I just sent Michael Overton a message and noticed that as I soon as I typed the letter “o” it was completed to his name and address. So I got curious. Who are my 26 best friends as seen by Thunderbird?

They are Alex Townsend, Alex Barnett, Yida Chen, Daan Huybrechs, Heather Wilber, Patrick Farrell, Abi Gopal, Daan Huybrechs, Sarah Iams, Jacob Trefethen, Kate McLoughlin, Wanzhou Lei, Kate McLoughlin, Nick Trefethen, Michael Overton, Patrick Farrell, Qiang Du, Rob Corless, Sheng Yang, Nick Trefethen, Catherine Drysdale, Stephanie Vincent, Wanzhou Lei, Yidan Xue, Yuji Nakatsukasa, and Andre Weideman.

So my 26 best friends are 21 in number, and two of them are me.

[21 October 2023]

We often feel out of control, anxious about the innumerable things that need to get done, some real and vivid, others lurking in the shadows and harder to identify.

It seems to me that there are two broad approaches to coping with this anxiety: (1) get more on top of things, or (2) stop worrying so much about them. In my opinion, neither (1) nor (2) is always or entirely the right answer. It depends on the person, their state of mind, their stage of life, whether there are children in the house to be fed and clothed and got to school. For me now, the emphasis is decidedly on the first. My best strategy is (1) to try to stay on top of things, even though there are always a dozen more of them looming; while at the same time I write notes like this one to balance my portfolio with a spoonful of (2).

[21 October 2023]