New Things
Just think: on December 21, the days start getting longer again.
About two years ago, I left my day job. I was ready to spend more time on this writing thing, more than the 45 or 60 minutes I squeezed in each morning before heading to the office, but I pretty quickly realized that “more time” didn’t mean eight hours a day. (I admire the hell out of Danielle Steele, but I just don’t have her stamina.) On a good day, I manage to write fiction for two or maybe three hours. The remaining hours fill themselves up with research, or admin tasks, or freelance editing, all of which give me the satisfying feeling of running my own little business, and I have many moments of thinking: I’m so lucky to do this, and thinking: being self-employed is THE BEST.
And I do love it, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but—there are things I miss about working in an office! It took a while to realize what exactly I missed: the mundane intimacies, the textural overlaps, the running conversations, spilling from one day to the next. The quiet but meaningful sense of proximity: how I can be over here doing my work, and you can be over there doing your work, and we’re not necessarily talking to each other, or even working on the same thing, but here we are, passengers on some bigger ship.
In hindsight, I see how much connection is contained in these moments, fleeting as they are. The person who happens to make her coffee at the same time as you each morning. The dramatic thunderstorm that draws everyone to the windows on a summer afternoon. The muttered commentaries from over the cubicle wall: oh, God, he’s tweeting crazy shit again. In time, I found ways of replicating some of those daily moments of connection; in pre-Covid days, I loved working at the library or neighborhood coffee shops (RIP Flora Bar). But I also began thinking, maybe replication is the wrong approach. Maybe it’s not about clinging to the old ways, but about trying something new.
Which leads me to this: a blog! I’ve thought for a while about starting something like this. It’s an itch I want to scratch, a way of keeping in touch with the wider world: something longer than an Instagram caption, something more general than emails to individual friends. (And it’s not exactly a new idea. Andrew and I were planning to blog during our big 2020 world travels. Lol. Oh, Anna of yesterday, how little you knew!) My expectations are modest. I’m not really sure what this is, or what it will turn into. In fact, for a while, that was my reason for not doing it. I thought, in order to start this thing, I needed a tidy theme, a raison d’etre, a Point of View. I don’t have any of those. Maybe someday I will! But for now, my inner perfectionist is taking the back seat, and I’m just going to start where I am.
Where is that? With a deep sense of gratitude for the privileges of health and safety during this year of upheaval; with a desire to channel that privilege, and that gratitude, into opportunities for connection. With a hope of staying in touch with you, whoever and wherever you are. With a whole bunch of random Thoughts and Opinions and Feelings. With a goal to make this fun. For you, and also for me. Because writing is my job, but it is also the thing I love to do.
For the moment, I’m planning to simply share what I’ve been up to—what I’ve been reading, cooking, watching, listening to, thinking about. You can probably expect a longer post once a week, with shorter posts interspersed. But who really knows? If 2020 has a silver lining, it’s that it has fully cured me of the notion that I have any way of predicting the future.
If you’ve read this far: thank you! If you haven’t: well, that means you can’t hear me anyway! It’s all good.
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Here’s what I’ve been up to lately. Tell me what you’ve been doing!
Reading: Late to the party on this, but I’m finally reading The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. It’s so good. I have about 50 pages left, and I’ve been devouring it. In publishing, we talked a lot about finding fiction in that “sweet spot” between literary and commercial. That overlapping portion of the Venn diagram is already pretty small. But when you add a third circle, the ability of the author to make you say “damn, I never thought about X like that before,” the overlapping portion among the three becomes tiny. This novel is giving me the hat trick that I always hope for: propulsive plot, beautiful writing, startling insights. Again, the whole world knows this already, but holy shit, Brit Bennett is good.
Cooking: Andrew and I are currently staying in a ramshackle-but-charming AirBNB in Montauk, and we’ve been taking advantage of cooking with the excellent local produce; I’m turning into a full-fledged fangirl for Balsam Farms. Right now they have beautiful kale and eggplant, so last week I made this vegetarian lasagna, and it was a winner. Both casual and luxurious. Wednesday night fancy.
Watching: We just finished bingeing the entirety of Counterpart. Only two seasons, because it was cancelled, which is a freaking travesty. Who do I call at Starz to complain? I live for a good spy drama, and Counterpart was the first show to fill the void left in my heart by Homeland and The Americans. I can’t rave about this show enough. Why was no one talking about this?? Please, just trust me and watch it.
Thinking: A few weeks ago, we spent a beautiful Saturday afternoon wandering through the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, taking in the gardens and the art. I keep thinking about this sculpture, pictured below: “In Transit (The Weight of Distance)” by Yoan Capote. When I came across it, I had to stop and stare for a while. The figure felt so incredibly real. I half-expected him to look up and start talking to me. There was a familiarity to it. I think the best art builds a bridge between the personal and the universal. This sculpture specifically refers to the experience of Cuban exiles—a reality that I have never lived—and yet that posture felt like something I know, something all of us know. The heaviness and tiredness that comes from a missing. The Weight of Distance: even if we’re physically stuck in place during Covid, hasn’t this year given all of us a glimmer of that estrangement, that removal from the state of mind we once called home?