Week of Nov. 12, 2026

From the editor’s desk

I’m writing the newsletter from bed today.

I’m on day 11 of recovering from ankle surgery. The foot needs to stay elevated most of the time, so the bed is my office for a while. It’s also my dining table, movie chair and crafting table.

Don’t worry—I’m doing OK and healing as fast as one can, and I have an amazing support team. (Thank you, kind family and friends!) 

This is my first-ever period of relative immobility, and there’s something about it that I find surprising: Instead of feeling cooped up (so far), I’m finding the forced downtime actually enjoyable. I’ve been visiting with friends who drop by, getting in some family board-game time, crafting, consuming entire seasons of TV shows in a day or two, and finally making progress on the excellent novel I started reading in July.

My first choice would be to be up and around, of course. But all of the above are things I very much enjoy doing, yet don’t often get around to. 

The last time I did all of those things on a regular basis was, well, the last time I had no choice—during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns in 2020. Life slowed down that year. I was working from home, so I didn’t reach the point of extreme downtime that many people did—my sock drawer never got organized; I did not take up sourdough—but the usual, small, constant expectations of everyday life eased up, and I felt like my time was suddenly my own again.

As the world sped back up to its normal pace in 2021, I hoped to maintain the sense that I controlled my own time, rather than it controlling me. But no amount of willpower helped, and no list of time management tips helped. I fell right back into the whirlwind of constant distractions and demands. As a journalist, as a parent, as a citizen, it seems like the number of things I’m supposed to be paying attention to is practically infinite.

This has all got me wondering whether it’s possible to slow things down when there’s not an emergency. To tell you the truth, I don’t have high hopes. Our culture is not built for it. My own heart and soul aren’t really built for it, either. So, I’ll savor the luxury of hours-long periods of mental tranquility while I have it.

I know it won’t last.

Take care,

—Kris Vagner, managing editor