Hi friend, welcome back.

If you're new here — I'm May, and this is The Sprezza Diary, a bi-weekly letter about books, slow living, wine & food, and the quiet questions that come up when you're trying to figure out what comes next. Glad you're here.

I was reading an essay that I came across on Substack from Use Your Wealth about how you should probably stop saving for retirement; especially, for white collar professionals where plenty of people tend to work way after retirement age. Additionally, now with the rise of portfolio careers, it is possible that if the work is engaging, people will stay working in their 60s, 70s, and beyond.

This statement hits home for me for two reasons. Careers are long and we don’t usually take enough breaks throughout them. One of the reasons I was able to take a sabbatical was due to prioritizing saving cash more than I did retirement. I continued investing in my 401k but not as aggressively. Instead, I decided to save to buy myself time now to work on projects I had postponed for a long time as I consider my current goals and not just a far off retirement.

So far, week three of the sabbatical has been genuinely good. The projects I kept pushing to the back burner are finally getting real attention, and there’s something deeply satisfying about that. But I’d be lying if I said it’s been all clarity and momentum.

There’s this low hum of something I can only describe as FOMO — not the social media kind, but something quieter and harder to name. Everyone around me seems to be doing something. The World Cup is in full swing across the country and the energy is everywhere, people gathering, traveling, making plans. Meanwhile I’m here, which is exactly where I chose to be, and yet.

I’ve been trying to plan a trip with a friend and the flights alone made my eyes water. I could pay for it — technically. But for the first time in a long time I’m genuinely feeling the weight of a missing paycheck, and it’s doing something interesting to how I make decisions. It’s not panic. It’s more like a new kind of awareness. Every expense gets a second look now, and honestly I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. It’s just new.

What I keep reminding myself is that the sabbatical wasn’t about filling the calendar with trips. I was mentally exhausted in a way that a vacation wouldn’t have fixed. I needed to stop, and I did, and that part is working. But I’m a people person at my core and the solitude is starting to show its edges. I’ve been thinking seriously about volunteering locally — not to be busy, but to remember what it feels like to be useful in a room full of people.

More on that as it develops.

Brandy Sour by Constantia Soteriou

Brandy Sour by Constantia Soteriou uses the famous Ledra Palace Hotel in Nicosia, Cyprus as her stage — a grand colonial-era landmark that once hosted royalty, diplomats, and tourists — and tells her story through the drinks her guests ordered. Each chapter is named for a cocktail or a beverage. Each drink carries a world inside it.

The opening chapter — Brandy Sour: The King — sets the tone immediately. The brandy sour was Cyprus's unofficial cocktail, the drink of choice for the elite, the colonial, the powerful. There's something almost unbearably ironic about a country's identity being filtered through a drink invented to disguise the taste of local brandy for visiting royalty who found it too rough. That detail alone tells you everything about the political texture of what's coming.

The Ledra Palace Hotel opened in 1949 and quickly became the social heart of Cyprus — the place where deals were made, where journalists gathered, where the last traces of British colonial elegance played out against a backdrop of increasing tension. Cyprus gained independence from Britain in 1960, but the peace was fragile from the start.

Intercommunal violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots escalated through the 1960s. In July 1974, a coup backed by the Greek military junta attempted to unite Cyprus with Greece. Turkey responded by invading the northern part of the island. Within weeks the island was divided — a division that technically remains to this day, with a UN buffer zone running through the middle of Nicosia. The Ledra Palace, sitting directly on what became the Green Line, was converted into a UN peacekeeping headquarters. A hotel that once served brandy sours to kings became a border crossing.

Soteriou doesn’t narrate this history directly. She lets you feel it through the drinks that changed, the guests who stopped coming, the orders that were never finished.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Because I've been wanting to get more serious about writing — actually writing, not just thinking about writing — I picked up Bird by Bird and within the first few pages I understood why everyone recommends it. Lamott has this rare ability to be laugh-out-loud funny and genuinely wise in the same breath. She doesn't make writing sound glamorous. She makes it sound honest and doable and worth doing anyway.

I've been trying to put some of her advice into practice with these newsletters. Whether it's working is for you to decide — but I'm hoping it keeps things interesting enough that you look forward to opening this every two weeks.

I didn’t end up finding the white peaches I was hoping for, so the seasonal fruit plan got quietly abandoned — and then Costco came through in a completely different direction.

I picked up a bottle of the Amarone della Valpolicella recently and it’s been the quiet highlight of my week. For anyone unfamiliar, Valpolicella is a wine region in northeastern Italy and Amarone is its most serious expression — made from partially dried grapes which gives it a concentration and depth you don’t find elsewhere. This particular bottle was medium to full bodied with a really lovely balance between dry and sweet, smooth on the palate but with enough boldness to remind you to get a second bottle next time.

Also, I’ve been sneaking more vegetables into my diet lately by tossing bok choy into everything. It instantly upgrades basic dinners like chicken and rice into a well-rounded plate. Even a quick bowl of ramen gets a major flavor boost with a handful of these crisp greens. It’s minimal effort for maximum satisfaction.

Until June 27th — and if someone in your life has too many interests and not enough people to talk about them with, send them here.

With range, always —
May