Free Lunch
October 7, 2025
When I worked in an office, routines and habits would propel me through my day.
I’d park my car, say some hellos, fire up the computer and attack the emails I was already behind on. I was off and running without having to think about much.
From there, meetings, pop-ins and hallway chats kept things moving. The days were often unpredictable, but they had a familiar rhythm.
Back then, lunch would just happen. I don’t remember doing a lot of lunchtime planning, but I never went hungry.
Some days I’d dash out and grab something between meetings, others I’d meet up for a meal with a friend. Occasionally a “working lunch” spread would materialize in a conference room — usually a sandwich with cheery, misleading adjectives like “Tuscan” or “Fiesta” or “Power”, and a cookie with raisins masquerading as chocolate chips until I settled into my seat and discovered the truth after it was too late to trade it in.1
Now that I’m free to map out my schedule, I’m 100% in charge of my own lunch program.
I am not good at it.
Turns out, when you remove the noise and structure of an office, you don’t get freedom, exactly. You get a blank page. And that means work.
Each day when the hunger pangs arrive I am somehow caught off guard, like a kindergartner searching for his shoes before sprinting for the bus. Lunch? Again? Didn’t we just do this yesterday?
And I’ve found that I have about a 45-minute window to make a sensible lunch choice. If I make my way to the kitchen too early, I’ll stare blankly into the fridge and realize my kids have been right all along: There is nothing to eat in this house. I’ll grab a granola bar and an apple and return to maul a can of Pringles later.
If I wait too long I’ll stalk the kitchen like an uncaged raccoon, ransacking the fridge and the cabinet and the other cabinet. Anything will do at that point. Mystery Tupperware noodles? Sure. Microwave bratwurst? Why not! A fistful of cheese? That’s good protein. And probably a dozen peanut M&Ms from my wife’s secret dining room stash (I don’t think she actually reads this far in the newsletter — let’s keep this between us).
The best part of working from home: you get to do everything yourself. The worst part: you’ve got to do everything yourself. And when it comes to fixing food, I cannot be trusted. But I’m trying.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I am off to make a Tuscan Fiesta Power Wrap, my signature dish. Stop by sometime, I’ll roll you one.
Each week in Squirreled I’ll drop links to four stories. The goal is that each story will be (1) useful, relevant, weird or otherwise interesting, (2) off the beaten path of the internet, and (3) free to read. Also, the longer the story is, the more captivating it has to be to make the cut. We all have attention spans to manage.
This Week’s Links (click the headings)
Behind the scenes of Steve Jobs’ commencement address. Steve Jobs delivered one of the greatest graduation speeches of all time in 2005, although the audience was too hot and hungover to fully appreciate the moment. And it almost never happened.
Jobs concluded with the words printed on the back cover of the final issue of the Whole Earth Catalog: “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” It was exactly the uplifting kicker the moment had asked for. Stewart Brand [creator of the Whole Earth Catalog] would later remark that because he wound up as the punch line for the most renowned college address ever, “ I became famous late in life.”
(Shameless aside: I once wrote a graduation speech as well, although I was paid a lot less than Jobs was. You can read it here.)
Smart glasses have arrived. It took longer than science fiction writers expected, but the smart glasses era is finally upon us. Don’t fight it. (But, beware of glassholes.)
Meta’s Ray-Ban Display isn’t just another wearable. The screen inside them opens up an entirely new universe of capabilities. With these smart glasses and Meta’s wild new “Neural Band,” you’re able to do a lot of the stuff you normally do on your phone. You can receive and write messages, watch Reels on Instagram, take voice calls and video calls, record video and take pictures, and get turn-by-turn navigation. You can even transcribe conversations that are happening in real time.
People aren’t wearing shoes in the office. To make the workplace more welcoming and comfortable, some employers are experimenting with a footwear-optional environment. Reason #4,345 to be grateful you work from home.
It might sound like a gimmick conjured up during a yoga retreat, but asking staff to leave their shoes at the door taps into something more serious: how to make the workplace feel a little less like work. Inspired in part by Silicon Valley startups where footwear-free floors are reportedly spreading faster than kombucha fridges, companies are experimenting with no-shoes policies as a way to improve focus, comfort and even staff morale.
The curse of “Every Breath You Take”. Sting and the rest of the Police kind of hate each other and they’re suing over who actually wrote their unavoidable 1983 hit. (Spoiler: Each guy says he wrote it.) Evidently this battle has been brewing for 42 years and songwriting law is whatever you want it to be.
For Sting, this song was always personal. “It’s ostensibly a love song, but it’s about controlling somebody and monitoring their movements.” Many fans missed the sinister subtext. “‘Every Breath You Take’ is very ambiguous and quite wicked.” Sting later wrote an answer song, his 1985 solo hit “If You Love Someone, Set Them Free.” “I had to write the antidote,” he said, “after I’d poisoned people with this horrible thing.” Maybe that’s why the conflict around this song never ends. It’s a timeless classic with a long, twisted history. But 42 years after it topped the charts, the tale of “Every Breath You Take” just keeps on getting stranger.
OK, back to work.
Putting raisins in cookies should be punishable by 3-5 years in prison. Nobody likes raisin cookies, or peanut butter cookies for that matter — that weird fork imprint thing isn’t impressing anyone.