ON CHRONICLING AND APPRECIATING CREPES NOT EATEN, YELLOW SWEATERS NOT PURCHASED, AND CAREER PINNACLES NOT ON THE HORIZON
Friday December 13 2019
Dear Sarah,
I couldn’t quite get started on my letter to you last night, and I couldn’t quite get started on it this morning when I woke up, either. But here I am now, feeling ready for the page! Let me tell you why.
In January of each year M and I tend to do some sort of healthy-living activity or make some lifestyle changes to try to counteract the excesses of the holiday season. One year we went running every day in January; it was the first year we tracked our running miles across the whole year (we had set a goal of running 600 miles and we did it!) Generally we plan for a dry January, excepting any gatherings with friends or special occasions that may present themselves. This coming year, in January, right around the corner, we will likely do our usual dry January and we are also considering a diet modification — we are thinking of introducing intermittent fasting into our days. I think the name makes it sound like a bigger deal than it is, but there was recently a study that shared some information indicating that there are health benefits to be gained if people compress their eating time during the day into a 10-hour window (e.g. 9AM-7PM) rather than eating across a wider window (e.g. starting first thing in the morning and eating one’s last meal later at night). (I went to look for the study and am not going to link to it but it appears that intermittent fasting is buzzy right now! So be it.) I am interested in this kind of new habit forming; I’ve occasionally fasted for medical-related happenings and found it to feel good, like a reset. Starting yesterday I began to dabble in intermittent fasting — I had my breakfast after 8AM and ate my last meal of the day before 6PM. This was generally fine, although I felt a little grouchy in the later evening, and our regular (lately) evening television diet of cooking shows felt especially punishing. (Yes, Julia and Jacques, I would love to partake in your Crepes Suzette right now, and I have never seen anything that looks more delicious than the buttery sugary orange cream you are blending and spreading on the crepes…)
This morning I woke up and drank some water. I accidentally forgot what I was doing and ate a single slice of cucumber while I was preparing a sandwich for M. Then I proceeded not to eat anything until just about 9:30AM (Fridays may be trying, because I want to leave time-room for a Friday evening dinner!). I didn’t have any tea until that time as well, and perhaps as a result, my head was not quite ready to write a letter to you. Now I have eaten breakfast and I am drinking tea and I have entered the broad expanse of the day when I can eat and snack as I might usually do. This brief dabbling experience had a familiar feel, felt resonant with some of our latest thoughts and conversations about consumption. I almost had a feeling of Well, what I am supposed to do if I can’t snack on something? And I don’t even snack that much. Even eating is a habit that fills time. Changing my habits even for a day or two gave me something new to think about. Oh, how I treasured my breakfast this morning! And my delicious tea. I will keep you posted as to how this goes as I dabble over the next week, and as M and I give it a full-fledged try in January!
Something else I am thinking of — and I am reminded of an article you shared recently, My Year of No Shopping by Ann Patchett — I almost bought myself a large yellow sweater yesterday. A company I like, from which I have purchased a fair amount of clothing, offered me a credit of $20. This is not nothing! I close my eyes and see myself waving a $20 bill in the air. I imagine this company’s hope is that I will buy something much more expensive, so essentially the credit would act as something like 20% off whatever I might buy. Anyway, in my case this credit would be added to some store credit I had left languishing with the shop since I feel even less inclined to buy new clothes these days, as I’m not going to an office (old news) and additionally am now freelancing (finding myself on fewer video calls) and as I have plenty of clothes to wear. It was a nice sweater, in a nice light wooly kind of knit, and a nice color — a bright yellow, in the family of yellows I'm beginning to think of as my Minnesota colors, getting me through the winters (there are also sports teams and university connections with that color around here, but that’s not my story). But they didn't have the yellow sweater in my size, and I was going to go up a size, and then my interest in the whole thing just petered out. I felt like I just didn't need it at all, and of course I was right. I don’t need a large yellow sweater right now. I just don’t! I could get myself a can of yellow paint if I wanted the extra splash of color. I have a lovely saffron-colored loveseat in my office that covers the yellow bases pretty well in my life. So I closed out of the shopping window I was peering into on my phone yesterday, and said to myself, Well, if I want the large yellow sweater at the end of the day then I’ll get it, but otherwise... meh. And that brings me to the end of my tale. No large yellow sweater was purchased by me. And I am currently typing this letter while sitting at my desk, with my saffron couch occupying my peripheral vision. All is well.
Our letters last week were in a particular sort of alignment! Each of us on our walks without our technology (even if you did use the word “warm” to describe your weather). And now I, too, am thinking about the lone elderly woman continuing to guard the Manhattan mosque following the shootings in New Zealand earlier this year.
I am delighted for you that you have completed your MBA program! I will be pleased to hear how it feels to welcome those hours back into your weeks. And I am relishing on your behalf that you wrapped up right before the holidays. There’s nothing better than mellowing out over the holidays with some significant portion of your duties tied up neatly and lifted from the collection of regular weights and necessities you may carry.
This is my letter today, it appears! A later-than-usual brekkie and a large yellow sweater, not owned. I look forward to reading your letter later today, a text that will emerge from your luxurious five-day week!
Until next week!
Yours,
Eva
December 13, 2019
Dear Eva,
This morning I reread our two letters from last week and wow, it really was remarkable how much similarity there was in that particular pair. The two of us do have many things in common about the way we think and move around in the world, and we must naturally be influencing one another through our writings and conversation. But we are also different. I cannot help but wonder if there is some way in which the sort of winding journey we have undertaken together and alone—reflecting, rethinking, pausing, seeking silence—would lead nearly anyone to the places we have started to converge. Maybe not. I like to imagine the person who stopped to deeply reconsider their life and came to the conclusion that simply amassing more money was where they truly found meaning. Surely such people are out there!
I will note that I am thankful that I took the time to mark the lovely day I had when I wrote last week’s letter. Just as I hoped, it was nice to recall the vision of that sunny, happy day on this day, which has suddenly turned sunny just as I type these words but in which I feel a bit dark in body and mind after a sleepless night. I was reflecting earlier today on why my tolerance for sleep deprivation seems so low these days. (It happens rarely thankfully!) I think perhaps it relates to my quiet little life, where the bulk of my waking hours are spent alone in a house with a dog, thinking and typing on a computer. It is harder to ignore the fuzzy brain feelings when you have no busyness or even other humans to help distract you. Today, in fact, I was blessed with a work day without a single call or scheduled commitment. There was a time not too long ago that this might have spurred some strange stress or sense of inadequacy. But today I just feel grateful for the time and space. I realized sometime lately that in this job, my ambition has felt like a toothpaste tube being squeezed with the lid on. Eventually, the ambition squeezed out self-carved cracks in the sides of the tube into projects like my MBA or the book I wrote for my kids. I have written before about my horizontal ambition, but only recently have I fully accepted and embraced that this is how it will always be in this particular job. It feels like a relief to acknowledge it directly—I do not really have anything resembling a traditional career. There is no arc leading to some pinnacle that brings it all together, and that is okay. This holiday season, when well-intentioned relatives and friends ask what I am planning to do with my MBA, I won’t get the constricted feeling in my chest. I can just honestly and without guilt say I don’t fucking know, maybe nothing in the strict quid pro quo sense of things (okay, I won’t swear to my family). But you and I have previously written many pages about the value and purpose of learning new things, even when you do not have some pre-identified plan for how that learning will be applied in your life. (I want to acknowledge here that it is a privilege to be able to learn for the sake of learning in a non-free higher educational setting, and I am very grateful for it.)
You wrote last week about more fully occupying your body. I delighted in the visual of your cat-like reflexes catching your pen as it rolled off your desk. I love the idea of shrinking back to one body and one self. As you describe, it is another way of seeking true presence in your life, with the humans physically present in your space and those virtually present in your digital space(s). We are told to scale ourselves in so many ways—more friends, more followers, more likes, more media consumed. But this kind of dispersion of self makes me feel like life gets diluted in the process. So I will join you in this return to a single self! It feels like another way of saying that I am going to sit down comfortably into my quiet little life, rather than worrying about what else I might be learning or doing. It feels nice to sit.
I look forward to reading your thoughts on this Friday. Have our brains gone to similar spaces yet again? How is your single self feeling today? I am anxious to find out.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Yours,
Sarah