And the Award Goes To... Getting Through It

This is my one of favorite times of the year: award season.

While most of the country organizes their weekends around NFL playoff games, I’m in my own version of the postseason. The red-carpet playoffs. The slow march toward the Super Bowl of spectacle - la pièce de résistance - the first Monday in May, also known as the Met Gala.

Award season is basically the soft launch of the guest list. We’re watching it assemble in real time. Who’s in. Who’s out. Who’s making their debut. Connor and Hunter, obviously, angling for playoff status this year - and clearly earning a seat at someone’s Met Gala table. (If you know, you know. Heated Rivalry hive, stay with me.)

And honestly? Award season couldn’t come at a better time.

It’s a distraction. A sanctioned escape. It gives you opulence while you’re sitting on your couch in sweatpants that have fully accepted their fate. It lets you imagine what it might feel like to be celebrated for your work… until you actually do have somewhere to go, at which point it’s all anxiety, regret, and “why did I think I wanted to leave the house?”

Been there. Done that.

Somewhere between the red carpets and the acceptance speeches, I realized I’m not actually being powered by ambition or outrage right now.

I’m mostly getting through on honesty, a decent sense of humor, and the rare moment where no one needs anything from me and I can just breathe.

Once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop seeing it everywhere.

And I couldn’t help but wonder - is this it?

Not the awards or the spectacle, but the honesty, the humor, and the parts of life that don’t need to be taken so seriously.

I miss Joan Rivers.

And yes, I still resent her a little for going under the knife one last time - not because of vanity (I fully plan to be lovingly touched by an angel with a scalpel when biology catches up to me), but because we lost something irreplaceable when we lost her.

What made Joan iconic wasn’t just that she was funny - it was that she wasn’t trying to be liked. She said the quiet part out loud, skipped the disclaimer, and trusted the audience to laugh. The jokes were sharp, sometimes shocking, but the point was never cruelty. The point was release. And watching Nikki Glaser host again this year felt like the same muscle memory in a modern body - that same refusal to audition for approval.

What I love about both of them is the same thing: they’re not performing carefully. They know it’s all a joke… and they trust us to laugh instead of bracing ourselves.

And maybe that’s what I’ve been bumping up against lately. Not acceptance - that part matters - but my own tendency to tense up instead of just letting myself laugh

Sometimes the most generous thing I can do is remind myself to calm down, exhale, and laugh.

Earlier this week, I was in a staff meeting that starts the same way it always does. Before anyone talks about work, we go around and ask each other a question. Nothing deep - just enough to see where everyone’s at.

This week’s question was deceptively simple: If you could be the CEO of anything for a day, what would it be?

I thought about it longer than I expected.

Because if the past year taught me anything, it’s that being the CEO of a company is wildly overhyped. So when it was my turn, I answered honestly: I’d be the CEO of me.

But with a twist.

I’d be the CEO of me - running the red carpet.

I’d be out there asking the real questions. The ones we all whisper on the couch.

🎤“Who are you wearing?” 🎤 “Is this couture, or did something go terribly wrong backstage?” 🎤 “If this show gets canceled, what’s the backup plan… skincare line or podcast?”

Think Joan Rivers meets Wendy Williams, with Ryan Seacrest charm - no malice. Just curiosity, humor, and a shared understanding that we’re all doing our best.

Being the CEO of myself doesn’t mean optimizing my life. It means deciding how seriously I take it.

One of the quieter moments this award season stuck with me more than I expected.

Ejae, accepting the Golden Globe for Best Original Song for Golden, said something that I’ve had written in my Notes app where I keep a running list of quotes:

“Rejection is redirection.”

Three simple words.

They’ve been on repeat for me for the past year.

Not punishment. Not failure. Not proof that you weren’t enough. Just a nudge. A course correction. A reminder that the thing you wanted might not have been where you were meant to land.

Award season celebrates arrival, but it’s built on a mountain of unseen rejections. And maybe that’s the part I needed to remember. Most of us are still being redirected. And that doesn’t mean we’re behind.

Award season doesn’t just happen on red carpets in our house. It happens daily.

The award for Most Attempts to Drink Coffee While Still Hot goes to… parents.

The award for Best Performance While Running on Four Hours of Sleep? Also parents.

The award for Outstanding Achievement in Pretending Everything Is Fine While Juggling Work, Life, and a Small Human Who Cannot Find Their Shoes? Unanimous win.

Some days, it feels like we’re all just trying to make it through the week without dropping any major balls - or at least without dropping the ones that really matter.

Showing up at work. Doing a good job. Being present. Taking care of ourselves in theory, if not always in practice. Raising a smart, kind, healthy child. Remembering to breathe somewhere between preschool drop-off and bedtime negotiations.

There’s no trophy for this part of life. No acceptance speech. No stylist. Just quiet resilience - and the occasional laugh that keeps everything from collapsing in on itself.

And maybe that’s why award season resonates so much right now. It’s not the glamour I’m drawn to. It’s the reminder that effort counts. That showing up counts. That even if no one’s handing out statues, we’re still doing something worthy of acknowledgment.

Lately, I’ve been thinking that maybe this season of life isn’t asking me for more.

Maybe it’s asking me to pay attention to what’s already working.

Some honesty. Some humor. And a few moments that feel lighter than the rest - even if they happen somewhere between bath time and bedtime.

The weekly section where I will call out a fraction: something that felt like progress this week (like a fraction forward) and a fiction: something that turned out to be a distraction or illusion. 

🎯 Fraction: Joan Rivers Would Approve

This week’s fraction forward goes to Botox - specifically, the kind administered by someone who actually understands facial muscles. Body, my choice, always. But there is a very real difference between “getting Botox” and finding a doctor who treats your face like architecture, not a canvas.

There’s a moment - usually about two weeks in - where everything settles and you don’t feel frozen or overdone. You just feel… lighter. More like yourself on a good day. Not transformed, not perfected, just fractionally more prepared to take on whatever’s coming. Which, lately, feels like progress.

🎭 Fiction: Jessica is the New Karen

The fiction of the week belongs to the sudden attempt to make Jessica the new Karen.

We’ve already done enough damage to one perfectly normal name, there’s no need to expand the blast radius. Especially not to a name carried by an entire generation already navigating enough cultural headwinds without becoming shorthand for bad behavior.

This isn’t clever social commentary. It’s lazy recycling. Let Jessica live. She didn’t ask for this.

And the award goes to… you, for making it to the end of this essay. If you think a few friends would nominate this for Best Newsletter of the Week, feel free to forward it their way or share the link. Award season is fabulous - and so, honestly, is Is This It? See you Friday for a little more glamour.

Same time. Same place. Next week,
Chris