Lisa Weiss

September 30, 2026

What are you not doing?

Inside: A great book, tackling your big ideas, and lemon ice box pie

Hello!

This month, my focus is on how we can return to accomplishing the great big goals we've lost sight of. Do you have something you'd like to accomplish but haven't?

Sometimes, we set our big goals with someone else in mind (a parent, a former version of ourselves). Other times, we need a roadmap, a plan, some inspiration from others with the audacity to create.

Related to this, I'm currently reading a book that is so brilliant and ambitious, it gives me hope for the capabilities of our fellow humans. This book is an antidote to apathy, and proof of what can be achieved when a talented person steels their resolve to create a big, beautiful, scary thing.

The book is The Disappearers, the new novel by Marlon James exploring the hidden queer history of the author's hometown of Kingston, Jamaica. James drops you straight into 1988 Kingston and never lets go. The book is shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize and Dwight Garner called it the masterpiece of the decade, if not the century, in the NYT.

The Disappearers is also remarkable for its use of voice. If you're interested in seeing the human voice come alive on the page, you'll drink in the narration and experience the distinct personalities words can conjure. It's something to study!

Here's to big things this month.

---

In this issue:

Recommendations Ideas and things I love right now Practice Taking small steps Just Curious What are you reading and watching?

Recommendations

Ideas and things I love right now

To support this month's topic, I returned to Arthur C. Brooks's 2024 essay in The Atlantic: "Schopenhauer's Advice on How to Achieve Great Things." 🎁 Gift link here. If you have a big, overwhelming idea or project you're trying to accomplish and need an infusion of hope and strategy, check out this insightful piece. Brooks breaks down Schopenhauer's advice into modern, replicable, bite-sized steps toward achieving what sometimes seems like the impossible. Essentially: keep the grand vision in sight, but focus your efforts on the small day-to-day actions.

For a few months, I was casually seeing Claude (Anthropic's AI assistant and large language model, also known as an LLM), but now we're on the fritz. Claude was useful for protesting my real estate taxes and many other tasks, and I'm grateful for the time we've spent together, but I'm feeling more hopeful and alive now. Which is why I'm glad to have received my pre-ordered copy of Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines by MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle arrived yesterday. I'll report back in greater detail next month after I've read it, but I'm eager to explore Turkle's ideas. I loved Turkle's 2011 book Evocative Objects and use it for work I'm doing around our relationships with physical objects.

When my family visited Washington D.C. earlier this year, we had lunch at the Occidental and ate the best lemon icebox pie I've ever tasted. Since then I've been clamoring for more, so I tried to make my own. If you're looking for a luscious, easy-to-make dessert, I recommend whipping up a lemon icebox pie. And there's no shame in a store-bought crust; achieving big goals doesn't leave a lot of time for rolling out buttery dough. Here's the recipe I made, and it turned out superb with very little effort.

Just Curious

Have you noticed, like I have, a proliferation of articles claiming that people aren't reading novels anymore, that it's the "end of reading"? Reading big books right now feels contrarian. But is it, really? What do you think, and how often do you read novels?

Reply to this email and let me know!

I'd also love to hear what's inspiring you on your bookshelf (and streaming cueue). Next up for me: Fleabag. I missed this one and bookmarked it while perusing "The 100 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century" coverage in the NYT.

Practice

Taking small steps toward bigness

This month's writing practice is inspired by the Arthur C. Brooks article linked above, "Schopenhauer's Advice on How to Achieve Great Things." 🎁 Gift link here. Step 1: Read the article Step 2: Think about your big project. Write for five minutes, answering the following: What's one day-tight compartment you can build out to move things forward? What noise do you need to block out in order to make this happen? What and/or whom (think: person, song, book, movie, show, pet) is a good companion for you as you embark on this project, and why?

Love this issue?
Forward it to a friend who'd enjoy it, too.

Forward to a friend