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Your insider edit of what’s truly worth it—and what’s simply good enough.
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Why Aren't You Done?
There’s a Forbes piece making the rounds about “ambition guilt”—what it costs women to want more than culture has decided they’re allowed to have. It’s aimed at women in their 30s and 40s, the ones still hesitating to ask, to invest, to want.
Real thing. But only half the story.
The version they wrote is: I’m not allowed to want this yet.
The version they didn’t is: I’m not allowed to still want this.
I'm 65. I sold my last business at 60. I retired, briefly, like a normal person, for about four years. Then I started PROVOKED. The strangest thing about starting a magazine in your 60s isn't the work or the late nights. It’s the apologizing.
I apologize to my kids when I miss a call because I have a newsletter deadline. I apologize to my book club when I show up admitting I didn’t finish the book. I apologize when someone tilts her head and says, “But you’ve already done so much. Why are you doing this?” On cloudy days, my own children look at me with quiet concern and ask if I’m sure. I love them for it. I also know what they’re really asking.
There’s a script for the woman who ambitions up at 35. There’s no script for the woman who ambitions up at 65. The most expensive version of ambition guilt isn’t paid by the woman reaching for the first round. It’s paid by the woman who crushed the first round—hit her targets, sold the company—and now can’t quite say out loud that she’s starting something new.
Sure, there are the unicorns. Martha. Oprah. Jane. Meryl. They live on magazine covers and prove what’s possible for them. What nobody has figured out yet is the rest of us: the ambitious women whose names aren’t known, but who are still building, long after “enough.”
The problem isn’t that we still want.
It’s that the world never imagined we would.
—Susan
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Back To Paper
"In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself." —Susan Sontag Journal Entry, 1957
Sometime around January, I committed to write something down by hand every day. Just for me. I haven't hit it perfectly, but I have come close enough to feel the difference between scrolling and time spent making my mark on paper. The slop economy wants us to consume. The analog practice forces us to create. The difference between those two is disappearing vs. staying.
For work, I keep a Hobonichi Cousin. It's the planner serious people use and it's earned its place. The paper is fascinating and takes ink without bleeding, and the minimal layout respects the chaos of my week.
For everything, else I write in this Hemlock & Oak undated daily—linen cover, beautiful weight, you can customize and pick two charms when you order it—the small thing that makes you smile every time you touch the book. Choosing the undated version works because it doesn't make you feel guilty staring at a blank page if you're falling behind. I'm not above cute emoji stickers. I follow Helen at Thecoffeemonsterzco. Don't judge me. The last thing on my desk that nobody asked me to want is the snail-mail subscription from Maura K. Spain's Baker's Dozen Print Club—a hand-printed piece of her art shows up every month, addressed to me in an envelope with a pretty stamp. It has the fingerprints of a human all over it.
None of this makes me more productive. That's not what it's for. It makes the days I spend on a screen feel less like erasure.
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What’s worth your attention this week
🎭 The Met Gala carpet rolls out Monday night—Theme: Costume Art. Dress code: Fashion Is Art. Co-chairs: Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, Anna Wintour. Honorary chairs (translation: the people who paid for it): Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos. The exhibition opens the new Condé M. Nast Galleries and finally includes a section on the Aging Body, a body type the museum admits has been historically overlooked. You don't say. Reports say tables aren't moving and designers are pulling back, with one insider calling the event a "billionaire circus." Anna stepped down at Vogue. Chloé Malle takes over. Mamdani RSVP'd no. The vibe has shifted.
🪷Fans of the The White Lotus know the cast is usually packed with A-listers eager to skewer the rich through Mike White's darkly comic lens. But in an unexpected twist, Helena Bonham Carter—one of the stars of the upcoming fourth season—left the show last week, citing “character misalignment.” Laura Dern has quickly been tapped to step in and reunite with frequent collaborator White as an entirely new character written with her in mind. Bonham Carter would’ve been a compelling ensemble addition, but we're excited to see what Dern will do in the series.
📚Where'd You Go, Bernadette author Maria Semple returns with Go Gentle, and her protagonist Adora Hazzard—a middle-aged, divorced Stoic philosopher building a women's coven on her floor of a Manhattan landmark—has spent years wanting nothing she doesn't already have. Then a stranger at the ballet, an art heist, and desire (which Adora had declared dead) turns out to be very much alive. Semple hasn't written a novel in nine years, and this is one we’ve been waiting for.
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For the curious
🎸 One of the best parts of NPR is their Tiny Desk Concerts. Small and intimate, filmed at the NPR headquarters themselves, each is a perfect showcase of overwhelming talent. Find your new favorite song, or listen to an innovative arrangement of an old favorite. The featured artists range from new to legendary. Do yourself a favor and watch the brilliant Buddy Guy, who, if you can believe it, turns 90 this year.
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I get annoyed when it takes longer than five seconds for a website to load on my phone like I didn't grow up dropping a roll of film off at the store and waiting five days to get pictures back.
—Abby Heugel
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⌨️ This newsletter was written by Susan Dabbar, Abby Heugel, and Cat Green.
🛍️ Some links in this newsletter are affiliate or sponsored links. If you buy something we recommend, we may earn a small commission—at no extra cost to you. Every product is independently selected and obsessed over by our team.
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