First things first: Go blue! The Champions of the West put Ohio in its rightful place for the second year in a row and we did it in their own house. The universe is set right again. Hail to the victors.
Second- LOL sorry not sorry England.
Today STV is back from our long, long two week post-election vacation. As you’ll see in the Watch section, I had a lot of time on my hands. Now that we’re back, I’m starting a long-promised management class with some of my staff. We try to promote up in our tiny org as much as possible and as we have it has occurred to me that most people were out having fun while I was doing every internship I could find on three continents. If you need someone to change the toner in a Xerox machine, I’m your girl. If you need someone to sneak you into a club on a Saturday night, find someone else. As I age, I am trying to embrace my supreme uncoolness with limited success, but being perennially uncool has made me a good manager. You have plenty of time to think when you’re always home.
As yet another unicorn poop exchange crashes in the wake of FTX and Twitter is continuing it’s Kanye-esque downward spiral I’ve been thinking a lot about management. It’s something we’re really bad at in America and I’m not sure why. The nonprofit world is especially egregious in this regard and I have often been in rooms with other nonprofit leaders and silently hoped that their employees resign en masse as soon as possible. I don’t know if it’s because we’re still so extremely individualistic that we truly believe that the only way to move up is to climb on the backs of those below us, or if we’re all just barely clinging to survival and therapy is expensive so we take our anger and petty aggression out on each other.
There is probably some good writing on this that I haven’t found yet, so please send, but as the leader of probably the most vacation-forward organization in the country (my aunt used to take days off for her birthday and every new Batman movie and my mother would give us “mental health days” from school so I come from a pretty pro-vacation family) I am constantly stunned by how many EDs tell me they wish they could give their teams more vacation and when I tell them that actually they can they change the subject.
Personally, I think unlimited vacation is a moral imperative. Most of my staff are mothers and for some reason children are constantly in the emergency room, probably because kids are bad at stuff, and I could not bear it if a mom had to decide whether she can care for her clumsy injured child with the .4 days off she has left. My big win was when my staff started requesting days off with notes that said “birthday”, “I have a headache” or just “need a day”.
I was recently at a retreat talking to a young woman who was running her first nonprofit from home and said she felt guilty that she wasn’t always working 9-5. When I reminded her that 9-5 is a fake work standard invented by a white man for fake reasons I could see the lightbulbs going off in her head. Tim Ferris is probably not a great dude but he did the world a service when he published 4 Hour Workweek. I love working. It really is one of my favorite things. But I don’t love it as much as not working after doing lots of work. First we Hustle. Then we spend 30 hours watching Star Wars.
Anyways, here’s some stuff to do while you’re not working hard but also not playing hard.
Watch:
Andor (Disney +)- Disney hit it big with the Mandalorian and then immediately vomited out a bunch of IP that nobody asked for. But then they gave us Andor, and it was all worth it. Watch it. And then watch Obi-Wan Kenobi followed by Rogue One followed by A New Hope followed by The Last Jedi followed by Return of the Jedi. Thank me later.
THE WORLD CUP (Fox 11, Peacock en Espanol which is way more fun)- Watch the World Cup because it’s awesome and just remember at every second that it is run by an international crime syndicate and hosted by a homophobic country that murdered 6500 people and made hundreds of thousands more suffer deplorable and inhumane conditions to build their stadiums that hilariously boast signs that say “save the planet” while blowing air conditioning on 80,000 people per stadium for several hours a day. But also, Messi.
Nothing Compares (Hulu)- Our long run of vindicating women who were unfairly maligned for the crime of being women continues with this fantastic documentary about the total badass Sinead O’Connor. Watch it and then make every little girl you know watch it too.
Listen:
Men in Blazers (podcast)- After listening to World Corrupt I hopped over to the soccer/football/fußball pod of one of the co-hosts (no power on Earth can make me listen to a Pod Save podcast) and it’s super fun. I don’t quite understand why this English dude is more passionate about Team USA than 100% of Americans but I approve.
Defining Diego (podcast)- This is one of those pods that is great even if it’s very clear that the people hosting it are not professional podcasters. Also perhaps my standards are just extremely high at this point. But it’s about international adoption and the impact it has on all sides and I have recently discovered that I have some huge gaps in my knowledge about this subject so this is one attempt at solving that. I also recommend the excellent film Casa de los Babys.
All the World Cup songs (Spotify)- They’re so much fun and IT’S THE WORLD CUP.
Read:
Why can’t we all just be like Japan.
Big news out of Venezuela but is it ever a good idea to make a deal with Maduro?
You have a lot of holiday time coming up so here are a few of my favorite substacks that you should subscribe to:
recaps Judge Joe Mathis episodes and it is the funniest thing I read all week. is an update on all things happening in the booze industry which is how I knew about the shenanigans that the Busch heiress was up to while (unsuccessfully) running for Congress. And is the only way I kept up with all of the glorious, glorious Don't Worry Darling melodrama.