Hello from a NYC that's in its rainy-then-warm-then-rainy spring weeks, where I’ve been tossing around a few questions in my head since I was given them on Tuesday. One of those is the underlying topic here, another will maybe come later.

I was frustratedly staring at the clock when it came to this edition of the newsletter. As you may know, this used to be a quarterly project, but larger events unwittingly conspired to motivate me to make it a weekly project, which I've somehow kept up with for 10 editions in a row. I've had too much to do this last week, and not enough quiet nights, I’ve had to wonder if I was going to finally end that streak.

I had to start writing this newsletter, I told myself yesterday, so I jammed out a few paragraphs when I would have rather been doing ... nothing. You know, exactly what I'm feeling I need to do, and I would be if I started this earlier. If I look at the whole month of April in my calendar, I see a grand total of four out of 30 days (if everything continues as planned) where I didn't have plans. May, on the other hand, has 19 out of 31 days with no plans set. And I'm starting to hope that my old habits don't wind up making May look like April.

A while back, I wrote about the topic of toxic productivity, which I like to explain in one of two ways. Either I see an empty calendar day as a challenge, or me and my calendar are like a cat and a mixing bowl: my skeleton forms to the surface area. But I couldn’t just be writing a newsletter draft, so I paused that to go see a noon screening of David Lowery's new film "Mother Mary," where something clicked in my head and I scribbled down "the fear of late & incomplete."

I think back to my younger years, and how things often didn’t go as planned (were they planned at all). I came to my current career slightly late in life, only getting a day job in online journalism when I was 30 years old. This is one of a few similar things I think about like that, and I think they've caused me to fill my calendar like I'm behind. I feel a fear that if I don't do as much as possible, I will be incomplete because I'm already behind. I've been working on these concepts for a minute now, as starting therapy in January 2025 led me to be a bit better at exploring my feelings.

A long-time friend recently asked if I enjoyed all those movies I see, a question that left me shocked and almost offended. In the days since, I realized that the movie-watching pace I'm on might remind some of competitive eater Joey Chestnut, who basically stuffs hot dogs into his mouth with a joyless and violent brute force that is quite scary when paired with his veiny visage. The difference is I am at peace during the movies, and I actually enjoy the films. They're not always winners, mind you. I've learned to stop watching when I know I've found a dud, and have been known to bail on a film in theaters when I'd rather spend my time doing anything else. But most of the time they’re pretty good, if not fantastic.

I didn't bail on "Mother Mary,” even when the proverbial record skipped, and some story elements that just didn't click as much took a lot of the oxygen on screen. I stuck with it because the film was still engaging enough, and Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel were doing great work. I grabbed lunch nearby, hastily ate it at home, and ran out to jump on the train to get to a friend's goodbye party in Brooklyn. There, I had a couple of frozen piña coladas, talked to friends, and made new ones. Then, I hopped in a cab to Astoria, Queens to watch the New York Knicks with friends, a game we were all worried wasn't going to go well.

I was concerned about the wrong thing, because the cabbie didn’t make it to the restaurant. I had him pull over two blocks early. I don’t know exactly why what happened happened, though the ride itself definitely didn’t help: the seatbelt was weirdly seated on my neck, I was looking at my phone too much, and the clear ceilings in Teslas have always weirded me out.

So, yeah, to try and hide the words for what happened: the car sickness of my youth pulled a major return, and I believe I also purged the evils of the Knicks’ game 2 and 3 losses prior to their decisive game 4 win. And no it wasn’t one of those “oh I feel better now,” kinds of incidents, as I just felt weird the whole night. And that sensation was gone this morning, but the memory remains to tell me “slow the hell down.”

This morning, well, as you may realize, I didn't rush this newsletter out. It's coming hours after the usual 9 to 10 a.m. publishing time. I slept in. I got groceries. I started cooking another amazing pot of Helen Rosner's Roberto soup. And then I came back to my laptop, pecked another sentence or two, and went back to stir the onions, checking to see if they were soft enough yet for me to add the garlic. Just came back after getting it all the way to the "leave it at a simmer for a while" stage, and then I re-read this for a self-edit. And right now, I feel at peace. Even though I need to go check on the soup.

Thank you for reading this far.

Next time, I’m going to be telling you to see the movie Blue Heron, so why don’t you see it before next weekend.