I am Margot.

The newsletter started, like most things, by accident. I had been keeping a private journal since I was eleven — first, embarrassingly, in a series of pink hardbacks with kittens on them; then, less embarrassingly, in a series of Muji notebooks that all looked alike. By 2018 I had filled forty-two of them, and one rainy October afternoon a friend named Lia, who lived above me at the time, asked very seriously if I'd ever thought about giving them away.

The first issue went out on the 7th of November, 2018, to forty-six people. Two of them replied. One of those replies became a four-year correspondence and, eventually, a small book.

Things I am not: a journalist, an expert, a critic, a productivity person.

Things I am: a fairly slow reader, an occasional and impatient cook, a person who has moved cities four times in nine years and is in the process of admitting that this might not be a coincidence. I grew up in Manchester, studied literature in Edinburgh, lived briefly and unhappily in London, worked for two years at a small magazine in Mexico City, and finally — five years ago, on a one-week holiday that became a six-month sublet — landed in Lisbon. The flat has a balcony, a small disorderly kitchen, and a view of a square. I am not going anywhere for a while.

What I am trying to do, with this newsletter, is something almost old-fashioned: write to a specific person, twice a month, about a real thing I noticed, in language that is not in a hurry. The specific person is someone I imagine vividly and have never met. The hope is that the writing is useful, occasionally, in the way that overhearing a stranger on a train can be useful — by accident, and only because she happened to be saying something true.

If you have read this far, you are probably one of the people I am writing for. Subscribe, or don't. Either way — thank you for the minutes.