Mike's Window

March 29, 2026

Scenes from Saturday + Food & Fashion

If you need a little reminder that spring is indeed here, baseball season started this week.

Just remember, baseball is “designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.” That’s a quote from the late, former MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti.

He also said, “Baseball is about going home, and how hard it is to get there and how driven is our need.” That thought has been driving stories and experiences for centuries.

March 22, 2026

Scenes from Saturday + Pizza & Pickle

Two reminders for myself this week. These are the types of things that I would repeat to Cecilia before she could drive and she was sometimes trapped in my car. She would give the obligatory eyeroll and hashtag #dadlessons but we’re planting seeds here.

First, 90% of success is not getting distracted. This is quickly becoming a define-able and hire-able skill. The average adult can no longer go six minutes without being distracted. Yikes. Deep work is rare. Consistent work is rare. But you can do it.

Second, so many advantages in life come from being willing to look like an idiot in the short term. I still struggle with this but feel as if I’ve gotten much better about this in the last five to ten years. When studies show your satisfaction and quality of life improve in middle age, I’m convinced not giving a f*ck so much is a major reason.

Good luck convincing teenagers of this.

March 15, 2026

Scenes from Saturday + Comps & Cards

Two things collided this week in an unexpected way: daylight savings time and Ally’s upcoming history test on the fall of Rome.

Turns out the Romans had their own version of daylight savings, but they took it further. Instead of nudging the clock an hour, they adjusted the length of the hour itself. Summer hours stretched to 75 minutes. Winter hours shrunk to as little as 45.

Time really was relative.

The logic was simple: if the sun was up, it was daytime and you worked. If it went down, leisure time. No ambiguity. No arguing about when to stop looking at email.

It makes for a great flash card. I’m just not sure I’d love the practical implications. A 75-minute hour in July sounds like a lot of extra Tuesday afternoon meetings.

Still, there’s something almost appealing about a world where the day’s length bent around human experience rather than the other way around.

I could potentially get behind a calendar that admitted December and July are not, in fact, the same.

March 8, 2026

Scenes from Saturday + Needles & Thread

I found this week’s inspiration the way I find most things: by avoiding something else entirely.

There I was, scrolling instead of working, generally marinating in that low-grade anxiety that seems to be the signature vibe of 2026, when I stumbled across a letter Franz Kafka wrote in 1912.

“Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.”

Feeling uplifted by Kafka. I know.

But something about it landed. Because it’s not 75 Hard. It’s not 120 grams of protein before lunch. It’s not whatever the current social media meme is telling you that you should be doing differently.

It’s the subtle maneuvers. Showing up day after day. The small shifts in attitude and habit that don’t feel like much in the moment but somehow, over time, add up to something.

I think this applies to creative work, to fitness, to parenting, where the big dramatic gestures almost never land quite the way you want, but the quiet, consistent presence somehow does.

Kafka, who had objectively a lot to complain about, wasn’t talking about optimization. He was talking about tiny moves, wriggling through.

Maybe that’s enough.

February 24, 2026

Scenes from Saturday + Steam & Speakeasys

Over school break last week, we made our first official college visit.

Cecilia really enjoyed the place. The weather certainly didn’t hurt. We came from home, which is currently doing its best impression of a walk-in freezer, and landed somewhere that felt almost suspiciously pleasant for February. I couldn’t argue with that part of her search criteria.

I knew she was liking it because during the tour, Cecilia asked questions. Real ones. To the actual tour guide, out loud, in front of other people and their parents. Anyone who knows her knows that’s not nothing.

One of those things that you eventually learn is that it is the people who feel a little weird, a little different, a little misunderstood are the ones who often end up having the most to say. They just need to find the right room first.

Maybe that’s what college visits are really about. Not the meal plans or the student-to-faculty ratio or if the rec center has a climbing wall. It’s about standing somewhere new and letting yourself imagine if you might belong.

She’s going to be just fine.

I didn’t say any of that out loud, of course. That would be embarrassing.

February 15, 2026

Scenes from Saturday + Roses & Recycling

Piloting a new life rule in February based on my old friend Ralph Waldo:

“Finish every day and be done with it… You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. To-morrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.”

Days are getting a little longer now. They are at least moving in the right direction, so solid advice. Except sunset is still happening before I’ve left work.

I do like the simplicity. When the sun goes down, the worry shop closes. Problems get dealt with in daylight. After dark, we’re off duty.

Okay, I’ll admit maybe the rule isn’t really about the sun at all. Maybe it’s about creating a line somewhere, anywhere, that says “this is enough for today.” The sunset is just convenient because it’s visible and definite and happens whether you’re ready or not.

Winter forces you to get more deliberate about that line. You can’t just wait for nature to draw it for you at a reasonable hour. You have to decide when enough is enough, when you’ve done what you could, when it’s time to let the blunders and absurdities go.

Basing your mental health on celestial mechanics is probably a poor coping mechanism, but the principle still holds: at some point, you clock out. You just have to choose when.

And tomorrow really is a new day, whether it starts in darkness or not.

February 8, 2026

Scenes from Saturday + Dough & Snow

I got caught completely off guard this week with the news about Catherine O’Hara passing. She seemed to be finally getting the recognition she long deserved. Of course everyone’s talking about Home Alone and Schitt’s Creek, and she was phenomenal in both. Beetlejuice too. But being dog people in this house, our favorite was always Best in Show.

There’s a quote from her I keep coming back to, not from a movie but from an interview. She said this about humor: “My husband and I laugh about everything all day long. My parents were blessed. They laughed until the end. That’s the best way to live because there’s so much sadness.”

Not a lot to laugh about these days in the world, which makes that quote land harder than it probably should. And we’re deep in the teen years over here in our household, where laughing and being silly decidedly isn’t cool. Every eye roll reminds me we’re in that phase where manufactured detachment is de rigeur.

I can’t wait until this phase is over. Is there a better, more healing sound than your kids laughing?