Hi Reader,

I was ill last week. Three days, stuck to my bed, not even considering a run. This almost never happens. I don't get ill. Until I do.

When I finally went out for a walk, somewhere between my front door and the next corner, it hit me like a stick on the head: what if I slowed down the podcast?

Before any sensible objection could arrive, I felt excited. Liberated, to be honest.

In seven years of podcasting it had never once occurred to me that I could just decide to slow it down. To publish only once every two weeks.

Somehow, when I started, I got the advice that consistency was key. I have never challenged it and so I had become a slave (maybe an addict, even) to the statistics: the weekly metrics and some — unspoken, imaginary — expectation that the people on the other side of this email are waiting for me to deliver. Are you, Reader??

I started the Unprofessionalism podcast for my own research and my own curiosity. There is a book I want to write about the topic and currently even I don't have the time to properly digest one conversation before the next one is released. I turned myself into a machine and forgot the most important part in the process: the processing of the information! And funny enough, nobody pays me for this. Nobody. Which means I am the one who set the rules and never dared to break them.

So from now on, this newsletter and the podcast arrive every other week.

The first slow week is next week, because I am getting married. The best moment to start a new chapter. No newsletter, no episode, for the first time in seven years.

🎤 Waiting for you on the Unprofessionalism podcast:

Speaking of bodies that stop.

I recorded this episode with Alissia Quaintance and I am still thinking about this part a lot: We celebrate Pride at work, we talk about LGBTQ+ rights, we are slowly getting better at speaking about mental health and neurodiversity. And then there is women's health: Periods, endometriosis, fertility, perimenopause, menopause. Things that affect half the population and somehow still feel too personal, too uncomfortable, maybe even too unprofessional to bring into a meeting.

And I am no exception. I have been incredibly lucky with my period, no real pain and barely any symptoms, and I remember friends complaining about theirs while I thought: It can't be that bad. Back then, I didn't know any better. And today I know that yes, it can be that bad and even worse if nobody talks about it because it leaves people like me comfortably ignorant. When we don't know why a colleague is struggling, we make something up: She's unreliable. She's moody. She can't handle the pressure.

Alissia opened a meeting at one of the world's biggest tech companies by asking every woman in the room where she was in her cycle. What might happen when we actually knew?

🎧 Click here to listen to the interview

📥 Download my 1-page summary

​UP_033_Summary.pdf​

That's it from my side. I'll see you in two weeks!

Myriam