool magic tricks at family gatherings. Card tricks, disappearing coins, mind reading games, the works. One night, he made a crumpled napkin rise off the dining table, and I was so stunned that I spent the rest of the evening begging him to tell me how he did it. Finally, he caved and walked me through it, step by step. I thought I’d be impressed. Instead, I felt a small and unexpected pang of disappointment. As soon as I understood the trick, the magic disappeared.

Not long ago, my friend introduced me to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. It’s a collection of imaginary words that describe emotions we all feel but don’t have the vocabulary for.

Here’s a short video that describes its origins:

Of course, I bought the book. I also spent some time browsing the website, where you can even submit your own sorrow. Yes, the words are made up, but aren’t all words? “In language, all things are possible,” Koenig writes, “Which means that no emotion is untranslatable.”

For example, here’s an interesting one I came across: kairosclerosis.

“In the moment you look around and realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart, and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.

There’s science behind this. Researchers call it the paradox of pursing happiness: the pursuit can backfire when we monitor it too closely. In some research, the more people valued happiness, the less happy they were. Kairosclerosis also reminds me of the Yiddish word Farpotshket, which is when something is broken only because you tried to fix it. It seems to be about the tendency to take a perfectly good moment and overthink it.

I do this a lot. Sitting in the backyard with my husband on a Sunday evening while the sun goes down and our kid picks oranges from the citrus tree, making the whole yard smell like jasmine, I stop and consider taking a photo. Or grabbing my journal to write about it. Or, god help me, posting something on Instagram. What can I do to savor the moment? I ask myself. Instead of just, you know, savoring it.

In a way, that’s the job of writing. Or, at least, storytelling. You take a moment and you make meaning out of it. It’s not just writers who do this—it’s human nature to find explanations in everything. The moment something surprises, confuses, or delights us, our minds rush to weave it into a story, turn it into a memory, or otherwise find some way to explain it so that we can appropriately store it within our mental archives.

Language does this, too. It helps us understand things. We come up with words to describe what it feels like to find joy in sadness or feel nostalgic about something elusive or even come up with the perfect comeback five hours later. It’s in our nature to name these experiences, which is why untranslatable words are so fun. They give us a way to describe something elusive, and they remind us that we’re not alone in the world. But, to bring it all back to kairosclerosis, sometimes overusing a word can also make it “slowly dissolve” until it’s rendered meaningless. Literally.

I don’t necessarily think the answer is to stop picking things apart —to stop trying to name things, search for explanations, or find ways to savor our experiences. Picking things apart is a human impulse to make sense of a world that can feel confusing, fleeting, and chaotic.

It’s just that, when we pick things apart in order to understand them, sometimes we lose a little magic in the process. I guess that’s the beauty, or the obscure sorrow, of being human.

From the archives

The Case for Cursing (The New York Times, 2017)

Share-worthy

• This piece by on the girlboss-tradwife dichotomy is so sharp and spot-on. Stefanie writes about these issues with such clarity that is strangely soothing for my own female rage. Her Substack feels like the feminist therapy we all need right now.

• I enjoyed this TEDx Talk by Jeff Harry on the Power of Play to reduce hierarchies and divisions. I also interviewed Jeff for this New York Times piece a while back.

• “The way squeezing creative work around other obligations is valorized bothers me. I think it’s important to claim time and show that writing has value by letting one’s family know it’s a priority.” This interview with my friend on balancing creative work with caretaking was highly relatable.

Enryo (Japanese)

In second grade, a geologist came to our classroom to do a presentation on rocks. Which might not sound terribly exciting as an adult, but when I was eight, rocks were a much more significant part of my life. I collected all kinds— tiger’s eye, turquoise, tiny pieces of fool’s gold.

At the end of the presentation, I was delighted when the geologist gave each of us a beautiful chunk of crystal to take home. I cupped mine in my hand and ran my fingers over its sparkly, jagged edges. It was perfect. Translucent on one side, milky white on the other, with the tiniest hint of pink. I placed it at the corner of my desk and went to the bathroom.

When I came back, my rock was gone.

I was not the kind of kid who liked to make a fuss. I was shy, and I didn’t like drawing attention to myself. But I grabbed the nearest adult, our teacher, “Mrs. G.”

Mrs. G quieted the classroom and asked everyone to look around for my missing rock. A kid in my class — let’s say his name was Ken — raised his hand and said he “found” an “extra” one. Likely story, Ken. Mrs. G asked him to show me the rock. Ken held out his palm with a look of shame on his face, and there it was. Just the right jagged edges. Just the right cloudy shade of white with a slightly pink hue. It was totally my rock.

“Is this it?” Mrs. G asked.

I am not sure what happened. I should have said yes. I should have grabbed it. I should have spoken up for myself, and then this would be a tiny blip in my memory, three decades later.

Instead, I shook my head no. Mrs. G paused, just as confused as I was, and Ken closed his palm and walked back to his desk with both of his rocks, still looking slightly embarrassed.

I’ve spent years trying to understand why I did that. Why did I hesitate? What compelled me to lie, especially at my own expense?

It might be that I truly was a very shy kid who absolutely hated being in the spotlight. It might be that I was secondhand embarrassed for Ken and wanted to protect him from shame. Or maybe I was afraid of conflict. Maybe I was just overwhelmed.

Recently, I came across a Japanese phrase — enryo (遠慮) — that made me think about that moment. It translates to “refrain” and describes “the behavior of refraining from doing or saying something out of concern for how it may affect others,” according to one source.

For example, if you visit someone’s house and they offer you something to drink, you might say no out of politeness, even if you really could use a glass of water. That’s enryo in action. It’s about “putting the group’s comfort ahead of one’s own desires.”

I’m fluent in enryo. And it’s not just the rock. I’ve spent years smoothing over conflicts, laughing things off, and swallowing my reactions so that everyone in the room can be comfortable.

Some of it is cultural, I think. I grew up in a world where you respect authority, do what you’re told, and try not to make a fuss about anything. You don’t complain. You just deal with it. And as the child of an immigrant, I carried this strange secondhand shame, like I hadn’t fully earned the right to speak up anyway. When kids told me to “go back to China” and teachers didn’t even look up to address it (I am NOT talking about Mrs. G — she was wonderful and would have NEVER accepted that), I learned early on that I should keep my head down. It was safer than drawing attention. Speaking up made me a problem. In my case, this wasn’t enryo so much as it was trying to avoid negative attention. But when you grow up with that logic, it becomes hard to distinguish obedience from politeness.

Some of it is also instinctive. Social psychologists talk about “facework” — the instinct to protect someone else’s dignity, along with your own, so the whole interaction doesn’t collapse. “Facework strategies include politeness, deference, tact, avoidance of difficult subjects,” the APA reports, “and the use of half‑truths and ‘white lies.’” And kids pick it up way earlier than we think. There’s research that suggests children will choose social harmony over fairness, and that might be especially true when someone’s feelings are on the line, the way I sensed Ken felt a little ashamed that day.

Enryo didn’t just explain why I stayed quiet that day. It explained a whole internal operating system I’d been running without knowing it. For years, I thought this was just shyness or conflict avoidance. But the more I learn about it, the more I see how deeply this instinct shaped the way I moved through the world: the way I apologized before asking questions, the way I downplayed my own needs, the way I tried to make myself small so no one else had to feel uncomfortable.

I think a lot about that stupid rock. At eight years old, I was already well versed in the art of restraint. That instinct has served me in some ways. It’s made me attentive, perceptive, and good at reading a room. It’s helped me make space for others when I can sense they’re feeling the same way.

I want to hold on to my softness— the instinct to care, to consider, to protect. But over the years, I’ve gotten a lot of sh*t from friends about this habit. They tell me to speak up. Stop apologizing. Be more assertive. They don’t seem to see the irony in urging me to be “more myself” while asking me to tone down the parts that actually are me. I think that’s because traits like “enryo” are generally seen as a weakness.

Lately, I can understand their point. I think it’s a tension that a lot of us are feeling right now —how to hold on to our more compassionate selves in a world that feels increasingly hostile to compassion. It’s a world that seems to reward the loudest person in the room, mistake cruelty for strength, and prioritize power over people. I don’t have answers. But at its core, enryo is about social harmony, and harmony only works when everyone is committed to it. So how do you deal with the risk of being gentle in a world that isn’t?

Share-worthy

• Stop Spiraling! I worked on this Hidden Brain episode about how our minds get trapped in negative thought spirals— and how to break out of them.

• How to Be a Rich Old Lady by Amanda Holden. I’ve been following Amanda’s work for years. She breaks down complicated financial topics (like investing) in a way that is funny, accessible, and engaging. If you’re looking for a money book that you’ll actually want to read, this is it!

• What script have other people written for you? I really enjoyed this post by about the hidden scripts that rule our lives.

• The thing you keep circling is the thing: Another great post (and reminder!) from .

From the archives

When Your Culture Clashes With Your Career Choices (The Startup, 2020)

This week’s soundtrack

Working in media usually means working at a brisk pace. You pour all of your attention into a project, publish it, and then it’s onto the next thing, almost immediately. There’s barely time to reflect on the work itself, much less how it might have impacted you. In the spirit of not doing that, I put together an end‑of‑year roundup of stuff I worked on in 2025. Some of these were assignments, some were questions I wanted to answer, and some were things I worked on just for fun. Basically, it’s a small collection of ideas and projects that stuck with me. Maybe one or two will stick with you, too.

Untranslatable (Write or Die Magazine)

I wrote a personal essay based on three Cantonese phrases that don’t exist in English. It’s also based on the Catapult series I wrote a while back — the one that became the backbone of this newsletter and the book I’m (slowly but surely) writing. The essay asks, what does language say about the cultures we grow up in? How does it change the way we experience the world? If you’ve ever felt caught between languages, cultures, or identities, it might be for you.

The Price of Revenge (Hidden Brain)

I worked on this Hidden Brain episode about revenge — why it feels so satisfying but never offers what we hope it will. The researcher we interviewed, James Kimmel, Jr., argued that revenge functions like addiction in the brain. It’s tempting and pleasurable, but only momentarily, and it always leaves us wanting more. And this doesn’t just apply on an interpersonal level. This “revenge addiction,” as Kimmel calls it, also explains why some types of global conflict never seem to end.

The Moments That Change Us (Hidden Brain)

You’ve probably heard the phrase “your future self.” The philosopher L.A. Paul makes the case that, in some scenarios, our future selves really are like different people, with fundamentally different identities. These are what she calls transformative experiences— experiences that change us so deeply that we are almost strangers unto ourselves. Which raises an interesting question: How do you make decisions about a future in which you might be a totally different person than the one who is currently doing the deciding? Clearly, I love a good unanswerable question.

Their Kids Had Questions About Wealth Inequality. How Did They Respond? (the New York Times)

I pitched this story after my own kid started asking questions I wasn’t prepared to answer. Reporting it taught me that avoiding uncomfortable topics doesn’t protect children — it leaves them to fill in the gaps on their own. And the ability to avoid these conversations is, itself, a kind of privilege.

Forget About It (Hidden Brain)

This was one of those episodes that totally changed the way I thought about something — in this case, memory. The episode is about how forgetting isn’t a failure of the human brain, it’s a feature.

Researcher Ciara Greene tells the story of Jill Price, a woman with a curious case of not being able to forget anything. Which sounds like a superpower, except that Jill can recall every small detail of every day of her life, including the tragic ones. Jill Price wrote about her experience in her beautiful, heartbreaking, fascinating memoir: The Woman Who Can’t Forget.

Ouch! That Feels Great (Hidden Brain)

This was a weird, delightful dive into the psychology of discomfort with the psychologist Paul Bloom, who explains why some of us love scary movies, spicy food, and other forms of “pleasant pain.” There are a lot of surprising reasons we seek out pain: it brings us together, it makes pleasurable moments more pleasurable, and it can even give our lives meaning.

You Are a Toddler Asking Too Many Questions (The Belladonna Comedy)

A not-so-serious thing I wrote about relentless toddler curiosity. If you’ve ever been interrogated by a small child, you’ll understand.

If any of these spark something in you — a thought, a feeling, a laugh?— then I’m glad I made them. Thanks for being here with me this year and here’s to many more moments of curiosity, delight, and wonder in 2026.

I first heard about the idea of creative composting from a workshop with . The idea is, you gather all the tiny random scraps that spark your curiosity — quotes, random thoughts, pictures, memes—and toss them into a giant “heap” (in my case, a notes app and bookmarked folder on my browser) where they sit and break down until someday (maybe) an idea starts to grow. The key is to tend the compost regularly, because even the weirdest, most random leftovers can turn into surprisingly rich soil. This week, I thought it would be fun to share a tiny glimpse into my own compost heap. Here are a few things I’ve saved.

A quote from Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act. A friend gifted me this book a while ago, and I’ve been reading a couple of pages every morning. I use it as a jumping off point before I start writing, almost like a little meditation before I get started. It’s very quotable. This one stood out to me because of what it says about the nature of both creativity and identity.

At school, this was my kid’s answer to “what do you want to be when you grow up?” A true multipotentialite.

Another saved quote. One that captures the spirit of weltschmerz.

This series of forgotten English words. Like “groke”: someone who stares at you while you eat, hoping you’ll share.

(I’ve got a few grokes in my house.)

This Calico Critter I saw in a toy store window who looks like he’s seen some sh!t. I kept trying to push these little calico critter things on my kid recently, until I realized I just wanted them for myself because there is something irresistibly adorable about them.

Thoughts on libraries from Phuc Tran’s wonderful memoir (which I listened to as an audiobook) Sigh, Gone.

This 1971 song that made the social media rounds recently, and for good reason. Here’s Labi Siffre responding to the newfound interest and describing the song’s origins.

That’s this week’s compost. If you keep a heap of your own, I’d love to hear what’s in it.

Untranslatable

Sobremesa: a Spanish word that describes the time spent lingering at the table after a meal, talking and enjoying each other’s company.

Share-worthy

I wrote a story for the New York Times about how parents talk to kids about inequality.

From the archives

How To Be A Tiny Bit Better At Buying Gifts (The Cut)

Hey! Need some butt-in-chair time? Krystie Yen and I are co-hosting another Write Night at Burden of Proof in Pasadena. Join us for a night of community, creativity, and collective action. This time, we’re raising funds for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley. Sign up here.

I’ve got problems. My eyesight is getting worse. The book I’ve been writing is a total slog. Two people I loved very much passed away recently, and it still doesn’t feel real.

Did I mention my eyesight?

Don’t worry. This isn’t some feel-good post about how life sucks and a gratitude list will fix everything. Although…if I were going to make a gratitude list, I would put ha ha ha ha ha ha ha at the top of it.

A couple of weeks ago, desperate to get out from under a pile of Legos and do something with another grown-up, I went with my sister-in-law to see a one-woman show — one that I knew next to nothing about, aside from the blurb I read on the website:

“All Julia Masli wants to do is solve people’s problems and win the Nobel Peace Prize, but this plan keeps going wrong as she continually wins prizes for comedy.”

Sounded fun. We got to the theater. The lights dimmed, the show started. Then, this woman — dressed like some kind of space alien, complete with a gold mannequin leg for an arm — made her way through the crowd then onto the blue-lit stage where she made weird noises and eventually thanked us for joining her on this “guided meditation.” Oh god, I thought, what did I drag us into?

But the show shattered my expectations. Julia Masli, a self-described “clown from Estonia,” goes into the audience dressed as some sort of, yes, alien-robot-space-creature-thing, and asks people for their problems. That night, people’s problems ranged from a bad breakup to writer’s block to caring for a father recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s. The whole show is improvised and based on each audience’s unique response.

When asked for a problem, one attendee admitted, “I don’t have friends,” as his voice cracked. Julia asked his name — then introduced him to someone else in the audience she knew with that name: the sound guy. “Exchange numbers,” she said. “You should hang out.” It was hilarious, serendipitous, and sweet. By the end of the show, a group of grieving strangers danced together while ABBA played.

It almost felt too good to be real, but it was. Which is kind of the definition of magic.

It’s hard to imagine that every show is different, because it’s hard to imagine the show I saw going any other way than the way it did. It wasn’t a one-woman show at all, it was a collective creation that, by the end, left me laughing, crying, and contemplating human existence all at once. Afterwards, my sister-in-law and I were stunned, trying to find the right words for what we’d just experienced. Even now, describing it here, doesn’t do justice to how weird and cool it actually was.

If you’re in the D.C. area, you should absolutely go check it out, because there’s a good chance you will be thinking about it for a long time after experiencing it yourself. I’m still thinking about it now. Weeks later, I’ve realized there is indeed a word for what I felt in that room: ubuntu.

I’ve avoided writing about ubuntu because it seems like an unstranslatable word that’s become so familiar, it’s no longer untranslatable. It’s been explained so much that it’s become flattened, and so it’s almost hard to recognize it when you feel it.

Ubuntu is a Nguni Bantu term that loosely translates to “humanness” and points to a philosophy of interconnectedness: the idea that there’s some universal bond connecting people and the world. It’s often translated as “I am because we are,” and used as a shorthand for describing the importance of community.

But like all untranslatable words, there’s something a little bit magical about it, too.

The philosophy of interconnectedness is not just some neat idea about kindness and community. The idea is, you are a person through other people. So, yes, it’s about community, solidarity, and supporting your neighbor. But it also seems to describe a somewhat radical idea: that existence is dependent on those around us. As one article puts it:

“...in Southern African traditional thought, being is understood in the communal, physical and spiritual sense. Thus, a human being is always in communion with other human beings as well as with the spiritual world.”

In ubuntu thought, existence is deeply relational — our identities are shaped by others. It’s an idea that’s similar to the Tagalog word Kapwa. BJ Gonzalvo writes:

“Many indigenous Tagalog words, especially those that have lasted through colonial and post-colonial times, are simply untranslatable. ‘Kapwa’ is one of those important indigenous words… The core value of kapwa, our shared humanity, is a cultural treasure that Filipinos willingly share, and must share, with all of humanity. No matter how loud and more pronounced the messages of individualism and self-ism get today, our need to recognize our interconnectedness, interdependence, and belonging runs deep in our human DNA.”

In the theater that day, it wasn’t just a clown solving problems. Somehow, all of it came together in a way that felt bigger than our individual little worlds. I could see myself in everyone else’s problems and anxieties, laughing at heartbreak and grief, cheering through writer’s block, finding joy in the mess of being human. It was healing, I guess, but it’s not like it made my own problems and anxieties disappear. If anything, it made me think about them more (“what will I say if she brings the mic to me?”). But it also made me think that maybe the beauty of being human, if it’s beautiful at all, isn’t in the absence of struggle, but in the way struggle can, and maybe should, connect us. For Julia Masli “ubuntu” isn’t just a metaphor. It’s the entire premise of the show, and I’m still floored that I got to experience it. Someone give this woman a Peace Prize already.

From the archives

The Imaginative Powers of a Brain on Autopilot (The Cut): You’re in the shower, or you’re brushing your teeth, or you’re blow-drying your hair. Suddenly, brilliance strikes.

Share-worthy

• You Are a Toddler Asking Too Many Questions. Please Refer to This Flowchart. I wrote this piece in a humor writing workshop led by the amazing Luke Burns and got it placed in The Belladonna!

• I worked on this Hidden Brain episode about how our biggest dreams, goals, and ambitions don’t just need passion —they need plumbing.

• Girl in a Forest. Treat yourself (or someone else!) to this gorgeous book of poetry by my friend and neighbor Elline Lipkin.

• Parents Have Feelings, Too. If you’re a parent, you need this book. Hell, if you are a human being with emotions, you need this book. It’s like a guidebook for navigating your Big Feelings, and while I want to recommend it to every parent I know, I would have benefitted from it long before becoming a parent.

This week’s soundtrack

Merak (Serbian)

Ever had a Shipley’s donut? I’m a California girl, but if there’s anything that could ever get me to move back to Texas, it would probably be Shipley Do-Nuts.

I’m not a good enough writer to describe the deliciousness of a Shipley’s donut, but I’ll try. It’s a soft, buttery, sugary pillow of gold. You can smell the light, crackly glaze before you even put it in your mouth, and once you do, it melts away as you reach divine consciousness and Let the Sunshine In blasts from the heavens above.

One Sunday back when I was still living in Houston, a friend and I went to get Shipley’s donuts together one afternoon, something to do to beat the Sunday Scaries. Obviously, I was excited.

When we got to the donut shop and I saw those familiar, yellow rows of glazed goodness, I clapped and smiled. Like a huge dork. My grumpy friend smirked and said,

“It’s so sad that this is all it takes to make you happy.”

I immediately felt silly and shallow and embarrassed for being so excited about a donut. Thankfully, Shipley’s had me in a state of nirvana, as it tends to do, so I wasn’t thinking about it too much at the time.

But the next day, as I was driving to work, my friend’s words randomly popped into my head:

“How sad that this is all it takes to make you happy.”

Oh god, I thought, am I sad? Is my life so pathetic that all I have to look forward to are empty carbs? My hands firmly gripped the steering wheel, and a response came to mind: “How sad that something this small doesn’t make you happy.”

Ha! What a great comeback. I mean, I wish I’d thought of it on the spot, but that’s l’espirit de l’escalier for you.

I think about this moment a lot, not because I think I'm any smarter than my friend (I, too, am cynical and grumpy about all sorts of things other people find joyful, like massages or Disneyland or beach trips…I don’t get the hype.) but because it made me wonder if there are two distinct types of happiness. There’s the big picture happiness you get from living a rich, fulfilling, and meaningful life, and then there’s the small happiness that comes from a cat on your lap or a good conversation with a friend or a bit of food.

For a long time, I thought of these two types of happiness — let’s call them big happy and small happy — as separate from each other. Of course, you could have both, but they were distinct and came from a totally different place in your mind. But there’s a Serbian word I came across recently that challenges this idea: merak.

Merak describes the way life’s simplest pleasures can make us feel deep things. One poet described it as the pursuit of small daily pleasures that create a connection with the universe. A Redditor described it as “something that is short-termed, but has great value in your day-to-day life.” Another writer called it “a small reminder of the natural order of things, something that puts things back into perspective.” I’m not sure if this is the right idea, but I like to think of merak as tiny doses of awe.

I've written before about Meraki—a Greek word that translates to “essence of ourselves” and has to do with the small pieces of yourself you put into something you create. Both Meraki and Merak are derived from the Turkish “merak,” which means “desire” or “passion,” and you can see how they relate to each other. Merak isn’t just about the small thing. It seems to describe what happens when that small thing brings you back to some “natural state of being,” as one writer described it, “and suddenly you feel intimately, acutely connected to the world around you and aware of your place in it.”

What makes merak particularly interesting, though, is the way it highlights the relationship between big happy and small happy, as symbiotic and interconnected.

Barbara Fredrickson’s work touches on this idea. She talks about something called the broaden-and-build theory, which explains the role of positive emotions when it comes to our survival. Negative emotions seem to have a clear evolutionary purpose for survival — you feel scared of the lion, you stay away from the lion, right? But then, what’s the use for positive emotions? What's the evolutionary benefit of getting all giddy over a damn donut?

Fredrickson’s theory is that these kinds of feelings help us build skills that are useful for thriving. She explains that, “joy sparks the urge to play, interest sparks the urge to explore, contentment sparks the urge to savour and integrate, and love sparks a recurring cycle of each of these urges within safe, close relationships.” In other words, positive emotions, however small or fleeting they may be, might gradually expand and build on our psychological resources. They might give us ways to be more resilient, to find a sense of meaning and purpose, or to connect with the world around us. This is the same idea that merak seems to capture. Finding joy or beauty or pleasure in small things isn’t frivolous or naive or shallow. Like anger or fear or disgust, it could be, at least partly, a survival mechanism.

But what I take away most from merak, and the broaden-and-build theory, this: The times when we most need those tiny hits of joy—when we’re stressed or lonely or just completely over everything—might also be when we’re least capable of feeling them. My grumpy friend wasn’t just being mean. He was probably too, well, grumpy to enjoy the donut. So maybe the real skill isn't learning to find joy in small things, but learning to recognize when we’re losing the ability to notice them, and treating that ability like a skill that needs protecting.

I guess what I’m saying is, it’s not just about the donut.

Share-worthy

• On topic: Ross Gay’s Inciting Joy and Book of Delights.

• If you’re in the Los Angeles area, save the date: on Tuesday, August 12 from 6-8 pm I will be co-hosting “Write Night” with my friend and creativity coach at Burden of Proof in South Pasadena. It's a donation-based event to raise funds for The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to advocating for the rights of immigrants.

• This week, I found some writing motivation in ’s recent Substack: When Should We Quit? In particular, I loved her take on the Pygmalion Effect: “It says when someone believes in us, we perform better. We top ourselves. We work harder. Someone believing in us can make all the difference.”

• From Psyche, A little Japanese trick for saying ‘no’

From the archives

A Total Beginner’s Guide to Keeping a Journal (The Cut)

Desenrascanço (Portuguese)

One of the most unexpected challenges of parenthood, at least for me, has been how much stuff there is to remember to bring with you everywhere at all times. Water bottles. Bento boxes. Snacks. Toys. Backup undies (for the kid, not for me). I'm constantly forgetting some random essential, so every trip out with my toddler becomes an episode of Survivor, where I'm forced to come up with a creative solution to an everyday problems.

Recently, I came across a Portuguese word that captures this feeling: “desenrascanço.” It literally translates to “disentanglement,” but it describes the ability to quickly improvise and solve problems using whatever means are available, even with limited resources. In this video, Joana Astolfi, a Lisbon-based architect and artist, describes the meaning of the word in detail:

Astolfi likens the word to a Portuguese saying: “If you don't have a dog to hunt with, then hunt with a cat.”

But Astolfi and others say that desenrascanço isn’t just about MacGyver-ing out of a problem. It represents a virtue in Portuguese culture that goes beyond resourcefulness and also describes the mindset of someone who refuses to be defeated by challenging circumstances.

It’s a virtue that feels especially relevant lately. As traditional institutions become increasingly unreliable — from healthcare systems to government services — more people are turning to mutual aid networks, community resources, and neighborhood friends to fill the gaps.

Desenrascanço seems to be in that same spirit of figuring out how to make things work in the face of challenging times.

Share-worthy

• “I've always been interested in the idea that our love of fiction is motivated by a desire to experience worst case scenarios.” What a fun Hidden Brain episode to work on, all about why we’re drawn to scary movies, spicy foods, and other tiny acts of displeasure and pain.

• Rest in peace to the poet . I once saved this Instagram Reel they posted about how grief's highs and lows are like stitching a wound, which feels like the perfect metaphor for life lately. You probably know the feeling of whiplash between watching terrible things happen everywhere and then immediately finding joy in ridiculous places (for me, that was a tiny baby grasshopper I found on my back porch yesterday). I used to think this constant ping-ponging between grief and joy was unhealthy, but maybe it's actually healing. If we don't have those moments of lightness, those tiny grasshopper interruptions, there's no stitching.

• The Zombification of the Writer: Writer fascinating take on AI, how it changes the way we read and write, and what it means for authors.

• Artist Yoo wrote about the process of Techo Kaigi, or “notebook meeting” in Japanese. If you’re a notebook collector, this is for you.

• The (writers Jade Chang and Ann Friedman) shared an email thread about trying to communicate with your dream self.

• At , Angela Sauceda explains why you shouldn’t sleep on your weirdest ideas.

From the archives

Mindfulness Meditation Advice for the Anxious and Distracted (The Cut)

One small thing

Q&A a Day for Kids: I’ve dragged our three-year-old into my notebook obsession. I recently bought this three-year journal for kids and it’s so much fun. We do a nightly journaling session where I ask him questions from the book and write down his answers.

For example:

Q: If you could buy anything, what would you buy?

A: Yogurtland. The whole yogurtland.

I grew up in Texas, where I’d heard about the mysterious Marfa Lights all my life. They’re these strange, glowing orbs that appear in the desert at night. No one really knows why they’re there, but they’ve helped turn the nearby town of Marfa into something of a travel hotspot. So when I recently talked about visiting, I was surprised by how many people asked, “What’s Marfa?”

Here’s how I’ve answered:

• “It’s a cool little desert town in the middle of nowhere, Texas.”

• “It’s an artist hub a couple of hours outside of El Paso.”

• “It’s like the Joshua Tree of Texas.” (I was advised to never repeat this to a Texan)

My best friend Jess and I decided to visit Marfa because it’s a halfway point between where we both live. Marfa was a great choice: the flight was short, the town is laid back, the food is good, the people are incredibly welcoming.

Marfa has been known for its art scene since the 1970s, when the minimalist artist Donald Judd moved to town. Before that, it served as a training facility for World War II pilots, and before that, it was a railroad stop named after a character in a Dostoevsky novel. We made a stop at Ballroom, a contemporary art museum probably best known for its 2005 “Prada Marfa” installation (although the actual installation is about 35 miles outside of the town). There, we checked out the work of writer and visual artist Christopher Blay, who had an Afrofuturist installation looking at race and and identity, and Virginia L. Montgomery, an experimental filmmaker.

As I mentioned, I first heard about Marfa in the context of the “Marfa lights,” a mysterious phenomenon where bouncing lights appear in the middle of nowhere in the Chihuahuan Desert. In 2004, the mystery was investigated by University of Texas students who determined that the lights were reflections from car headlights on a distant freeway. That doesn’t explain why accounts of the lights go back to the late nineteenth century, but maybe I’m just being hopeful. As my friend Adam, co-owner of Bitter Sugar Marfa put it, “At my age, I appreciate a good mystery.”

Some other highlights from the trip:

• Bitter Sugar, a local coffee shop with the world’s best cornbread

• Bordo, an Italian deli and 2025 James Beard finalist

• The pool at the Hotel Saint George is well worth it for the $30 day pass.

• The McDonald Observatory Star Parties (ours was canceled due to weather but the drive up there was worth it)

We didn’t have time to do everything we wanted to do, not because we weren’t there long enough, but because the town operates on its own schedule. That’s part of Marfa’s charm. It doesn’t rush, and it doesn’t try too hard. Especially now, it felt good to be in a place where the people were kind and time seemed to stand still.

Minga (Quechua)

Over the weekend, millions of people filled the streets in cities across the U.S. to express a basic tenet of any functioning democracy: protest.

I'm no political scientist, but we did interview one a few years back at Hidden Brain, and I learned that nonviolent resistance is surprisingly effective at bringing about change—about twice as effective as violent movements. A big reason for this is that violence tends to deter people, and lasting social change relies on large numbers of diverse groups of people coming together. Put simply, there are strength in numbers.

In South America, there’s an Indigenous word — minga — that loosely translates to something like, “collective work.” It involves community labor, care, and shared responsibility. Minga is, for example, a road repaired by neighbors or public gardens maintained by willing members of a community. Minga isn't just about cleaning up local neighborhoods, though. It involves resistance. Mingas have been organized around climate justice, land rights, and political accountability. In 2020, the Minga Indígena in Colombia saw thousands of Indigenous people march on foot across the country to protest violence. Reporting on the movement, a New York Times article described the word:

“Minga is an Indigenous word, one used long before the Spanish arrived in South America, to refer to an act of communal work, an agreement between neighbors to build something together: a bridge, a road, a government.

But minga has also come to mean a collective act of protest, a call to recover what a community believes it has lost: territory, peace, lives.”

Another article from the North American Congress on Latin America adds: “By calling their movement a minga, the Indigenous participants call attention to both the work that must go into politics and the idea that that work must be collective.”

It’s easy for politics to feel individual, isolating, and divisive. It becomes less about the policies and actions that affect others and more of a way to state where we fall on some ideological spectrum. Minga, and the protests we saw this weekend, are a reminder that behind every policy and headline, there are real people involved. And if change is going to happen at all, it probably starts there.

Share-worthy

• The Hidden Brain episode mentioned, featuring the work of historian Erica Chenoweth, who has studied more than 100 years of revolutions and insurrections.

• Working on that episode, I came across Srđa Popovićs TED Talk about his role in Otpor! a nonviolent activist movement that played a key role in the ousting of Slobodan Milošević.

• Another Hidden Brain episode I worked on about revenge and how our desire for vengeance operates like an addiction in the brain.

• RIP Brian Wilson, who died this week at the age of 82. I really enjoyed this 2021 documentary that followed his career but also documented the friendship between Wilson and Rolling Stone editor Jason Fine.

From the archives

What Does It Mean to Be ‘Lucky to Be Here’? (Medium, 2021)

This week’s soundtrack

Miunjeong (Korean)

A cool thing about writing this newsletter —a newsletter dedicated to untranslatable words—is that when friends, family, and readers come across these words in the wild, they like to send them my way. A friend recently tipped me off to the Korean word miunjeong (미운정). It loosely translates to something like, “hateful affection,” two words that could not feel more opposed to each other, which is maybe why I felt immediately drawn to it.

The root of the word, “jeong,” is itself somewhat untranslatable. It describes the deep emotional connection that can form between people but also between animals or even objects. It’s been called a “Korean we-ness” or a kind of collectivism. It seems somewhat similar to the Bantu word ubuntu: “I am because we are.”

Miunjeong is a specific flavor of jeong. In English, it might read something close to a “love-hate relationship,” but miunjeong seems to go a bit deeper than that. Some say it describes the rocky relationship you might have with a rival or an in-law or a sibling. Others describe it as “a closeness that derives from unpleasant or negative experiences.” Ever bonded with an unlikely colleague in a toxic work environment? Or felt a strange kinship with a curmudgeonly traveler after a two-hour flight delay? You might have felt miunjeong.

Lucy Hyekyung Jee at Yonsei University put it this way:

“In those relationships, people have two opposite kinds of jeong, called miunjeong (미운정; jeong from hatred) and gounjeong (고운정; jeong from love). When people spend time together, and especially undergo turmoil together, they encounter both the good and the bad sides of each other, and they can come to understand each other deeply over time and develop sympathy and even a feeling of shared humanity.”

Miunjeong reminds me of the idea that “misery loves company.” When we go through something unpleasant, why is it oddly comforting to have other people in the same boat? I don’t think it’s that we want to share the pain, exactly. It's more that having company makes it more bearable. Hard things are harder in isolation. Miunjeong seems born from the same idea. Tough times can remind us of our humanity, and they can also forge bonds we might not expect.

Shareworthy

• I worked on “Forget About It!” a Hidden Brain episode about forgetting and how we think of forgetting as a deficit of memory, when actually, it’s a crucial part of it.

• I was struck by philosopher Ruth Chang’s TED Talk on How to Make Hard Choices, and how we approach these choices with a scientific mind when some things can’t be measured this way.

• Devon Price’s book, Laziness Does Not Exist looks at the psychology behind the “laziness lie” and how it permeates both our everyday lives and broader social systems. It goes beyond the usual “rest is actually good for productivity” message, too. “The Laziness Lie wants us to believe that the solution to every social problem is casting aside your grievances and getting to work.”

• A paper: “Toddlers Learn Best After Experiencing Impossible Events.” I can remember the feeling of having my mind blown as a kid, then following my curiosity to figure out what was really going on. I think much of my adult life has been spent chasing that feeling. Which is maybe why I became a journalist?

From the archives

How Thinking Like a Little Kid Can Keep You Sharp as You Age (The Cut)

This week’s soundtrack

A colleague and friend put together a birthday playlist for me and I can’t stop listening to this song.

A friend recently sent me an untranslatable word that made me laugh: koekentroost. According to one Instagram account, it means emotional support cookie.

I’m not sure if this is a real word. I couldn’t find much evidence of it anywhere. But emotionally, linguistically, spiritually? It’s totally relatable. I’ve been eating emotional support macarons almost every night lately.

I turned 42 this month (not why I needed the macarons, I promise). And while it didn’t feel much different from turning 41, it felt WAY different than turning 40.

Forty felt like a costume. Like I was a twenty-something-year-old cosplaying a middle-aged adult woman. HEY GUYS LOOK AT ME, PRETENDING TO BE AN OLD LADY, CUTE RIGHT?

But at 42, I feel like I’m, well, in my forties. Something changed. It started with my body.

Like a lot of women, I’ve spent so much time trying to look better. Bigger boobs. Better bangs. A higher(?) butt. I thought that if I went to enough pilates classes, got an expensive enough haircut, did enough facial yoga, that I would eventually be the chiseled goddess I knew I was capable of being.

At some point, it became clear that this wasn’t going to happen. Eventually, your aging begins to outpace the promises of your facial serums. Your Frownies can only do so much. After a while, your face is above its pay grade.

But also at some point, maybe you accept it. You realize that the quest for hotness is literally impossible: you never reach the goal because there’s always a new goal, and the goals only get harder to achieve with time. It will never be enough. So you’re left with two options: obsess over your body like a wealthy tech bro who swaps blood with his teenage son, or accept what’s in the mirror, for better or worse. I have bills to pay, so I guess the latter will have to do.

It wasn’t just my body. I always assumed that by 40, I’d have more money. Or a bigger house. I thought I’d be more fashionable, too. I didn’t expect I’d still be trying to pull off a beret—only to catch a glimpse of myself in a public mirror, cringe hard, and think: DAMMIT, WHY DID I THINK THIS LOOKED OKAY AT HOME??

I guess what I’m getting at is this: It’s kind of liberating to let go of the need to be better, at least in this way. Once I accepted that I’m never going to arrive at some ideal version of myself, it’s like I could actually see myself more clearly.

Researchers have a term for all of this: self-objectification. It’s when you prioritize how others see, judge, and value you over how you see, judge, and value yourself. And it's not just some problem with insecurity or imposter syndrome or something. It's even more insidious than that. At some point, the outside gaze becomes so familiar that your own perspective gets blurry. It's like putting on a pair of someone else's prescription glasses and then trying to figure out what you look like. In other words, maybe that beret does look good on me, after all.

Lately, I’ve thought a lot about the phrase “she let herself go.” When I show up to preschool drop-off in socks and house slippers, I sometimes worry that people will think I’ve let myself go. When I skip makeup in the morning because I’m too excited to write, then spend the next three hours in a state of flow, eating leftover pizza for lunch, wiping my greasy hands on the jeans I wore yesterday, I wonder if I’ve let myself go, too. Maybe I have. Or maybe that’s just what we call it when people, especially women, stop making themselves crazy trying to keep up with what everyone thinks they should look like. Or how everyone thinks they should be.

My mom always said middle age is great because you feel beautiful, but in a different kind of way. I’m starting to understand. At 42, my body is starting to feel less like an object to be consumed — something I need to polish and present — and more of an experience. A space I get to inhabit. And for now, it’s where I get to live. It’s not a costume or a goal. Just a weird but miraculous little home. And I plan to keep it stocked with cookies.

Shareworthy

• I’ve been going through some of the exercises in Lynda Barry’s Making Comics. (h/t to ). I’m no artist, but it’s not about that. Making Comics is more about reconnecting with our uninhibited, creative, inner-child-like minds. Or, as the book puts it, “how to not think.”

• My friend relaunched her YouTube channel and newsletter. Watch her incredible video essay about the highs and lows of pushing yourself to your limits.

• Another brilliant Stefanie I know, , recently relaunched her newsletter, too, which breaks down the myths of “girl power” culture. You definitely want to subscribe to this.

• I loved working on this Hidden Brain episode about transformative experiences. In it, philosopher L.A. Paul argues that it’s irrational to make certain “transformative” decisions, like whether or not to become a parent, based on which path we think will make us happiest. There is no way of knowing, because, by definition, we will be transformed—different people by the end of it. So how do we decide? Go ahead, give it a listen.

This week’s soundtrack

It’s always nice when you introduce a loved one to one of your favorite songs, and they love it as much as you do. My kid has been asking for the “the crack in the sky” song all week.

Hello, readers! March somehow managed to move both too fast and too slow at the same time. Between a hectic travel schedule that turned out to be unexpectedly joyful, and a lingering sickness that had me moving in slow motion, it’s been a month full of surprises. But I feel rested and ready for what’s next.

At the beginning of the month, I went to a good friend’s celebration of life ceremony. Greg was truly one of a kind and maybe the funniest person I’ve ever met. He created and ran a comedy wrestling show in Houston called Doomsday. (Ages ago, I used to be in it!) Back in the day, when Doomsday first started taking off, I remember trying to convince Greg to make the show bigger. Take it to other cities. Pitch it as a TV show, even.

“Huh. Yeah, maybe,” Greg would always say, before promptly doing nothing of the sort.

It wasn’t because he lacked ambition. He just had a different definition of success. His only goal was to create a show that made people laugh like crazy. For him, scaling up didn’t mean franchising or fame; it meant making the show sharper, weirder, funnier. And he did.

Greg taught me that life is short and that you should spend as much of it as possible making ridiculous things with people you love. He was a beautiful weirdo who appreciated the beautiful weirdness in all of us who called him a friend. He saw the world as a giant playground, and he had the confidence to take chances on his vision — even if that vision involved Mormon luchadors tackling a wrestler dressed as a banana.

Greg’s mother, who is also an incredible person, has been hit with significant medical and funeral expenses this past year. If you're able, please consider donating a few bucks to support her.

Speaking of incredible people…My friend Emma Pattee’s book, Tilt, made its way into the world. It’s a fantastic read—sharp, soulful, and impossible to put down. It also received a glowing review in The New York Times, which, for a writer, is the equivalent of winning an Olympic gold medal (but with fewer ankle sprains). I followed Emma to New York to celebrate her book launch, and it was such a joy to do so. At one event, she talked about the value of seeking creative community and the dangers of trying to write in isolation. This felt pretty relevant to me, someone who defaults to writing alone and struggles to ask for help.

In other news, I took my first improv class. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, mostly because everyone I know who’s taken an improv class swears it’s life-changing. I figured I’d learn a thing or two, but wow. The truth bombs our teacher drops in class make me want to stop everything I’m doing and write them down. One of my favorites, when a student asked how to be more creative in a scene:

“You don’t have to be creative. Just focus on being human, being authentic, being vulnerable. Then the scene will become creative.”

In other words, being human is being creative. So creativity doesn’t have to be something we chase. It emerges in the real, human experiences, thoughts, and moments of our everyday lives. (This also reminds me of the idea of sprezzatura: the art of hiding art)

And finally, a word I learned this month. The Japanese term itasha translates to “painful” or “cringeworthy car.” It describes the subculture of wrapping one’s car in anime stickers and graphics—a trend that originated in Japan in the 1980s, but has since exploded here in the States. (Once, after a long and exhausting flight, a Lyft driver picked me up from the airport in his itasha, blaring the Princess Peach song from the Super Mario Bros. movie on repeat the whole way home. But that’s a tale for another day.)

There’s something oddly poetic about this: The idea that a car—meant to be functional and efficient—can also be an absurd explosion of self-expression. Itasha is a moving testament to the fact that we’re all just out here trying to find ways to make our utilitarian lives a little more fun, a little more creative.

Or maybe that’s just the improv talking.

Shareworthy

• I worked on this Hidden Brain episode about transformative experiences. It features the work of L.A. Paul, a philosopher who argues that when faced with “transformative” decisions (like becoming a parent), it’s irrational to choose based on which path we think will make us happiest, because we can't know who we’ll become on the other side.

• This fascinating interview with a neuroscientist on how memory shapes our identity, and what that means when our memory begins to fail us.

• I watched the Sinead O'Connor documentary, Nothing Compares. I always knew she was a force, but I didn’t realize how much of a force. It was a powerful reminder of what it means to have conviction and to speak up—even when it costs you everything. Which, unfortunately, seems particularly relevant right now.

From the archives

The Imaginative Powers of a Brain on Autopilot (The Cut)

This week’s soundtrack

Greg introduced me to Rufus Wainwright, one of my favorite artists. And this was one of Greg’s favorite songs. You will be missed, my friend. We’ll see you on the other side.

Hózhó (Diné/Navajo)

It’s been a hell of a year, and it’s only February. A few weeks ago, fires raged across my city and neighborhood, forcing many people out of the homes they ultimately lost. The smoke has cleared, but blocks are in ruin, and now there are concerns about pollutants in the air and soil. If that’s not enough, the political headlines feel just as toxic, making each day feel like a reminder that the world is both figuratively and literally on fire.

In all of this chaos, I keep thinking about the word hózhó.

Hózhó (pronounced Hoh-zho) is a Diné word that means “walking in beauty” and describes the act of pursuing balance and harmony. It describes living one’s life in a way that is good, healthy, and peaceful. These words — balance, harmony, peace — have become a bit trite in the English language. Maybe that’s what happens when wellness intersects with capitalism, but I guess that’s a post for a different day. The point is, in other languages, words like “harmony” and “wellness” almost seem to carry a different meaning, one that’s more, well, meaningful. In an article published in Global Advances in Health and Medicine, scholars attempt to explain Hózhó:

“Hózhó reflects the process, the path, or journey by which an individual strives toward and attains this state of wellness. Thus, translating the complex meaning of Hózhó without reducing its expansive meaning is difficult.”

At the risk of reducing it, hózhó is not just a state of wellness but also the path toward attaining that wellness. It’s also contextual. As one Navajo speaker put it, “Hózhó is somewhat like a person. It adapts to the situation presented…it has a way of communicating that things will be okay. As we get back in balance with ourselves and our environment, there’s hope and there’s peace.”

In some ways, hózhó feels like resilience, but there’s a quiet defiance to it, too. It speaks to the pursuit of balance and connection when the world feels chaotic and discordant.

For many Indigenous communities, language itself has been an act of resistance. In the late 1800s, for instance, Indigenous children, including the Diné, were sent to government-run boarding schools where they were punished for speaking their native languages. Similar stories exist across countless other languages: Welsh, Cantonese, Gaelic, Ukrainian — the list goes on. Leaders justify these bans in the name of patriotism. But we all know it’s far more insidious than that. It’s a calculated attempt to erase culture, identity, and history.

When a language disappears, entire histories are often erased, and by the time new leaders step in to preserve those cultures, the damage has often been done. Language also shapes how we see the world. So when a language disappears, so does a culture’s perspective — their unique ways of seeing the world and understanding life.

Hózhó is one of those words. It's choosing what is good in the face of what is not. That doesn't mean we have to ignore suffering or force positivity. It seems to be about cultivating a mindset that resists the forces causing that suffering in the first place. The word also reminds me of something I once heard the writer Morgan Jerkins say during a panel discussion on writing during difficult times: I refuse to let the world take my softness. Hózhó is a reminder that even when the world tries to unravel us, we can still walk in beauty, still weave something whole. And, ideally, we can do it together.

Shareworthy

• A sociologist shares tips for staying on top of political news without letting it wear you down—exactly what the constant onslaught is designed to do.

• Jemaine Clement, a comedian and musician of Māori descent, gets emotional during an interview discussing the painful history of his grandmother being punished for speaking her native language.

• I helped out with this Hidden Brain episode on the psychology of pushing through a crisis—what’s going on in our minds when we stay strong in the face of big challenges.

From the archives

How Languages Go Extinct (Catapult): “Destroying a language is also a way of destroying a culture.”

This week’s soundtrack

One Small Thing

This month, one small thing that’s made my life better is ’s podcast, Creative Pep Talk. Big thanks to (another awesome resource for creatives) for sharing this gem. It feels like having a fun yet insightful conversation about creativity with a friend over beers.

-Kristin

Around this time last year, I was stuck in a big creative rut. I had lots of ideas bouncing around in my brain, but they all felt vague or overwhelming. Instead of starting any one of them, I’d overthink every detail until I got too tired to do anything. Or, I just talked myself out of it entirely.

By the end of the year, I had enough. I made a goal: dedicate 2024 to reconnecting with my creative side. I signed up for workshops, worked with an expert, and tried to figure out what it means to “be creative” in the first place. I thought I’d share a few things I discovered along the way.

The paradox of potential

When I started working with a creativity coach (hi Krystie 👋), I shared a fear I had about not reaching my potential. In the past, whenever I’d made something—a short film, a book, a newsletter—I would love it at first, only to cringe at it a year later, convinced I it could have been much better. For years now, this fear has kept me from starting anything new. What if the creative project doesn't live up to its potential?

Krystie offered a different perspective. She said something along the lines of, “Potential, by definition, is focused on the future. And you have no idea what your future self will think.” This blew my mind. There will always be a version of myself in the future that will be more skilled than I am now, so it’s impossible to live up to my future expectations, because by definition, I’m not there yet. I have no idea what those expectations are, so trying to please my future self will always be a pointless endeavor. Plus, I won’t get there until I do the work anyway. So I might as well just create the thing. Put simply, I’d rather create something and risk being disappointed by it than never create anything at all.

The difference between perfectionism and intuition

For a long time, I believed that "done is better than good." I saw so many talented writers paralyzed by perfectionism, unable to share their work. I didn’t want that to be me, so I would rush through projects just to finish them. But when my gut told me to slow down because something wasn’t working, I dismissed it as perfectionism and kept going. The problem? I could no longer tell the difference between a "gut feeling" and perfectionism. I wasn’t even sure I knew what intuition was.

In The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control, Katherine Morgan Schafler writes, “A lot of perfectionists think they’re driven by success when what they’re really driven by is the avoidance of failure.” This really hit home for me. Perfectionism feels like fear—of failure or judgment—while intuition feels more like excitement about how something could improve. This has made it a lot easier to listen to my gut when something needs revision. I still avoid perfectionism, but that doesn’t mean I have to rush through a project, either.

Ideas belong to everyone

I’ve always loved the idea of the Duende—a mischievous creative force that visits us on its own terms. Elizabeth Gilbert echoes this in Big Magic, arguing that ideas don’t “belong” to anyone. Instead, she makes the case that ideas are more like entities that bounce around until they find the right person to bring them to life.

There’s something really useful about thinking of ideas in this way. It shifts the focus from ego to connection. Creativity isn’t something you own; it’s something you participate in. And approaching ideas this way makes the creative process feel less isolating and more collaborative. It’s also a reminder to be playful—creativity works best when I stop taking myself too seriously and hoarding my ideas out of fear that someone else will take them.

Work with what you have

Earlier this year, I worked on a Hidden Brain episode about how big ideas are born. It featured the work of Saras Sarasvathy, a researcher who spent years studying the world’s most successful innovators and visionaries. She found that they generate ideas and solve problems differently than most people. Instead of trying to predict the future or wait for the perfect opportunity, they focus on what they have right now.

They ask questions like, What resources are available? Who can help? How can setbacks become opportunities? This framework is focused on business, but it also transformed the way I approach creative projects. Instead of sticking to rigid plans or getting frozen by the pressure of “reaching my potential,” I’ve learned to adapt, experiment, and embrace where I am now. Creativity isn’t about having the perfect setup—it’s about making something out of what’s in front of me.

Be a little delusional

A little creative delusion can go a long way. In another Hidden Brain episode I worked on last year, we highlighted Justin Berg’s research on creativity. He found that artists with long careers, like Robert Zemeckis, often experience early failures because they refuse to follow trends. But sticking to their vision is what ultimately builds their legacy.

Optimists who stay true to their creative visions may risk failure, but they’re also the ones who achieve extraordinary success. The takeaway? Believing in your creative vision—especially when others can’t see it—can be risky, but it’s also what sets you apart.

We worked on this episode in 2023, but that lesson has been immensely helpful whenever the creative self-doubt popped up this year. Creativity is messy and unpredictable, but I’ve also learned that sometimes, I just have to show up and try, no matter how uncertain it all feels. Cheers to all of your creative endeavors.

See you in 2025,

Kristin

Han (Korean)

There's a story I tell about my great-grandmother often. In the 1940s, she was a widow struggling to raise a single child. The Communist revolution had taken hold in China, forcing her out of her home — and her homeland — in a disturbingly violent way.

The details are less important here. The point is that I tell this story often, and think about it often, because it pisses me off.

What happened to my great-grandmother happened a long time ago, I get that. And I never even met her, I get that too. Her story is not my story, her identity is not my identity, and maybe her pain is also not mine to carry. Yet somehow, I hold a deep sense of resentment for the people who hurt her, both in her home country and when she came to the United States. That resentment holds for my grandmother, my mother, my aunts and uncles. When my mother tells me stories about what her family endured — not just the xenophobia, but the sacrifices they made financially, emotionally, and otherwise — it angers me in a way I can’t quite explain. It’s a profound anger, one that shapes who I am and how I see the world, and I can’t seem to let it go.

Recently, I discovered a Korean word that seemed to describe this feeling: “han.” Like most untranslatable words, it isn’t easily defined, but “han” has been described as a profound blend of sorrow, regret, anger, and longing. It’s a collective emotion, and it can be an inherited one, too. In an essay, Eunice Kim asks her Korean father about han after they are separated for many years:

“He said as the years go by, the sadness and regret I feel from our time apart will eventually turn into my own version of han.”

Some say han is a uniquely Korean experience, but Minsoo Kang, a professor of history at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, writes about its problematic origins (which he compares to the way the word “hysteria” has been used against women) and how Korean han has become something of a stereotype.

“Some people insist that han is a uniquely Korean idea that only Koreans can truly grasp,” Kang writes. “Yet it is about as useful at explaining everything Korean as the term ‘rugged individualism’ is at explaining everything American or the ‘Samurai’ is in capturing all that is Japanese.”

Han doesn’t explain everything Korean, but it does seem to explain a distinct brand of anger, one fueled by culture and history.

Kristin Neff, the self-compassion researcher, once told me that anger is a beautiful thing. She said she used to be ashamed of her anger and would try to hide it away. But then she realized her anger also helped her stand up for a colleague. It taught her to fight back against the systems she found oppressive. I’m not Korean, and I'm not sure if my own anger is truly han. But to Kang’s point, maybe framing han as unique to Korean culture risks reinforcing stereotypes. I just don’t know.

I do know, however, that the way “han” is described feels so familiar. I’ve felt it my whole life. And it’s hard to give up the experiences of those who came before me, not only because I feel a kinship with them, but because part of me is still looking for a way to make things right. So I hold onto the anger. But anger doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Anger can be productive and even beautiful. We can channel it for good—in our writing, in our art, in our activism.

From the archives

The Biggest Wastes of Time We Regret When We Get Older: I wrote this piece in 2016, and it recently made its way back to me. It’s cool to see something I wrote so long ago still making its rounds on the internet, and it’s kind of bizarre to read my past self’s thoughts on getting older.

Share-worthy

• A poem: American Han

• My friend Alan Henry’s latest newsletter about who gets to have an opinion in media. Read his book, Seen, Heard and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized.

• “There's a lot that we can learn about your mental health from what you post on social media.” I helped put together this Hidden Brain episode about what our digital footprints reveal about us — and it’s more than you think.

This week’s soundtrack

My kid recently watched his first movie, Moana, and y’all, I can’t stop listening to this song. Am I becoming a…Disney Adult?

-Kristin

It’s 2:34 in the morning and I feel like I haven’t slept since American Idol was in its sixth season. My kid screams, “MAMA!” and I stumble into his room ready to pass out.

“Yeah?” I ask. “Whath wrong?” My retainer is still in.

“Blanket,” he says.

I put the soft quilt over his belly and tell him to go back to thleep. “Stay mama,” he whispers. And well, how can you argue with that?

His cheeks glow softly in the purple nightlight. “Sing a song,” he says, so I hum Frère Jacques, then tell him to go back to sleep. 

“Stay mama,” he whispers again.

“Okay, bud,” I tell him. No wonder I feel like I haven’t slept since 2007. I’m fully awake now, fully aware that I won’t be going back to bed anytime soon, already calculating how much sleep I can still salvage at this point. “Why don’t you think about some things that make you happy?” I suggest. “Sometimes that helps me go to sleep.” 

He blinks at me, his face still.

“You know what makes me happy?” I ask. I think about our trip to the café that day. “Remember when we went to the coffee shop?” I ask. “You had your muffin, and we held hands, and we found those big yellow trees? The wind blew, and the leaves fell like rain? That makes me happy.” I smooth his hair and rub his cheek, wondering if he’ll offer something as vivid. What’s made an impression on him, I wonder.

I ask, “What makes you happy?”

Before I can even finish the question, he says, “Peanut butter.”

Of course. I was hoping he’d remember an equally sentimental moment, but who can compete against everyone’s favorite condiment? I stretch out on the shaggy carpet and laugh. It’s been a while since I’ve had a laugh, and it feels good. It doesn’t fix the exhaustion or change the fact that I’ll be running on fumes tomorrow. But in that moment, laughter feels like a release—a small rebellion against the chaos, a way to let go of the exhaustion, the endless list of things to do, the way these moments stretch forever yet vanish all at once. It feels like hope.

Not long ago, I worked on a Hidden Brain episode with the psychologist Jamil Zaki. He said something about the difference between hope and optimism:

“Hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism is the belief that things will be better. I think of that as rose colored glasses—something that can make us complacent. Hope is the notion that things could get better. And it often coincides with a lot of dissatisfaction with how things are now. Hope is a choice.”

People think hope is naive or lazy. That it means accepting the bad and turning a blind eye to it, but for me, it’s the exact opposite. Hope is the only thing keeping me from feeling engulfed by the bad. It’s a way to survive.

I think people resist hope because they think being cynical means they see the world more clearly. Psychologists even have a name for it: the cynical genius illusion. And as Jamil mentioned in the interview, the opposite is true — cynical people are worse at detecting lies, for example. Skepticism distorts a person’s perspective, it doesn’t bolster it.

Hope, at its core, is about persisting with progress even when everything around you says it’s pointless. Think about the most world-changing movements. Civil rights, women’s suffrage, the fight against apartheid. Hope was essential for motivating people to take action. Activists weren’t driven by blind optimism but by the idea that a better future could exist, even if they couldn’t see it yet.

Hope doesn’t mean ignoring hard truths or pretending everything is fine. It means confronting reality with the conviction that our reality can be transformed.

Untranslatable words to consider

Weltschmerz: "World grief": “I find hope in the fact that a word exists to describe this feeling in the first place. It’s evidence that humanity has the capacity for something beyond the cruelties we observe. Even when it’s hard to do so, we’re capable of imagining a more ideal world. A world in which unfathomable suffering remains unfathomable.”

Shareworthy

• I helped write this Hidden Brain episode about living with uncertainty.

• My friend Emma Pattee wrote a beautiful piece about pregnancy for Vogue: “I was running out of time, so I did what any crystal-loving horoscope-fluent millennial does in a time of trouble, I went to see a psychic.”

• I’ve been thinking about this other Hidden Brain episode I worked on a bit ago: How to Change the World.

-Kristin

P.S. I’m thinking of hosting a Zoom writing session where I share a random untranslatable word (like hiraeth or komorebi), and we spend some time writing on it together. Would you be into that? Hit reply and let me know.

Yesterday I came across a 60 Minutes interview with Bob Dylan, where he talked about the inspiration for some of his earliest songs. He said,  “I don’t know how I got to write those songs. Those songs were almost magically written.”

Dylan seemed to suggest that his lyrics came from someplace beyond himself. Almost like they weren’t even his idea. “Try to sit down and write something like that,” he said of his 1965 song, It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding). 

The way Dylan described his creative process reminded me of the Duende: the mischievous imp that takes over your body and brain when you do creative things. The word has origins in Spanish folklore and has been used to describe the deep and passionate state seen in flamenco dancing.

Of course, there is no imp. Well, there’s probably no imp. Assuming an actual demon didn’t write some of my favorite songs, where does the Duende come from? What’s the “magic” part of the creative process, scientifically speaking? 

This experience of having little control over your own creativity is akin to the concept of “flow,” the mental state where you’re fixed on the task at hand, immersed in your work, and unaware of anything around you. It’s that same feeling of surrender. But flow seems to describe an effect of the Duende, rather than the Duende itself. 

When I think about the times I’ve felt the Duende, it’s often with poetry. Not that I’ve written much poetry. But when I do, certain phrases seem to materialize out of thin air. One morning, for example, I had been thinking about how it would be fun to write a poem about Houston, my hometown. That afternoon, I took my dog Murphy for a walk in our neighborhood when a phrase popped into my mind: “tin taste of Lone Star on my tongue.” It came out of nowhere and literally stopped me in my tracks because it was so confusing. I’m not saying it’s a mind-blowing line or even a very good line. The point is, I wasn’t actively trying to write a poem, but this random phrase popped into my head. Before I knew it, the next line materialized. And then the next. And then I had a poem.

What could explain this? A few things were happening at the time.

1. I was engaged in a mindless task. Walking my dog isn’t something I have to think about too much, so part of my mind was occupied with that while the rest of it was free to wander. It’s what neuroscientists call the Default Mode Network.

2. A few weeks prior, I signed up for a poetry class where I was exposed to loads of new poets and poetic forms. It was an explosion of inspiration. 

3. For this class, I had an assignment due later that week, and an idea of what I wanted to write, but I also had zero pressure to write anything. It’s not like I had money riding on it. It’s not like I could “fail” the class if I didn’t turn in a poem. There was no pressure to create, just a prompt. I didn’t have to try, so there was no inner voice present. No inner editor telling me whether the line was good or bad, or that it wouldn’t work because of XYZ, or that it might work better if I did ABC.

Those three things  — the mind wandering, the prompt, the inspiration  — seemed to create an ideal environment for the Duende. I’m not suggesting this as some sort of recipe for accessing magic, but in that state, my demon felt comfortable showing up, albeit briefly. It was like I had completely disengaged from the logical side of my brain, which, of course, isn’t possible for very long, which is maybe why the Duende feels so uncontrollable and fleeting.

Of course, I’m no Bob Dylan, but I find it such a hopeful thought that the same “magic” that strikes someone like him could hit any of us. And that’s what I love most about the Duende. It reminds us that creativity isn’t limited to a select few brilliant minds. It’s not some unattainable skill only reserved for some, but a bit of magic that can visit any of us if we can surrender to it.

 — Kristin

P.S. A bit of music history: In 1965, Paul Simon wrote a song called A Simple Desultory Philippic. The song was meant to be a satire of Bob Dylan for abandoning his folk roots. I guess you’d call it a diss track. The two allegedly feuded after an awkward encounter at a folk performance in Greenwich Village. I like the song, partly because it’s kinda weird, but also because a good reminder that, no matter how magical your work, at least one person will always hate it. Might as well do it anyway.

Untranslatable words you might enjoy

Sprezzatura: The art of hiding art

Tarab: The transcendent power of music

From the archives

How to Be Creative When Your Ancestors Are Watching (Electric Literature)

Shareworthy

• Speaking of poetry, here’s one I can’t stop thinking about lately.

• I loved this TED Talk on how we’re more than our origin stories.

• I wrote a New York Times piece about what happens when one friend makes more money than the other.

Not long ago, I was invited to a swanky event for journalists here in Los Angeles—the kind I immediately chalked up as pretentious. Naturally, I went.

When I got there, I looked for evidence to validate my cynicism. The designer outfits. The impeccable haircuts. The bite-sized hoagies that everyone called crudités. “This is so L.A.,” I thought. 

Then I remembered something George Saunders calls “first draft mind.” 

When you’re writing, there’s a perspective that shows up in the first draft. During the revision process, that perspective changes. It gets deeper and more thoughtful. As George Saunders explained in an interview with Ezra Klein, “first draft mind” is your knee-jerk reaction to a given situation. Like being cynical at a party because, as you realize in "second or third draft mind, you’re actually just insecure. And maybe in fourth draft mind, you even realize it’s okay to be in a room full of people who intimidate you. That maybe you can learn a lot from the people in that room. And even if you don’t, hey, free food.

Saunders put it this way:

“By the end, there’s a different person represented. And it’s a person that I like better. So in other words, the mind that appeared in the first draft was just some mind. It doesn’t have to be identified with me. The process of working through it, suddenly you see, oh, there’s a lot of minds along the way. And that to me is a really beautiful and kind of addicting experience. I don’t ever want to be the person who speaks or thinks in first-draft mind.”

So much good writing advice is also solid life advice. 

I think about “first draft mind” a lot, usually when I’m reacting to something defensively or impulsively. Is this how I really feel, I’ll ask myself, or is this my first draft mind?

A few years ago, I started making a list of quotes or pieces of writing advice that I think about even when I’m not writing. This week, I thought I’d share a few.

Enjoy,

Kristin

On self-criticism:

“If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.” –Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

On letting go:

“There’s a line between revision and fretting, just working it to death. It is important to know when you are fretting it; when you are fretting it because it is not working, it needs to be scrapped.” –Toni Morrison, from a 1993 interview in The Paris Review

On finding your voice:

“ But in just about every case I can think of, one is already in possession of the voice, one is just not in the habit of listening to that voice, or for it, much less letting it speak.”   –Alexander Chee, How to Write Faster and Find Your Voice

On authenticity: 

“We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can. When I was 21 I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for The Simpsons who'd briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.” –Zadie Smith in the Guardian

On doing the damn thing:

“Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.” –William Faulkner

On the value of practice:

“You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.” –Octavia Butler

On meaning-making:

“'What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.” -Vivian Gornik, the Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative

On starting messy:

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.” –Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

On the value of uncertainty:

“Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding.”

― David Bayles, Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

Untranslatable words you might enjoy

• The Duende (Spanish): A heightened state of creative expression.

• Tsundoku: (Japanese): Books that pile up before you have a chance to read them.

From the archives

How to Finally Write Your Nonfiction Book (the New York Times)

Shareworthy

• I helped write this Hidden Brain episode about cynicism versus hope. "Cynicism is far from a radical worldview. It’s a tool of the status quo."

• Thank you to Jon for recommending Gretchen Rubin’s The Opposite of Meditation Is…Recess & I Need More Recess. “I didn’t want to empty or quiet my mind; I wanted to flood my mind with sensations.”

• I enjoyed this story about the history of Erewhon, an expensive grocery store chain in Los Angeles. “It exists within, and has always occupied, a space between commerce and cult.”

This week’s soundtrack