Enjoy an audio recording of this piece, or scroll to keep reading. Don’t forget to smash that like button if you enjoy this post.
Listening to: “Wherever You Go” by The Avalanches ft Jamie xx, Neneh Cherry, and CLYPSO. This was one of my favorite songs from 2020 and my Spotify algorithm just loved me enough to resurface it so… back on loop it goes.
Watching: The Giants/Cowboys game. Andrew is a Giants fan and I enjoy football season because it feels like the marker of Cozy Season. I’m secure enough to admit that I am desperately jealous of sports fans. At 31, that ship has probably sailed, right? Like your friends would never let you just become some devout Chiefs fan without giving you endless shit about the randomness of it all. But what I’d give to have a TEAM! To automatically have plans when a game’s on, even if it’s just watching it in your own basement. And the camaraderie? The immediate alliance you form upon learning someone roots for your squad? Call me Ariel the way I wish I could be part of that world.
Just Read: Carissa Potter’s piece “How to not be boring… my rules.” I love contemplating the boring-interesting binary—the ways we avoid being bored, and fear being perceived as boring. The other week at work, we had our creative agency partners in from New York. I had a long chat with the art director about some of her hobbies (whittling garden gnomes from small blocks of wood and playing a virtual power washing game, among others). She was charismatic and vivacious and self-aware and basically everything one could hope to be in the minds of strangers. I told her, point blank, that she was the most interesting person I’d ever met, and I stand by that. When we parted ways, I wondered if that was something she got often, if it makes her feel pressured to be the life of the party. And then I thought about how much I wished I could be around people like her all the time. Maybe she unlocked some boring avoidance in me.
Excited for: This year has been all about doing things that scare me. Corny, but it’s true. Like, I got contact lenses for crying out loud. (And changed jobs, signed up for a marathon, started writing fiction, etc.) Over the weekend, I came upon an opportunity to keep this spirit of intentional discomfort alive. So, I’m subscribed to Cheryl Strayed’s Substack. If you don’t know who she is, do yourself a favor and pick up her book Wild for the most soulful, relatable account of everyday resilience. Anyway, in last week’s newsletter, she had mentioned that she still had spots left in her writing workshop in New York’s idyllic Hudson Valley. I decided to check it out, assuming it’d be financially impossible and just generally out of reach. Much to my surprise, though, the whole weekend, meals included, came to under $1,000.
I made every excuse not to go: It’ll disrupt my training schedule. I should really see my nephews. I leave for Italy less than two weeks after that. But my gut told me to make it work by any means. And so I signed up knowing they didn’t have any lodging left. I begged the sweet admissions woman to let me know if anyone cancels and something opens up, but that I’d get a nearby hotel and purchase a commuter pass in the meantime. After searching high and low for an affordable hotel, I eventually found one over 30 minutes away from campus with free cancellation right up to the date of the stay. And sure enough, I got the call today that an on-campus room became available. Twin bed. Shared bathroom. Whatever, I canceled my hotel in one click. If I’m going to do this, I want to do it all the way, even if “all the way” just means sleeping in some crusty dorm and getting access to the free yoga classes in the morning. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be crafting my speech to persuade this extremely famous author to be my mentor.
Thinking: 1.) Tonight, Andrew and I smelled something chemical-y and dizzying in our apartment, and called the gas company to check for a leak. This was, of course, a false alarm, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that it costs nothing for a technician to zoom out to your place on a dime and make sure you’re not going to die. How sad is that? To be surprised by the existence of public utility companies in an increasingly privatized world? To assume you’ll have to pay someone to check for invisible poison that you have no control over, in an apartment you don’t even own?
2.) So, I have this philosophy that’s absolute reductive garbage but if I don’t get it off my chest, I’ll literally die: the hottest guys date the most miserable women. The world has long bent in the direction of ease and comfort for its most delicious men and thus, they crave a little resistance. Think about how good it feels to complain. Hot guys statistically don't have enough to complain about so they shack up with a total bitch and gain a lifelong conversation starter. Why do you think Andrew’s with me? Because I’m a nagging killjoy and anything less is utterly forgettable.
Obsessed with: Baking bread. This weekend I was struck with a burning need to spend a full day in the kitchen. I’d been wanting to bake a yeast bread for so long that I finally caved and bought a dutch oven at Target. I was naive to think it’d be easy; dough is a sticky little devil. But for what my bread lacked in beauty, it made up for in flavor and texture. There’s something especially gratifying to making bread. It signifies warmth, hospitality. There’s a reason we say “breaking bread” to describe sharing a meal, or even sometimes, more broadly to mean extending trust. Bread is universal. Bread is life.