I just watched a documentary on Nora Ephron by her son, called Everything is Copy. That was her motto—that everything in life could be spun and used for comedy or essays or the movies. It reminds me a lot of things that I’ve heard about mindset, or how to make money on line. “Content mindset.”

I was also struck by the observation that everything obviously wasn’t copy to Nora, as she told absolutely no one about her cancer. The comment was made that “everything is copy” applied to the things that you were done with, the things that you wanted to reframe, the things that you didn’t like anyway. The truly special things in life—those were not copy.

In a way, I agree with this. I haven’t made everything copy on my blog, but certainly there are things that I’m open about and those are usually the things that I don’t care too much about. The things that I really love, I don’t talk about.

Also, somehow I never noticed that Nora Ephron wrote Mixed Nuts, which is utter insanity and yet somehow one of my favorite comedies.

There’s a truism on the internet (or rather, in the Twittersphere) that everything comes from compound interest. That’s one way of thinking about it, but lately I’ve been mulling over the idea that most problems are this really complex web of interlinking parts. In order to solve the problem, each one of those linking parts also has to be solved. It takes time to build momentum, and you’re just solving one small issue after another, until the day that all the small problems are solved—and then *poof* you level up.

That’s why you get so many people who say “oh, it’s easy, just do ______” when it’s really not that easy. Finding that one missing piece only works after you’ve assembled the other 999 pieces. The hard part is doing the work, not figuring out the work that needs doing.

Speaking of which, I got to experience the results of my ‘spiderweb’ approach today. I’ve not been happy with my social life, especially after moving to a new area of the world. I’ve never been much of a social person, and I really fell off after I got pneumonia three years ago. Time for a change.

So for 2019, I gave myself a challenge. Each week, I had to do something social. It could be as small as having coffee with a coworker outside of work, or it could be throwing a party. Anything recurring only counted once, such as the small group that I joined at my church. I gave myself as much latitude as possible to ‘win’ each week.

At first, my social interactions were still few and very small. Then gradually, as I remembered what it is to interact with people and weave together a social life, the asks became more and more frequent until this week I found myself with a real, live social calendar, including a hike and lunch today. And it’s only March!

I’m not letting myself off the hook, because the challenge is to be more proactive and deliberate about my social life. Gotta take responsibility.

Still, it’s gratifying to watch the results of one’s actions.

All that talk about Nora Ephron’s keen powers of observation and her allegiance to the written word make me wonder if I have the chops for a column like hers.