The Friday Brew 10.9.26
If you’ve been around here long enough, you might remember The Friday Five, a weekly email I wrote for about ten years featuring interesting things I found around the web.
Later, I had another little feature called Musings, where I’d share thoughts, observations, quotes, and whatever else had been wandering around my brain.
And if you’ve known me for more than approximately eleven minutes, you probably know I love coffee. I used to make coffee memes every weekday, for crying out loud.
So I’ve decided to bring a few old traditions together and give Fridays their own little corner of What’s Next.
Welcome to The Friday Brew, a weekly collection of interesting finds, useful recommendations, passing thoughts, and occasional weirdness. Some weeks it’ll be thoughtful. Some weeks it’ll be ridiculous. Most weeks it’ll probably be a combination of the two.
There are no prescribed categories, no required life lessons, and absolutely no
homework.
Grab your coffee. Let’s see what’s brewing.
1. Something I Use and Love: Fastmail
I love a good tool that does its job without requiring me to become a part-time systems administrator just to use it.
That’s one reason I’m such a fan of Fastmail.
It’s a beautifully designed email service built around privacy, security, and actually making email pleasant to use. It has the features I need, including calendars, contacts, and custom domains, without burying everything under seventeen layers of unnecessary nonsense.
Everything you need and nothing you don’t.
If you’ve been thinking about moving away from the usual email giants, it’s worth a look.
Disclosure: That’s my affiliate link, so I may receive a benefit if you sign up through it.
2. Something to Read: And Then What?
I’ve also been developing a publication over on Substack called And Then What?
It’s built around a question I’ve been asking for years, particularly when I’m working through decisions, problems, and plans: And then what?
Because making a decision or solving an immediate problem is rarely the end of the story. What happens afterward? What does that choice set in motion? Where does it lead? And is that actually somewhere you want to go?
It’s a place to explore those questions, along with the sometimes surprising consequences of the choices we make.
If you enjoy the territory we explore in What’s Next, you might enjoy wandering around over there, too.
3. A Little Musing: The Fine Art of Doing Absolutely Nothing
Yesterday afternoon, I found myself in a peculiar situation. I wanted to work on something, but I also didn’t. I considered switching projects, but that didn’t sound particularly appealing either. I thought about taking a nap, except I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to sleep.
Eventually, I figured out what I wanted.
Nothing.
Not a movie. Not a book. Not a podcast. Not an opportunity to learn something, accomplish something, or improve something.
Just forty-five minutes of lying down with my headphones on and absolutely nothing expected of me.
And you know what? It was lovely.
We’ve become so accustomed to filling every available moment that doing nothing can feel like something we need to justify. As though an unoccupied half hour is a problem waiting for a solution.
Sometimes it isn’t.
Sometimes it’s just a half hour.
And sometimes that’s plenty.
4. Well, Would You Look at That? An Albino Puma!
Because apparently the world contains creatures that look as though somebody accidentally turned the saturation all the way down.
An extraordinarily rare white puma was photographed in Brazil, and the images are remarkable. Pumas are normally tawny or reddish-brown, so seeing one with an almost entirely white coat is quite a sight.
The animal has been described as albino, although I’d want to confirm that classification before getting too enthusiastic about the biology. Albinism and leucism can produce similar-looking animals, but they’re not the same condition.
Regardless, it’s a beautiful reminder that nature occasionally produces something so unexpected that you have to look twice.
And there you have it. Our very first Friday Brew.
A useful tool, a little reading, a reminder that doing nothing is an entirely legitimate activity, and a big white cat.
I did warn you there wouldn’t be a theme.
Hey, it’s Lee
I’m a writer, strategist, and professional question-asker who has spent more than two decades helping people and organizations make sense of complicated things. I write about life, work, human behavior, and the systems we build, inhabit, and occasionally need to dismantle. I’m also particularly fond of unconventional thinking, good coffee, and asking, “And then what?”
