You & Me

This is edition 110, the last of 2025. It is special.

I wrote The Thought's first letter in March. Eighty thousand words later, here we are. It was exciting when I noticed the first five readers. It is still exciting now, even if the dashboard displays four digits.

This year we explored how we perceive the world and how it deceives us. How we decide, and why we so often decide poorly. How we perform, stall, and burn out. How we construct identity from stories that may or may not be true. How we connect, attach, and misunderstand each other. How we search for meaning when the usual answers stop working.

Every edition shared a common goal: to understand why we think, feel, and behave the way we do.

But the better story lives in your replies.

The replies I receive reveal who reads The Thought and why you stay.

Many of you are navigating transitions that demand reinvention: staying mentally engaged after retirement or when careers shift, working through change that reshapes identity, feeling isolated after moving cities or countries. Others left university and discovered that making friends as adults requires deliberate effort.

Most of you are high performers wrestling with optimization itself: how to be better, do better, choose better. Some described how small decisions come easy but big ones spiral. Others named what stops them from trying new patterns. Fear of failure was the biggest culprit.

The most common thread was recognition. "I did not know this had a name." Naming something you have felt but could not articulate shifted the experience from personal failure to documented pattern.

Some described practical shifts. Taking a leap after naming what stopped them. Recognizing what sabotages focus. Others still wrestle with endless comparisons.

A surprising number of replies centred on relationships. Understanding partners through new lenses. Realizing why explanations never land. Making sense of why certain people drain you. Navigating workplace dynamics. Confronting bullies.

Some of you carry intense grief. For yourself or for others.

All of us want to feel connected. Heard.

Throughout this year I have received many replies and I treasure every single one. Some go deep. Others, just a sentence. Either way, thank you for trusting me with your thoughts.

I am a private person by default and vulnerability does not come easily to me. So knowing these letters have been read close to 21,000 times is, first, terrifying. But after the shock, I am left with an odd form of purpose.

Somewhere around edition fifty, I noticed a shift. I stopped introducing concepts and started playing with scenes. Specificity became generosity because you do not need labels. You need moments.

I now know that vulnerability and precision are not opposites. Psychological concepts become meaningful when grounded in real experience. The research gives the personal somewhere to land. The personal gives the research somewhere to matter.

I learned to trust fragments, because most of life is open to interpretation. I took a leap on saying more by saying less. Thinking out loud is now a bit more comfortable.

Some editions were extremely hard to write, for many reasons, but these letters have made me a better writer, friend, partner, daughter. I am glad we made it this far.

The work going forward deserves proper attention. First, a pause.

We will pause publications through January to build what comes next. Changing something that works is a risk. But staying still feels like a bigger one. The next letter will be waiting for you on February 3rd.

A sneak peek at 2026:

If you are new, welcome. I am sorry you joined just as we are going on a short pause, but the archive is yours to browse.

If you have been reading for a while, you have watched this evolve. You stuck around through the experiments, the format shifts, the editions that worked and the ones that did not.

If you have been reading from the beginning, you took a chance on something that did not exist yet.

For those who have opened, clicked, forwarded, written a reply, supported the store, or simply stayed: thank you.

You and I are here for the same reason. To name what we feel. To see the pattern. To be less lost. Less alone. To make it make sense. I love the work and I would do it without an audience. You are what gives it consequence.

See you February 3rd.

Lacey

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^{This publication is a space for exploration and reflection. Nothing in this email is medical, psychological, or therapeutic advice. These ideas are general insights on human behaviour, not treatment or diagnosis. Each reader’s situation is unique and deserves the right kind of support. If you are struggling or in crisis, please contact a licensed mental health professional.}