I realized I had regained my ability to imagine the future when I began dreaming of parties.
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For years, planning for parties — dinners, game nights, picnics, even just the outfit I want to wear to someone else’s party — has been my favorite self-soothing way to escape the present. The years I worked the worst job I’ve ever had coincided happily with the years that I went to the most elaborate themed parties. Gatsby-themed, Hunger Games Capitol-themed, Midsummer Night’s Dream-themed, Springween-themed: I always had a costume to plan or a menu to outline in my head when I wanted to stop thinking about customer complaints and call quotas.
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For me, planning for something exciting is a way of stealing a bit of joy from the future and bringing it into the present moment. Whether it’s a party or a trip or a meal or a project, planning fun in my head is where escapism and hope intersect. Imagining every lovely detail tells me things will get better. It tells me no matter what I’m dealing with now, someday soon there will be delight.
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So as someone who finds great comfort in making plans, one of the hardest mental shifts for me at the beginning of the pandemic was to stop trying to imagine a future beyond this moment. Stop trying to picture July in March; stop trying to picture November in July. At first it was terrifying to confront the blank void in front of me, to face the reality that the future has always and will always be unknowable and all my plans are just guesses. Eventually it became a habit, just like everything else, and I stopped noticing the abyss in my imagination, stopped trying to test its edges.
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But last night I lay awake dreaming of a party. It is May, and we are in the park. We’re still wearing masks, but most of us are vaccinated. It is warm, with a gentle breeze from the lake. There are finger foods and paper flowers and ribbons and bare feet; the sunlight filters through the leaves (there are leaves on the trees!) and shadows shift across the grass. Everyone is beautiful and laughing. I forgot what it felt like to dream of May in January.
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My dreams for 2021 are all like this: more people, more laughter, more shared food, but also more deliberate decisions about how I spend my time and energy (what a surprising relief it was to have my social life stripped away last spring!). More listening. More helping. I want to take with me the bone-deep understanding that we are all each other’s responsibility.
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Your dreams are much the same: “To go to a pub with my friends again.” “I dream of sitting with a group of friends. Ordering another bottle of wine to pass around. Seeing everyone’s faces when they laugh!” “I take a road trip with my friends. We sing along to our favorite playlists. We eat at whatever restaurants catch our interests. We browse through bookstores for hours, reading each other snippets of the most ridiculous books we can find. We share sips of each other’s drinks. We play board games in a bar. We walk barefoot on the beach. We watch a sunset together. That would be enough.”
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The dreams you sent me feel small in a good way, full of a feeling of sufficiency. It feels like we are all carefully stretching our long-dormant imagination muscles. You wish for a beehive, a place to dance, a new home, a trip to the theater, less anxiety and more contentment. Simple, life-changing things. One person spoke for us all when they said their theme for this season is “bones”. “I’m trying to pare things back and build a better structure more suited for where I am now.” This hit me in the chest. Yes. Who am I now, different from who I was last January? How have the pieces of my life changed, and what are the new ways they fit together? What have I let go of, and do I want it back?
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For me, my guiding star will be along the lines of this dream: “To practice savoring. To quote Heather Havrilesky, ‘I think people are very divorced from understanding what they actually love in this life, I think it’s really easy to see your life as a series of problems instead of seeing it as a patchwork of things to savor.’”
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P.S. My favorite response this week was a dream that I can actually make come true. To the person who said their dream is to “Buy a pothos N Joy plant and name it Bethusaleh (name = an inside joke with my husband)” — first, I love this hyper-specific dream. Second, if you haven’t yet found your Bethusaleh, send me your address and I’ll mail you a clipping of my N Joy!
Now that I’m fully vaccinated, I’ve been thinking a lot (as I’m sure we all have) about what this next stage of my life, our lives, will look like. There is no upside or silver lining to a disastrous global pandemic, but there are choices I’ve made that I never would have otherwise, and some of those choices have led to a new way of living that I want to consider carefully before letting it slip away into the status quo. I joked recently that the shutdown has been like an elimination diet for my social life — cut everything out completely and then slowly reintroduce elements to see what my body can handle and what I react to poorly. Some things, like friendly hugs and small dinners with friends, I’m already craving. Other things, like a jam-packed schedule and regular monthly travel, I want to let go of as much as I can.
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In a time of uncertainty and fear, it is difficult to make clearheaded decisions. But when that time stretches into a year and more, make them we must. What are some of the best decisions we’ve made as a result of the pandemic? Early on, I made a lot of random impulse buys, and some of them are now my favorite things. I filled my home with plants, bought a weighted blanket to soothe my anxious body, and ordered a mini waffle iron to treat myself to fancy brunch for one. I see now in hindsight that I was buying comfort, fully indulging my Taurus moon, and it absolutely helped.
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I’m not the only one; many of you listed big purchases as your best pandemic decision. One person got an outdoor heater (essential for chilly backyard hangs!), another got a stationary bike to replace boutique spin classes, and someone else bought their very first sex toy (CONGRATS!!!). Home upgrades have been an ongoing project for me given how much time I spend at home now, so I felt a lot of kinship with the person who said they bought “very expensive (to me) furniture that gives me a lot of pleasure just seeing it.” I feel so grateful to be in a home full of things I love, where every corner holds something precious to me.
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Many people did not feel that KonMari-style joy, and uprooted themselves completely. There were moves from New York to Toronto, New York to Burlington Vermont, from a high-rise to the suburbs, out of London, back to New York, and staying in Boston. All of the responses that talked about moving made it sound like wherever they are now, they can breathe easier. “I am so glad I [moved] because I hadn’t realized how lonely I’d been, or how stubbornly blind I’d been to that loneliness.” “Less people, more trees!” “We currently live with my parents and it’s really nice to have that connection when human connection is so scarce right now.” I like reading about folks who feel like they’re finding their place, however unexpected that place may be.
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One of my favorite responses came from someone who decided to move to a different city from their partner, even though they didn’t have to for school. “I love him and he’s a true gift, but I am also proud, after an abusive relationship, to have been able to assert the need to be by myself, explain it to him, be understood and supported, and then put into practice. I love my tiny room for one, I love going to visit him, I love having him here, and then say goodbye and realize we have lots to take care of even when we are not together. No need to have a ‘good reason’ in terms of classes or things-in-person to attend: just a boundary that was set up gracefully, respected lovingly, and enjoyed throughout.” A boundary that was set up gracefully, respected lovingly, and enjoyed throughout. I can feel my chest open and my breath deepen when I read that. What a gift!
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A lot of people (including me) learned to take care of themselves in new ways. One person’s best decision was “to break up with someone who didn’t really care about me.” Another went on a Selfish Sabbatical, “where for two months I only did what I wanted and said an unapologetic swift no to everything else (Zooms, calls, adding to my calendar, worrying about money, creation).” I LOVE this idea! Someone else had a similar practice: “I decided to dive into doing nothing at all whenever the feeling arises. The trauma that has built up over months of normalizing the severely abnormal needs time to circulate through my body and release itself. So some days — weekends especially — I just start the day by doing nothing and let it last until I find myself doing something. It’s such a release of obligation, a recognition that I need rest and deserve it, and that most of the things I ‘need’ to do can usually wait.” This is such a beautiful anti-capitalist practice, very much in line with The Nap Ministry or Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing. That feeling of slow expansiveness, that there is enough time for everything, is something I want to be careful to hold close to me as the world begins to change again.
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One reader closely echoed my experience when they wrote, “Alone with my thoughts, I finally got some mental health assistance and medication.” This was the actual best decision I’ve made as a result of the pandemic. I’ve been seeing an excellent therapist for years, and hadn’t considered introducing medication because I felt that my depression and anxiety were well managed — until last November, when I couldn’t pull myself out no matter what coping strategy I tried. At my therapist’s suggestion, I saw a psychiatrist and got on Lexapro, and it was truly life-changing. I don’t feel happy or numbed, it just feels like everything is easier. Like I’ve been swimming all my life and then was suddenly given a raft and an oar. And all I can think is, has everyone else been floating on rafts this whole time?? No wonder other people are able to go farther without getting tired, if they’ve been using oars all along! It is not an exaggeration to say that it has revolutionized the way I interact with the world, and while I wish I had not been pushed to a breaking point to get here, I am grateful to be here.
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It has become a common refrain that there is no going “back to normal,” because we have all been fundamentally changed. I hope this is true; I hope we have gained new perspective on the brutality and unsustainability of our current world, and the possibilities for how it could change. In my own life, and in the responses that you all have shared with me, I see us reevaluating what is most important; re-centering community, family, rest, and boundaries; and taking our own joy seriously. This is my dream for all of us, and I am excited to will that future into existence — starting with naps and hugs.
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In the spirit of rest and boundaries, The Good Question is going on hiatus. I started this newsletter in January of 2020, a prescient move that turned out to be a vital source of connection in a time when loose bonds became scarce. I have loved writing these essays, and I deeply value the friendships I have found and deepened through this practice. But now that my life is opening back up, I find my creative energy pulled elsewhere, and I’m not able to give this newsletter the focus it deserves. I am certain that I will come back to it someday, but for now: thank you, thank you, thank you for your time, attention, brainspace, and readership. I am honored that you have let my words into your inbox and treated them with such care. I’m not going anywhere; please email me with questions, thoughts, suggestions, and updates on your lives. Farewell for now! (And feel free to unsubscribe if you dislike dormant newsletters.)
I love the sense of control and order that lists offer. My notebook is full of them; to-do lists and grocery lists, sure, but also lists of qualities I look for in a partner, books people have recommended to me, reasons I’m not interested in getting back together with my ex, how I want my ideal job to make me feel, dinner party guest lists, home improvement projects, newsletter topic ideas. Maybe it’s my Taurus moon or my diagnosably terrible memory but lists make me feel safe, like I have my hands around my life. And when my fried attention span won’t let me focus on writing for more than a half hour at a time, it feels good to work on a list of things that feel good.
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The brightly painted cornice on the building at 304 West Evergreen
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The feeling of pressing a hot mug of tea against my face
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Ordering a book without knowing anything about it just because I love the author and then reading the synopsis and thinking “wow that sounds so good!”
When someone uses an emoji so often, particularly in Slack reactions, that it becomes “theirs”
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Related: the odd, specific things you learn about coworkers just from spending so much time with them, like how Zach Breakstone always scooped out the inside of the baguette roll that came with the meatball lunch he got every day from the Italian place in the mall
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The blooming redbud outside my window, some cousin of the blooming redbud outside my dad’s home office window. We compare redbuds every time we talk
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Henna in my hair
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Podcast episodes so beautiful they make me cry every time I listen to them
A song I think of every time I have a song stuck in my head and want to get it out. I’ve never once gotten it stuck in my head so it’s become like a mental reset button. It has served this purpose so long that I now think of it when I want to stop a line of thinking, like a painful or embarrassing memory or an anxiety spiral
The feeling of putting on earrings with cool hands
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Stretching. God it’s so good. I know we talk a lot about how stretching is good, but I don’t think we talk about it enough
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My weekly breakfast burrito and coconut shake from the diner around the corner from my apartment (they didn’t make me spell my name when I called in my order today, so I think we’re well on our way to “the usual” status, which I’ve never had at any restaurant and delights me to think of)
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Water
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Watering plants
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The way my cat sits up tall, arching her neck and stretching on her front legs, before tipping over heavily onto me, reminding me of the comforting weight of a friend using me as a pillow on a long bus ride
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The ritual of making a drink (any drink)
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Bellflowers!! I didn’t know these existed until this week but they might be my favorite flower?? I lent a friend a book and she gave me a bouquet of these in exchange
"Really any description of Detectorists will make you think that watching paint dry would be more fun, but it's a charming, carefully observed gem of slow-paced comedy. And if you can deal with some (very) thick Cork accents, The Young Offenders is similarly great. Maybe try the movie first if it's easily available to you. It's hard to do good comedy about the lives of young working-class delinquents, but this is perfect.
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140 | What both of these have in common is a sense of warm-hearted optimism and a complete lack of cynicism or irony in treating these people as actual people and not just the butt of lazy jokes." —Michael Ashbridge
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"Warm-hearted optimism" is maybe the most ideal descriptor of the genre of TV and movies that I gravitate toward so this is extremely on-brand for me. I loved the first few episodes of Detectorists and I'm excited to brave the Cork accents to check out Young Offenders!
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Got a recommendation of your own? Hit reply; I’d love to hear from you.
When the pandemic first got serious in America, I was surprised to find that the thing I missed most about safely going out in the world was not parties, or haircuts, or concerts, or bars, or restaurants, though I miss all of those things. The image that came up every time I let myself indulge in nostalgia for my recently deceased former life was of a movie theater.
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I love sitting in the dark with a roomful of strangers watching a movie on the big screen. I love the popcorn that always makes me feel like crap immediately after the movie ends. I love theaters with lobby bars that sell a “movie pour” of wine, which is actually just a half bottle in a large glass. I love listening to people gasp and laugh and sniffle at the same moments as me, and I especially love hearing unexpected reactions. Someone’s overenthusiastic laugh at a mediocre joke gives me more joy than the joke would in isolation; hearing someone shout at the screen in a moment of tension makes me feel for a moment like we’re all friends at a sleepover.
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I don’t think of myself as the kind of person who’s “into movies,” but I realized once the option was taken away from me that I used to go to the movies with considerable regularity. It was my go-to suggestion when making plans with a friend, and I especially love taking myself to a solo movie that I know will make me emotional. For a while I took yoga classes across the street from the big Arclight, and catching a random movie became my favorite post-savasana treat. I particularly remember sobbing to Kubo and the Two Strings in an empty theater, still dressed in my yoga pants and tank top.
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I have so many favorite movie theater memories — dancing in my seat to Mama Mia 2 along with the other women in my row, listening to a theater full of tweens shriek and giggle the whole way through Twilight: New Moon, getting made fun of for involuntarily shushing the characters on screen at the climax of Holes (they were YELLING about how important it was to hide and stay quiet). Seeing a good movie in theaters is lovely, but I would argue that seeing a mediocre movie in theaters is even better. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the campy heist movie Now You See Me, solely because of the moment when I watched Mark Ruffalo say to Isla Fisher, “I planned for everything, but the one thing I couldn’t plan for … was you,” and the entire theater groaned in chorus.
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I recently realized that the last movie I saw in theaters before covid hit Chicago was Jumanji III: The Next Level. On the one hand, this is deeply embarrassing — both because it was the last big-screen movie I saw before the world changed and because I watched it at all (I will defend Jumanji and Jumanji II: Welcome to the Jungle to my last breath, but The Next Level is straight trash). On the other hand, it is a perfect encapsulation of my philosophy on the joys of seeing crappy movies in theaters. It wasn’t even so-bad-it’s-good, it was just bad, but I had a delightful time. My best friend and I traded whispers about the absurd plot holes. Buzzed on my absurdly large glass of wine, I got too worked up over the unnecessary number of near-death misses in the second act and we ended up dissolving into silent, shaking giggles. I saw the emotional twist ending coming from a mile away, but something about the dark theater, and the crowd, and the wine, left my heart open to still be touched by the thoroughly mediocre writing.
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Pairs well with
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The replies to this tweet of everyone’s most visceral audience response experience in a movie theater.
Music Box Theater’s at-home movie rentals. I love the Music Box and they have a great system set up to rent interesting movies online through them. If there’s an independent theater that you want to stay open, check to see if they have a similar program — it’s a cool way to see movies I wouldn’t have otherwise known about and support a theater I care about.
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Hobby of the week: Knitting
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One of my family’s favorite stories is of my aunt Caron, who was walking through a Michael’s craft store when she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, grabbed her husband’s arm and exclaimed, “Oh my god! I just remembered! I know how to knit!” I had a similar moment earlier this week when I got fidgety while watching TV and wished I had something to do with my hands other than eat more snacks or look at my phone. Solution: knitting! I pulled out my neglected drawer o’ yarn and cast on some beautiful orange merino that I bought years ago on a trip to Savannah with my sister. Now I’m well on my way to a cozy earwarmer headband.
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Reader Recommends: Crossword puzzles
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“Specifically, working with someone else on crossword puzzles! I’ve always found crossword puzzles to be frustrating and impossible when working on them solo. However, I found a bagel shop near my home, which (in addition to amazing bagels) provides a new crossword every week. I started noodling on one of their puzzles with my partner over breakfast, and to my utter surprise, we got totally obsessed and finished the entire board! Overall very relaxing and satisfying, 10/10, would puzz again!!” —Annabeth Carroll
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Crosswords are great! At least, the ones with a cultural frame of reference that I can understand. I found a new love for crosswords when I started subscribing to The Smudge, which often has one printed on the back. It’s so pleasant to take a paper crossword out to my back steps and work through it in the sunshine with some tea.
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Got a recommendation of your own? Hit reply or email mayirec@gmail.com; I’d love to hear from you.
This edition of May I Recommend was written in an apartment so quiet I could hear the neighbor's phone ring in Chicago, Illinois.
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6 | May I Recommend ☞ Blindly Embarking on A Public Project with No Certainty of Achievement
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Who is the patron saint of unfinished projects? I want a pendant of them to wear around my neck. All my early report cards mourned the promise of the half-colored drawings and half-told stories I left littered in my wake. Every summer my best friend and I would plan extravagant projects, but I bailed so consistently that one year she wrote a contract making me promise not to get bored and lose interest the next day. Reader, I signed it, and then broke it almost immediately. I’ve been ducking her lawyers ever since.
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I still can’t trust myself to reliably build foundations for the castles I dream up, but in college I found a different tactic. One of my favorite classes was an animation course I took at Hampshire, and perhaps the most impactful thing I learned in it was as simple as it was mind-blowing:
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Scope small.
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Dream up the tiniest thing imaginable and polish it until it glows. The first animation we created could be no longer than five seconds, and our final project was capped at 15 seconds. That limitation gave me room to obsess over every frame, pouring in all the detail and finish I saw in my mind. Years later when I learned to code, I learned a similar practice in building a minimum viable product: the absolute most essential version of what you are aiming for, stripped of every bell and whistle, in order to get it up and running and iterate on it from there.
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This perspective has been life-changing for me — now I can get the rush of accomplishment almost immediately, leaving myself plenty of room to improve and expand after I’m already “done.” But I worry that it makes my dreams small. That the fear of my own lost steam holds me back from committing to anything requiring long-term, sustained effort.
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When I had the idea for this newsletter, I couldn’t sleep all night because I was too busy writing essays in my head. I haven’t felt this kind of electric buzz for a project in years. But a newsletter is not easily scoped down: it is necessarily a function of time (one email does not a newsletter make). And it requires an audience, so the stakes of followthrough feel higher. Can I see a project through if I can’t see the finish line from where I’m starting? I don’t know, but I’ve decided I’d rather trust myself and risk public failure than not chase after this wild excitement.
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So I offer two directly opposed recommendations: the first is for tiny projects. Things that can be knocked out in one long, luxurious day and then polished, refined, expanded, and built upon for weeks — or left as perfect little prototypes.
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The second is for projects too expansive to see the far shore. It’s that risky not-knowing that I recommend. It’s a different kind of excitement with a frisson all its own that is uncomfortable but not unpleasant. No matter what gives you that feeling (even if it’s a measly newsletter) you can tell by that tingle that for you this is big — too big to see all of at once, so there’s no way to know where the edges are. It’s the top-of-the-rollercoaster feeling that you’re not sure if you can handle what you’ve gotten yourself into but there’s no turning back now, and the only thing left to do is hold on tight and trust.
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I have no idea where this will take us. What fun! What fear! Let’s go.
Former Newsletter: Robin Sloan’s Year of the Meteor, particularly Week 51, which inspired/challenged me to finally put my feet to the ground and make this idea happen (hi Robin!)
Survey: Annabeth Carroll’s Best of 2019. Unaffiliated with this newsletter, Annabeth is collecting one favorite thing from every respondent for 2019. It’s very wholesome and fun (hi Annabeth!)
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Quote: “A ship in port is safe. But that’s not what ships were built for.” —Grace Hopper, a true pirate
Not just for New Year’s Eve anymore! I love this song, and this particular cover, on all days of the year, though it is particularly well suited to these liminal moments while the year is still tender and fresh. And that’s even before this episode of The Anthropocene Reviewed made me sob uncontrollably while I cooked dinner.
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Reader recommends: Jagged Little Pill, the new Alanis Morissette musical
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“Because we all need You Outta Know brought back into our lives at least once every five years.” —Maura Kinney
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I know nothing about this musical but I back Maura's point 100%
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Questions, comments, complaints? Hit reply; I’d love to hear from you. I’m particularly interested in what YOU recommend and why, or an area of your life where you’re looking for recommendations.
Allow me to posit a strange theory: crunch and umami are the same thing.
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There is an obvious counter-argument: they are not the same thing. Umami is a flavor and crunch is a texture. Umami is used to describe burgers and cheese while crunch is used to describe granola and Trader Joe’s dark chocolate sea salt almonds (may I recommend…).
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But my theory is that the satisfaction they offer is the same. The visceral pleasure of biting into a perfectly roasted portobello mushroom (or steak, if you must) is the same as the joy of shattering a potato chip in your mouth, or even stomping on a crisp autumn leaf. They feel more primal than other sensations, almost barbarian, like they’re tied to our earliest evolutionary impulses. Perhaps: umami is to crunch as meat is to bones.
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All of this is to say, popcorn and pomegranate seeds make an ideal snack combo.
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So many delightful flavor contrasts: the pomegranate seeds bring the sweet and sour with just a hint of bitterness, while the popcorn gives you a punch of salt. The only flavor group missing is umami.
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But they’re both. Extremely. CRUNCHY!
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We all know the dry crunch of popcorn is its primary appeal, along with its function as a flavor vehicle (Terry Pratchett on popcorn: “When you put salt and butter on it, it tastes like salty butter.”). But pomegranate seeds offer a rarer and more controversial pleasure: the wet crunch. Only otherwise found in fish roe, cherry tomatoes, and the confusing balls inside Orbitz soda, the wet crunch is the experience of biting down on something with taut surface tension that bursts to release liquid in your mouth. Many people hate this; I cannot recommend it highly enough.
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Now you may ask: do they both go in the same bowl? And the answer, of course, is how dare you. I’m an innovator, not a heathen. (I tried it this way once and honestly didn’t hate it but it was alarmingly easy to mistake unpopped kernels for pomegranate seeds.) Separate bowls allow for yet another lovely contrast: temperature. Hot popcorn with cold pomegranate seeds: chef’s kiss. Every time your mouth gets used to one, switch to the other for a whole new experience! I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do this.
Fancy popcorn brings me joy because it’s deceptively simple but FEELS special and extra. Great for parties, great for movie dates, great for treating yourself!
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Movie: Booksmart. This movie is so cute and funny and well written and well acted and just fun! I loved it.
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TV show: The Librarians. Have you ever wished every character in Buffy were replaced with a Giles version of themselves, and also that it had the campy low-budget clunkiness of Charmed? This is your show. Magic, adventure, terrible special effects, strong early-2000s vibes (even though, I learned upon writing this, it started in 2014): what more could you want?
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YouTube series:Gourmet Makes. I have so much to say about Bon Appetit’s youtube channel that I might write a future edition of the newsletter about it. But in the meantime, watch the extremely charming Claire Saffitz struggle to recreate junk foods in BA’s test kitchen
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Cookbook:Alison Roman’s Nothing Fancy. She has a whole section on un-fussy but exciting snacks with which to impress your friends, and I think my popcorn creations would fit in well!
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Movie of the week: Little Women (2019)
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Greta Gerwig's take on the 1994 film 1868 novel is mind-bogglingly good. It fixes every complaint I have ever had about Little Women (Amy is a brat, Beth is boring, the plot loses energy after the girls grow up, none of the character motives make sense) and brings humanity to the story in a way I've never seen before. It's like ... have you ever seen a colorized version of an antique black-and-white photograph? The image suddenly feels real and electric and you realize anew that everyone from that distant past made grocery lists and had indigestion and laughed so hard they couldn't breathe. I felt that way about this production of Little Women! I think this is the feeling every “gritty reboot” is trying to convey: “Remember those boring characters your parents loved? Now they're just like you! Mostly sad and angry.” But this is the first time I've seen it pulled off effectively. The characters felt more real and complex and, yes, relatable than I've ever seen them before. Bold opinion: I think this movie is more nuanced and rich than the book. I know! But it's true! Plus beyond that it's just a lovely movie. Aside from some unfortunate moments where characters read letters aloud directly to the camera, I think it might be perfect.
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Reader recommends: Unfinished symphonies
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In response to my last newsletter about my terrible track record in finishing things, my mom wrote: “There is quite an oeuvre of unfinished symphonies btw, which today stand on their own, some of which were finished by other composers. The most famous is Schubert's, but there are many more that have been published and performed. A symphony is supposed to be composed of three parts. These ‘unfinished’ are two parts. So to your point — accept a two-part symphony as a done deal? why not?”
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MOM!!! 😭❤️
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Questions, comments, complaints? Hit reply; I’d love to hear from you. I’m particularly interested in what YOU recommend and why, or an area of your life where you’re looking for recommendations.
I love the sense of control and order that lists offer. My notebook is full of them; to-do lists and grocery lists, sure, but also lists of qualities I look for in a partner, books people have recommended to me, reasons I’m not interested in getting back together with my ex, how I want my ideal job to make me feel, dinner party guest lists, home improvement projects, newsletter topic ideas. Maybe it’s my Taurus moon or my diagnosably terrible memory but lists make me feel safe, like I have my hands around my life. And when my fried attention span won’t let me focus on writing for more than a half hour at a time, it feels good to work on a list of things that feel good.
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The brightly painted cornice on the building at 304 West Evergreen
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The feeling of pressing a hot mug of tea against my face
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Ordering a book without knowing anything about it just because I love the author and then reading the synopsis and thinking “wow that sounds so good!”
When someone uses an emoji so often, particularly in Slack reactions, that it becomes “theirs”
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Related: the odd, specific things you learn about coworkers just from spending so much time with them, like how Zach Breakstone always scooped out the inside of the baguette roll that came with the meatball lunch he got every day from the Italian place in the mall
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The blooming redbud outside my window, some cousin of the blooming redbud outside my dad’s home office window. We compare redbuds every time we talk
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Henna in my hair
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Podcast episodes so beautiful they make me cry every time I listen to them
A song I think of every time I have a song stuck in my head and want to get it out. I’ve never once gotten it stuck in my head so it’s become like a mental reset button. It has served this purpose so long that I now think of it when I want to stop a line of thinking, like a painful or embarrassing memory or an anxiety spiral
The feeling of putting on earrings with cool hands
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Stretching. God it’s so good. I know we talk a lot about how stretching is good, but I don’t think we talk about it enough
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My weekly breakfast burrito and coconut shake from the diner around the corner from my apartment (they didn’t make me spell my name when I called in my order today, so I think we’re well on our way to “the usual” status, which I’ve never had at any restaurant and delights me to think of)
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Water
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Watering plants
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The way my cat sits up tall, arching her neck and stretching on her front legs, before tipping over heavily onto me, reminding me of the comforting weight of a friend using me as a pillow on a long bus ride
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The ritual of making a drink (any drink)
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Bellflowers!! I didn’t know these existed until this week but they might be my favorite flower?? I lent a friend a book and she gave me a bouquet of these in exchange
"Really any description of Detectorists will make you think that watching paint dry would be more fun, but it's a charming, carefully observed gem of slow-paced comedy. And if you can deal with some (very) thick Cork accents, The Young Offenders is similarly great. Maybe try the movie first if it's easily available to you. It's hard to do good comedy about the lives of young working-class delinquents, but this is perfect.
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228 | What both of these have in common is a sense of warm-hearted optimism and a complete lack of cynicism or irony in treating these people as actual people and not just the butt of lazy jokes." —Michael Ashbridge
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"Warm-hearted optimism" is maybe the most ideal descriptor of the genre of TV and movies that I gravitate toward so this is extremely on-brand for me. I loved the first few episodes of Detectorists and I'm excited to brave the Cork accents to check out Young Offenders!
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Got a recommendation of your own? Hit reply; I’d love to hear from you.
When the pandemic first got serious in America, I was surprised to find that the thing I missed most about safely going out in the world was not parties, or haircuts, or concerts, or bars, or restaurants, though I miss all of those things. The image that came up every time I let myself indulge in nostalgia for my recently deceased former life was of a movie theater.
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I love sitting in the dark with a roomful of strangers watching a movie on the big screen. I love the popcorn that always makes me feel like crap immediately after the movie ends. I love theaters with lobby bars that sell a “movie pour” of wine, which is actually just a half bottle in a large glass. I love listening to people gasp and laugh and sniffle at the same moments as me, and I especially love hearing unexpected reactions. Someone’s overenthusiastic laugh at a mediocre joke gives me more joy than the joke would in isolation; hearing someone shout at the screen in a moment of tension makes me feel for a moment like we’re all friends at a sleepover.
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I don’t think of myself as the kind of person who’s “into movies,” but I realized once the option was taken away from me that I used to go to the movies with considerable regularity. It was my go-to suggestion when making plans with a friend, and I especially love taking myself to a solo movie that I know will make me emotional. For a while I took yoga classes across the street from the big Arclight, and catching a random movie became my favorite post-savasana treat. I particularly remember sobbing to Kubo and the Two Strings in an empty theater, still dressed in my yoga pants and tank top.
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I have so many favorite movie theater memories — dancing in my seat to Mama Mia 2 along with the other women in my row, listening to a theater full of tweens shriek and giggle the whole way through Twilight: New Moon, getting made fun of for involuntarily shushing the characters on screen at the climax of Holes (they were YELLING about how important it was to hide and stay quiet). Seeing a good movie in theaters is lovely, but I would argue that seeing a mediocre movie in theaters is even better. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the campy heist movie Now You See Me, solely because of the moment when I watched Mark Ruffalo say to Isla Fisher, “I planned for everything, but the one thing I couldn’t plan for … was you,” and the entire theater groaned in chorus.
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I recently realized that the last movie I saw in theaters before covid hit Chicago was Jumanji III: The Next Level. On the one hand, this is deeply embarrassing — both because it was the last big-screen movie I saw before the world changed and because I watched it at all (I will defend Jumanji and Jumanji II: Welcome to the Jungle to my last breath, but The Next Level is straight trash). On the other hand, it is a perfect encapsulation of my philosophy on the joys of seeing crappy movies in theaters. It wasn’t even so-bad-it’s-good, it was just bad, but I had a delightful time. My best friend and I traded whispers about the absurd plot holes. Buzzed on my absurdly large glass of wine, I got too worked up over the unnecessary number of near-death misses in the second act and we ended up dissolving into silent, shaking giggles. I saw the emotional twist ending coming from a mile away, but something about the dark theater, and the crowd, and the wine, left my heart open to still be touched by the thoroughly mediocre writing.
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Pairs well with
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The replies to this tweet of everyone’s most visceral audience response experience in a movie theater.
Music Box Theater’s at-home movie rentals. I love the Music Box and they have a great system set up to rent interesting movies online through them. If there’s an independent theater that you want to stay open, check to see if they have a similar program — it’s a cool way to see movies I wouldn’t have otherwise known about and support a theater I care about.
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Hobby of the week: Knitting
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One of my family’s favorite stories is of my aunt Caron, who was walking through a Michael’s craft store when she suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, grabbed her husband’s arm and exclaimed, “Oh my god! I just remembered! I know how to knit!” I had a similar moment earlier this week when I got fidgety while watching TV and wished I had something to do with my hands other than eat more snacks or look at my phone. Solution: knitting! I pulled out my neglected drawer o’ yarn and cast on some beautiful orange merino that I bought years ago on a trip to Savannah with my sister. Now I’m well on my way to a cozy earwarmer headband.
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Reader Recommends: Crossword puzzles
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“Specifically, working with someone else on crossword puzzles! I’ve always found crossword puzzles to be frustrating and impossible when working on them solo. However, I found a bagel shop near my home, which (in addition to amazing bagels) provides a new crossword every week. I started noodling on one of their puzzles with my partner over breakfast, and to my utter surprise, we got totally obsessed and finished the entire board! Overall very relaxing and satisfying, 10/10, would puzz again!!” —Annabeth Carroll
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Crosswords are great! At least, the ones with a cultural frame of reference that I can understand. I found a new love for crosswords when I started subscribing to The Smudge, which often has one printed on the back. It’s so pleasant to take a paper crossword out to my back steps and work through it in the sunshine with some tea.
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Got a recommendation of your own? Hit reply or email mayirec@gmail.com; I’d love to hear from you.
When I started May I Recommend, I went to a lot of trouble to remove as many audience indicators as I could from my radar. I knew from past experience that if I could see analytics such as opens, clicks, subscribes and unsubscribes I couldn’t help but fixate on them, re-reading my letters wondering why one got opened more than another, why this one prompted a dozen unsubscribes or that one didn’t get as many click-throughs. I wanted to banish cold numbers completely and pretend I was writing just for myself, unless I got notes back from real humans (which I often do, and every one delights me!). The only number that I couldn’t find a way to hide from myself was the total amount of subscribers, but I eventually made peace with that. The effect was like talking on the phone late at night in the dark. I could hear soft breathing on the line, and occasionally a murmured response, but in the darkness I could talk freely without the weight of eyes.
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As more callers joined the line (thanks in large part to Robin and Edith, y’all are the best), I started wondering about the people on the other end. Who are you? Where are you in the world? What do you eat for breakfast? This is why I conducted a readership census, and much of the reason I decided to switch up the format of my whole newsletter into Good Question: fortnightly survey responses on low-stakes, open-ended questions.
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If the census responses are any indication, this was a fantastic decision. This readership, I learned, is chockablock full of thoughtful, fascinating, eloquent humans around the world with intriguing browser tabs and lovely things to say. Here is the data I got back on YOU (specifically, the 80 of you who responded):
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You hail from around the world (!) with an unsurprising concentration in Chicago and the eastern seaboard of the United States. (Click through for an interactive version where you can zoom in and mouse over the dots.)
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You are mostly in your thirties, with a long tail into the 60s, which I somehow find very flattering.
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You mostly identify as women, and use a variety of terms and labels to describe yourselves.
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In response to my demand that you tell me something nice, you massively overdelivered. My heart grew three sizes, Grinch-style, every time I read a new wave of submissions. Many of you had incredibly kind things to say about my newsletter; I can’t thank you enough. And so many of you had delightful things to say about your lives and the world! Some adopted puppies (my favorite names: Lupin, Spencer, Juniper aka Junebug 😭). Some were getting joy out of holiday decorations (my favorite comment: “It maybe turned out a little bit Melania T.-esque but I’m going with it.”). Here is a smattering of other excellent nice things, grouped into a few themes:
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Nature updates around the world
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“It is currently 30 degrees C in Melbourne and I am sitting here thinking about going to the beach.”
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“It rained this morning. Everything was cool and crisply wet. The smell was like a sigh from the dirt.”
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“The tide is going out right now.”
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Due to the decline in cruise ship activity in 2020, the oceans were quieter than they have been in decades, which provided a unique opportunity for whale researchers to understand the effect of ocean traffic sound on whale populations. [Much love to the person who wrote me 232 words on whales that I had to cut for space. Click the link to learn more!]
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“There was a beautiful and colorful sunrise yesterday.”
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“This week, I am going try and attract cardinals to my garden by putting out a tray of cut fruit and seeds.”
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“It’s a nice day here and it feels like the fog and darkness are lifting.”
“I just received good news! My professor complimented a project I submitted that was like a first step for a Master’s thesis. He said it was ‘exceptional work’. I so often get the feeling that I’m just muddling through things, plodding along, and so, getting positive feedback is delightful.” [CONGRATULATIONS! That's the best feeling!]
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“I have a very cute 2-month old baby! She is named Inga, after my great-grandmother :)”
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“I haven’t drank in 36 days.” [That’s fantastic!!!! Good luck in your journey my friend!]
“My almost 4 month old daughter is currently sleeping on me”
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“I just ate a chocolate cookie with caramel cream cheese frosting, and it was delicious.” [woahhhhhh this sounds absurdly good]
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“When I’m working in my basement office, sometimes I can hear my young daughter singing to herself in her bedroom directly above me.”
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“I danced around my apartment this morning while I was getting ready for the day in a way I probably haven’t done really since high school and it felt great and silly and fun and I decided I should do that more.”
This is a quick soundcheck to make sure the mic is on. Can everybody hear me? If this successfully hits your inbox, please respond with a hi or an emoji or, if you're feeling generous, something you recommend and why.
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If all goes according to plan, the first May I Recommend will go out January 11th.
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Thank you all for being here!
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~E
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6 | May I Recommend ☞ Blindly Embarking on A Public Project with No Certainty of Achievement
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Who is the patron saint of unfinished projects? I want a pendant of them to wear around my neck. All my early report cards mourned the promise of the half-colored drawings and half-told stories I left littered in my wake. Every summer my best friend and I would plan extravagant projects, but I bailed so consistently that one year she wrote a contract making me promise not to get bored and lose interest the next day. Reader, I signed it, and then broke it almost immediately. I’ve been ducking her lawyers ever since.
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I still can’t trust myself to reliably build foundations for the castles I dream up, but in college I found a different tactic. One of my favorite classes was an animation course I took at Hampshire, and perhaps the most impactful thing I learned in it was as simple as it was mind-blowing:
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Scope small.
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Dream up the tiniest thing imaginable and polish it until it glows. The first animation we created could be no longer than five seconds, and our final project was capped at 15 seconds. That limitation gave me room to obsess over every frame, pouring in all the detail and finish I saw in my mind. Years later when I learned to code, I learned a similar practice in building a minimum viable product: the absolute most essential version of what you are aiming for, stripped of every bell and whistle, in order to get it up and running and iterate on it from there.
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This perspective has been life-changing for me — now I can get the rush of accomplishment almost immediately, leaving myself plenty of room to improve and expand after I’m already “done.” But I worry that it makes my dreams small. That the fear of my own lost steam holds me back from committing to anything requiring long-term, sustained effort.
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When I had the idea for this newsletter, I couldn’t sleep all night because I was too busy writing essays in my head. I haven’t felt this kind of electric buzz for a project in years. But a newsletter is not easily scoped down: it is necessarily a function of time (one email does not a newsletter make). And it requires an audience, so the stakes of followthrough feel higher. Can I see a project through if I can’t see the finish line from where I’m starting? I don’t know, but I’ve decided I’d rather trust myself and risk public failure than not chase after this wild excitement.
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So I offer two directly opposed recommendations: the first is for tiny projects. Things that can be knocked out in one long, luxurious day and then polished, refined, expanded, and built upon for weeks — or left as perfect little prototypes.
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The second is for projects too expansive to see the far shore. It’s that risky not-knowing that I recommend. It’s a different kind of excitement with a frisson all its own that is uncomfortable but not unpleasant. No matter what gives you that feeling (even if it’s a measly newsletter) you can tell by that tingle that for you this is big — too big to see all of at once, so there’s no way to know where the edges are. It’s the top-of-the-rollercoaster feeling that you’re not sure if you can handle what you’ve gotten yourself into but there’s no turning back now, and the only thing left to do is hold on tight and trust.
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I have no idea where this will take us. What fun! What fear! Let’s go.
Former Newsletter: Robin Sloan’s Year of the Meteor, particularly Week 51, which inspired/challenged me to finally put my feet to the ground and make this idea happen (hi Robin!)
Survey: Annabeth Carroll’s Best of 2019. Unaffiliated with this newsletter, Annabeth is collecting one favorite thing from every respondent for 2019. It’s very wholesome and fun (hi Annabeth!)
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Quote: “A ship in port is safe. But that’s not what ships were built for.” —Grace Hopper, a true pirate
Not just for New Year’s Eve anymore! I love this song, and this particular cover, on all days of the year, though it is particularly well suited to these liminal moments while the year is still tender and fresh. And that’s even before this episode of The Anthropocene Reviewed made me sob uncontrollably while I cooked dinner.
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Reader recommends: Jagged Little Pill, the new Alanis Morissette musical
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“Because we all need You Outta Know brought back into our lives at least once every five years.” —Maura Kinney
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PREACH, MAURA
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Questions, comments, complaints? Hit reply; I’d love to hear from you. I’m particularly interested in what YOU recommend and why, or an area of your life where you’re looking for recommendations.
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/letters/scratch/13_popsicles.yaml:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | {
2 | "img_link": "https://twitter.com/probirdrights/status/610565282256437251",
3 | "img": "https://pics.me.me/birdsrightsactivist-probirdrights-i-been-working-on-my-summer-bod-it-27395742.png",
4 | "img_alt": '@probirdsrights on twitter: "I been working on my summer bod: it the same as my regular body, but this time more popsackles in it."',
5 | "essay": '
In the disorienting tumult of the last 4 months(/years), I have become mildly compulsive about stocking food. My actual eating habits haven’t changed significantly, and I’m not hoarding food on an unreasonable scale, but I find myself getting much more anxious and flustered when I start to run low than I ever did before. And for some reason, this anxiety is focused most prominently on sweets.
6 |
I have always had a sweet tooth, and for years I purposefully banished all dessert items from my house in a misguided attempt to deprive myself joy in favor of some neo-puritan ideal of “health.” I thought I couldn’t let myself have what I wanted because I was incapable of restraint, when in fact I had deprived myself for so long that I hadn’t learned the feeling of enoughness; I had not yet learned to be satisfiable (as Adrienne Marie Brown puts it in Pleasure Activism). Slowly, over many years, my relationship to sweets (and to all food, and my body, and everything) began to evolve, soften, settle. I learned(/am still learning) how to delight in treats without guilt or shame, which opens my heart up to moderation.
7 |
When lockdown started, my little dessert habit suddenly became very important to me. I’ve spent a lot of time working on paying gentle attention to the needs of the animal body my soul inhabits, and as confusion and panic became a constant, she had some loud demands. It started with an intense craving for buckeyes, a candy I think I’ve had twice in my life. Something about it felt nostalgic and homey, and offered the kind of deep comfort I was seeking. I made a pan of buckeye brownies and slowly worked my way through it over the course of several weeks.
8 |
As my supply dwindled, I started to feel unusually nervous. It was a primal kind of anxiety; even though the more nutritious shelves in my fridge were full, some deep food-scarcity alarms were ringing and difficult to ignore. It seemed silly to give into, but whatever was happening in my heart and brain felt much older than my consciously held opinions on food, nutrition, and grocery shopping. I decided not to fight whatever reptilian defenses were trying to protect me, and wound up with a minor stockpile of ice cream and chocolate-covered pretzels.
9 |
Now, in the warm, sweet days of June, summer has officially arrived, cooling my appetite for chocolate and igniting a new love in my heart: popsicles. One of my favorite features of the Chicago lakefront is the paletas man with his bell-adorned cart, walking up and down the beach. I will always, always give up a couple dollars for a coconut paleta melting fast in its plastic sleeve. Even though I don’t foresee many beach trips this summer, popsicles are still my ideal sweet summer snack: they are cold, they are delicious, and they are absurdly easy to make. If you can use a blender or heat a pan, you can make a gourmet-level popsicle. I love how easy it is to be imaginative and inventive with popsicles — they’re so simple and fast to put together that it feels super low-stakes to take a risk with a new flavor combination. ALSO, they are a great way to use up all the fruit I bought and then failed to eat before it got mushy!
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Some delightful flavors I’ve made:
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Mango and blueberry with chili-infused salt. I had an overripe mango I needed to use up (see: overenthusiastic fruit-buying mentioned above) so I pureed it, added some blueberries, and poured it into my trusty popsicle mold. I was making tacos at the time and felt inspired to add a salty-spicy kick so I layered it with some chili-infused finishing salt. I’m sorry, is that Chef Gordon Ramsey in my kitchen??? No it’s just me being a culinary genius!!!!!
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Coconut chai. I boiled some coconut milk, added a bunch of loose-leaf chai and some sugar, let it simmer for a while, and then put it in my popsicle molds once it cooled. They were amazing but I made the mistake of eating one during one of the hardest conversations of my life so I haven’t made them since, whoops! Maybe I’ll make them this weekend and eat them while watching cartoons or something.
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Blueberry/blackberry/strawberry with yogurt/coconut milk. These are absurdly good. So creamy! So tart! I didn’t have enough blueberries so I supplemented them with blackberries and strawberries and daaaaaang it’s delicious.
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When I load up my six little molds and stick them in the freezer, it feels like a promise to my future self that I will have moments of delight in my day. No matter what else is happening, I will have a cold, sweet treat to rely on. I’m not sure why having a freezer full of popsicles soothes me in a way that a fridge full of dinners doesn’t, but I’m glad I can offer myself a simple comfort that has such an outsized impact on my life.
',
17 | "pairing_list": '
Paletas by Fany Gerson. I bought this book on a whim one dreary February day when I needed a reminder that summer exists. The recipes, photography, and stories behind the food are so evocative and inspiring, and everything I’ve made from it has been delicious
Since I mentioned tacos I have to share with you this walnut-cauliflower “chorizo” that is just absurdly good. I’m usually not one for meat substitutes (I’d rather just eat vegetables that taste like vegetables) but this is so flavorful and has such a nice texture, I can’t wait to make it again
',
20 | "totw_category": "Movie",
21 | "totw": "Disclosure",
22 | "totw_desc": "Disclosure is a documentary about the depiction of trans and gender-nonconforming folks in the media from the dawn of moving pictures through today. It’s brilliantly told — heartbreaking, but also fascinating and uplifting and nuanced and even sometimes funny. I really enjoyed watching it and I’m going to be thinking about it for a long time. A while ago I posted a quote on instagram from Angela Davis in which she says, “I don’t think we would be where we are today, encouraging ever larger numbers of people to think within an abolitionist frame, had not the trans community taught us that it is possible to effectively challenge that which is considered the very foundation of our sense of normalcy.” A friend messaged me to add that he thinks of this as “the trans ask”: that for non-trans folks, “recognition of trans experience asks (maybe demands!) that you see your OWN identity & sexuality as constructed & contingent.” I think this is at the heart of what makes transness so terrifying to so many, but it is the thing I am most grateful to the trans community for. Trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming folks have expanded my imagination of possibilities for myself and the world by an order of magnitude. By their very existence, trans folks demonstrate every day that, as Ursula K. Le Guin says, “Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” Disclosure reminded me concretely that this is nothing new, and that world-expanding history stretches back through the ages.",
23 | "reader_rec": 'Tweefontein Herb Farm Lavender Balm',
24 | "reader_rec_desc": '“It smells heavenly, feels AMAZING, and now I use it on my daughter after her bath too. I use it on everything. Especially right now, it’s so awesome because it’s all-natural and antimicrobial and helps boost her tiny immune system. It’s from Tweefontein Herb Farm, which is a small business, and I live for supporting small businesses. It’s amazing, it’s magic, it’s one of my favorite things in life.” -Anya Navidi-Kasmai',
25 | "reader_rec_comment": "Who doesn't love a soothing balm?? Particularly in the summer, I know my skin needs extra love.",
26 | "writing_location": "on a steamy summer day"
27 | }
28 |
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6 | Good Question ✧
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Good Question is a fortnightly newsletter co-written with its readership, based on survey responses to low-stakes, open-ended questions. Each letter typically includes an essay, a mildly amusing data visualization, and various links to things I think are good.
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Message In A Bottle
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Message In A Bottle is the email subscription platform I built to distribute May I Recommend. It’s important to me to have a fully analytics-free experience, with no indication of who’s opening it, what links are clicked on, or any other traditional “engagement metrics”. I want to feel like I’m tucking a carefully rolled letter into an old rinsed-out rootbeer bottle, sealing it with cork and wax, and then lobbing it out into the ocean and waving goodbye. Who knows whose shores it will wash upon? Maybe someday they’ll write me back, or maybe I write the letter for no one but myself.
This site is set in Rosario for paragraph text and Ibarra Real Nova for titles. It consists of a Sinatra app with a Postgres database hosted on Heroku. Emails are sent using Mailgun.
May I Recommend is a newsletter about things I think are good, which ran from January 11th to December 27th, 2020. It takes inspiration from Ross Gay's Book of Delights, Robin Sloan’s Year of the Meteor, the podcast Wonderful, and my own irrepressible urge to tell people about the stuff I like. This is the archive.
There is nothing in this finite life more valuable than time. I’m honored that you spent some of yours with me. Fairwell friend!
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I’m not sure what happened there but it looks like you haven’t been properly unsubscribed (sorry!). Please try again or let me know what happened at mayirec@gmail.com and I’ll do my best to sort you out.
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I’m not sure what happened there but it looks like you haven’t been subscribed. Please try again or let me know what happened at mayirec@gmail.com and I’ll do my best to sort you out.
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