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I used to be a news buff. It was as much of a staple in our house as sweet tea growing up. I learned a lot about the way the world supposedly worked around that dinner table.
Decades later and I had become the fact checker in chief. Over the past months, I’ve decided that most conversations about the news are just an exercise. An exercise in showing off who has the biggest bias, and that bias works like a muscle.
The more I flexed, the more it seemed to matter. But it didn’t help my core.
I quietly unsubscribed from the talking heads. I started observing real people and their real problems. I listened more. And I returned to writing. I began strengthening my core.
It was precisely 15.15 on a Monday afternoon. Most office workers wouldn’t be going home yet, but these two were. They were dressed like people who had already met their quotas. They could have been brothers.
People tend not to pay attention to how much conversations bounce around in tight spaces like the tram we had all just sat down in.
After massaging the nicotine pack into his lower lip, the more rugged one blurted out with immense pride: “I wrote the best damn report ever in my life today.” His colleague asked him about it. I heard something about writing and so my antenna went up.
The rugged one went on to say that he simply summoned ChatGPT to do it. When pressed further what ChatGPT had written on his behalf, the rugged one couldn’t recall, but he was certain that it was the best report ever. On that there was no negotiating.
The colleague seated across from him wore his discomfort on his face. He pushed back on it a bit. To which the rugged one said gleefully: “If you can’t beat them, join them!”
I go to a gym. It is a hole in the wall. I don’t go there because of the latest and greatest machines—because there aren’t any. I go there because of the people.
The receptionist and trainers, and some of the clients. Then again, there are plenty that rub me the wrong way. Like the dude that always inserts himself into my personal space. I guess we will be forever synchronised in our mutual frustration for each other.
There’s one thing everyone complains about: the music.
The owner of the gym is a metal head and could be easily mistaken for a festival goer from the 90s. He likes to work out there too. And for his favorite music to accompany his workouts. Meanwhile, most of the customers wear headphones.
He complains about business. And contemplates out loud about even selling the place. He used to ask me for advice, but stopped doing that ever since I pointed out that his gym is not his living room. Metallica blares on.
A lot of folks dread Mondays. Just scroll through Instagram on a Sunday evening. You would think Monday is judgement day.
The toughest Monday in my life came around this same time 14 years ago, when I was in the midst of pr-ing the launch of a client’s book.
I was getting used to a new life after a ridiculously early heart attack. My relationship with my partner was disintegrating. And our rental agreement on the flat wouldn’t be renewed. I was living proof that bad news comes in threes.
I opened my calendar that morning and it smelled of overwhelm. All the dates and times were changing. Who and what could I rely on any more? Our two kids were too young to understand any of this. But at least I still had Bibo.
All these moving parts. Situations change. People change. Everything is always in flux. The first time I heard and fell in love with Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde,” I learned there’s actually a name for it. It’s called unresolved tension.
There will always be unresolved tension. Mondays aren’t so bad after all.
It was my first job after moving to Prague. And I was oozing Georgia peach all over the place. I think my coworkers tolerated it in exchange for my knowhow. But they spoke Czech—and at the time I didn’t—so I’ll never really know. And whenever I asked them how they were doing, they responded with an unenthusiastic, “I am normal.”
Getting sick is never fun, especially when you don’t have anyone to lean on and all you want is your mom. Like any good American who had been trained that they could be easily replaced, I marched myself and my fever into the office that morning. Of course I had to be the first to arrive. Everyone had to see me, didn’t they?
Lukáš, my junior colleague arrived a half-hour later. The usual “How are you?” routine began. A cheery “I’m good!” fell out of my sore throat when it was my turn.
“Why are you lying to me?” Lukáš asked. “Why do you Americans lie like that?”
Normal is a really good word.
It was the oddest thing. All the children sat in a ringed circle, underneath a statue. The statue to Josef Jungmann, the father of modern Czech language. Their backs turned toward him.
It was a mild summer day. One that seemed almost unfair for the throngs of passing tourists to enjoy alone. The children, each one with a device in hand, would react with rapid fidgets and bursts of joy. The joy of conquering something. Then they would pass along a nudge to their vacant friends.
Later that day, a host of errands saw me pass through the mall. Instead of a ringed circle, they sat side by side on food court benches. Then on the tram on the way home, seated one in front of the other. Except they were old enough to be the children’s parents.
I looked back down. Another DM.
I learned it in Psychology 101. An anthropologist had discovered that humans could maintain about a maximum of 150 social connections.
When I worked in travel publishing, back around the birth of Facebook, we came up with the idea for a travel-related version. We thought we were absolutely genius. It would be a huge money maker. Interns did the research, plans were thought through, a pitch deck was created.
I argued for a cap on connections, a dozen felt right to me. We’ve got twelve pairs of ribs, in the US eggs come by the dozen. So there must have been a good reason for 12. Monetization crept in. My idea was sidelined. The site never launched.
Over a decade later I was rolling high on Instagram. I got caught up in follower count. Surely 1000 times the number I originally had in mind would be my golden ticket. It earned me some privileges and a bit of money. But that never compensated for the people and time lost.
Her name is Vira. It’s impossible to forget. That was the name of my great aunt. But she was from Tennessee. This Vira comes from a country freckled with war stains.
Vira works at the McCafe in town. I started going there because it was a convenient place between meetings to catch up on work. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. It’s probably more for my favorite pastime: people watching. And certainly because I am not a coffee elitist—I actually prefer dark roast to citrus.
I know that Vira enjoys rainy days like me. I know that, like me, she’ll spend the holidays not where she grew up, but with her adopted family.
She makes more than my coffee: she makes my day.
There was a market here in Prague. I think most major cities have these kinds of markets. You could find anything there. And when pretending hard enough, the fake handbags and watches almost seemed real. If you could get past the mechanical defects and strange smell.
It reminds me of AI and writing these days. In a few clicks you can go from writing marketing copy to authoring your own book series on marketing. But, like the folks in the market selling their fake wares—and the people flaunting them—there’s a part of me that says these folks don’t want to be found out.
AI is brilliant. I have previously advocated for it to be unleashed—something I might regret if you noticed that em dash. It is the ultimate tool for curiosity seekers—the kinds of folks like me who burdened their parents incessantly with “how does this work?” and “why?”
I use AI for research and sometimes to check that I’m making sense. Especially when there hasn’t been enough coffee involved. But LLMs lack something critical: lived human experience. Only through lived human experience can we accomplish true storytelling.
Patek Philippe always comes to mind here. Decades ago they introduced their now-famous philosophy: “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.” In the same way, we have a responsibility to be stewards of genuine, high-quality writing. In a sea of sameness, fakes can be hard to spot, but it becomes easier to spot them as long as there remain examples of good craftsmanship.
I have a friend. I hope you’re lucky enough to have one like him too. He’s a joy to be around. But sometimes it’s the slightly unaware way he communicates.
When that happens it feels less like my friend of 20 years talking. And more like a recital made of equal parts academic privilege and F500 corporate policy.
My friend lives in Spain where bedtimes are sadistically late. I live in Prague, which has historically had one of the earliest start times on the continent. So we tag each other a lot on DM. The response to our last electronic waltz was, “Let’s choose a mutually convenient time during the week to connect.”
“Mutually convenient time?” It felt like I was stuck in a corporate recital. But perhaps he had a long day and was just tired—and so that muscle memory kicked in. Then I reminded myself that I was trained in the same kind of recital. For the longest time I talked that way too. It was easy and oddly comfortable.
So next time around, when it comes to a “mutually convenient” time, perhaps I’ll just suggest something like “How about now?”