I sat down this Sunday (when I normally pen these) to write this memo with genuinely nothing. Not a polarising opinion, not a brand critique, not a half-formed thought, nothing. Which is a strange thing to admit in the newsletter itself but there it is.

Instead I did what I usually do on a slow Sunday which is to sit with a coffee and let my brain wander into places it has no business going.

Anyway, places it wanders to: Am I making the right calls with the business. Am I spending my time on the right things. It's not a crisis. It's more like a low hum that shows up most weekends and asks a few uncomfortable questions before letting me get on with my day. This particular Sunday this particular hum had a full agenda. We are looking for a new office again, which has quietly turned into me questioning whether we need an office at all, while also being fairly certain we're not becoming a fully remote team, so mostly I've just been going in circles in a mental WhatsApp chat with myself.

Similarly, my H2 2026 business plan exists in the sense that I have opinions about it (thanks, war and office hunting!), not in the sense that it is written down anywhere anymore (fixing that this week). I've started properly noticing what takes my energy versus what gives it back, which has been useful and also mildly alarming. And I still haven't worked out if the five doggos are getting enough of us, or if I've just gotten very good at telling myself they are. None of it is small; nothing is critical. But if I'm honest, this Sunday also had me mildly anxious about whether I'd left someone on read for too long, and deeply certain that everyone else has watched The Odyssey and I am missing out.

So it's not as if my brain limits itself to the big questions. It will happily spiral about a text message and a business plan in the same ten minutes, with equal conviction and no real sense of proportion between the two. None of this is really about the office, or the dogs, or The Odyssey specifically. It's the same low-grade feeling wearing different outfits every week, the sense that everyone else has quietly figured out the thing I haven't got round to, whether that thing is a decision worth six figures or a movie everyone's already finished.

The list never actually finishes. It just changes shape and finds a new costume. I've decided the answer isn't to catch up faster on any of it. We are not Dubai-it-ing it. It's accepting that being slightly behind, on the big things and the ridiculous ones, is just what having a business and a life and a functioning brain looks like right now. Nobody is actually keeping up. The people who look like they are have simply gotten better at hiding the list.

So for this week, just a Sunday, a coffee, an unwatched film, an unfound office, and me, writing about having nothing to write about, which I suppose is technically still something.

M.

A small thing I loved this week: no structure or theme, just sharing some favourites.

Indulge: I don’t know if you’ve ever had a Crunchie before but this is my childhood in Dubai rolled into pure, sweet honeycomb delight. I never finish a chocolate bar in one go except I am notoriously fast around these.

xx

Manuja

Not for everyone. Never was.