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- The meeting ended hours ago. Why is your body still at work?
The meeting ended hours ago. Why is your body still at work?
Stress that follows you home, a word that’s forbidden at sea, and the polite habits making people dread your texts.
Greg Sullivan
September 29, 2026 • Est. Reading Time: 4 minutes
“I’m not interested in driving a racecar, but I would love to cruise around in a palindrome.”
― Jarod Kintz
Today in The Daily GOOD, neurologist Danielle Wilhour explains why your body keeps logging overtime long after the last Zoom call, and shares a surprisingly doable list of places to start unwinding. Then a cruise ship passenger learns the one word you never say on board, and a therapist lists five “nice” habits that land like the exact opposite.
Well-being
Your body may be logging overtime, too.
Ah, the amazing feeling of closing the laptop at the end of a long day. Such bliss. Such relief. Right? So why are you on the couch an hour later replaying that one Slack message while that knot in your shoulders grows tighter and tighter?
In this story, neurologist Danielle Wilhour explains what can happen when stress keeps the nervous system revved up long after the last Zoom call. Poor sleep, hours of sitting, muscle tension, and even our attempts at unwinding with screens can pile onto the problem. Your headache may be less random than it feels.
The encouraging part is that calming things down does not necessarily require a two-week vacation, a silent retreat, or throwing your phone into the sea*. Even small breaks, movement, and sneaking more nature into the workday can help shift the equation. And Wilhour has a surprisingly doable list of places to start.
* - Don’t do it, you’ll regret it. Believe me!
Christine Scott sent this vibrant photo of a beautiful maple in Silverdale, Washington, and made a point of saying it wasn’t retouched. We really made it, didn’t we? Summer is over! At least on paper, it’s still supposed to be almost 100 degrees here tomorrow. Sigh.
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What follows you home from work most often?The laptop is closed. Your brain has other ideas. |
Yesterday's Results
In yesterday's issue, we shared Karen Stollznow's look at parentese and the surprisingly sophisticated things babies are doing with language.
And we asked: When a little kid says "goed" instead of "went," what are they doing? Just 37.9% of you nailed it: overregularization. That's the name for those tiny grammar nerds learning a rule and then applying it a little too enthusiastically.
Overregularization (37.9%) 🏆
Code-switching (11.2%)
Echolalia (9.5%)
Semantic narrowing (41.4%)
The most popular answer was actually semantic narrowing, which is a real thing too, just a different one. That's when a kid decides "dog" means only the family dog, not anyone else's.
Skills | Courtesy of Upworthy
 | ||
Passenger on 274-day cruise is surprised to learn the one word you can’t say on the ship | ||
“It’s like saying ‘Macbeth’ in a theater.” | ||
By Tod Perry | ||
There are some things you just don’t say. You don’t yell out “bomb!” on an airplane, make jokes about carrying weapons while going through security, or, as Michael Scott from The Office knows, loudly proclaim that a boat you’re currently on is sinking. | ||
Those are all pretty obvious examples, but sometimes etiquette and decorum are a little more subtle. If you’re not experienced in the ways of the venue you’re in, you might not know all the unspoken rules. And you might find out the hard way. Cruise ships, for example, have their own very specific set of rules and regulations that guests should abide by. | ||
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Well-being
None of them are malicious. That's exactly why they're so easy to miss.
Here is an uncomfortable thought to bring to your next conversation: the small moves you make to seem caring, engaged, and more likable might be the exact ones making people quietly dread talking to you. Jeffery, a licensed therapist who posts as @therapytothepoint, lined up five of them, and the comments filled with people tagging friends, then admitting they were the friend.
The sneaky part is that none of it comes from a bad place. The habits start as honest attempts to relate, to explain, to commiserate. They feel like connection from the inside and land like the exact opposite from the outside. One of them is essentially the George Costanza special, which is a delight on Seinfeld and considerably less so at brunch.
In Mark Wales's breakdown of all five, the therapist walks through what each habit signals to the person across from you, and why the fix is almost never the thing you'd guess. Hint: it has very little to do with finding the perfect thing to say. If you have ever left a chat feeling vaguely off, or want proof you might already be doing better at this than you think, this one holds up a mirror worth looking into.
On September 29, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, creating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The law made a wonderfully democratic case for doing so, declaring that “the arts and the humanities belong to all the people of the United States.” More than six decades later, both organizations continue to support art, culture, history, education, and scholarship across the country.
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💬 From the group text…
Check out this vintage fridge restoration. I’m honestly waiting for the moment manufacturers realize that if they combined the amazing aesthetics of the past with today’s tech, people would buy them instantly. Or, at least I would! One sure thing customer is enough to justify that, right?
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Until tomorrow, remember, even if it isn’t the entire solution, you should still close that laptop and walk away sometimes.