Welcome to The Finite Scroll - a weekly-ish newsletter for curious people. Each issue should take between 5 and 10 minutes to read.

Oh boy. The craziness of the last month of school and summer has resulted in an unintended hiatus from writing this newsletter. Between the kids finishing school and getting them off to camp, a 10 day trip to San Sebastian (a truly wonderful place that I would recommend to anyone) with our son and his travel soccer team to play in a tournament called The Donosti Cup and a busy period at work, I haven’t made the time to write. I'm still figuring out my workflow and its clear there's room for improvement. I really miss it and I'm gonna try and get back on that horse today and start with a few thoughts on... therapy. 

For most of my adult life, I’d had a feeling I would benefit from therapy. But after one not-great experience in my early 20s with a therapist who didn’t feel like the right fit, I quietly filed it away as “probably not for me.” The idea of starting over and navigating the logistics of finding someone I connected with - just felt too heavy. So I let it go.

Then a few years ago, I noticed a colleague’s Slack status: a little couch emoji and the words “Therapy until 1pm.” That small signpost stuck with me. After a few weeks of seeing it, I messaged him and said that I’ve been therapy-curious for a bit but was struggling to figure out where to start and asked if he had any tips. He responded with such thoughtfulness - sharing how he found his therapist, gave me a few tips, and even offered to introduce me to his if I wanted. He also pointed me to a few different platforms you can use to research and find licensed therapists. I decided to use Alma, but there are others out there.

That was the nudge - and easy-to-use tool - I needed.

I wrote down a few things I was looking for –  experience with anxiety, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (as that was an approach I’d tried on my own and had some success with) and mid career stuff. I browsed a lot of profiles on Alma, made a shortlist of five therapists, and booked 20-minute intro calls (free!) with each. I asked them all the same set of questions so I could easily compare and after those conversations, one of them stood out - both for his answers to the questions but also because of the ease in rapport we had. I’ve been working with him for nearly two years now and it’s honestly been transformative.

There’s a lot I could say about what therapy has helped unlock for me, but the reason I’m sharing this post is because therapy is so much more accessible than it used to be. If you even have an inkling that you might benefit (and I’d venture that most people would) and you’ve been on the fence, I’d encourage you to give it a try - it doesn’t need to be forever, just as an experiment to understand whether it might be helpful for you.

A few quick tips if you’re curious:

  1. Write down what kind of support you’re looking for. Try to be specific.
  2. Think about the kind of therapist or approach that might resonate with you (e.g. CBT, career transition experience, parenting, etc.)
  3. Try a platform like Alma to search for therapists with those qualities.
  4. Make a shortlist.
  5. Do intro calls. Ask the same short set of questions to each person.
  6. Choose someone and try a few sessions.

You might not get it perfect on the first try but it’s never been easier to begin and that's the biggest step. 

And the other thing I took away from this experience: just being open about therapy - even in small ways - can make a huge difference to someone else. That tiny Slack status from my colleague ended up nudging me toward something that’s been incredibly meaningful for me. For so long therapy has been stigmatized or kept private but it shouldn't be. If my own Slack status, a quick mention in a meeting or this post ends up encouraging even one person to find support that helps them, that’s worth it.

PS: If you've considered it and have any questions, I'm happy to answer them at alex@alexrainert.com.

We got on the Jumbotron at the tournament 🕺; also, Basque Cheesecake is the best cheesecake.

Things I'm into this month

🏃🏻 Simple Ways to Build Habits - I love the simplicity of this Apple Watch fitness habit hack my buddy Dennis uses to stay motivated to hit his goal to run 30 miles every month - just keep the miles higher than the date.

🎙️ Reflecting on Your Family Patterns - Sticking with today's therapy theme, I wanted to share an episode from one of my favorite pods, The Gray Area, where host Sean Illing and family therapist Vienna Pharaon explore how childhood experiences influence our behavior and relationships as adults. This episode really resonated with me and pushed me to reflect on how some key experiences from my own childhood continue to shape how I respond to certain situations today.

🤖 Giving AI Agents the Keys to Your Life - Meredith Whitaker, CEO of Signal, succinctly captures the inherent privacy and security risks wrapped up in the promise of the AI-powered agentic internet. Sure it sounds great to say that an AI agent can research and book concert tickets for you, but once you stop to think about what kind of access to sensitive information that entails, you may think differently.

💫 Switching from Spotify to Apple Music - I put up with it for as long as I could but ultimately decided the switch from Spotify to Apple Music. Why? Because Spotify's desire to be the everything audio app (I like a standalone podcast experience and don't do audiobooks) and the degree to which their various algorithms were shaping my music habits. It's been over 3 months now and I'm really happy with the decision. If you're interested in exploring, there are some pretty seamless ways to bring your library and playlists with you.

🎙️ A Brief History of Enshittification - If you're young enough to only know an internet dominated by Facebook and all the companies they've acquired, you might not know that this isn't always how it was. Cory Doctorow, who coined the term "enshittification" to capture the process by which online platforms gradually degrade in quality to maximize profits for shareholders at the expense of users and business partners, made an excellent 4 part podcast series for the Canadian Broadcasting System called Understood: Who Broke the Internet. Check out the trailer below.

In Understood: Who Broke the Internet?, Doctorow traces the downward spiral from the heady days of ‘90s tech-optimism through to today’s rotten “enshitternet.” You’ll meet everyone from visionaries to villains to regular people just trying to survive in today’s online world. And you’ll discover who broke the internet — and, more importantly, a plan to fix it.

🏊‍♂️ A Floating Pool is Coming to NYC (!?) - I live in the burbs now so maybe this is old news but I recently learned that NYC is getting a pool that apparently has been in the works for 15 years. Its called the +Pool and the renderings look kinda awesome. You can learn more about it here.

The Plus shape lets them support multiple uses at once. Clever!

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading. If you want each new edition in your inbox, you can subscribe below or follow right from your favorite RSS reader.