"For all things, including crisis, there should be a season”

The Weekender

"For all things, including crisis, there should be a season”

In this edition of The Weekender: falling out over “morally dubious” career paths, dealing with a tantrum-throwing boyfriend, and finding out how much money a wildland firefighter earns

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Oct 31, 2026

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Painting by

Patrick Visser

This week, we’re carving hyper-realistic imagery into pumpkins, jousting on Lime bikes, and throwing together last-minute historically accurate Halloween costumes.

ADVICE

The line between patience and naiveté

A Maybe Baby

reader finds themselves on the receiving end of a boyfriend’s fits of anger and general cynicism, writing in to Danny Nelson for advice on how (and if) to move forward.

Dear Danny: My boyfriend throws tantrums

—

Danny Nelson

in

Maybe Baby

“I’m writing about my boyfriend’s overall cynicism and anger at the world, because (and I mean no offense by this) I think you might be able to offer me some meaningful insight on how to better meet him where he’s at. For context, my boyfriend and I have been together for about two years and living together for about 6 months, and it’s been absolutely incredible.

We have a lot of the same values and philosophies, but our ways of being are pretty different. I’m far more sensitive and socially self-conscious than him, while he has pretty much a complete lack of social anxiety, is extremely frank about his opinions, and is kind of fueled by anger. He grew up in the skateboarding and punk-rock scenes, which I think have taught him to tap into the power of anger in a way that I actually really admire. However, my boyfriend has had a series of bad luck this month, and this has come with a string of related angry outbursts.

It started when he accidentally backed into our neighbor’s car and was barely able to contain his self-directed anger, yelling, punching the air, saying he hates himself (our neighbor is a cop so this was an extra blow to pay for repairs lol). Then he kept getting flat tires on his bike, which he uses to commute to work every day. He works a pretty dangerous blue-collar job with intense manual labor and having to stop and fix flats drove him haywire (made worse by the fact that he didn’t want to drive his car instead after backing into the neighbor’s car, of course). Now his grandfather is in hospice care and, understandably, my boyfriend says that the grief feels shocking and unbearable.

I’ve of course been trying to support him and calm him through all these frustrations, but I feel at a bit of a loss because we have such different modes of coping. My instinct is to listen to him, share my perspective when I can, and try to reassure him things will eventually get better. His instinct is to lean entirely into cynicism, insisting that life just fucking sucks. Last night he ripped up one of his favorite sweaters because he doesn’t know where else to direct his grief. If you actually choose my question I’m prepared for many readers to call him toxic and tell me to break up with him (no shade but that’s not the response to everything!), but it’s because I have full faith in our relationship that I’m coming to you to ask: How can I support him through this?

I choose this question at my peril. As a person who has spent much of his life devoted to self-destruction, I of course relate to your partner. Your patience and good faith are a gift. To the compulsive, self-loathing, and dysfunctional people in this world, compassion is a salve and a blessing. You are right that breaking up is not the answer to everything. That being said, the instinct to stay, which begins in good faith, can become a trap. Sinking energy into something that is unquenchable winds up a punishing journey. How does one avoid becoming an accomplice in that punishment? How does anyone know when to leave?

Anger is an uncomfortable emotion for most people. Your partner has learned to make it his ally only by turning it on himself. I’m going to try to describe my own experience of self-sabotage in order to illuminate what a nearly impossible cycle it is to break. I would argue, without incredible effort, it is not just “temporary.” You know, I also crashed my car recently and I also work a blue-collar job. We all have family in our lives who are suffering or will die soon. That is to say, I relate directly to the struggles he is facing. I do not come to this question with the rod of the moralist.

The secret satisfaction that is derived from self-sabotage is without a doubt its most shameful and difficult aspect. Self-destruction is a form of control. Or, worse, it’s an internal bureaucracy that disallows accountability while also prioritizing self-immolation over emotional growth at all costs. It is a mockery of the phoenix rising from the ashes when the phoenix’s only purpose is to be burnt again and again. This becomes apparent in the diminishing intervals between episodes. For all things, including crisis, there should be a season. Year-round inferno is pathology.

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STILL LIFE

ON THE CLOCK

Think

you’re

putting fires out at work?

Lila Baer gets an inside look at what life as a wildland firefighter is really like.

$60K in 6 months, no showers, and a winter spent making art. Is their job legit?

—

Lila Baer

in

Ursa Minor

Is Your Job Legit? is an anonymous interview series that asks the questions we’re all too polite to ask: what people actually do all day, what they make, and whether it’s worth it. We’re going deeper than Glassdoor. And please, don’t even compare me to LinkedIn.

Official job title?

Wildland Firefighter

And if you could rename it?

Emergency Landscaper

On a scale of luck to strategy, how did you snag this job?

Both. You have to apply at the right time, call and email hiring managers for the crews you want to join, and then maybe they’ll have you stop by the station to go for a run with them.

If they like your vibes and you are fit enough, they might offer you a job. I got really lucky and my crew reached out to me, but I still had to go visit the station and prove myself.

Sounds complicated. How did you know how to navigate the process?

Trial and error. I applied two years in a row with no results. I only figured it out once I met someone in the industry who knew how to navigate the hiring system.

What does a typical crew look like?

Most crews consist of 24 people in their late 20s to early 30s (I’m 25). At most, we’ve had two women per season. I know a lot of hiring managers are trying to bring more diversity into their crews, but it’s a slow process.

Give us the 30-second version: what do you do all day?

For 14 to 21 days at a time, our crew gets sent to wildfires across the West Coast to build “handline,” a strip of cleared land that stops a fire’s forward progress.

We cut back brush and trees with chainsaws, and then scrape several feet of bare dirt with hand tools so there’s nothing left to burn. If a fire is too intense, they’ll use bulldozers to create larger containment lines. We’re usually working on steep, rocky slopes that require three points of contact with the ground.

I’m assuming you can’t go home at night. Where do you sleep? Are you “off”?

Sort of. Shifts are 16 hours on and 8 hours off. In those 8 hours, we’re either sleeping in the backcountry or in a fire camp with the other crews.

We cook our own meals, don’t take showers, have limited cell service, and sleep on the ground with no tents. We also only get 3 days off between each assignment. You gotta love it.

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GOING GOURD

HARD FEELINGS

How to mourn a long-standing almost-friendship

For over two decades, Laura Tremaine saw Rena every six to eight weeks for a wax. The two shared intimate details and even raised sons alongside each other. When Rena passed away unexpectedly, Laura was left to make sense of an undefinable grief.

She waxed my bikini for 20+ years. And then she died.

—

Laura Tremaine

in

Secret Stuff

The woman who dripped hot wax onto my nether regions and ripped it off gleefully for over twenty years died unexpectedly and it has left a hole in my life. Pun very much not intended. Or actually, you know what? Pun intended. She would have laughed at that.

I started going to Rena in the early 2000s, when I was single and definitely couldn’t afford regular bikini waxes but would splurge before vacations or other special occasions. She was recommended by friends and owned the small salon on a busy street in our trendy neighborhood. Rena was efficient at the task at hand, and made it as painless as humanly possible. Of course, I didn’t have much to compare it to, since Rena was my first—and for a long time my only—wax specialist. But bikini waxes are embarrassing and unpleasant in any circumstance, and her no-nonsense demeanor made it slightly less dreadful.

Around the time I got married, these appointments became more regular and Rena and I got chattier. She doled out advice about the care and keeping of things and I dragged friends to her who were resistant about the procedure. I was a bikini wax convert, and I knew Rena could show them how the result was totally worth it.

I saw Rena throughout my first pregnancy and, eventually, after. Then Rena and I turned up pregnant at the same time. Imagine when I ran into her at our shared doctor’s office! Out of context for our relationship, but also not really. We laughed about it and then kept seeing each other, in the OB’s office and in her salon. We were due the same month. Both with our youngests. Both of them boys.

On and on our every-6-to-8-week relationship went. We always asked about each other’s children. She frequently checked in on my sister and mom, who I had toted with me to my appointments on more than one occasion. Our boys, exactly the same age, grew and hit milestones and eventually started school. I moved farther away, then her salon moved locations. I still kept up the trek.

When the pandemic hit, small salons like Rena’s were a heartbreaking casualty. She closed up shop and pivoted to doing housecalls. Our relationship really changed then. We went from specialist and client to something else, and it’s that “something else” that has spun me out for months.

There is no name for the people who are in your lives so intimately but don’t occupy a traditional role. I believe Rena and I cared about each other, but we weren’t friends. And of course there was the primary transactional nature. She was performing a service I was paying her for, so that alone often defines the nature of a relationship. And if it had stayed in the salon, that client relationship would have stayed mostly professional, regardless of the vulnerability of what she was doing to my body each visit.

And then earlier this year, I was having trouble getting a hold of Rena to schedule my next appointment. This had never happened before. After a nudge or two, I got a text back that she had fallen and broken her shoulder and would be out of commission for a while. The message came from her number but didn’t sound like her. I assumed she had someone communicating for her, so I didn’t think much of it. I wrote back my best wishes for a speedy recovery, and for the first time in a long, long time, I made other waxing arrangements.

Months went by. I wanted to check in, but hesitated. I didn’t want to sound like I was checking in for selfish reasons, nor did I want to sound overly familiar either. Rena and I had never really talked about the nature of our relationship outside of joking about it, and now I felt self-conscious about assuming an intimacy where she might have only seen a client. I regret that now, my lack of reaching out. I could have sent a quick, thoughtful text. But also I wasn’t that worried about it. She’d recover and life would march on, right?

In June, while traveling with my family, I got a text from Rena’s number. The writer identified himself as Rena’s older, college-age son. He regretted to inform me that Rena had passed away after a brief battle. She had only been diagnosed a few months before—just after our last appointment together, which I suddenly remembered clearly. The illness must have already been spreading and we were none the wiser as we complained about our various home repairs… I clumsily tried to tell him how long we’d been in each other’s lives, how wonderful she was, and then I wondered how many other clients across the city were offering the family similar sentiments. There had to have been dozens of us. Maybe we all thought we were Rena’s favorite.

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BLISS

MODERN ETIQUETTE

What to do (if anything) when you’re not into your friend’s employer

It’s no secret that the job market is in a state of flux. Some might even call it bleak, and nailing down a job can feel like a Sisyphean task. Does that mean we should give friends a pass on where they work?

Your friend has an evil job. Should you cut them off?

—

Maya Abuali

in

Dazed

After months of rueful avoidance, Adam* finally faced Sam* over dinner to tell him that his ethically questionable career was a friendship dealbreaker. “Our friendship was one of respect, where we could share what we thought,” Adam says. “It felt unnatural not to be honest about something like this.” They caught up like old times for a languid hour, before Adam told Sam he was “growing increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that [he] was friends with someone who worked where they worked.” Sam froze, unable to compute that the criticism was coming not from a self-righteous stranger, but a friend who cared about him. Then he said to Adam, “I can’t change how you feel about me, and I can’t change that this is what I do.”

The two had met in the sprightly stretch of early university, still eager to emerge and remake the world in their image. But as their friends struggled to land jobs, recruiters pursued Sam, and he joined a defence-tech company on the commercial side. Adam assumed it would be a phase. “You want to see your friends have a good start to their career, where they can work for a bad company for a bit [to gain financial footing] and then eventually go on the right path,” he says. But years later, Sam was still spending 50 hours a week at a company their friends once marched against. “That was really disappointing to me,” Adam says, although he felt a sense of hypocrisy, having gone into finance himself. When a second friend followed Sam into a similar job, and then a third, an ethical line began to take shape for Adam.

For some tech bros, broadcasting their employer has become a dating-pool liability. One viral TikTok highlights a Hinge prompt warning potential matches, “don’t work at Palantir,” stirring up a storm of comments from women recounting dates with “real-life supervillains.” One comment noted, “all of these tech bros are SO good at compartmentalising,” routinely relying on the same defence mechanism: Yeah, my company is evil, but I’m just here for the pay. But it’s difficult to draw the line when it’s a friend you care about using those same rationalisations to justify their paycheck.

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DUELS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES

“Jousting in London Fields” by

Elliott Gunn

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

Historically accurate costumes for those averse to planning ahead

Waiting until the last minute to scrounge up a Halloween costume is a tale as old as time. Below, a solve.

10 relatively low-effort historically-inspired Halloween costumes that are still good fun

—

Olivia

in

weird medieval guys

If you’re anything like me, you love to leave Halloween costumes until the very last minute. Part of this may have to do with the pressure of finding the perfect one—a good costume is affordable, sustainable, perhaps a bit sexy and involves just enough effort to be considered DIY without requiring a massive quantity of time or skills. And, most importantly, it makes a clever and educated reference to history, mythology, or literature. A bit niche, without being so obscure that the obscurity becomes the point (sorry, gay people on Twitter).

Henry VIII

Six wedding rings. That’s it. Find some big gaudy antique-looking costume rings on Vinted/Depop/etc. or at the thrift shop for extra pizazz. You can find big lots of costume rings on secondhand sites for very cheap. If you’re an everyday ring wearer (as I am), this is the perfect opportunity to add some new ones to your rotation. Add vaguely Tudor clothing/fake or real beard/horrible open wound depending on how much effort you’re feeling.

A blemmye

This may or may not be my upcoming Halloween costume. It’s crazy simple: just find a top that roughly matches your skin tone (for the best match, look in the lingerie section of a large clothing store—they usually sell undergarments made to look ‘invisible’ under sheer clothing in a range of skin-like hues). This can be anything from a baggy long-sleeve to a tight cami, depending on how daring you’re feeling. Draw a face on the chest and you’re good to go.

Optional upgrades: black balaclava or stocking over your face to really commit to the bit. If you’re really feeling yourself, get a tight skin-colour bodysuit and add a fig leaf. Or fake genitals. Or real ones.

[. . .]

A plague rat

You can really let your creativity run wild with a rat costume. You could go basic with all-brown clothes from your wardrobe, some paper ears stapled to a headband, and a DIY tail (I feel like a pink stocking stuffed with tissue paper could be a good no-sew option). Or you can go higher-effort. I think if I was going to do this costume I would use it as an excuse to thrift a brown faux fur coat and make a cool papier-mâché mask. You don’t necessarily need to add anything to become a plague rat specifically: after all, the

Yersinia pestis

bacteria that caused the Black Death were microscopic and the fleas that carried them were very small. However, I think a fun way to play this one would be to print out or draw some fleas on cardstock, cut them out, and tape them to your costume with double-sided tape or similar. Make a game out of seeing how many people you can transfer your fleas to over the course of the evening!

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FEELING FESTIVE

Substackers featured in this edition

Art & Photography:

Patrick Visser

,

Emily Fishman

,

Allie Sullberg

,

Claire

,

Elliott Gunn

,

Sarah Sonne

Writing:

Danny Nelson

,

Lila Baer

,

Laura Tremaine

,

Dazed

,

weird medieval guys

Recently launched

Michelle Kaufman, who spent the past 30 years covering the Olympics, World Cups, and college and pro sports for the

Miami Herald

, is now on

Substack

.

Bethenny Frankel has launched “The List” on

Substack

, where she’ll be sharing “unfiltered opinions” and “insider recommendations” on beauty, fashion, travel, business, and relationships.

NFL running back, home cook, and avid collector AJ Dillon is now on

Substack

.

David Macias has launched Circulation, a publication that “explores how algorithms constrain the art that reaches us,” on

Substack

.

Six Nations Rugby, the home for stories on the Guinness Six Nations, has launched on

Substack

.

Inspired by the writers and creators featured in the Weekender? Starting your own Substack is just a few clicks away:

Start a Substack

The Weekender is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, audio, and video from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited by

Danya Issawi

out of Substack’s New York office.

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