This special bonus issue includes a playlist 🎵 for your day.

✅ If you’re hosting today, that means there is one less thing on your to do list already. How cool is that?

🕰 This playlist will provide background music for over 18 hours, which should be enough to take you from that first cup of coffee and morning prep through the day’s cooking, afternoon activities, the big meal, doing dishes, and well into the evening.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 It spans three generations and a variety of genres, including both well known and more unique songs. Threads of family, friends, love, relationships, food, encouragement, gratitude, grace and America run through the playlist.

🔀Best played on shuffle (while I’ve hand selected all of the songs on it, I have not put them in a sequence and would strongly encourage you to let Spotify shuffle the playlist for you to ensure variety).

So what’s on it?

• The Cranberries, The Smashing Pumpkins, and American Pie

Here is a sampling of the songs (and ten themes) included in this playlist:

• Washing Dishes, Handy Man, and The Hands That Built America

• Homeward Bound, A Sort of Homecoming, and My Hometown

• Sit Next To Me, Everybody Eats When They Come to My House, and Stretchy Pants

• We Are Family, No Need to Argue, and What a Good Boy

• Thank You, Be Thankful, and I’ve Got Plenty to be Thankful For

• Better Together, We’re Going to be Friends, and You’ve Got a Friend

• Grace, Say, and Brave

• Heartland, Walking in Memphis, and New York, New York

• Fast Car, How to Save a Life, and Lean On Me

• Enjoy Every Second, Send Me On My Way, and Getting Ready for Christmas Day

Pretty perfect for Thanksgiving, right?

Here is the playlist - and again, please do you and your guests a favor and select shuffle in Spotify. I hope you enjoy! :)

Happy Thanksgiving.

Be well,

-Bryce

Welcome to November. I want to try something new with you this year. Let’s focus on being grateful this month — together. Thirty days. Thirty opportunities to be present, to be intentional, and to be grateful.

The idea occurred to me a few weeks ago and I’ve been excited for today, November 1, to arrive so I could launch this with you.

What exactly is the idea, you ask? Good question.

Grateful November in Community

Quite simply, I would like to encourage each of us — all of us — to create a shared gratitude journal of sorts for the next 30 days. We have readers across the United States and around the world and it would be enlightening for us to hear from each other. Together, we can offer each other accountability, encouragement, celebration and support during this season of gratitude.

Are you with me? Here’s how to join in three quick steps.

How to participate

1. Join our community chat in the Substack app or on the web.1

2. Share something you are grateful for each day on the Grateful November post.

3. Engage with each other.

I look forward to seeing you in the community chat this month!

If you’re not sold yet, please keep reading.

Benefits of gratitude

Being grateful is good for you. Joshua Becker at Becoming Minimalist has collected a list of the many benefits of gratitude with source links, which I’m including here for reference:

Gratitude offers numerous mental and physical health benefits. Its importance cannot be overstated:

Gratitude reduces stress and makes us more resilient.

Gratitude helps us feel more positive emotions.

Gratitude unshackles us from toxic emotions.

Gratitude improves our self-esteem.

Gratitude decreases the symptoms of depression.

Gratitude helps us sleep better.

Gratitude improves our interpersonal relationships.

Gratitude enhances optimism.

Gratitude can even help us lower blood pressure, stop smoking, or lose weight.

How to create daily habits of gratitude

I was listening to Tim Ferris’ podcast the other night while I was cooking dinner and he was interviewing Jack Canfield. I found this (unrelated) video from Jack Canfield that has five practical suggestions for how to create daily habits of gratitude.

He suggests:

1. Taking seven minutes each morning to write down what you’re grateful for

2. Appreciating at least three people each day

3. Appreciation game - looking for the good in all situations

4. Carrying a physical token of gratitude in your pocket

5. Appreciating yourself

Do you have a daily habit of gratitude?

Leave a comment

🎬25 Reasons To Be Thankful

As we start this journey together, here is a little inspiration from YouTube (hat tip to the University of Illinois for surfacing this gem).

I hope you have a wonderful day.

Let me know what you’re grateful for today. I’m grateful for you.

Be well,

-Bryce

PS: There are sixty days left in 2025. How will you spend them?

It’s still dark outside as I write this. The house is quiet, aside from the tick tock of the clock behind me that sounds like a metronome. I prefer silence but the clock was a gift. As I was going to bed last night, my phone noted it would be seven degrees cooler today. I hear the rain coming down heavier now outside. The forecast shows rain into next week.

I’m so glad I got out last weekend when the weather was still glorious.

Every day for the last few weeks it’s seemed as though today would be the last nice day for a while — and then the next day would turn out to be sunny, dry and blue. It’s been such a delight. And the leaves! Each day, they seem brighter than the last. The crimson red maple leaves have started to fall but the yellow leaves have been radiant in the sunshine. And in between, a cacophony of orange, orange/red and red/orange as if mother nature is working to fill in the range of a box of 64 Crayola crayons, you know the kind with the little sharpener in the back?

Alas, the weather changed yesterday. It was grey and rained much of the day. I was cold all day and didn’t leave the house. We have plans this weekend — some family, some friends — and also much on the to do list. I’m looking forward to a good, productive and renewing weekend.

How about you?

Leave a comment

I’m sharing something different in this week’s media embed.

If you could use a laugh today, I invite you to discover….

🎤 Andy Huggins

That line had me laughing out loud. Andy Huggins does stand up from a different perspective — he’s 72.

Here’s a three minute YouTube Short of some of his comedy for your enjoyment:

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Be well,

-Bryce

I say all this a bit wistfully because I honestly haven’t been outside that much this fall. I’ve simply had too much going on. When I looked at the weather last night, today looked like the better of the two days and the rain is returning soon. So I am going out today I say.

I hope you are having a wonderful day today.

🎵Find My Way Back by Eric Arejes

This week’s musical embed is a track by Eric Arejes that came out in 2015 but crossed my radar more recently. It has a nice mellow rhythmic quality to it. I hope you enjoy it.

Thank you for reading this. I appreciate you and look forward to connecting again soon.

Be well,

-Bryce

Do you ever pause to reflect on just how incredible this is? The idea that anyone can write something, publish it online, and you can read it — whenever and wherever you want. For free.

It wasn’t always this way.

Before the web, there was Gutenberg.

Gutenberg

Do you know the history of the Gutenberg printing press?

In 1436 Johaness Gutenberg, a German goldsmith, began designing a machine capable of producing pages of text at an incredible speed—a product that he hoped would offset losses from a failed attempt to sell metal mirrors. By 1440 Gutenberg had established the basics of his printing press including the use of a mobile, reusable set of type, and within ten years he had constructed a working prototype of the press. In 1454 Gutenberg put his press to commercial use, producing thousands of indulgences for the Church. The following year he printed his famous 42-line Bible, the first book printed on a moveable type press in the West.¹ (source)

It’s hard to overstate the impact of this innovation:

Johannes Gutenberg’s moveable type press marked the beginning of the Printing Revolution in the western world, a colossal moment in the history of information and learning. With access to printing presses, scientists, philosophers, politicians, and religious officials could replicate their ideas quickly and make them available to large audiences. (source)

Books

Growing up, I took books for granted. I was lucky to live in a city with the world’s largest independent bookstore: Powell’s. Wandering up and down the aisles, it can seem like there is a book about nearly any topic imaginable.

Magazines and newspapers

When I was a kid, there was a cigar store downtown named Rich’s that my dad would visit sometimes to buy an out-of-town newspaper. I loved it when he took me — not because either of us smoked but because they had hundreds of magazines and dozens of newspapers from all over the world. I loved to browse the titles.

Web

When I first discovered the world wide web in the early 1990s, I sensed it could change the world. I’ve written about the early days of the web in my Web 30 series earlier this year. Here I’ll highlight two things that excited me then and still do today:

1. Power of hyperlinks: No longer did we have to live with just a footnote and trudge to the library to look up the referenced book or research article; now you could directly link to the source!

2. Democratized publishing: No longer was publishing only in the hands of major publishing houses and media companies. If someone had something to contribute, they now could — directly.

Still, in those early days, it required some technical skills. Over time, it got easier and more accessible to the masses.

Six Apart

In 2001, Ben and Mena Trott launched Movable Type, an early pioneer in blogging software. Mena had started writing a blog, Dollarshort. As NBC News reported in 2005:

As Mena blogged, Ben became frustrated in his search for a decent computer programming job. While unemployed, Ben began to work on the computer code that became Movable Type.

When 100 people downloaded Movable Type during the first hour of its release in September 2001, the Trotts decided to run their own business from their bedroom, drawing the inspiration for the company name from their nearly identical age -- Ben and Mena were born six days apart in 1977….

Decades later, this origin story is still referenced on the Moveable Type website:

Movable Type was created by a husband and wife team with a single purpose: to create a powerful solution for the creation and management of web content. An originator of the blogging field, Movable Type offers stability, a user-friendly interface, and beautifully extensive visual customization for websites and blogs.

In 2003, venture capitalist Joi Ito invested in Ben and Mena’s company, Six Apart, and the company and its products began to scale. His wiki described the company this way: “Six Apart creates tools that enable tens of thousands of individuals, organizations, and corporations to participate in the web’s full potential by publishing their ideas on the Internet with simple, yet powerful software and services.”

TypePad

In July 2003, I started testing a new Six Apart offering, TypePad, which was essentially a hosted version of Moveable Type. Here was my first post:

After a month of testing, I decided to keep using it. Here was a post I made at that time:

By that fall, I was thinking of adopting TypePad for a new personal blog:

A few weeks later (on November 7, 2003), I wrote a post noting in part:

Online, the tension between a desire for community and a need for personal privacy continues. I’ve spent the better part of the last nine years wrestling with this very issue. And, on the eve of considering the launch of a new personal blog, I’m still conflicted.

It’s something that I continue to wrestle with to this day. I wrote about it in 2023:

By December 2003, however, I had decided to formally adopt TypePad as a web publishing platform, writing at the time:

Many others did, too. ABC, BBC, MSNBC, Time, and Wired were among the media companies that used TypePad.

Later that same year, I received a card from a dear friend who wrote:

I thanked my friend for the kind words — and kept going.

Over time, Typepad would become home to multiple publications. Here is a screenshot of a legacy WebBP Media home page featuring a few.

In 1998, Jakob Nielsen, named the “guru of web page usability” by The New York Times, wrote web pages must live forever. I read Jakob’s bi-weekly column regularly for many years and his research and insights influenced my views on web design and usability.

I share this because it helps to explain why I have continued to pay for TypePad each year even though I haven’t posted new content on the platform in several years.

Alas, nothing lasts forever.

Typepad shut down on September 30, 2025.

What have I learned?

• Nothing lasts forever, even if you pay.

• It’s better to move with the times than to stay to the bitter end.

  • Seth Godin moved off TypePad in 2018 with help from a team including Auttomatic, maker of WordPress. Every year since, I’ve thought about doing the same but never found the time or team to make it a reality. I tried the Substack import tool in 2022 but it didn’t import beyond 10 posts so I made peace that would start new, just as WebBP::Blog did in 2003.

  • Maybe one day if I find the time I will create a WordPress site, import the MoveableType export into WordPress, export and then import into Substack. But if I’m being realistic, probably not. And given that the export didn’t include images and other items, it would likely be a low fidelity version of the original. (If you have the skills to do this and want to help, email me.)

• Sometimes the universe will make a decision for you.

  • Each January, I’ve debated about whether or not to renew my Typepad subscription. Next year, I won’t have to.

If you’ve read this far, thank you.

More about Ben and Mena, Six Apart, and TypePad

Here are a few other articles that I found during my research for this issue that you may find interesting.

• Birth of a blogging behemoth (NBC News, 2/22/2005)

• Why the Design of this Site Will Never Change (Kevin Smokler, 1/6/2005)

• Blog Tool Writing Its Own Story of Success (LA Times, 3/7/2005)

• Meet the founder of the blog revolution (Mena Trott, TED, 2/2006)

• Interview with blogging pioneer Mena Trott (Oliver Lindberg, Medium, 6/18/2007)

• Farewell, Six Apart. (Mena Trott, Dollarshort, 9/22/2010)

• WordPress, Six Apart silences and communities (Adam Tinworth, 2/10/2011)

• Kottke.org posts about Mena Trott (Jason Kottke, Kottke.org, 2006-2012)

• My Divorce Sense is Tingling (or: “Okay, Malcolm Gladwell, you win.”) (Joey deVilla, 5/1/2013)

🎵 Blogging by Wire

Here is this week’s embed: a track called Blogging by Wire about our digital world.

Be well,

-Bryce

I remember watching the ABC evening news with Petter Jennings in the family room while my mom made dinner in the kitchen when I was in elementary school.

I started reading my dad’s Wall Street Journals not too long after. The WSJ had a funny story on the front page every day (a feature known as the A-Hed I would learn years later) that — in retrospect — was a great gateway for this young reader. By the time I was in college, I was a regular WSJ subscriber.

When I started commuting via car for work, NPR’s All Things Considered became my go-to evening drive time companion for many years.

I mention all of this as context for two things that happened this week. We’ll start with yesterday.

Friday

Ari Shapiro

Last night, Ari Shapiro signed off All Things Considered for the last time. His voice has been a familiar one on All Things Considered for the last decade and across NPR for more than 25 years. If you missed it, here is a link to a touching 8-minute audio retrospective with his co-hosts and people he has interviewed through the years:

Listen

• ‘All Things Considered’ bids farewell to host Ari Shapiro (NPR)

Here are a few quotes that resonated as I listened to it — behaviors we can learn from and embrace:

Finding

Whole self

Connecting

Thoughtful

Indeed.

is on Substack, Instagram and has a website at arishapiro.work. He’s also long been a guest singer with the band Pink Martini. I’ll be excited to see what’s in store for his next chapter.

Now we turn our attention to how this week started.

Monday

The WSJ published a paper like it does six days a week. One showed up on my driveway.

Jonathan Clements

When I was a kid, the WSJ had no pictures. Whenever there was a portrait, it was done in this dot-ink style (known as hedcut, gift link) that has become its signature and looks like this:

I share this because this is how I knew Johnathan Clements. He started writing a personal finance column called “Getting Going” in 1994 as I started college. It ran for many years and I've probably read most of them. His writing was clear, practical and impactful. As a young investor, I found his common sense counsel invaluable.

Jonathan died on Sunday and I read the news on Monday:

• Jonathan Clements, Longtime WSJ Columnist, Dies at 62 (gift link)

Jason Zweig, writer of the WSJ’s Intelligent Investor column, wrote:

Last fall, Jonathan Clements, author of The Wall Street Journal’s long-running personal-finance column, “Getting Going,” wrote a gut-wrenching article for the Journal about his terminal cancer diagnosis.

Jesting at his own impending death, he proposed to the article’s editors that the headline should be “Getting Gone.”

Now he is gone. Clements, 62 years old, died in Philadelphia on Sunday, about a year-and-a-half after being diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer. Between 1994 and 2008, he wrote 1,009 columns on investing, financial planning, money and life for the Journal.

Clements was one of the first financial journalists to argue for index funds. His advocacy, he conceded in a 1999 column, was nearly an “obsession” that irked many readers.

In the 1990s, professional investors often derided index funds as inferior and a guarantee of mediocrity; Clements praised them as a sure way to minimize the risk of underperforming the market. Following the trail Clements had blazed, millions of investors eventually made index funds the building blocks of their portfolios….

I was one of them.

Last fall, I read the article Jason Zweig referenced above:

• Some Final Personal-Finance Advice From Jonathan Clements (gift link)

This spring, Jason Zweig wrote:

After Jonathan shared his grim prognosis, some of his fans suggested establishing a journalism award named after him. “The world has enough journalism awards already,” Jonathan responded with a laugh. “Too many, in fact.”

He knew exactly what he wanted instead: to launch Roth IRA accounts for young people from poor families who have never invested before, with the objective of turning them into lifelong savers.

• The WSJ’s Jonathan Clements Wants to Leave a Living Legacy (gift link)

That idea became the Jonathan Clements Getting Going on Savings Initiative.

Jason Zweig explains:

The initiative in Jonathan’s honor is a collaboration among three organizations: the John C. Bogle Center for Financial Literacy, which seeks to promote the legacy of the late Vanguard Group founder; J-PAL North America, a leading behavioral-economics research organization I wrote about a few years ago; and the City of Boston’s Summer Youth Employment Program.

If you would like to join me in contributing to this initiative, here is a link:

Contribute

(And if you’d like to benefit others while benefiting yourself by reading some of his best columns, pick up a copy of The Best of Jonathan Clements: Timeless Advice for a Financial Life Well Lived. All royalties from this book will be donated to the program.)

In 2016, Jonathan started a site called HumbleDollar. I visited it on Monday and was surprised to see a post by Jonathan dated 9/22/2025. It began:

If this post is appearing, it means I’ve succumbed to cancer or one of its side effects. Please don’t feel sad for me. I’ve had a life filled with love, great experiences and wonderful career opportunities. Despite my demise at a relatively young age, I consider myself beyond fortunate.

Here was a man who wrote last year that:

Ever since I learned I had cancer and might have just a year to live, I’ve been working like crazy to make sure I bequeath a well-organized estate and leave my family in good financial shape. I’m determined to have as good a death as possible, not least from a financial point of view.

He then went on to outline the very practical steps he was taking. What a loving gesture for his family. And to have one final post written? Of course he would. A bit like Randy Pausch, Jonathan Clements is a quiet inspiration and reminder of the joy of being human. His full farewell post is worth a read. He signed off this way:

Indeed. May we all be so blessed.

Thank you, Jonathan.

HumbleDollar has a collection of tributes to Jonathan, in which Jason Zweig notes, “I have just lost a friend, and so have you.”

🎵Thank You for Being a Friend

Is there a journalist that has really impacted your life? Let us know in the comments.

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading. I appreciate you choosing to spend a few minutes of your weekend with me.

Be well,

-Bryce

It’s an important topic and an engaging conversation. Maria Ressa is amazing, communicates clearly, and the interplay between her and John Stewart made this among the best 15 minutes I’ve seen this year.

🎬Maria Ressa and John Stewart

I watched it cold without any context and have intentionally not shared much here. If you prefer to know more before you watch it, here is the official blurb from YouTube:

“It’s both deja vu and PTSD.” Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist and author of the book “How to Stand Up to a Dictator,” sits down with Jon Stewart for a conversation about Trump’s authoritarian attacks on free speech in the wake of Disney taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air in fealty to the president and his hand-picked FCC Chair. Ressa, who in 2020 was jailed in the Philippines for her journalism criticizing the country’s former president Rodrigo Duterte, warns about the similarities between the dictatorship she lived under and the Trump administration. They also discuss how tech companies use authoritarian governments as case studies to inform their algorithms and manipulate democratic elections, and the importance in this political moment for Americans to take peaceful action before their rights are continually stripped away.

Seriously, you owe it to yourself to watch it.

Don’t take my word for it. Here are a few of the more than 4,000 comments to date on this video:

Watch it. You won’t regret it. I promise.

I’d love to hear how the interview landed with you. Share with our community here:

Leave a comment

Be well,

-Bryce

PS: Today is the first day of fall and this is the first time you’ve heard from me since late August. I apologize for going dark these past few weeks. The transition from summer to fall has proven even more challenging this year than last from a capacity perspective with the confluence of major projects active in academic, professional and personal spheres right now. I will write when I can but it may be a bit less consistent this fall. TBD. Thank you for your grace and understanding.

I wrote about Simon earlier this year:

I first saw Trevor live nearly a decade ago in 2016. Here is a picture I took that night:

On their respective About pages (linked above), Simon is described as a “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect” and Trevor is described as “one of the most successful comedians in the world.” What would they be doing on the same stage you might ask?

Well, as it happens, they are kindred spirits and this conversation — which sounds like it was kind of an impromptu thing at Brilliant Minds in 2024 — is really good. I think you’ll enjoy it.

🗣️Simon Sinek & Trevor Noah on Friendship, Loneliness, Vulnerability, and More

Here is the overview on YouTube:

Join Simon Sinek and Trevor Noah in this candid discussion where they dig into the critical role of friendships in mental health, success, and happiness. Simon argues that while we’re constantly improving ourselves as leaders and professionals, we neglect the deep, emotional bonds that help us thrive.

Simon and Trevor also discuss the loneliness epidemic among young men and its link to dangerous ideologies, and why teaching the value of true friendship could change society. Watch as they share stories and insights that will inspire you to nurture your friendships and live a more balanced life.

You can watch (or listen) to the conversation here (24 minutes):

If you are someone who usually skips over embedded content, I’d encourage you to pause and listen to this one. Or, if you don’t have the time right now (that’s okay), save it for later and come back when you do. Just promise yourself you’ll listen to Simon and Trevor sometime. I think you’ll be glad you did.

At one point in the conversation, Simon talks about how there is an entire industry around helping us to become better leaders, better parents, to exercise better — and yet, “there is barely anything on how to be a friend.” He goes on to mention mental health challenges — stress, depression, anxiety, obsession about longevity — concluding “friendship is the ultimate bio hack that fixes all of those things.”

It’s a striking moment. Okay, so, how does one be a friend?

A friend of mine, , someone I’ve known since grad school (the first time), has actually been writing about this for the past few years. She posted about it on LinkedIn this week and you might appreciate knowing about it, too.

✍🏻The Make Great Friends Project

Notes from Elissa

The Make Great Friends Project

I started a newsletter called The Make Great Friends Project in 2023 with dreams of creating a course to help people make more meaningful connections. Building relationships comes naturally to me, and I realized later in life that this isn’t the case for everybody. I even wrote a proposal to get funding to support this dream, but sometimes life has othe…

Read more

a year ago · 3 likes · Elissa Fesyk

She moved The Make Great Friends Project to Substack earlier this year and I’ve been enjoying her thoughts. If you’re intrigued, you can subscribe here:

Notes from Elissa

Thoughts on finding your voice, your people, and the life you’re here to live.

By Elissa Fesyk

The Make Great Friends Project also has a presence on Facebook and Instagram.

Have a tip to share on how to be a better friend? We’d love to hear your perspective.

Leave a comment

🎵 We’re Going To Be Friends by Jack Johnson

We haven’t had a musical embed for a while. This week’s is an on-theme track from a Jack Johnson album that has long been a favorite. The track: We’re Going To Be Friends.

For some reason, embedding this song from Spotify doesn’t generate the right album art so I’m also including the full album below:

Wherever this message finds you, I’m wishing the best for you.

Be well,

-Bryce

📷 Retro

Based on your comments, some of you appreciated last week’s feature on Retro, an app for sharing photo memories with close friends or family. That makes me happy. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to give it a try. Use it solo for a week or two to get familiar with it and then invite a few close friends or family members to join you. Let me know how you like it.

Leave a comment

We will be returning to the idea of community — and strategies and tools for supporting it — in the future.

📱 Social media

Thank you to all who responded to last week’s poll questions about your relationship with social media. If you’re curious, here is a summary of the responses received as of today:

1. How often do you go on social media?

   1. 75% daily

   2. 25% multiple times a day

2. How much do you share on social media?

   1. 67% rarely share

   2. 33% share highlights

For those who responded, social media use is frequent and more about consumption than production (sharing). It raises a new curiosity:

The results above — specifically about how much people share — aren’t too surprising. Jakob Nielsen wrote about this in 2006: “In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.”

🍑 Peaches

Last week I wrote, “Soon it will be time to pick peaches. I can’t wait because we’re eating the store-bought nectarines faster than they are ripening.” Well, shortly after writing that my wife and I decided to go see if we could pick some peaches. It was earlier than we went last season (and some varieties weren’t ripe yet) but we successfully picked twenty-four pounds. Here is a picture of the first box:

We have had three boxes of fresh peaches like this on the kitchen counter all week and have been enjoying them each day as they ripen. They are so good!

If you like peaches, I heartily encourage you to find a u-pick place near you or to visit your favorite farmers market.

May you have a wonderful weekend.

Be well,

-Bryce

Rachel Feintzeig, who used to be the Work + Life columnist at the WSJ, had a piece in The New York Times this week that you might enjoy. In it, she discusses her evolving relationship with social media:

• If I Don’t Post About My Vacation, Did It Even Happen? (NYT, gift link)

What is your current relationship with social media? Please take a moment and respond to two quick questions and help create a composite sense of our community:

I remember when Facebook first launched in 2004. I had a friend that shared her photos on Bebo, which launched in 2005. In those early years, social media seemed amazing. I carefully curated my connections and friends lists and enjoyed seeing what high school and college friends were up to across the country and around the world. Over time, of course, Facebook ceased to be about friends.

Today social media is just media. Occasionally, you may see a post by someone you know in your feed but it’s increasingly filled with posts by accounts and brands that you don’t know in real life. The feed on Facebook, Instagram and the rest has become an algorithmic content distribution platform.

Rachel Feintzeig linked to a bit on Instagram by a British comedian, Jain Edwards, who explains what 2025 is like to someone from the 1990s. It’s really funny and worth watching. I’ve embedded it below:

jain__edwards

A post shared by @jain__edwards

So what to do?

Maybe you’ve done something similar. Or perhaps you haven’t uninstalled the apps but simply find yourself posting less often. That’s my reality.

There is something to this.

Retro

If you like the idea of saving what you want to remember but don’t like the how noisy Facebook and Instagram have become (or don’t want your photos to be used to train Meta’s AI), I have an app suggestion for you: Retro. (I’ve been testing it for over a year and like it.)

Founded by two former Instagram team members, Nathan Sharp and Ryan Olson, Retro is refreshingly simple. It is private by default and uses weeks as it organizing principle. You can use it as a private photo album or share with close friends and family. There are no ads, influencers or other distractions.

The ethos behind Retro is different and refreshing:

Why We Started Retro

Retro is a social app that feels like a joy, not a habit. It’s a friends-only photo journal where you share for yourself as much as your friends. It gently nudges you to find at least one moment each week to remember and then put that moment out there in a post so your friends know what you’re up to.

One early indicator that we’re on the right track is that our friends that deeply value privacy and safety feel comfortable enough to share photos of their kids’ faces and flight itineraries and wild parties — things they wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing elsewhere.

We started working on it when we realized something: after all that has been built in social since the iPhone, we now see less of our friends on social than we did 5 years ago. The apps that have traditionally served this purpose well have pivoted toward entertainment created by people you don’t know, and even though this content is entertaining, it also crowds out the other content that friends share with each other. So now we’re left sorting through a ton of message threads to see what’s going on with friends, or most commonly, we just don’t get that update at all. That’s a superpower lost.

Even though consumer social is insanely hard, we decided to do this together because it’s the app we wanted for ourselves, and we think it’s important that people have a place that remains dedicated to being the best place to catch up with friends and family.

Here are a few screenshots of what Retro looks like:

Here are a few news stories that provide additional information on Retro:

• Retro is a deeply personal photo journaling app for close friends (TechCrunch)

• Retro, an actually good photo-sharing app for BFFs, launches collaborative journals (TechCrunch)

• Forget New Twitter—It’s Time for a New Instagram (Wired)

If you’d like to give it a try, it’s available for both Android and iOS. (And, if you do, I’d love to hear your impressions.)

August

This is the first weekend of August. Our tomatoes are finally starting to get ripe and I picked some fresh basil in the garden last night for dinner. Soon it will be time to pick peaches. I can’t wait because we’re eating the store-bought nectarines faster than they are ripening.

Wherever you are and whatever you do, I hope you have a lovely summer weekend.

Be well,

-Bryce

Summers go fast — too fast. It’s been a month since I’ve been able to sit down and write on a Saturday morning. I’m not complaining; I’m just trying to make sense of the gap since I last wrote here. We visited a friend over the 4th and picked some cherries, went sailing the next weekend, and traveled for a family reunion last weekend. Each was a lovely experience. In between, there was work (both of the paid and unpaid varieties).

Your July has probably been similar. Perhaps a camping trip here or a summer vacation there. Whatever the mix, I hope you’ve been enjoying your summer so far.

It’s cloudy this morning and surprisingly cool. I went out early to pick some plums. We have a bumper crop this season. There seems to be something special about this season. Everything seems to be especially bountiful. Usually we have a handful of blooms on our hydrangeas. This year, we have more than we’ve ever had. They are a beautiful blue.

Despite being solar-powered, I’m good with a cloudy start to today. When you’re running nonstop and pulled in a lot of different directions, it can feel good to pause, assess all of your open loops, and get re-centered before you launch into your next thing. I’m looking forward to that kind of day today.

How about you? What has your attention?

Leave a comment

📚 Kobo and Pocket update

Mozilla shut Pocket down on July 8, 2025.

I’ve been using Raindrop.io since to save articles I come across on my phone. It’s okay; I like the ability to tag an article as I save it but don’t like the additional friction/steps compared to Pocket where I had Pocket permanently pinned to Share and, with one tap, content was saved.

Meanwhile, I turned off the Wi-Fi on my Kobo and have been able to continue reading my collection of articles in Pocket! I have lots of articles saved so I’m hoping this will work until Kobo releases replacement “read it later” functionality.

This week, Kobo announced it has selected Instapaper to replace Pocket and plans to have the functionality rolled out by the end of the summer. This is good news.

Here is the official press release:

• Instapaper Rakuten Kobo Integration (Instapaper)

• Rakuten Kobo Announces Plans for Instapaper Integration, Continuing Commitment to Seamless "Read It Later" Experience (Kobo)

Good e-Reader covered it here:

• Rakuten Kobo is replacing Mozilla Pocket with Instapaper

Chris Krycho wrote a note about it here:

• Kobo and Instapaper Integration

The community response is pretty positive on Reddit:

• Reddit: Pocket | Instapaper

Instapaper has set up a dedicated welcome page for Pocket users with links to import and a 3-month premium trial.

For those of you who have been on a similar journey these past few months, will you be moving to Instapaper or did you find another tool you prefer?

Leave a comment

💙 Bluesky

Last month, I mentioned I had started to use Bluesky. Since then, I noticed at least one of you has followed me — thank you. :)

Here are my initial impressions of Bluesky after a month of use:

• The user interface feels very much like Twitter did in the old days, which is a good thing. It’s nice to have a microblogging platform again.

• It’s unfortunate that it chose a product name where the logical URL was already registered. I’ve gone to Bluesky.com (which is a second-generation family business focused on planners) more than once instead of bsky.app but I’ve learned. :)

• Right away, I liked how it renders article previews better than LinkedIn. (LinkedIn used to use a full-width image with the headline below but since it switched to its current format of a small thumbnail at left with headline to the right, posts about articles don’t look as good as native posts).

• I’ve been surprised how many brands/companies don’t have an official presence on Bluesky yet. (Or if they do, they’ve simply reserved the @name but not even uploaded a logo.)

• I’ve found many journalists and other early adopters active on the platform but, when compared to Threads, it seems like fewer everyday users are on Bluesky. The numbers back this up: Bluesky has over 35 million users (source), roughly a tenth of what Threads has amassed (source).

• Despite fewer users, there seems to be more engagement than on Threads.

• Even though I’m not following that many users, the posting volume can be hard to keep up with across multiple accounts. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to integrate into my life without it consuming too much time.

If you use Bluesky and have any tips, I’d welcome them and others in our community may, too.

Leave a comment

Thanks so much for reading this issue. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Be well,

-Bryce

PS: I seem to be in a phase of trying out new software tools right now. Let me know if you enjoy hearing about this and would like more technology content. If it’s been boring you to tears, I apologize. Let me know what you’d enjoy more. You can always send me an email. Thanks!

Welcome to the last weekend of June. How on earth has half of this year already gone by?

I remember one summer day when I was a kid my older sister telling me (in response to me complaining about being bored or how long summer break was or some such thing) that just wait, every year seems to go faster than the last.

She was right. Indeed it does. Oh, what I would give for three months off now.

Time

Earlier this year, I wrote about Oliver Burkeman and his provocatively titled book, Four Thousand Weeks.

I finally picked up a copy recently and have been enjoying it. Others have too.

If you’ve read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts. (I’m still working my way through it along with a few other books.)

Leave a comment

Pocket

Last month, I wrote about the devastating news that Mozilla was discontinuing Pocket:

This development struck a cord with some of you and various readers shared suggestions for possible replacements in the comments. Thank you, all. suggested raindrop.io and suggested readwise, Omnivore, Instapaper and several more.

Pocket’s shutdown looms and I still haven’t settled on a replacement. Have you?

Leave a comment

I am really going to miss the native integration on Kobo (and still hoping that Rakuten Kobo announces something in the next week or so).

Use case

The tools may change but the essential use case remains the same: How to best collect and curate the amazing things you find on the internet?

I remember being an active user of del.icio.us in the early 2000s (here’s an old page from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine). I remember being excited about a then-new service, Amplify, which later shut down and was replaced with Clipmarks, which also shut down (the URL today resolves to Salesforce.com). From there, I remember using and trying to like Diigo (and making use of its highlighting features), which to its credit still exists as a service today.

By the time Nate Weiner created Read It Later (later rebranded to Pocket) in 2007, I had tried many different tools, including the then-common emailing myself links to articles I wanted to read later or save for future reference. What Nate built suited my needs so well because he had the same issue. From an interview he gave in 2014:

What’s the story behind Pocket?

What I just described was a problem that I had. I was working at a web design firm in Minneapolis about six-and-a-half years ago and during the course of the day I was coming across stuff all the time that I wanted to save, whether it be an article or a tutorial on something or a video I want to watch, and I was just emailing myself all these links. I would never open any of them because they would clutter up my inbox.

So one night I sat down and I built a Firefox extension—I wanted to learn how to make Firefox extensions and it was the one thing I wanted to fix. I took two nights, built the Firefox extension (below), and it was just this basic place to save a list that stayed in your browser of just stuff you wanted to save for later. After you opened that thing, you could remove it, never see it again, or you could share it out to a bunch of different places. That was the basic notion.

It was initially very much just scratching your own itch, so to speak, but in terms of its growth, it was one of those things where I certainly had no idea of what the impact would have been at the time. Once it got picked up on Lifehacker and then a number of other sites, it exploded from there. It quickly became very apparent to me that there were a lot of other people that had this problem.

🙋🏻 Yup. I have been a dedicated Pocket user ever since.

Over time, Mozilla depreciated two features I liked:

1. being able to send something to a friend’s Pocket via share on your mobile phone

2. being able to recommend and share an article to your public profile (mine).

The loss of the first meant I resorted to texting links. The second caused me to start sharing more articles on LinkedIn.

Still, the core personal “save it to read later” functionality remained intact until now and that is what I’m going to miss most. Figuring out a replacement is still on my “to do” list this week. (If you have any recommendations, I welcome it.)

Bluesky

While I continue to add articles to my Pocket account daily, I have also started to embrace Bluesky recently as a possible lightweight way to share articles (the second feature Mozilla depreciated above). I created an account after Twitter became X, but hadn’t really used it much until now and am finding it may become a new part of my toolset.

• If you’re on Bluesky, you can find me @brycepayne.bsky.social.

• Here is a starter pack of other Substack writers on Bluesky like Andy Adams:

How about you? What is an app or tool you’ve been exploring lately?

Leave a comment

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. I know this issue may be a bit … random, different, or geeky. I’m writing from the heart — and hope that maybe something I’ve said resonates with you.

Next weekend is a holiday weekend in the US. I may take the week off from the blog. I haven’t decided but it’s likely I will.

I hope you have a wonderful day today — and a wonderful week ahead.

Be well,

-Bryce

PS: I picked a half flat of raspberries this morning: so good! Enjoy the bounty of the season wherever and whenever you can. It’s good for you. :)

Has your calendar been busy with end-of-the-schoolyear activities or graduations? Or perhaps you’ve been enjoying the longer evenings and warmer weather? Or is this week like last week and you’re just trying to put one foot in front of the other? Whatever your reality, I’m glad you’re here.

Me? I’ve been on the road a bit. A few trips for work. A weekend trip to visit some friends. And hosting some friends from the UK. Between friends visiting and visiting friends, I got to meet two little humans in recent weeks that I’d only seen in pictures. Getting to discover their personalities in real life: that was fun. It’s been good—aside from getting sick1 in the middle of it all (I’m better now).

I love to travel. I also love landing at PDX. It’s home.

Airports are full of airplanes and the kid in me still enjoys seeing a new-to-me plane. An international airline I’ve never seen in person before. Or a new livery design.

Coming home from a recent trip, this one caught my eye and made me smile. Which is not like the other?

About a decade ago (maybe a bit more), a professional friend introduced me to biophilic design. Her excitement was infectious and I’ve always remembered the presentation. I had never heard of it at the time but can tell you: it’s definitely a thing.

As I prepared to leave the airport, I turned around one last time—and watched others beginning their travel journey.

Are you ready for summer, which officially began yesterday? What plans do you have?

Leave a comment

Me? I’m easing into summer. We’ve been enjoying the bounty of the season. Here are some fresh strawberries we u-picked recently. So good!

I invite you to join me in making this your best summer ever. What would that look like? Feel like? Let’s make it so.

Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, wishing you a wonderful day!

Be well,

-Bryce

The news was devastating. Pocket has been an integral part of my digital life for years. Whenever I come across an article I want to read (but don’t have time to read) — on my phone or on the web — I add it to my Pocket. I do this daily, often several times a day. Then whenever I have a little downtime — traveling, on a flight, over lunch at the office, in the evening — I grab my Kobo and read from my queue.

What’s Pocket?

If you have never used Pocket, here is a video (from 13 years ago) that demonstrates the use case and its value:

The core use case is still true today. Its integration with Kobo is what makes it magical:

Being able to read online content with the ads stripped out and nicely reformatted on an eReader you can take anywhere is such a more enjoyable lean-back experience.

Here is a video showing Pocket’s integration with Kobo (from 11 years ago):

Alas, this is all coming to an end — and soon: July 8, 2025.

Here is the official Mozilla blog post announcing the news and the related support article:

• Investing in what moves the internet forward (Mozilla Blog)

• Pocket is saying goodbye - What you need to know (Mozilla Support)

If you’re one of Pocket’s 50+ million users world wide, you may know how I’m feeling right now: abandoned, but not alone.

Media coverage

Here is a sampling of news coverage over the last few days:

• Pocket, One of the Only Apps I Ever Liked, Is Shutting Down (404 Media)

• Mozilla is killing everyone's favorite read-it-later app starting today (Android Police)

• Mozilla is killing its Pocket and Fakespot services to focus on Firefox (Ars Technica)

• Mozilla is shutting down Pocket (BetaNews)

• Mozilla is shutting down its read-it-later app Pocket (Engadget)

• Mozilla is shutting down Pocket, its read-it-later app (Nieman Lab)

• Read-It-Later Pocket App Will Shut Down on July 8 (PC Magazine)

• Mozilla is shutting down read-it-later app Pocket (TechCrunch)

• Mozilla is shutting down Pocket (The Verge)

How to export Pocket saved articles

According to Mozilla:

You will be able to export your saved articles, including items in your list, archive, favorites, notes, and highlights, until October 8, 2025. After this date, all user accounts and data will be permanently deleted.

• How to Export Your Saved Articles Before Pocket Shuts Down for Good (Lifehacker)

• How to export your Pocket saves (Mozilla Support)

Finding a replacement

With just 45 days until Pocket shuts down, the search for a replacement has already begun. If you have a recommendation, please share below or send me an email.

Leave a comment

Here is what my initial Google search suggested:

I looked at Raindrop.io, and Wallabag briefly. Raindrop looks intriguing but different. Wallabag may be a good option but with more complexity (need to self-host). I had looked at Instapaper many years ago and preferred Read It Later/Pocket at the time. I will take another look. I plan to test as many services as I can to find the most suitable replacement for Pocket. If you’re interested, I’m happy to share what I learn with you in a future issue.

Saving Pocket

Of course, the best case would be if someone could simply save Pocket.

Kevin Rose suggested he’d be interested in taking it over:

• Digg founder Kevin Rose offers to buy Pocket from Mozilla (TechCrunch)

My immediate thought was Kobo. Afterall, its native integration is one of its primary points of differentiation compared to Kindle (and the reason I’ve recommended Kobos to multiple people over the years). It might have a strategic interest in preserving this functionality.

Kobo’s CEO Michael Tamblyn is active on Threads. I thought about messaging him yesterday. I waited to see if there might be an announcement. This morning he posted this:

I’m encouraged by his comment that, “We’re taking a look at other web clipping options too, so as far as Kobo goes, one way or another we'll get this figured out.” I sure hope so. What’s unclear is the timing.

A look back

Nate Weiner started this nifty tool as Read It Later in 2007. As it continued to scale, Read It Later rebranded as Pocket in 2012. In 2017, Mozilla acquired it and Nate stayed on until 2020.

I’ve never met Nate in person but I’ve long been impressed by his story and the thoughtfulness imbued within Read It Later / Pocket. Here are two articles you might enjoy:

• How a Two-Day Side Project Turned Into a Productivity App with 11 Million Users (Zapier)

• The Story Behind How Pocket Hit 20M Users with 20 People (FirstRound)

And here is a video from November 2013 where Nate shared what the Pocket team had been working on:

🎵Pocketful of Sunshine by Natasha Bedingfield

This week’s musical embed continues in the theme of pockets.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Be well,

-Bryce

Did you? It could have been something small, something ambitious or anywhere in between. What matters most is the act of starting for this is how we begin to manifest the future we want to see.

If you decided to start something, no matter how small, I’d love to hear about it and celebrate with you. Also, your sharing just might inspire someone else to start their thing.

Leave a comment

But I’ve got too much on my plate, you might say. I get it. I feel this way sometimes, too.

Pay attention to what nourishes you and what drains you — which activities, interactions and and environments. To the extent you can, strive to do less of what drains you and more of what nourishes you. Realize you may have more agency than you think.

Perhaps you can delegate something at work or rearrange who does what at home. Maybe some of the things on your to do list don’t actually need to get done.

Be intentional and purposeful with your communication.

If your environment is impacting your ability to do your best work, change it. Recently, I’d let things accumulate and the clutter was really getting to me. Over the last week or so, I’ve focused on cleaning one room at a time and they now feel so much more peaceful.

The race is long and in the end, it's only with yourself. Remember why you started. Give yourself grace. And always believe in yourself. You exist and have a unique capacity to contribute to this world.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. To all of the mothers out there, thank you for bringing us into this world, for caring for us, for loving us — and for encouraging, nurturing and inspiring us to become the best versions of ourselves. You are amazing and we love you. ❤️

Have a wonderful weekend.

Be well,

-Bryce

Do you have an idea that’s bouncing around in your head? Maybe it’s a dream to start a gluten free bakery out of your kitchen? Maybe it’s a desire to find like-minded people who share your passion for making your hometown a better place? Maybe it’s wanting to see if you’ve really got what it takes to be a published poet instead of an office admin? (All true stories by the way.)

This week, I want to encourage you to start.

You may be a planner. That’s great. There’s certainly value in planning.

But I would argue there’s also value in just starting sometimes. You won’t know if your idea will get traction until you start.

I did something small this week that may be instructive.

The other night, I had an idea before bed. Rather than letting it roll around in my head or jot it down somewhere, I decided to act on it. Right then.

I created a showcase page on LinkedIn for the idea. I jumped over to Canva and created a logo. Suddenly, my idea had a container.

I was going to repost a few relevant posts from others when I decided to first write a launch post, explaining my rationale. I wrote it in one take and clicked post. At this point, this newly created page had zero followers and no one knew about it.

I clicked follow, liked the post and went to bed. It was 3am.

When I got up at 6am, I noticed three people had already followed the page. I was surprised — and encouraged. Over the course of the day, more people found and followed the page. By the end of the first day, more than 50 people had. I assumed most would be people I knew who had a shared interest in the topic. Curious, I took a look. Here is what I discovered:

While I knew the first two followers, had met the third before, and knew of the fourth, the fifth was new to me, demonstrating the power of networks. As people shared with their networks, more and more of the followers were new to me.

This was a key discovery. Initially, I had assumed this would appeal primarily to members of an existing community I’ve built over the last decade, but clearly there is broader interest, which is exciting.

The second chart above presents the same followers by degree of connection. While the majority of the followers are people I don’t yet know personally (88% by first chart), 64% of them share one or more connections with me, suggesting our paths might cross through the power of weak ties.

Even more striking than this modest number of followers was the number of people who saw that first launch post I wrote at 3am: over 1,000 people by the end of the first day!

While this may be nothing compared to the millions of views people get on TikTok videos, it’s significant given that that it was posted to a new page with few followers and I’ve done zero promotion of it (beyond that initial like).

Clearly, it is resonating.

Why am I sharing this? Not because I’m trying to impress you with these stats (I’m not). I’m sharing this as an early real world, real time example of what’s possible. Whatever you’re into, whatever your passion, whatever your cause, there are other people who share your interest.

If you’d like to make an impact, make the world a better place, or just make a few new friends, I encourage you to start making something.

Long time readers may know I’m a fan of the Holstee Manifesto. Here’s its creation story. If you’ve never seen the video, I promise you will feel moved in less than 3 minutes.

What do you want to start?

Leave a comment

If you’d like to discuss your ideas with other members, join us in the subscriber chat.

Thanks for reading. I hope you found this week’s issue instructive and encouraging. I welcome any comments or feedback you may have.

Wherever you are and however you read this, I appreciate your interest.

Be well,

-Bryce

It’s a question worth pondering sometimes.

If you are feeling grey today, you may enjoy this week’s media embed.

I was working out the other morning, listening to my playlist, when I put on a different track. This track:

🎵 Birds of a feather by Billie Eilish

I don’t usually read the comments on songs but one caught my eye:

Give it a listen. And, whatever your day may have in store for you, I hope you have a wonderful day today and each new day.

Be well,

-Bryce

PS: If you like podcasts, I’ve recently started sharing specific episodes I’ve enjoyed at podcasts.worthmention.com. Check it out and you can subscribe to get future episodes.

If you’re among the 43% of my readers who are outside the US, this would be a great week to catch up on any issues you may have missed in the archive or check out one of the most popular issues. You may also find the issue below of interest, too.

This week’s issue is based on one I wrote a year ago this week. I have updated both the copy and the calculator to reflect the current 2025 budget and also highlighted a few notable changes in our nation’s budget priorities year-over-year.

If you’re not yet a subscriber or supporter, you can become one here:

Subscribe now

I’ve often wondered if people would feel better about paying taxes if it was more apparent what you are buying with your hard-earned money. You know, kind of like a nutrition label.

As it happens, Visual Capitalist published this visual in 2024:

It’s great for seeing the relative proportions of various government services, but what I’ve always wanted is a customized invoice that says: here’s what your taxes are paying for this year.

So I set out to build one for us in 2024 and have updated it for 2025.

First, I had to track down the federal budget1:

Bold reflects areas where the budget has increased year-over-year from 2024. Specifically, an item appears in bold when:

• a line item has moved up in its relative position in the budget

• obligated amounts that have increased from last year

• % of total that has increased from last year

As I was updating this table, a few changes in spending priorities from FY2024 to FY2025 stood out:

1. Medicare increased 27% to overtake Social Security as the largest single budget line item (it was #2 last year; Social Security, previously #1, increased 7%).

2. National defense increased 13%.

3. Unreported Data2, which is essentially a plug, doubled.

4. Transportation increased 47%.

5. Community and Regional Development increased 101%, moving from 15th to 12th priority.

6. Energy increased 328%, increasing from 19th to 14th priority.

7. International Affairs increased 31%.

8. Commerce and Housing Credit decreased 38%.

9. Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services decreased 72%, falling from 11th to 19th priority.

Next, I tracked down the federal income taxes paid from FRED (St. Louis Federal Reserve) for each income quintile (lowest 20%, 21-40%, 41-60%, 61-80%, and highest 20%) and created this table, updated for 2025.

Finally, I updated the quick calculator in Excel I created last year that you can use to create a personalized summary of what you are buying with your taxes this year. Here is what it looks like (using the real median household income in 2023):

You can access it and easily create your own personalized summary here:

Calculator See Where Your Us Federal Income Taxes Go

36.3KB ∙ XLSX file

Download

Download

I hope you find this helpful. If you did, please feel free to share with others who might appreciate this attempt at a more user-centered approach to tax bills. (I’d like to do more, much more, but taxes call so that will have to wait for another day…)

Share

I welcome any feedback you may have and, together, maybe we can start a movement towards government providing a clear accounting of the services we individually and collectively use and support.

Leave a comment

🎵Media Embed: Music for Taxes

If you’re going to be spending some quality time with TurboTax or reviewing what your CPA prepared, I’ve got a soundtrack for you this weekend.

Here is the playlist your CPA might be listening to this weekend (it’s published by none other than the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA)):

If you’re preparing your own taxes, here’s a Spotify playlist for you:

Apple Music has a playlist called Tax Season Pop. Even iHeart has a Tax Day playlist.

Who knew tax-prep playlists were a thing?

Happy filing!

I hope you have a lovely weekend whatever you do.

Be well,

-Bryce

It was five years ago this week that the pandemic became real for many people.

I remember first seeing a small mention about an illness outbreak in China in late 2019 or early 2020. I didn’t think much of it at the time but remembered it.

On January 6, 2020, The New York Times wrote its first story … which appeared on page A13.

📰 China Grapples With Mystery Pneumonia-Like Illness (gift link, The New York Times, January 6, 2020)

It included this quote:

Two days later, The Wall Street Journal published a story:

📰 New Virus Discovered by Chinese Scientists Investigating Pneumonia Outbreak (gift link, WSJ, January 8, 2020)

It noted:

Two newer human coronaviruses, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV, have been known to cause severe illness and death, according to the U.S. CDC.

The Wuhan strain is similar to bat coronaviruses that were a precursor to SARS, a person familiar with the new findings said.

But it also included this assertion by K.Y. Yuen, chair professor of infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Medicine:

Given the marked advances in hospital isolation facilities, infection-control training and laboratory diagnostic capabilities in the past two decades, it is unlikely that this outbreak will lead to a major 2003-like epidemic, Mr. Yuen said.

At the time, “No cases have been reported in the U.S., the CDC said, adding that it is prepared to respond “if additional public health actions are required.”

The next day there was another news story in the WSJ:

📰 SARS Experience Guides China’s Effort to Contain New Virus (gift link, WSJ, January 10, 2020)

The first death was reported one day later:

📰 China Reports First Death From New Coronavirus (gift link, WSJ, January 11, 2020)

Things became more real ten days later, when the first case in the US was announced — in the Seattle area:

📰 Snohomish County man has the United States’ first known case of the new coronavirus (The Seattle Times, January 21, 2020)

It made NPR’s Morning Edition the next morning. By the end of January, the World Health Organization (WHO) would declare the coronavirus a global health emergency:

📰 WHO Declares Coronavirus Outbreak A Global Health Emergency (NPR, January 30, 2020)

A few weeks later, as I was flying to a conference for work in early February 2020, my partner gave me a mask to wear. I didn’t see anyone wearing a mask on the plane or at the conference.

Later that month, news broke of an outbreak at a nursing home in the Seattle area:

📰 First Covid-19 outbreak in a U.S. nursing home raises concerns (STAT, February 29, 2020)

One of my Seattle-based colleagues lived a few miles from the nursing home and it quickly became a topic of conversation. By the end of February, the governor would declare a state of emergency:

📰 Washington State Declares Emergency Amid Coronavirus Death and Illnesses at Nursing Home (The New York Times, February 29, 2020)

On Tuesday, March 10, I flew to Boise on business. My colleague from Seattle joined me. Someone flew in from Los Angeles. Another was local. We had a great day together (including delicious pizza). That would be my last flight for a long time.

That same day, Tomas Pueyo wrote a very compelling post on Medium titled Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now. I discovered it via my friend Moira Burke and shared it with my network on LinkedIn:

The next day, Wednesday, March 11, is the day it became real for a lot of people:

📰 March 11, 2020: The day everything changed (NPR)

That was the day that Dr. Fauci testified before the House that “it’s going to get worse,” the WHO officially declared it a pandemic, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 1,200 points (ending an 11-year bull market), and the president made a prime time address to the nation from the Oval Office. That evening, Tom Hanks announced he had tested positive and the NBA suspended its regular season.

Me? I was working from home that day while I was getting a new water heater installed. The next day, Thursday, March 12, I was back in the office.

I remember having a discussion with one of my colleagues, who had just joined us some months before. As talk turned to potentially closing the office and sending people home, he thought we’d be back in a couple weeks. I remember telling him I thought it was going to be longer. Neither of us ever worked in that office again.

My partner and I had plans to go out for dinner that Friday, March 13 at the 2019 restaurant of the year. It had been a hard place to get into and we finally had reservations. I remember wondering if it was still a good idea. In the end we went and the place was packed. That would be our last meal out for a very long time.

The following Tuesday, March 17, we officially closed our office and shifted to working from home. Many others already had.

…

Five years on, we look back at some of the defining images of the pandemic:

📸 The defining photos of the pandemic — and the stories behind them (CNN)

📸 Enduring Images of a Global Crisis (gift link, The New York Times)

This week, The New York Times had a really striking series of interactive charts that I highly encourage you to check out:

📉 30 Charts That Show How Covid Changed Everything (gift link, The New York Times)

The series highlights some of the lasting effects of the pandemic like:

• Americans now spend more on food at restaurants than on groceries

• We continue to spend more time at home than we did, on average, pre-pandemic

• We continue to spend less time socializing with others than we did pre-pandemic

• The share of women in the labor force (aged 25-54 with a child under 5) has increased to a record number, enabled by remote and hybrid work

• Public transit ridership has never recovered, down 200 million trips per month compared to pre-pandemic

• Students fell behind by around half a year of learning, which they may never recover

The pandemic affected each of us and all of us.

For me, it was a very personal experience. I highlighted a few moments on Instagram over the first few years.

What are some of your memories from the pandemic?

Leave a comment

If you’d like to discuss with other members, please join us in the chat this week.

🎵 Music embed: Songs of Hope

During the pandemic, some hospitals and medical professionals turned to music “trying to keep spirits high, both for patients and each other” (quote from article linked below). This playlist is a compilation of these songs based on this article:

Hospitals Play ‘Songs of Hope’ as Virus Patients Go Home (The New York Times)

We give our deepest thanks and gratitude to all of the amazing medical professionals that served during the pandemic.

Go deeper

Here are a few additional resources if you’d like to explore further:

News

• Seattle’s Patient Zero Spread Coronavirus Despite Ebola-Style Lockdown (Bloomberg Businessweek, March 9, 2020)

• A YEAR OF PANDEMIC (The Seattle Times, March 14, 2021) - really well done, with compelling images and stories from the first year of the pandemic in Washington state.

• How It All Started: China’s Early Coronavirus Missteps (gift link, WSJ, March 6, 2020)

Reference

• When Did the Pandemic Start and End? COIVD-19 Pandemic Timeline (Northwestern Medicine) - a high level timeline

• CDC Museum COVID-19 Timeline (CDC) - a detailed timeline

• Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic (WHO)

• Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic (WHO Europe)

Thank you for reading this reflection. I’d love to hear your impressions and reactions. You can reply to this email or send me a message.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Be well — and give a loved one a hug.

-Bryce

Only later did I realize that he was the author of the book with the provocative title and yellow cover that had been sitting in my shopping cart since the holidays. In real life, the paperback version is highlighter yellow.

On the same aisle, the person I was with noticed a red book book about TED talks. We both love TED talks. Perhaps you do, too? As we were leaving the aisle, I noticed a book by Seth Godin. Then one by Simon Sinek. Who is Simon Sinek the person asked?

Oh, he’s the find your why guy I replied. He had a TED talk about 15 years ago and has parlayed that into a growing empire that today is called The Optimism Company. I like Simon. I smile whenever I see him online and usually find what he has to say insightful.

But for me, it all started with his first TED talk. I remember it being powerful. Clarifying. Insightful.

I watched it again last night for the first time in years. He gave the talk in 2009. It was at TEDxPugetSound. I hadn’t remembered that detail. (It would later be published on TED in May 2010). The video quality isn’t as good as more recent TED talks but the ideas he shares still resonate today. His presentation is earnest and approachable. If you’ve never seen it (or if it’s been a while), I encourage you to watch it (18:01):

🎬 Watch on TED.com | More on TED by Simon Sinek

Leveraging stories about Apple, Dr. Martin Luther King and the Wright brothers’ discovery of human-powered flight, Simon shares a simple idea he calls the golden circle:

He explains:

This little idea explains why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire where others aren't.

Let me define the terms really quickly.

Every single person, every single organization on the planet knows what they do, 100 percent.

Some know how they do it, whether you call it your differentiated value proposition or your proprietary process or your USP.

But very, very few people or organizations know why they do what they do.

And by “why” I don't mean “to make a profit.” That's a result. It's always a result.

He continues:

By “why,” I mean: What’s your purpose? What’s your cause? What’s your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care?

As a result, the way we think, we act, the way we communicate is from the outside in, it’s obvious. We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing.

But the inspired leaders and the inspired organizations — regardless of their size, regardless of their industry — all think, act and communicate from the inside out.

This is a key insight.

Do you know your why?

If you do, you can help others by sharing it.

Leave a comment

If you don’t know your why yet, Simon has a free exercise you can do with friends to find your why. He also wrote the book Start With Why and a companion, Find Your Why that you may find helpful.

If you’d like to explore this further, please join us in the chat this week.

And remember:

I hope you found this interesting. Let me know what you thought. Thank you for reading.

🕑 Daylight Savings Time starts tomorrow. Clocks spring forward so we lose an hour tonight. Seize your Saturday and have a great weekend!

Be well,

-Bryce