HeyJaredThe Performance Plan
For anyone who feels like they're sometimes getting life right, but mostly getting it wrong.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 12
- Latest publication
- Sep 30, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 8, 2026
Latest issues
NMB (opens the original)
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“Why were you talking about hiding spots on the phone?” Leon barges into the kitchen to ask me.“Um…” I hesitate, deciding how I want to play my hand. Thinking on my feet, I say, “Aunt Lauren and I were talking about hiding presents, you know, for birthdays and Hanukkah and stuff.” This satisfies his curiosity, and he scurries away.Okay, we weren’t talking about hiding places for gifts; we were talking about hiding places for ourselves. Lauren was calling me from her closet to escape her children
How Little Boys Become Friends (opens the original)
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Watching two six-year-old boys become friends is a dance. It usually goes something like this: How much do you like it when I say poop? Do you laugh when I shout it? What about when I scream it on Clement Street in a bakery where people pay seven dollars for a croissant and they only let in two people at a time? If poop isn’t your thing, do you like it when I talk about putting my finger in my butt? Or better yet, your butt? What about when I try to put my finger in my little brother’s butt, rig
Getting to Know Your Burners (opens the original)
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In Chicago, my back far-left burner was my go-to for simmering, the front far-left was my fave for a hard sear or a rolling boil, and the front far-right was for sautéing or making eggs. The other three were just backups. I knew them; I knew them very well. We had a symbiotic way of working together.September always brings the start of a new year for our family, school-wise and Judaism-wise. I was looking at my notes from this time last year (by notes, I mean nearly intelligible jottings in my p
Land of the Co-op and the Paper Straw (opens the original)
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We have three garbage bins in San Francisco: one for compost, one for recycling, and one for waste, which the can reminds you, in big block letters, goes to the landfill. If you put anything in the landfill bin, you are a bad person. To make sure you really don’t, half the bin is blocked off, so only eight of its sixteen gallons are usable. I don’t make the rules; Recology does. Ours has been full every week since we moved here. Adjustment is hard. The compost, meanwhile, sits nearly empty. If o
Incubator Signs (opens the original)
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When Sonja and I were born, we each had a sign on our incubator that read, “I have a twin sister who’s in another part of the hospital.” We’d both come at 32 weeks, each with our own problem. Hers was a collapsed lung; mine was that I was very small. Our Grandma Eileen used to say that together we barely formed a sad grocery store rotisserie chicken. But the most important fact about us, as far as the hospital was concerned, was that there was another one. Twins are mythical creatures. To know o
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