Welcome to

AdminNight

Or, how to fight sludge, overwhelm, loneliness, despair, and possibly capitalism itself with a six-pack and some hummus

Backstory

AdminNight

Chris Colin here. I'm a journalist who's been writing lately about bureaucratic sludge and the explosion of administrative tasks in our lives—and who benefits from it.

I've also been writing about something I started in 2019 to address this stuff — a regular ritual I called Admin Night. Friends come over, we hang out, drink, eat — and then for half an hour we tackle the stuff we've been avoiding. That cancellation, that dispute, that insurance nonsense. Then back to hanging out. Rinse, repeat till 10.

Let's make this spread! Admin Night is weirdly fun, and helpful with our sprawling to-do lists. But it also focuses us on a system that isn't working. And maybe that's the start of something bigger. The world's a %*$& mess. More togetherness and more joy and more snacks — I'm pretty sure these are part of the solution.

The Book

TheBook

I'm writing a book about this stuff for HarperOne! Admin Night is a narrative of modern life gone off the rails—and a case for collective resistance. It pulls back the curtain on the daily frictions we've been trained to accept: soul-sucking hold times, byzantine insurance portals, Kafkaesque unsubscribe mazes.

These aren't just annoyances. They're features of a system that colonizes our time, warps our sense of what's possible, and drains our civic spirit.

Admin Night will show what it looks like to fight back, and reclaim our sense of community and agency and fun in the process.

Articles

Articles

Some places I've written or talked about admin, sludge, bureaucratic friction and the like

That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose. Read PDF The Atlantic
How to Turn the Bureaucratic Grind of Life Into a Party Read PDF Wall Street Journal
Your Call Is Important to Us Listen 99% Invisible
Is Customer Service a Bad Model? Listen KQED Forum
Modern Life is Designed to Exhaust You Listen Some Things Considered with Sean Murphy
Why Customer Service Sucks Listen The Jim Rutt Show
You Are A Victim of "Sludge" Listen The Lisa Wexler Show
Admin Night on Moolala Watch Moolala Podcast

What's eating your soul?

Try the Sludge Frustration Capture App — dump whatever bureaucratic absurdity is currently ruining your week.

Log your sludge! →
Share your story

Tell me your
admin story!

Do you have a memorable tale of bureaucratic sludge? Got a perspective from the other side? How has admin overwhelm affected your life? Any and all thoughts/experiences welcome for this book!

By submitting a story on AdminNight.com, you grant Chris Colin the exclusive, worldwide, irrevocable right to use, post, print, broadcast, monetize, etc. said story in all languages and media throughout the world, in perpetuity.

How to

How to

How do I start my own Admin Night?

Short answer: However you want!

Longer answer:

  1. When people arrive, hang out normally for 10 minutes. Then work quietly for half an hour. Alarm goes off, 10 more minutes of talk. Rinse, repeat.
  2. No doing your job. Resist the urge. Admin Night is for admin.
  3. Don't replace normal hangs with this — Admin Night is additional. We're reclaiming a night that would've been a dumb show on the couch. (Shout out to dumb shows!)
  4. In the talking time, share what you've learned: the trick to navigating United's phone maze, a helpful email at Verizon, how HSAs actually work. No more figuring this stuff out alone.
  5. At the end, each person name one thing they accomplished. Cheer loudly!
  6. Schedule the next one now, while you're still feeling it. Weekly? Monthly? Just get it on the books.

Incomplete list of possible admin tasks

  • Argue with an airline
  • Submit a claim
  • Request a refund
  • Apply for benefits
  • Figure out what's even up with benefits
  • Dispute a ticket
  • Write to that company that screwed you over
  • Cancel that streaming service you forgot about
  • Software update
  • Organize your photos
  • Summer camp signup
  • Sync your family calendars
  • Desktop organization
  • Manage your miles
  • School stuff
  • Travel stuff
  • DMV stuff
  • Passport renewal
  • Deal with those browser tabs
  • Taxes
About me

AboutMe

Chris Colin

In addition to admin and bureaucratic sludge, I've written about living in total darkness, bad billionaires, river access wars, Japan's rent-a-friend industry, Obama's Irish roots, psychedelic first responders, endangered noodles, insurgent Barbadian road tennis, a gay chorus's tour of the Deep South, Covid memorialization and more for the Atlantic, NewYorker.com, the New York Times Magazine, 99% Invisible, Pop-Up Magazine, Wired, the Wall Street Journal, Saveur, Outside, Alta and California Sunday.

My work is featured in Best American Science & Nature Writing, and has won the Society of Professional Journalists Award for Features & Long-form Storytelling, and four Lowell Thomas awards. I'm a contributing writer for Afar.

About my last book, Dave Eggers said, "For humanity to stay sane, this must be read like the Bible." I'm also the author of What to Talk About, with Rob Baedeker, as well as What Really Happened to the Class of '93. In 2015 I co-wrote This Is Camino, which was nominated for a James Beard Award.

I made José Andrés's podcast (RIP), and I also make music for podcasts. During Covid I published Six Feet of Separation, a free pandemic publication by and for kids — "a virtual newspaper for our troubled times," Dan Rather called it. My editorial policy was Yes.

I live in San Francisco with my kids and wife, who edits Ear Hustle, which is a great podcast you should listen to. You can find more about me at www.chriscolin.com.