Sometimes you lead with the questions.
Why am I getting this? Well, I picked 41 people in my life as the first recipients. Some of you I know very well, some less so, but you came to my mind as I drew up this initial list.
Why 41? It's my age (until June 1st). I like these corny connections.
What is this about? Great question. Let's just call it a year of weekly letters that I'll use as tools to figure out the next chapter of my life.
OK, soooo draft four is a pun? I told you; corny connections. Fourth decade, and also the name of a book very dear to me (Draft No. 4), because it talks about nonfiction writing as a craft of building, rebuilding, trying, discarding. It's about writing as intentional labor. That's not how it is for everybody, but it's how it's always been for me.
Why is this in English? I often feel I'm freer thinking/writing in English. It's a second language, and a second self to some degree. (I want to explore this further).
Can I get out of this? Anytime. No reason to stay subscribed if you don't need it. On the flip side, if anything in here is interesting, pass it along to a friend. You're the only promotion mechanism I'll use.
Anything else you want to mention? Always a great question in an interview. The honest answer is “I have no clue what will be in here, or where it'll take us”. The unknown is scary as shit, but easier to tackle alongside other people.
What I'm thinking about
In what ways is obsessive detail-oriented work unsustainable? You might have heard that the world-famous restaurant Noma, in Copenhagen, is changing gears in 2025, shape-shifting from a restaurant into a laboratory doing who-knows-what crazy projects. Though I've never been (one day, maybe), I've followed chef René Redzepi's work, because I admire his risk taking and his creative process. He loved to experiment so much that, after a grueling week, they ran contests where the staff came up with new dishes, just for the joy of it. (It was called Saturday Night Projects). A decade ago he founded MAD, a platform/training ground to explore the changing nature of our relationship with food, but also how the industry can be better to the planet, and its people.
Of course he benefited from the exploitative culture of kitchens (the NY Times story spends some time on this), but he's also come a long way to understand how they perpetuate hierarchies, and divisions. When he called the Noma way "unsustainable", part of what he is saying is that to continue delivering the experience they set out to create, while also doing right by the team, and all the stakeholders – the planet included – would have made it an even more exclusive offering. (“In an ideal restaurant, employees could work four days a week, feel empowered and safe and creative,” he said. “The problem is how to pay them enough to afford children, a car and a house in the suburbs.”)
This is not just a matter of figuring out the business model. What Redzepi wanted to deliver as an experience was something "extraordinary". Creating a dish required hours of tedious and repetitive work. It required many people, and, yes, a pecking order of experience. It required a devotion to the craft that might not be what many of us want today from an endeavor that, at the end of the day, is labor, not leisure.
"Good enough" might be more than enough, right? Both in terms of quality, and in terms of effort. So why bother?
This piece by Jeff Gordinier (who also wrote Hungry, a book on Redzepi that I recommend for anyone doing creative work) wrestles with some of these questions, and concludes this (emphasis mine): "Ordinary food is dependable and comforting, and I am very much looking forward to my ordinary lunch of tinned sardines and rice, but is that what we always want? Forgive me for saying something that is no longer fashionable to say, but I kept going back to Noma because Noma was extraordinary."
I hope that as we wrestle to bridge gaps of inequality, to give people more control of their time, to be more aware of our impact on our personal and natural ecosystems, we don't discard the idea of doing something "extraordinary" simply as a luxury, a privilege, or worse, a whim.
There can still be a kind of "extraordinary" built on the love, respect and devotion one has for their craft.
And yes, of course this got me thinking of the longform intimate journalism I’ve been involved with for almost two decades now.
When my colleague Andreea Giuclea profiled record-breaking swimmer David Popovici this summer, I heard a few voices say we shouldn't champion an individual's striving for excellence, one who aims to always better his own performance.
I understand how unrealistic standards can break us, and yes, we should be more mindful of how they are communicated or enforced. But we should also cherish those that show us how far we can actually go. Yes, we should find ways to make more experiences affordable. But we shouldn't discard everything that comes with a hefty price tag. (Or, in the case of journalism, with any price tag at all.)
I subscribe to the Redzepi school of restlessness, and my obsessive nature often got me (and others) in trouble. But it also created our best memories, and most memorable projects. If we just coasted at the existing "good enough" level, we wouldn't have made anything extraordinary. Sure, we also found out the hard way that sustained excellence – in journalism, in Eastern Europe – is also unsustainable (not just financially). But that shouldn't be a reason for anyone to stop trying to aim for at least the occasional "wow". On the contrary.
Speaking of narrative nonfiction, obsession and extraordinary work, this magazine piece on homelessness in Boston is all that. It's about one doctor's decades-long quest to tackle one of the hardest societal problems we face because of inequality and failing systems. It's both a tremendous reporting and writing accomplishment, and also a diagnosis of broken systems and how to mend them.
New year, new complaints? As we venture forth into a year, we'll bring many of our complaints with us. But what if the way we complain – especially about our jobs and our bosses – is detrimental? What if it makes problems worse, and us into accomplices? This conversation sheds light on how we can complain in a way that changes everyone’s status quo.
The fragility of everything is a difficult thing to contemplate. We, along with everyone we love, will perish. For many, that's a paralyzing thought. For some, it's an inspiration. Just trust me and listen to this edition of On the Media where, among others, Guido Tonelli, a particle physicist, takes on the question of our vulnerable world: "Imagine for a moment we have been in the last the 2.500 years speculating that we are subject to death the while, the moon, the sun, the planet Earth was, eternal. Now, science tells us that there is an inner fragility in the entire universe, and so we as material beings share the same fragility."
Bonus climate reading: This is one of the best "state of our planet" overviews I have read in a while. It's about about the stories (some dark, some hopeful, some naive) we tell about our future.
Bonus restaurant culture: If you are into kitchen stuff, Disney+ carries both the amazing 8-episode series The Bear, and the darker-yet-comic The Menu, which does poke at fine dining culture, much of which deserves it. (For me, it's a more enjoyable satire of class privilege then the more obvious Cannes winner, Triangle of Sadness, which is still worth a watch). And there's always that beautiful documentary, a combo of kitchens and obsessions and love: Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
Imi place cum scrieti. Si mi-ar place sa citesc si ceva scris de dvs. in romana, desi, inteleg tendinta de a scrie in engleza.
Can I get in touch with you somehow? Ask a few hard questions, maybe you can shed some light, I missed out on my chance to even try to write something that could be considered DoR material, so whatever you do next, I'd like to be a part of, if there's any chance...