Hi friend,

I have officially run myself ragged on travel for 2018. A last-minute weekend in Parisfollowed by immediately hopping on a plane to San Francisco 12 hours later to give a talk at a conference–this is the calendar straw that finally broke me.

I realize it's a glamorous ending.

But regardless, here I lie, sprawled out in the Virgin Atlantic terminal at SFO, writing to you a broken woman.

*whimpers into my peppermint tea*

Hi friend,

I had lunch in Chicago last week with a friend who's now a hiring manager–somebody I hadn't seen in too long, frankly.

She was catching me up on life, and her face lit up when she started talking about her team at work. All of the sudden, a manager of five. It honestly feels like yesterday that she was texting me with a heavy, stressy heart after a fruitless job search trip to New York the summer after graduation.

I could tell she's become a genuinely incredible mentor to this rapidly-expanding squad of employees.... and get this...

Hey friend,

I've been getting up at 7AM everyday for the last week. (I know that’s not a big deal but I don’t go into the office until 10AM, so….)

And as of last night I can officially say: HOLY SHIT, I TURNED THE #ENTRYLEVELBOSS BOOK PROPOSAL IN SO THAT MY AGENT TEAM CAN READ IT AND SELL IT AND WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW I DID THAT.

Click to watch the 7-minute video that I made at 8PM last night, sitting in the lobby of my day job office, in a complete daze after pressing send on that email.

Hey friend,

Yesterday, I sent you some homework. Today, I want to encourage you to actually do it.

Yep, seriously.

It's a simple assignment, but a profound one. Designed to stop you from dwelling on your career rut for yet another day... and think about what comes next instead.

Because happiness is impossible unless it’s quantifiable. If you want a job that will make you happier than the situation you're in now, you need to find out for yourself what happiness means to you. Explicitly.

Hey friend,

London is in the middle of the world's dumbest heatwave. It's 10:13PM as I write this and I'm still sweating. There are a lot of perks to being an expat in Western Europe, but the American kid may forever struggle with this whole lack-of-air-conditioning thing.

But also, like, I spent most of last week in Amsterdam drinking cold rosé by a canal. So... TL;DR I'm super fine, you know?

I had a lot of conversations in Amsterdam about the future.