Volume 6, Issue 10: Saved

"You have given everything to me. What can I do for You?"

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Everyone I know is on tilt, all the time. This has obviously been the case for a while now—I’d say a decade at this point—but 2026, a year that is only 38 days old, has pushed us all to the brink. People are worried about everything—their families, their jobs, their finances, their health, their security, their safety, their country, their mental stability, their ability to make it through all this. I try to remember, constantly, that everyone I interact with my life is dealing with this in one way or another. They’re going through it right now. We all are.

Like everybody else, I’m just trying to keep my bearings: to keep myself and the people around me as sane as level as possible. I’m trying to keep my cool. I am not always successful at this—ask the poor lady who made the mistake of mentioning that she occasionally uses ChatGPT for room design within earshot a couple of weeks ago—but I am trying. If you were to run into me on the street, I hope that you would think I was being at least somewhat successful.

It is, as I suspect it is for you, a constant battle. But I’m finding little ways to keep my head above water: Strategies that I find helpful. I dunno if they will work for you. But they are (mostly) working for me. My tips, for myself, to keep my wits, to keep my face from melting off, during this specific time.

Here are some things that are working for me, that are helping me keep my head, with a little assistance from my old friend Reddy Kilowatt.

Seriously, put the phone down.

I don’t mean this as some sort of anti-technology stance: I am, after all, on my laptop all day, every day, and am in fact on this laptop right now. I look at the same stuff everybody else looks at. But I do think there is a difference between sitting at a desk and looking at a computer and staring at your phone. One is something done in a controlled environment, that requires a certain bit of upright activity: Even if you are not working, sitting at a desk with a laptop feels like working, which provides a certain separation, you lean forward, you have a buffer, you engage. We look at our laptops when we are looking at the world; we look at our phones when we are out in it, or, more accurately, in and while still try to escape. You go to a computer; a phone follows you, everywhere. The phone envelopes us, keeps us from what we would otherwise be doing, whether it’s sleeping, talking to another human or even crossing the street.

It is obvious at this point that we, as a society, very much underestimated the ramifications of having a megapowered supercomputer that can instantaneously provide us the horrors of every person in the world—in our pockets at all times. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I’m very bad about connecting with my phone: I’m a bad texter, I’m an even worse poster, I’m not in any group chats, I’m always slow to respond to everything. The best way to get ahold of me, and to get me to respond to you quickly, is to email me, just like it was in 2001 and 2011 and 2021. I tend to miss a lot of your texts. It’s true.

I am willing to pay this price. When I am home, almost the only time you will find me on my phone is when I am talking on it, taking a picture of my children doing something weird, or right before bed, when I play 10 minutes of Last War before I go to sleep. I am very good at Last War. Last War is a very stupid game, but it is a very stupid game that is much healthier for my brain than scrolling through whatever fresh hell social media has for me.

I have found, for what it’s worth, that kids are better about phone mental health than their parents are, and a lot better than their grandparents are. (Here’s an excellent Charlie Warzel piece about that.) But yeah: As I get older, I am trying to be more and more conscious about only using my phone when I am out rather than when I am at home, and even then, trying to focus only on its utilities (telling me how to get where I am trying to go, updating me on sports scores, ordering me pizza) rather than its relentless efficiency at rotting my brain (vertical video scrolling, instant updates on whatever might enrage me next).

I’m finding some success with it—particularly in 2026.

Enjoy the things you enjoy and don’t feel bad about it.

It is an overstatement that Keaton Wagler and the success of the Illinois men’s basketball team, currently No. 5 in the country, is saving my soul right now. But only a slight one. The worst kind of person is one who chastises you for finding solace in the irreverent and irrelevant. (I have to decided this type of person must simply enjoy being miserable and has made it their goal to make sure we feel exactly as they do.) Finding escape in diversion has been a fundamental aspect of being alive since we were drawing stick figures on the walls of caves. You are not being irresponsible by losing yourself in sports, or obsessing over “The Traitors,” or reveling in celebrity gossip. You are giving yourself an out. You deserve one. You have earned one.

Also, seriously, Keaton Wagler will save your soul.

Help in ways that people won’t see or know about, but you will.

It can be overwhelming to see all the injustice and madness in the world—it’s forever cascading!—and feel like there is just too much to tackle. It can also be exhausting to see all this noted in a public forum; there is inherently a performative or self-congratulatory aspect to anyone who makes it very clear, for the world to see, how appalled they are and how much they’re doing to try to fix it. (You could, ahem, make an argument I’m doing that very thing this second.) You cannot change everything at once; if you could someone would have done it by now. Just find something in the world, in your life, that you know you could personally make even slightly better. You know what this thing is. It won’t be hard to think of one. There are millions of them; they’re not far from you. Just go ahead and do that thing.

And tell no one. Then do it again. It will amaze you how much it improves your mood.

Send notes to people whose work you admire.

I have made a conscious effort to do this over the last year, whether it’s a basketball podcaster whose show I never miss, or a teacher you know is working her hardest, or a writer who wrote something that I wish I had written. It doesn’t have to be creative, and in fact, it’s almost better if it’s not. We see quiet craftsmanship and competence every day in our lives, people doing what they do the way it is supposed to be done. Just tell someone, when you see it, that you saw it, and you appreciated it. It will make them feel terrific. It’ll do the same to you.

Call an old friend.

There are so many people that are important to me, and have been important to me for decades, but who are not active parts of my life at this exact moment. Maybe they live far away, maybe they don’t interact with me professionally, maybe they’re just in a different stage of life than I am right now. They still matter to me, and me to them, and the connection that we have remains strong and vital.

So just call them. Make up an excuse. Or just schedule a time—maybe they’ll think you’re dying at first, but an hour into the conversation, it’ll be just like it always was. Talk to them about the old times, talk to them about irrelevant bullshit, talk to them about whatever you want. It will make you both very happy.

Walk around the block anytime you can.

Don’t take your phone with you. Don’t listen to a podcast. Just walk down the street. Look at the trees. Wave to people you walk past. Glance up at the sky. Just be away from everything, outside, for 20 minutes or so. Get out there and move. Whatever is happening inside can wait. (Credit to my wife for this one, she’s a master of the Wellness Walk.)

Play a throwback video game.

Nothing quite combines escapism and nostalgia like a video game you used to dominate but haven’t played in years. It will startle you how quickly it comes back to you. My current obsession is NCAA Basketball 2010, the last college basketball game they ever made. (It’s the one with Blake Griffin on the cover.) It is gratifying to kick my kids’ ass in this game, considering I can’t beat them in anything that’s out now. Plus, that 2010 Illinois team was good, it had Brandon Paul and D.J. Richardson and Demetri McCamey. You also get to hear both Dick Vitale and Bill Raftery call your games.

Whatever your game is, play it. Lose yourself in it.

Hug someone near you.

They won’t be expecting it. And they probably need it as much as you do.

Find out what works for you. And tell others.

That’s what I hope you’ll do right now, in the comments, or just email me, or just go talk to someone in your life about this very thing. We could all use the help we can get. We’re gonna make it through this. We just gotta keep our heads straight—whatever way works.

Thank you. And thank you, Reddy Kilowatt.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. My Interview With Chuck Klosterman, New York. About his new book Football.

2. My Takeaways From the Brendan Donovan Trade, MLB.com. I’m actually going to be writing weekly about the Cardinals on MLB.com for a while, which will be fun.

3. This Super Bowl Is About Sam Darnold, The Washington Post. What happened at the Post was an enormous shame, obviously. I will continue to write for the Post when they will have me. I am of the belief that losing something good is a reason to try to make more good things, not to stop.

4. MLB Season Preview: Teams With Most on the Line, MLB.com. This is basically every team in the AL East.

5. I Previewed the Winter Olympics, New York. Also, I got Fox News’d! I was due for one of those.

6. Important Dates of the MLB Season, MLB.com. It’s all almost here.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, Grierson is back from Sundance, we discussed Send Help and Sexy Beast.

Morning Lineup, I did Monday’s and Friday’s shows.

Seeing Red, We’ll be weekly again come Spring Training.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“Here’s how Epstein broke the internet,” Ryan Broderick, Garbage Day. It’s wild how those documents can make you feel like the conspiracy theorists we’ve all been mocking for years.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers! I am finally all caught up on these! (For now.)

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“What’s Right?” Ratboys. This album is very, very good.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section. Let this drive your listening, not the algorithm!

I am in San Francisco right now and will be at the Super Bowl tomorrow. I have not been in San Francisco for nearly a decade, and I have to say, for all I hear about how much it has supposedly changed, it is as beautiful as ever. This place always feels like another planet entirely. There is no place like it. I need to come back more often.

Have a great weekend, all. Stay safe out there.

Best,
Will