Apart from being the moment when I first learned I should always carry some kind of snacky with me (now protein heavy as well), I also learned something here for the first time: art is exhausting.

Once, when I was younger and working one of my first jobs, a customer approached me while I was reading. He asked what book I had, what I was studying in school. Without warning, this absolutely random person told me, "your one job is to not become a pessimist." He left. I never saw him again.

And so we went to a movie. We saw Close. The movie was based on a book by Niobe Way called Deep Secrets, a study of 150 boys between 13–18 years of age and their male friendships. It's a beautiful movie and a beautiful demonstration of that study. It documents the vanishing of the language of love as these boys mature and experience their first loss, that of a close friend.

I recently stumbled across something wild. My younger self. I was with Ole, and we were talking about some of the hidden work I’ve done, this time moderating sessions with the Boston Book Festival in the fall of 2020.

He was looking around but had his neck pitted, tilting just his head and mostly his eyes around scanning the room in his forward lean. His look was the accumulation of slow burnout arriving in a single moment. He was forlorn, bearing something abandoned, privately tragic but socially apparent. He was a flat tire on its last roll.