Week 47, 2025— chasing sunlight

The weather in Paris has been dismal and it’s hard to tell whether I’m down / things feel harder than they need to be or if it’s a seasonal dip. Going out one night didn’t help—I’ve had so little alcohol these last few months that a few glasses of wine threw me out of whack for two days. Lame. I’d much rather have had two nicer days than the drinks…

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I finished reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and am very pleased I have the paperback version so that I can pick it up again in the future, both literally and figuratively. I started Brené Brown’s new book, Strong Ground. She is a researcher first and foremost and the book presents her latest research, as distilled from client work, academic research, expert interviews, all kinds of other conversations and her own life experiences. There’s two layers of the book: what the findings are, and what she thinks about what they’re learning in the field and practicing themselves. I don’t know if that’s a style that speaks to the mainstream but it’s certainly an attractive one for me!

Week 46, 2026 — small changes

It was another nice week at home, with a near-ideal balance of work, sport and meeting friends. Tried a new cafe, a new restaurant and a new neighborhood grocer. All were great and serve as wonderful reminders to keep trying new places. In recent months I’ve had to unpin so many of the establishments I’d saved on Google Maps in the past decade. So much turnover.

Speaking of new things, I started keeping a journal (handwritten!) which is a mix of notes, reflections and lists. It’s working for me, and by working I mean it’s actually becoming a habit, which I can scarcely believe. Will continue tinkering away at it, without overthinking it, and see where I am in a few weeks.

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I had the chance to speak at an online event with my Greaterthan colleagues about our experiences trying alternative approaches to distributing money. Good stuff.

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I chanced upon a paperback copy of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha so I put Steppenwolf to the side for a moment. It’s a lyrical, fast-paced, novel-style book and I spent a very pleasant afternoon immersed in it. The book didn’t touch me the way it seems to have profoundly impacted many others. Which doesn’t bother me much—I quite enjoy reading and watching reviews and interpretations to help me appreciate what I hadn’t spotted myself. Also making a note to self to read Tezuka Osamu’s Buddha when I’m in Japan next. It would be fun to read a version of this story as a Japanese manga.

I continue to love Anne Lamot’s Bird by Bird. I’m reading a few chapters a day and am sad that it’s almost done.

Week 45, 2025 — another quiet week

Another quiet week—I’m pleased that I managed to get to the climbing gym four times. I haven’t progressed much in terms of skill but I’ve reached a point where I’m enjoying the sessions themselves. That’s a milestone I never reached with running during the 200 kilometers that I ran to train for the Paris Marathon in 2015. It’s also fun that my gym has three locations that are on “my side” of the city. Since the days are getting darker and colder, it’s good to have more reasons to get out of the house. It also helps that I’ve regained access to the Velib bike system. That is a boring story of my credit card being blocked, which I won’t get into.

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I finished reading Nadjeschda Taranczewski’s “Conscious You: Become The Hero of Your Own Story”. I met Nadja through her CU*money program, which is a wonderful program that helps people redesign their relationship with money. I’ve recently become active in her Conscious Tribes Community and look forward to attending more community events.

I started reading Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird” and enjoying it a lot.

Week 44, 2025 — quiet days

I came back from Bavaria mid-week and sent another Postcard—yay! I get a nice handful of replies each time, sometimes from people I haven’t interacted with in ages, and that makes me happy. For me it’s a win to send out a clean signal that’s perceived to be inviting enough to spontaneously shoot back a reply or text. A while back I thought to myself, it would be something to still be sending sporadic Postcards in ten, twenty years time. It was a thought that opened my aperture for this project and makes me feel more generous and generative.

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I cleaned and oiled my hiking boots over the weekend. These are proper leather boots that I splurged on a dozen years ago, after being enthralled by a store staff who taught me what to notice in my feet. It’s only these past few years that I felt I’ve grown into someone who hikes enough to be wearing these kinds of shoes. I resoled them this spring at a specialist shop in Paris and upgrade the insoles, too. I’m caring for the things that carry me, and realizing I’ve become the person I once bought them for.

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I finished reading Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. It’s a business book that is partly an autobiography of Guidara’s successful career in the restaurant business. All of the stories are from his early days or his experience building Eleven Madison Park into a Michelin Star restaurant, which I enjoyed alot, as it’s not a world that I’m familiar with (other than through TV shows like The Bear). The meta-lesson that I got from this book is not to accept industry norms or customer expectations at face value. Anything and everything is open to observation and experimentation.

Week 43, 2025 — late fall in Bavaria

I’m co-working at a friend’s outside of Munich for a few days. It’s peak foliage all around and early snow up in the peaks. We made apple strudel, watched Interstellar and hiked the Ammergau Alps which runs across Bavaria and Tyrol. I learned about the story of the Oberammergau Passion Play, where villagers perform the Passion Play once every 10 years to uphold their promise to God since 1634. I feel well-rested and grateful for the change in pace.

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I read Neal Allen’s “Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic”, mostly spurred by this comment from Nadia Bolz-Weber, “If you’re ready to stop being an asshole to yourself and need more than fluffy affirmations, this book is for you.” It’s an accessible, psychiatric take on Buddhist enlightenment without religious or even spiritual undertones.

Less than 10 weeks before the end of the year.

Week 42, 2025 — Beautiful, glorious leaves

This week was a pleasant blend of quiet time and catching up with friends. I’m realizing it’s a pattern—the first week after I’m back from travel, I like to recharge at home, and the week after that, I’ll start going out again. It was the “second” week, so it makes sense that I was able to go on four outings with friends, catch up on some errands, and go for a ride.

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One highlight: I was able to send out a Postcard and spent some time tracing what it took to get there. I don’t feel bad about the frequency of my personal newsletter but I do wish I felt more at ease with writing and sending them. The past few months of these Weeknotes was a slow onramp that led to new energy for writing. The kick I needed was Anne Lamot: “First, stop NOT writing.” I read that on her brand-new Substack (!!) and thought, huh okay. Simple as that.

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Another highlight was finishing the Hilma af Klint biography. I had only known of af Klint’s work in isolation, and hadn’t realized the extent to which her spiritualism could be contextualized to a broader set of religious and philosophical movements in the West. The links to Rudolf Steiner, for example. I would like to deepen my understanding of Western esotericism… maybe this encounter is a continuation of my interest in the Cathars in the last few years!

I also skimmed a non-fiction book on Life Admin. Begrudgingly, as I used it as a forcing function to grapple with the topic long enough to find perspectives that would help me overcome a lifetime of being allergic to it. Which I am tired of. The book was helpful to normalize some of my behavior patterns, and recognize that my privileges and life circumstances are such that I am shielded from what could be much heavier burdens and consequences. I’m going to work on a new identity in relation to Life Admin.

Oh, I also read (“read”) the manga version of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I meant it to be a refresher but actually I’m not sure if I read this one. I must have started with Getting Naked. That was the first business book that I actually connected with. I wish there were more business fable manga in English. It’s an established category in Japanese non-fiction.

Binge-watched the third season of The Diplomat, too. Alright that was a LOT of reading and watching, made possible by sleeping less and not exercising at all. Will shoot for a better balance next week…

Week 41, 2025 — socks weather, officially

A while back I told myself that the sandal weather was over for the year but of course chanced it one more time. It’s really over though, despite how sunny it may seem. I shall wear socks from tomorrow onward. And shoes. I should hide my sandals.

It has been a super busy week. In my brain! It feels like a week of fresh air, mountain views and wonderful conversation cleared my field of vision and now that I’m back, all kinds of ideas and desires are rushing in to fill it. It was frantic, it was exhausting, and it was thrilling.

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I finished Kasia Urbaniak’s book “Unbound: A Woman's Guide to Power” this week. It’s my second time reading it (the first attempt had a strong start but disappeared into the Kindle blackhole as my eBooks tend to do) and having recommended it to a new friend, I wanted to read it properly so that I could enjoy discussing it with her. It was still great and I’ve been having fun mapping Gestalt concepts to it, with the help of ChatGPT. To be continued.

I also read Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s “Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World”. It was a speedy read, as I’m familiar with her writing from the Ness Labs newsletter. I don’t think I really wanted to read the book per se—I wanted to sit with the idea of experiments as a default mode of being, and chose this book as a way to doing that.

I spent an average of 60min per day reading on the Substack app. There are some great writers there, and it’s easy to discover new ones. But the creep of the algorithm is always there. It’s inevitable that soon my hours will explode and I’ll start resenting the experience. The trick is to stay connected to the writing that I want to follow, and not get sucked into anything else.

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So, a ton of fun with reading, exploratory conversations and all kind of scheming, on top of my regular client work load. I’m also in rest and recovery mode from a week of hiking, so I slept a lot. Next week I will re-start my daily stretching and exercise routines.

Hey it might be the first time I’m publishing a weeknote on Saturday. Tomorrow I’ll spend the whole day with a friend in the forest.

Week 40, 2025 — Hiking Picos en Europa

I spent the week in Northern Spain, on a long-anticipated hiking trip with friends and collaborators. We started on the Basque Coast, then crossed into Asturias and Cantabria to explore different areas of Picos en Europa. Two short walks and three big hikes.

I loved it! Can barely believe my fortune, in good company in good weather. I have half-finished reflections and stories swirling in my head, not to mention photos and route information to organize, but will publish this short piece to keep with the weekly practice.

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And in keeping with my habit (practice?) of lugging home bulky, beautiful books, I discovered a biography on Hilma af Klint at the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Author Julia Voss casually mentions that she learned Swedish to be able to read af Klint’s notebooks. Spurred by this display of commitment, I am now a happy owner of a copy of her efforts and relish diving in.

Week 39, 2025 — Lake Balaton and back home

After a very intense training period, I met with a good friend to decompress and catch up. We rented bicycles and rode around Lake Balaton for a few days. The infrastructure for leisure cycling there is excellent, with paved bike paths with good signage and villages every hour or so to grab a bite to eat. We dipped in the lake a few times—parts of it are very shallow as you can see from the photo—and let the sun dry us while we cycled on. What fun! We celebrated the intentional investment in our friendship, our foresight in planning an enjoyable, easygoing trip, and our good luck with the late summer weather.

I flew home to Paris afterwards and spent the rest of the week playing catch up, while checking in with my training cohort peers to support each other re-enter our respective home and work systems. Tending to re-entry is a lesson we were encouraged to learn after the first module: to reconnect with those who held down the fort while we were away, to have compassion for ourselves as we adjust, and to consider what to put in place to serve our learning. I find this perspective very valuable, considering all the travel that I do. I’m fortunate to have these opportunities and it causes a lot of wear and tear.

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Oriana and I ran the first Emotions at Work public workshop, Your team's emotions about using AI. It was great to see participants jump in with both feet to discuss this topic with strangers. I find that in general, people are hungry for conversational spaces where they can pause to reflect, and learn from each other’s experiences. With our renewed focus on team leads, the potential ripple effects are even larger—an experience with EAW could be the difference between being able to breathe during a hard conversation or not, impacting the nature of that relationship in uncountable ways.

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I started reading Leadership in the Age of Not Knowing: Strategies for Leading in a Learning Way by Mary Ann Rainey and Jonno Hanafin. I’ll read it in parallel to The Fertile Void: Gestalt Coaching at Work by John Leary-Joyce to deepen my understanding of the Gestalt ways of being that I’m learning.

Week 38, 2025 - in the grand city of Budapest

I’m in Budapest for training, fatigued but feeling alive with new experiences and the certainty that I’m learning exactly what I want to be learning. The barrier to entry to this training is high, in terms of the time, energy and financial commitment. It acts as a forcing function for each of us to make the most of the opportunity - people are hungry to learn, ready to take risks and intent on making the most of every moment. The goal is to become more of who we are as we develop as leaders, and strengthen our skill of influencing human systems.

It’s my third time here, so I’ve decided it would be acceptable to forgo sight seeing. I still stumbled onto some amazing sights while taking night walks with my peers, though. What a city!