THE SUNDAY LETTERElias Agbonlahor ABOUT

ABOUT THE WRITER

I WRITE BECAUSE
SOME THINGS BECOME CLEARER
AFTER THEY HAVE BEEN
WRITTEN DOWN.

I started writing on Sundays almost by accident. I'd spent a year keeping a private notebook — half journal, half argument with myself — and one week I sent a page of it to nine people because I thought one paragraph might be useful to my friend Tomi, who was going through something I recognized. She wrote back. Then someone she'd forwarded it to wrote back too. That's the whole origin story. There was no launch, no plan, just a Sunday habit that a few people started expecting.

I chose Sunday because it was the day I was least defended — no meetings to prepare for, no inbox pulling at me, just enough stillness to notice what I actually thought about the week behind me. I hope a letter can do for a reader roughly what that notebook did for me: not answer anything, exactly, but make the question a little easier to hold.

I read more nonfiction than fiction, though the fiction stays with me longer. I notice conversations on trains. I notice when a friend says "I'm fine" in a tone that means the opposite. I continue writing, mostly, because stopping would mean losing the one habit that consistently tells me what I actually think.

WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT LETTERS

A letter should have somewhere to go.

A thought does not need to become advice.

Attention is a form of generosity.

Not every question requires an answer.

Good writing leaves room for the reader.

Precision is a kindness, not a performance.

HOW THE LETTER GETS WRITTEN

MONDAYCollecting fragments — a line overheard, a feeling I couldn't name yet.
TUESDAYReading — usually something unrelated, which somehow always turns out to be related.
WEDNESDAYDiscarding ideas — most of what I collect on Monday doesn't survive Wednesday, and that's correct.
THURSDAYDrafting — badly, quickly, without looking back until it's finished.
FRIDAYEditing — cutting roughly a third of what I wrote on Thursday.
SATURDAYLeaving it alone — the hardest discipline of the week.
SUNDAYSending — and immediately wanting to change a sentence I no longer can.

A SHORT TIMELINE

2022The first note — a paragraph sent to nine people, not intended to become anything.
2023The first twenty readers — all people I knew personally, which made it easier to keep going and harder to be lazy.
2024The Sunday Letter begins properly — a name, a rhythm, an archive worth keeping.
2025The archive passes its first major milestone. I reread the earliest letters and cringed, appropriately.
2026Still writing, most Sundays, with fewer illusions about where it's going and more conviction that it doesn't need to go anywhere.

A FEW SMALL FACTS

CURRENT NOTEBOOK
A black notebook with too many unfinished lists.
FAVOURITE WRITING TIME
Early morning, before the day has an opinion about itself.
MOST REPEATED SENTENCE
"I am still thinking about this."
CURRENT QUESTION
What does enough actually feel like?

A FEW LETTERS TO START WITH

001 The Things We Do When Nobody Is Asking 17 MAY 2026 WORK → 003 A Small Defence of Being Ordinary 31 MAY 2026 IDENTITY → 006 On Wanting to Be Understood 21 JUNE 2026 LIFE →