Eight Small Things: May 2025
Monthly field notes on what I'm eating, bookmarking, screenshotting, consuming, and learning.
A lot of my friends ask what’s on my radar—where I’ve been, how I find places, what I’m reading, or what I think about that very uncomfortable moment at work.
Since the last one of these, life’s been full: my birthday, two bachelorettes, meeting my newborn niece, and a string of long weekends. May brought three bank holidays in France, which meant stretches of intense work broken up by brief moments of calm before summer begins. I haven’t had the time—or attention span—to pen a longer essay, but those will return soon now that I’m catching my breath.
Here are eight small things I’ve been thinking about, learning, saving, loving, and letting go of.
(1) One thing I purchased:
A record at a Soccer Mommy concert. It had been a while since I went to a show without a splashy background visualizer; this one was intimate and anchored by a stripped down singer-songwriter setup. She “just” played guitar into a mic. Her lilting voice and biting lyrics washed over a room that was too focused on the music to have its phones out. My friend Shawne and I loved it for a chill Friday night. I picked up one of her albums on vinyl to play at home on peaceful, sunny days.
(2) One place I marked to eat or stay:
A luxury train journey through Australia with Journey Beyond Rail. We’re planning our honeymoon for the end of the year—about three weeks in Oceania—and I came across JBR’s four routes: the Ghan (Darwin to Adelaide), the Indian Pacific (Perth to Sydney), the Great Southern (Adelaide to Brisbane), and the Overland (Melbourne to Adelaide). Honestly, we’d do it if it weren’t closed during the exact stretch we’ll be there. What a beautiful way to move slowly through such expansive, cinematic landscapes.
(3) One thing I’m consuming:
Two great episodes of the NYT Popcast. Anyone who knows me knows I’ve been a loyal listener for the better part of six years, and now that I live in France, it’s often a lifeline to frontier American pop culture (at least through the lens of pop and hip hop music criticism).
One episode is a sharp breakdown of the Diddy trial, with two reporters who were in the courtroom. It’s the clearest explanation I’ve heard, covering the exact charges, context, atmosphere, and implications of various projected outcomes. The other is a conversation with Addison Rae that I found genuinely fascinating. She talks about deliberately “selling out” early to build a massive audience (over 88.5M followers on TikTok), and how that gave her the freedom to follow her own taste now that she has the fans.
(4) One trend I’m following:
Labubu. If you haven’t heard of it, I’m happy for you, and also, I’m sorry. I only learned about Labubus at my bachelorette-birthday in Miami, when my friend Eleanor (fresh off a trip throughout Asia - to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and more) put us on. They are insanely popular in China right now, and rapidly growing in popularity everywhere else on earth. The trend is part Beanie Baby and part Furby in terms of collectibles and aesthetics—it’s an elf like plushie with fangs—and part Pokemon Cards in the way that they come in blind boxes that bake in an element of surprise and make for dramatic haul videos on social media. Its staying power remains unclear, but I can’t stop following it.
(5) One photo from my camera roll:
Maybe one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen. We were driving down from the medieval hill town of Erice to Trapani and couldn’t believe the sky, so we pulled over to take pictures.
(6) One thing I learned at work:
People either overcomplicate early user interviews or don’t use them enough. I have the good fortune at work of interviewing business experts about specific topics. This month, I got to interview Kim Pham, co-founder of Omsom, and also Rob Fitzpatrick, author of the canonical entrepreneurship book The Mom Test, perfectly bridging my old life in food journalism with my current one in startups.
The point of early interviews isn’t to validate your idea. It’s to understand your potential customer inside and out: what their actual problem is, how urgent it feels, and what workaround they’re using now.
Kim told me she and her sister visited 50 home kitchens and simply watched people cook. That’s how they realized the gap they first solved for: many people want to make Asian food, but when the moment comes, they either don’t have the right ingredients or don’t know how to use them. So they launched sauce packets for easy flavor while cooking as their first product.
(7) One thing I ate and adored:
A hot tuna (real tuna, not tuna salad) sandwich with crushed pistachios and a squeeze of lemon, eaten overlooking crystalline blue water from a truck called Tuna City in Favignana. Truly the best thing I ate in May on our trip to Sicily.
Honorable mention for a carton of Georgia peaches my mom and I picked up at a farmer’s market in Palm Beach. My first great stone fruit of the summer season.
(8) One thing I’m sick of:
Everyone dressing exactly the same. If I see another Samba…
First it was the baggy pants, then the headscarves, then the ovular sunglasses and claw clips, then the mesh flats. Now it’s long, loose shorts with cowboy boots, or some other dainty off-match shoe. I hate it. I want people to develop their own point of view and dip in and out of trends—not wear every single one like a Pinterest costume.
Bonus Things
Where I was in May:
Sicily, Italy
Favignana, Egadi Islands, Italy
Paris
Palm Beach, Florida, USA
Miami, Florida, USA
One thing I stopped doing:
I stopped writing in my gratitude journal in the morning and at night. I enjoyed it at first but felt that I didn’t really need help noticing what’s good. What’s more useful to me is morning pages, where I can get all the noise and spirals out of my head and onto paper before the day really gets rolling. At least then those thoughts have somewhere to go. And then I never look at them again.
One unresolved thought:
It’s harder than ever to cultivate a point of view that actually feels singular—especially now, when music, outfits, opinions, everything—are algorithmically fed to people at scale.
If your work depends on new ideas, you have to know what the crowd likes. But you also have to protect yourself from it. You need inputs you chose, not ones you were handed. That’s harder than it sounds, and for example, it was interesting to hear Addison Rae talk about how she will turn off the radio when she hears a song she doesn’t like because she doesn’t want to absorb its sensibilities via osmosis.
Other miscellaneous articles I sent around this month:
New research suggests the classic midlife dip in happiness may be disappearing—and not in a good way.
The founder of protein bar brand David bought its key ingredient and then cut off supply to competitors who used it too.
Somewhere between a Birkin and an L.L. Bean tote, the Boatkin taps into a very American nostalgia that feels new.
A study finds that people living near golf courses face 126% increased risk of Parkinson’s due to nearby pesticides.
Cannabis use is rising fastest among older adults, especially those 65 and up.
Chocolate prices are climbing, but how much consumers notice—or care—depends a lot on where they live.
The former Juul exec is back, this time with a new delivery system: caffeine pouches (like Zyn) meant to replace your morning coffee.