Ho ho ho Reader! Every year, I celebrate the advent period by watching a holiday movie every day until Christmas. I love to revisit old favorites like A Christmas Story, Love Actually, The Muppet Christmas Carol (it’s the best one, truly), and Four Christmases, as well as see what’s new. I love the wide variety of stories told around the winter holidays, and the nostalgia so many of these movies bring. Which brings me to this week’s selection, Home Alone. This timeless classic is often...
8 days ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader! Let’s be honest, this week has been the kind of week where you just need to curl up in your cozy pj’s and turn to your favorite emotional support shows. One of those shows for me is The Office. Not just because Michael, Dwight, and Jim will have me rolling in minutes, but because it brings about a certain familiarity. True story: In my 20s, I moved to Seattle, sight unseen, with only an apartment lease and a handful of interviews I’d lined up for the week I arrived (RIP...
15 days ago • 2 min read
Good morning Reader! This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the pressure to be palatable. Maybe I’m just a tiny bit feral from my weeks of solo travel, but I keep noticing how often people soften themselves to be accepted. I see it in speaking all the time. People back away from the challenging truth or rewrite content to be more digestible. While we want our audiences to connect with us, we also need to be unapologetically authentic. People can smell insincerity a mile away, and it’s the...
22 days ago • 1 min read
Well hey, Reader! I debated for hours this morning whether to stick with the most iconic scene from Up or pull a lesson from somewhere else. After writing (and deleting) two hours’ worth of words that didn’t feel right, I decided to go with my first instinct. Sometimes, we don’t need to be clever, we just need to tell the story that comes to us with ease. I’m assuming we have all cried over the opening montage of Up. I have cried over it so many times that even hearing the soundtrack on...
29 days ago • 2 min read
Well hey, Reader! I grew up swooning over young Dr. Carter, played on ER by Noah Wyle in the 90s. So when he returned to the ER in The Pitt this year as older Dr. Robby (Robinavtich), I plopped myself right down for the binge-fest I had been told it was. If you haven’t seen the show yet, I recommend you clear a weekend and enjoy it. The Pitt (HBO) is a real-time drama, set in an over-crowded, under-funded community hospital in Pittsburgh, PA. Like the hit show from the early 00s, 24, The Pitt...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Spoiler alert: Even though I’m pretty sure that the surprise ending of The Sixth Sense is common knowledge at this point, I feel compelled to tell you that I reveal it in this email. Buon Giorno, Reader! There’s something about fall that makes everything feel anticipatory. As we watch our shadows grow longer and the leaves begin to change, summer fades into the background and debates begin over whether or not it’s too early for Christmas decor to hit retail shelves. Fall is such a romantic...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Well howdy Reader! This week, my friend Shelly Waldman, Founder of Creative Camp and host of the Creative Campfire Podcast, has been the best London tour guide a woman could ask for. This week, she took me to Richmond, home of Ted Lasso and the fictitious AFC Richmond Greyhounds. When Ted Lasso first premiered, it was easy to write it off as a fish-out-of-water comedy. If you’re not familiar with the premise, Ted is an American football coach hired specifically for his lack of knowledge about...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader! I arrived in London earlier this week as I kick off a 110-day travel adventure. I was a little suspect of how easy it was to pass through customs and immigration, so much so that when I rounded the corner and realized I was already on the other side of International Arrivals, I was a bit underwhelmed. Every winter, Love Actually makes its rounds. Despite the fact that it's aged poorly, it's still one of my favorite holiday movies and one of the first I put on for the season. It's a...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader! My first job was working at Denny’s. Not just any Denny’s, one of the busiest stores directly off the I-40 exit every tourist headed to the Grand Canyon would take. We’d get busloads of people moving through our doors before the sun was even up. There was no amount of caffeine that could prepare me for the gut drop I’d feel when I saw a bus pull up and a line of sleepy tourists streaming through the doors. If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, you know that chaos is an...
2 months ago • 2 min read