What is The Long Goodbye?

A fortnightly essay about the middle —the years where everything feels simultaneously too much and not quite enough.

Not a self-help newsletter. More like a letter from someone else figuring it out, and occasionally manages to say something useful about it. Topics include: shame, creativity, emotions, midlife, masculinity, parenting, and the general strangeness of being a person in 2026.

The tone is honest. Sometimes funny. Frequently both.

The goal is that we both leave here appreciating life a little more.

Who writes it?

Adam Fletcher. British, Berliner by choice, father of one small and opinionated daughter. He’s sold 400,000 books across two languages, written for the New York Times and the Guardian, and has a mostly-fortnightly column in Die Zeit (in German). He is also, somehow, increasingly, bald.

Perhaps also bold.

Why subscribe?

Because saying goodbye to youth is hard. Because the middle of life deserves more attention than it gets. Because parenting is profound and absurd in equal measure.