March 25th 2023

2008. I’m 40. I write a short story about my search for my birth mother, how in 1998, after searching for six years — after a social worker said it was impossible— I found her but she was already dead. I write about how finding answers soothed my soul at the same time grief shattered it. I show it to a friend, a screenwriter and former New York Times journalist who says, “holy shit, you’re a writer.” It is the first time I’ve shown someone my writing. He suggests I turn it into a screenplay, so with his help and the help of other screenwriter friends, I write a screenplay. Some people read it and like it and wow, maybe I really am a writer. The news horrifies my husband — a film producer — now his wife is like everyone else in this town asking him to read their script, but he is a good husband, so he reads it and, much to his cynical surprise, he likes it. He sends it to his friend, a big fancy agent. His friend, the big fancy agent, does not like my script. “She sucks. She should never write again.” Not “it needs work” or “it’s not commercial enough,” no, the big fancy agent issues an edict, an absolute, a nuclear blast. I’m devastated. But instead of giving up, I say “fuck you big fancy agent” and keep writing.

March 25th 2023

Remember 2020? So many of us thought that was going to be the big one for the way we work. I thought it would be the year that changes productivity forever. And in many ways it was; it forced us to spring clean our dusty attic of beliefs about what makes people productive. Decades of in-office 9-to-6 culture blown out of the window! It was a year that showed us just how resilient the human spirit is and how robust our ability is to get things done. The big discovery that year was how little productivity could change if we put our minds to it.