Weekly Good Things 2025 Week 4

A pep talk.

Hello! Hello! Welcome to another weekly episode of Good Things – your guide to living intentionally and more fully one good thing at a time! I give you a peek into my everyday life during the week, and roundup my good links, ideas, books, and more.

Bertram and Bruno, last week’s house guest

2025. It’s still January.

💌 Here’s a little pep talk. 💌

Week 2. Week 3.

I’ve re-written versions of this newsletter (and frankly most of my work that I’ve committed to) for the past two weekends in a row.

Nothing has felt good.

And here we are week 4, where the lesson to remind myself of is: just release!

Whatever you are trying to do? That thing? You can do it!

It is what it is.

Let your work be a [snapshot of now].

Whatever you need to create right now is probably not going to be your best work. It probably feels like a draft. You might not have the spoons to polish it. (If you do, please send some spoons my way.)

I think many of us could be served by just releasing “drafts” rather than feeling creatively constipated and never putting out ideas into the world at all.

The time may never in fact, feel right.

If you are prone to over-thinking: please know I’d rather see your fleeting thoughts, questions, and half-formed ideas than not see these things at all.

You don’t need to be profound.

You don’t need to address every cause that you care about at the same time.

You don’t need to solve everything right now.

You don’t, in fact, need to solve anything right now.

I want to see your daily snacks, your random questions, your observations. I want to see photos of your dog. I want to see videos of your child discovering new things in the world. I want to see your plants.

I want to see your reflections about the moment in time we’re living in, and see how you see the world.

Just one step at a time.

Today, you do what you can, and I’ll be happy to see it and cheer you on.

👋 If you are new here, welcome! I try to fill these newsletters with a little something for everyone. (If you are just here for the food, it’s at the end! Feel free to scroll, I won’t judge!)

3 Good Things

A theme of the month has been getting into the community to build connection.

In a month that has been both jam-packed, fast-paced, chaotic, and somehow also slow as molasses (what is time, really?) I’m thankful for any opportunities to simply gather for conversation and community.

🎓 A Wellesley Workshop: Teaching Entrepreneurship Skills

I was invited to participate in the Wellesley College Upskill for Entrepreneurship week long winter program, co-led by my friend Beth Santos, founder of Wanderful: a women’s travel community (and the owner of Ula Cafe).

As part of this program, students set out to solve a community problem in a week.

My group was exploring communications issues: specifically a lack of standardization for how students, faculty, and admin use calendars, (multiple) apps, newsletters, and social media to stay informed and promote events.

I liked this problem specifically because it’s a universal one: how do you streamline information and help people find out about what is going on in the world? How do you plan for good communication? How do you bring a community together with technical tools?

As an aside here, I spent the past few days at the Connect351: Massachusetts Municipal Conference, and this is also a big problem in many cities/towns, communities, and organizations generally.

To build on entrepreneurial skills, we worked through questions like:

• Is this actually a problem? Is someone else already working on this problem? Are we the right ones to work on it? Who needs to work on it?

• Who does it impact?

• What resources do we have already?

• How do you interview stakeholders to hear more about the problem?

• What tools do people currently use and like? What do people use and dislike?

• If we are to create a solution for this problem, what is the smallest way to engineer a solution? (My personal philosophy is a spreadsheet makes a great mvp (minimum viable product!)

• If we are to create a new solution, do we know what good looks like? How can we learn from different frameworks and disciplines to build a great solution?

Incidentally, as a student on campus, this was much less of a problem at the time. Communications were largely standardized to my holy grail of lifetime software experiences: FirstClass (RIP), the 'social technology’ experiment which housed our emails, our classes, and our forums. It was my first experience of technology actually doing a pretty great job of shaping community. And as a bonus, the internet *shut off* each night for several minutes around 1:53 am.

**As an aside, if you are an alum, I discovered there’s now a Shake Shack where the Gap was, and a Faherty among the new stores in the ‘ville. And I hear there’s a new french bakery, Petit Four, that opened this week.

🫖 NATO DIANA Workshop: Stress Management and Building Resilience

I was invited back to the NATO DIANA program to host a conversation on stress management and resilience.

My thesis generally here is that stress management and building resilience are *not* competitive solo sports where you can focus on ticking off boxes and achievement to solve the problem. The best solutions come from building community and supporting your village.

Instead of giving a slide-heavy workshop on the topic, I facilitate a conversation to help people get to know each other better.

Because this was the first week of the accelerator program, the participants were largely new to each other, not just to me, so we start there.

I try to help folks scratch the surface quickly:

• Who are you? Where are you from? What does your company do?

• What’s one thing you are struggling with (anything goes)?

• What’s one thing you are great at you’d like to share (a superpower)? (I alternate this with what’s something you are proud of?)

Within five minutes we’ve jumped from an energy of professional distance, to folks connecting genuinely over sourdough starters, parenting, hobbies and crafts, to deeper emotional topics like a dad working to break imposter syndrome to be a better role model for his six year old daughter, facing deep worries about burnout, troubles turning off to focus on family members, saying no, life priorities, technology ethics, and shifting into next phases of life.

My hope is always that people enjoy our conversation, and I can plant seeds of community connection in a way that will facilitate life long friendships and support.

I always feel so lucky to get to connect with people this way.

💆🏻‍♀️ A Surprising Change in Plans:

Once a month I have a standing dinner with my friend Kathy to explore some of the more interesting restaurants in the Greater Boston Area. Having a friendship routine is one of the best ways for me to stay connected, and I’ve loved our monthly adventures. (Don’t be ashamed of friendship routines!)

We’ve had a lot of fun with our choices, and if you are curious, HMart sweet potatoes, O Ya, and Pammy’s all rank somewhere at the top.

We were set out to go to hot pot last week at Qiao Lin with our friend Courtney, but the no-reservations line was about 2 hours long after an already very long week, and it took me about 40 minutes to park in Allston.

I don’t *love* when plans change, but this ended up being fantastic: we ended up grabbing some snacks at Kimchipapi, and Courtney reserved us viral scalp treatments at FashionPoint at the last minute. (I’d narrowed down to FashionPoint vs. SKA for scalp treatments a few months ago, and the never pulled the trigger!)

They put a camera on your scalp to assess what you need done (it’s a little alarming in a delightfully disturbing way), and then provide about 12 different treatments based on what you need and want: including head scratchies, massage, fancy water machines, and potions of all kinds. At the end, you see the results, and it’s like magic!

We had a GRAND time.

Sketching Bees

Assorted Thinking: Ideas for Drawing

I’m trying to build back my habit of drawing and painting for pleasure, but I always find it challenging to sit down without a plan. So I’ve been outlining some ways to explore and play (here are some of my quick thinking scribbles):

• Why do I want to draw? As both a meditative practice, and a way to better express myself better through creative means. I’d also like to create some cartoons, and make more art generally. I’d like to do more with art to explore ideas of community, connection, health, nature. What would it take to make a modern day Eames Mathematica exhibit?

• Drawing Techniques: hatching, dots, stippling, etc. Zentangle. Doodling techniques. Quotes and a drawing. General pattern making. Color exploration. What would my syllabus for myself be?

• Quick ideas: nature drawing, line drawing kitchen items, sketching from photos

• Themes: bees, bugs, flowers (general nature), rocks. Birds. Culinary and plant botanical drawings. Fish. Sardines. Beans. Condiments. Wellesley things.

• Pen Swatches

• Art Challenges: Inktober

• A Pinterest board of sketchbook ideas

• Books to visit (or re-visit): Drawing on the right side of the brain, grab some of my art books from New Hampshire. Get sponsored by Phaidon.

• People and Ideas: how to think when you draw, David Shrigley, Edward Gorey, Lisa Congdon, Maira Kalman, inspiration: sketchbooks (Basquiat, Frieda Kahlo, Cy Twombly, Da Vinci, Keith Haring.) Luna Luna.

Slow Drip Gardening:

• None this week! But my spring Tulip share is about to start!

Dense Bean Salads and Kitchen Helpers

Mixed Media:

• 📖 Reading: While my Year of Sanderson may be officially over, I’m still reading ‘Wind and Truth’. It’s taken a little bit of a backseat to Crowns of Nyaxia, and this week’s release of Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm. I’ve also picked up a review copy of Sahil Bloom’s ‘The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life’, and Andrew Wilkinson’s ‘Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire’, and Matt Dinniman’s ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ based on friend recommendations.

• An Article: How to Like Everything More

• A list of 2024 movies from David Ehrlich via Kottke

• A Youtube Video: The one piece of drawing advice that changed my life via Struthless in 2020

• 📺 Watching: Skeleton Crew with my friend Caroline. Adding a new year tab to my movie spreadsheet, and an Instagram Story Highlight for Movies 2025. I rewatched Conclave last night, and very much enjoyed Godzilla Minus One this week. Brothers was silly and delightful. (I tried to get into Cross, but only have managed an episode so far.) Watched Bottoms.

• 🎧 Listening: I always enjoy catching up with Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose’s Random Show episodes. (Thinking of Kevin and Darya who lost their home in the fires.) // Bad Bunny’s NUEVAYol on repeat (and the reaction videos of Puerto Rican parents)

• 🤣 Memes and randomness of the week: best quote of the conference this week: “My confidence is not cockiness, it’s your insecurity with my confidence.” - Opal Maudlin-Jones 🎤💥

The Week Meal Plan:

Why do I do this? I’ll note, my meal plans tend to be more of a directional support for me than what I actually end up eating in my week. (I think a lot of people who do meal planning feel obligated to actually eat the things they come with rather than just using as a placeholder/inspiration. I do not feel so constricted.)

🍒 Good Eats from the Past Few Weeks:

• Pasta with very green sauce (adapted from here). You can make the sauce and then eat it with other things. (I like to brighten it up with some acidity - lemon or sherry vinegar.)

• Cabbage and caramelized onions with kielbasa, jaju pierogies, and sour cream

• A few bites from Kimchipapi - a takoyaki and some chicken and rice

• Battered Trader Joe’s shiitakes with lemon and tartar sauce

• Tofu Pudding with Rice Balls from Meet Fresh

• A bowl of cold spicy noodles from Yume Ga Arukara

• A coffee toffee cookie from Levain (wow.)

• Beans of the Week: Rancho Gordo Midnight Black Beans, Desi Chana, Cassoulet Beans

• Good Drinks: brought out the teapot to drink more tea in the afternoon! Things with matcha.

This week’s meal plan: cookbooks of the week - Ottolenghi Comfort and Hot Sheet from the library. Bean of the week: Cassoulet.

• Sunday: Pork chops, quick pickled cabbage, and plantains

• Monday: Fish piccata with broccoli rabe and white bean mash

• Tuesday: Braised lamb and white beans, bright green salad

• Wednesday: Kale and date salad, chicken cutlet

• Thursday: Kebab rice bowl with whipped feta, tzaziki, cucumber, tomato

• Friday: Fondue with things to dip in it.

Lunch Options: Butter lettuce for salads. Shredded cabbage. End of this week’s dense bean salad: desi chana, tomato, cucumber, mozzarella balls, shallot vinaigrette. Chicken molé. Cacio e Pepe chicken sausages. Miso tofu.

Snacks: Yogurt and blueberries. Cheese sticks. Eggs. Turkey Chomps. Steel Cut Oatmeal. Cream of Wheat. Aggressive amounts of fridge-cheese.

Treat options (mostly in the freezer): Trader Joe’s Coffee Panna Cotta. BerryLine Frozen Yogurt, Ben and Jerry’s Chance Mint Fudgy Brownie, TJ’s Tiramisu, Trader Joe’s Brownie Coffee Ice Cream Sandwiches. Apple Tartines. Key Lime Pie. Trader Joe’s Chocolate cheesecake bites.

What are you eating this week?

Here’s to a very good week!

xo, Sam