Capsule #121 ft. Emma Fridsell

Hello hello,

I’m 29 today! I would love to hear from any wise people on whether you think it is a good idea to make a ‘30 Before 30’ list or whether such an endeavour is not worth your time. Hit reply to this email if you have thoughts!

Today’s issue is a precursor to the busy festive period that can leave us feeling frazzled. I’m trying to bottle the holiday lessons before they fade away!

And the wonderful Emma Fridsell is also here with a Hot & Not.

Enjoy the weekend ahead,

Holly x

I’m not sure if you can feel it too, but we are just on the cusp of what we affectionately call “silly season” in the UK. Mulled wine, glitter, drunken karaoke with your colleagues. Much of the goodness happens at this time of year.

But on the flip side it is also burnout season: calendars packed with post-work drinks, pre-Christmas catch ups with friends, end of year deadlines, a big list of gifts to sort out (the Capsule gift guide is coming, don't worry). We like this part of winter because there’s a lot of fun to counter the darkness, but I’m already noticing the early signs of exhaustion.

A friend asked me this week for some advice on balancing all of the above. Faced with new work pressures, a flurry of 30th birthdays and a new routine, they were struggling to show up for the important stuff without going mad. I sent over a few of the classic tips you’d expect - safeguarding bits of your calendar, getting realistic about how much you can do on weekdays, and so on, but I realised that these measures are only half of the story.

I am still close enough to my two-week break in Mexico to remember how differently it feels to be in your brain and your body on holiday. It always takes me a while to ease into it, but once I get there, the shift is pronounced. I feel creative, energised, and interested in things I loved as a young teenager. I feel curious about the world around me. There is some sort of life force that can only worm its way out into the open through genuine rest and detachment from the pressures of regular life.

So how can you access that magical portal in your normal routine? Is any of that wonder even possible during the busiest time of the year?

I think it is. In Mexico, I found myself observing the small, repetitive tasks of people around me. The folding of napkins in a city centre hotel, perfect pockets designed to hold two forks and a knife. The rolling down of parasols on Zicatela beach, a daily routine to prevent them from blowing away or being stolen overnight. They would be erected the following morning of course, stand for their 16-hour shift, before carefully being collapsed again at sunset.

These daily, mundane tasks are exactly the sort of thing that an optimiser might diagnose as an inefficiency, something we could streamline or implement tech to do for us. But how else is time better spent? In these examples, is time spent strategising about other parts of these businesses genuinely better than folding a napkin?

I found these moments of manual repetition fascinating because they reminded me of the parts of our lives we often wish away. Chores like washing the dishes or putting out laundry. How frequently the bin needs taking out. Walking to the shop to buy milk every two days. The tasks we often resent at home felt peaceful through my holidaying lens, meditative processes that made me believe there is no more valuable way to spend our time.

You might be wondering what folding a napkin has to do with coping with burnout this winter. I think we can learn from this by making space for small, not conventionally valuable or productive activities that enable us to slow down and turn down the brain chatter. The best example I have currently is doing a jigsaw puzzle, a meditative practice that surprises me every single time with how successful it is at putting my mind at ease. There is no real point to completing the puzzle. You literally break it apart when you finish and put it back in the box. But the time spent searching for edge pieces, accumulating blue hues to tackle the sky, and sitting in silence with a loved one while you both tackle opposite ends of the picture does something that feels like a vital tonic to the stressors of modern life. And of course there’s no high quite like finding a crucial piece that’s been hidden for hours.

And that’s my bid to us all over the next few weeks, that we commit to giving ourselves the time to do something to slow down, perhaps use our hands, without a pressured goal to succeed in some way. It might be a jigsaw puzzle or it could be collaging, playing with clay, or organising your books into alphabetical order. We can’t always take away the big things like work deadlines or social commitments, but we can make sure our time off is better quality than the default setting of worrying about the next few days or scrolling our phones. And if you do need help managing your diary and saying no to a few things, here is Little Simz on the power of no. Another important resource this season!

And finally…

News from the Capsule universe this week:

• Welcome back to the stage, Hilary Duff

• And after a closer look, is Hilary’s new song about a certain well-known actor?

• You should put a long-sleeve under your tailored waistcoat like Jenna Ortega

• Once again in awe of Olivia Dean’s gown collection

• Two words: face card

• Ludovic de Saint Sernin has collabed with Zara

• Did we all see this

• Okay let’s remember the name Adéla

• AI imagining what it would be like if Taylor slayed…

• Jennifer Lawrence appreciation!

• Surely you’ll be able to buy these soon

• And what a great cover this is

This week, Emma Fridsell popped into Capsule to share what’s 🔥hot🔥 and what’s not 🙅‍♀️ …

Emma is a content creator, stylist, and creative consultant from Stockholm. She’s currently based in New York City.

📺 Watching: Bugonia in the cinema, this awesome first Rosalía performance, and ‘Dopamine’ the new Robyn song and video.

📖 Reading: ‘The Coolest Girl on Earth Seeks God,’ an article by Spencer Kornhaber on Rosalía’s Christiancore moment, Jennifer Lawrence’s cover story on motherhood for W mag, and like everyone else this week, Charli xcx’s new Substack.

🎧 Listening to: ‘House,’ the new Charli xcx song with John Cale of The Velvet Underground for Wuthering Heights, EUSEXUA Afterglow, the new FKA twigs album, and Hayley Williams on Five Best Songs. Also Florence Pugh on the Louis Theroux podcast, a great listen in which she talks about her relationship with Zach Braff, why intimacy coordinators aren’t always the silver bullet you might think, and listening to your body.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear how you’re finding Capsule - let me know here. And if you have a friend who might like it, do refer them! 🥺

See you next week 💋

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