Just found out today is Earth's half-birthday. Let’s PANIC! 🙀

How are we already 182 days into the year? ALSO: Do we measure too much stuff? I asked a real psychiatrist.

Bonjour! Welcome back to AND ANOTHER THING.

Today’s newsletter is coming in extra early because I’m working from Europe this week. (Thanks to Mom and Aunt Gail for watching the kiddos back home.)

Last night in Paris, Delphine Arnault, the CEO of Dior, received the Legion d’honneur from Emmanuel Macron. I was chuffed to attend the ceremony at the presidential palace in the presence of France’s debonnaire president. His remarks were touching and sincere. He teased the honoree about her rebellious teenage years (she smoked cigs!), gave Jonathan Anderson’s recent appointment the presidential seal of approval, and had this fabulous one-liner: “If the devil wears Prada, God must wear Dior.”

This weekend, Larry Gagosian is hosting his annual one-day-only exhibition at Malaparte, the renowned mid-century architectural marvel that juts out from a rocky cliff on the island of Capri. Every year, he features a different artist, and this time it’s the absurdist genius Maurizio Cattelan. (Yes, the man who made the $6.2 million banana.) Then it’s back to Paris for haute couture fashion week, which Daphne Guinness once called “fashion’s laboratory.”

Be sure to check your inbox for a special AND ANOTHER THING photo diary after the shows. Until then, I’m drowning myself in SPF and sweating out this European heat wave:

Moving on…

Happy half-birthday, Earth!

I was inspired to write this newsletter after reading a New York Times newsletter—yes, my whole personality is now newsletters—that announced today is the halfway point of the year.

It read, “182 days on either side of July 2, the precise midpoint of 2025… There’s something satisfying about having exactly as much road behind you as you have before you. Look over your shoulder. Where have you been? And where on earth are you going?”

This is the gist: If we make New Year’s resolutions or top-of-year annual goals, this new holiday—if that’s what we’re calling it—is our half-year check-in. A sort of mid-resolution moment.

I read this and thought, Am I halfway through everything I wanted to do in 2025? Umm. IDK?

Usually, I love data. I crave facts; I live for success metrics; I keep a tight, packed schedule. But, as the Times put it, was it satisfying? Actually, I feel anxious.

Yesterday, the memes reminded me a zillion times that it was the first of July. Pinch, punch, first of the month! (Don’t touch me.) Two weeks ago, I wrote about how, after a lifetime of assuming the summer solstice was a pagan astrological ritual, I did some research and—woops—it’s an astronomical fact. Now, I’m being told we’re halfway through the year and we need to assess our annual planning. Already? Really?

When did every date become a milestone to celebrate? Why are we compelled to keep measuring everything against timelines? Surely, Melissa Kirsch, who wrote the newsletter, meant no harm. She was merely encouraging readers to level-set for the rest of the year: “No more horsing around, now it’s time to straighten up and fly right.” She coined it “The Summer Reset” (capitalized, so it feels official), emphasizing possibility over punishment. But does anyone else feel exhausted?

The tension of July 2nd hasn’t eased since I read about its newfound significance. It reminded me how obsessed we’ve all become with milestones:

My iPhone (and my mom’s Facebook) sends reminders of what I was doing on this day 10 years ago. We measure a president in his first 100 days. We count our steps. Spotify Wrapped. Follower counts. How many likes did that pic get? Dry January! Sober October. Do people still care about The Whole30 Diet? What’s your best Wordle streak?

When I was a kid, the only thing we measured was how many licks it took to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. Now, we track the number of hours we sleep, and with devices like the Oura ring, we rate the quality of that sleep. Confession: When I worked at Google, I stopped referring to time in terms of seasons and started using quarterly reports instead. “What’s your Q3 look like?” replaced “What are you up to this fall?”

Our smartphones obsessively monitor our screen time and provide us with a percentage breakdown of the apps on which we spend it. (Four hours isn’t that bad, right? RIGHT?) Our smartwatches remind us to stand up when we’ve been sitting for too long. My algorithm just served me this story: ‘I burned 10,000 calories from exercise in 30 days -- here's how my body changed.’ How dare you, Cosmo!

For a Vanity Fair cover story I wrote about Emma Watson in 2017, I interviewed Sheryl Sandberg about the actress’s positive influence on the world. It was a few years after her book Lean In came out, and she was living in micromanaged bliss. Her office informed me that we could speak for exactly 10 minutes, and she called me precisely at our agreed-upon time, providing me with precisely 600 seconds of quality quotes. I was so impressed by how efficient and well-organized her life was. Down. To. The. Minute.

But a year later, Michelle Obama was asked about Lean In and offered a sharp counter: “Sometimes that shit doens’t work out.”

Now, I’m wondering: Have I become too focused on numbers, dates, data, and goals? Do you? Is there a health risk in documenting everything? Does counting everything ultimately distract us from doing the thing we want to do?

I decided to phone a friend. For all my mental health needs, I call

Dr. Samantha Boardman

, a Harvard grad, Cornell MD, author of Everyday Vitality, and the voice behind Positive Prescription Substack. Our friendship has spanned more than two decades, and she’s regularly proven to be one of the smartest, most generous, and most logical people on this planet.

“I love this topic,” she said when we first spoke.

Here’s a condensed version of her medical explanation of the trauma behind our obsession with metrics:

There’s a psychological phenomenon called “measurement myopia,” where we become so fixated on the metrics that we lose sight of what matters. Your 10,000 daily steps become more important than actually enjoying movement. (I had a patient who would do laps around her tiny studio apartment into the wee hours just to reach her goal.) Your meditation streak matters more than whether you feel centered.

Yes, tracking devices can be a great source of motivation, but they can also become a great source of exasperation. Consider the person who meticulously tracks their happiness levels but forgets to actually enjoy themselves. Or the individual who is so focused on optimizing their sleep score that they develop insomnia from the pressure to perform well in bed—literally.

In our quest to optimize our lives, we have created a new form of anxiety—the fear that we’re not measuring enough and not measuring up.

My advice? Set measurement sabbaths. Designate times when you deliberately disconnect from tracking. Go for a walk without your fitness tracker. Have a conversation without rating its quality. Eat a meal without logging it. Revolutionary, I know.

Above all, remember that some of the best things in life cannot be measured. The depth of a friendship, the satisfaction of creative work, the peace that comes with a quiet morning, quality time with your dog, hanging out with your family, the joy of reading a beloved Substacker. The goal isn’t to live an unmeasured life—it's to live a life where measurement serves you, not the other way around. The most important thing isn’t whether you hit your target, it’s whether you lived your life fully, meaningfully, and according to your values.

At the end of our chat, Samantha mentioned her recent Substack post on “goblin mode.” Frankly, that spoke to me much more than this new celebration of Earth’s half-birthday.

The truth is, I want to exist somewhere between the hyper-effective professional who’s always leaning in—and this goblin. I want to set goals, track them, and achieve them. But I also want to let it all hang out and get ugly sometimes.

So, this is what I’m going to do—and feel free to join me: Today, July 2nd, will be my tracker day. Where do I stand with my writing goals, and how far ahead have I planned my Substack newsletters? What are my top secret projects and fantasy jobs? What do I have in the brain bank here? I’ll press publish on this newsletter, and then I’m going to spend the rest of today relentlessly, methodically leaning in to plotting the rest of the year. This is my kick in the ass. HAPPY HALF-BIRTHDAY, 2025, YOU GOT MY ATTENTION TODAY.

But tomorrow, I’m taking my foot off the gas, if even a little bit. By Friday, I’m going to coast into the weekend. Capri is probably a good place to do that, right?

I came across this line from Albert Einstein while pondering today’s text, and it really hit:

“The best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.”

Tell me: Do you have any tips for staying on track while living in the moment?

Thank you for reading to the bottom! Please like, comment, and tell all your friends to subscribe to this newsletter.

See you next week!

Derek C. Blasberg

PS. This is also very important: July 2nd is my brother’s birthday. Happy birthday, Chris!