Life picked back up after Thanksgiving. After three minutes of feeling grateful, I’m now swamped with my responsibilities. I’ve spent time working, socializing, cooking, cleaning, ordering, planning, and writing—and I still have tasks left to complete. For at least a week, I’ve been pretty jammed up. I haven’t had a moment to pause and think and breathe, during which I often get my best writing ideas or life revelations.
For the most part, I think this is because of fending for myself in a city rather than living with my parents—much of my time’s gone into running errands, arranging our apartment, cooking, or cleaning—but there’s also the social angle. With roommates and friends my age around, any day can become fun and relaxing as easily as it can digress, and the balance is precarious. I’m rarely alone anymore, excluding hot showers and long walks, and the result is that I feel more excited but less at peace.
So instead, in an effort to anchor myself against the brutal passage of time, I’d like to share a list of small moments that occurred throughout my week that need not be consolidated into greater meaning.
Various Things Of Importance
The heart-sinking feeling of really wanting to finish a book, then admitting to yourself that all the books you’ve started are boring and probably won’t get any better, then picking one up and trudging through for 7 minutes before your brain cells turn off and you fall asleep. (Accepting recommendations.)
Spending more time organizing the tabs on your computer into separate windows classified as work, personal, or shopping-related than actually going through and closing out each one.
Realizing that phrasing things using “While…” instead of “…, but…” sounds more persuasive. For example, “While I don’t like Drake, I want the same haircut as him” somehow sounds much more convincing than “I don’t like Drake, but I want the same haircut as him” (this example is entirely fictional).
Suffering a crippling defeat in another historical board game called Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan, in which two people replicate a real war where the rebel uprising took Japan from its incumbent ruler. The rules are simple—you move soldiers around a geographical board and initiate battles—but the game’s chess-like in how anxious it gets where each move takes >= 5 minutes to make.
The epic thrill of installing a projector wall mount. The payoff is slow but worthwhile: each time we want to watch something, we no longer need to shove board games, blankets, and cardboard tubes underneath the projector to hit the perfect angle. At the end of the installation, however, having spent at least an hour widening holes in a wall with a drill bit, I felt as emotionally beat up as the cheap, bent drywall anchors we hammered into them.
The absolute joy of constructing a charcuterie board and consuming its contents, no matter how humble the layout. (Always add figs.)
Feeling thoroughly unimpressed by the first three episodes of The Queen’s Gambit, though a friend and I promised we’d finish it. It’s got a generic addiction plotline, a forgettable story, and a main character whose personality seems to just be the words “woman prodigy” (though I think Anya Taylor-Joy does a great job in the role). Care to change our minds?
Enjoying the quick cooking time of a gas stove and ignoring the grease and assorted foodstuffs that litter the bottom of it, begging to be deeply cleaned.
Experiencing the intense full-body workout of attempting to slip a duvet into its cover, until Googling better solutions and finding a shortcut that some Internet genius posted years ago (God bless him).
Having your roommate’s cats curl up on your bed like little sleepy cinnamon buns to revive you when you’re feeling bored or exhausted.
Other Things Of Note
This New York Times article on the absurdity of hustle culture. I’ve written about and linked to other pieces on this topic, so it’s nothing new, but I think it’s always important to keep in mind, especially when recalibrating on a Sunday.
The movie mid90s, which I thought would be a carefree documentary-ish trip through an early era of my life but was actually a lovely, painful, nostalgic story about a pivotal phase in a growing boy’s life.
Apparently, how quickly anime characters build friendships.
This competitive tetris tournament video that hypnotized me for at least 30 minutes.
This dumb comic that I find really funny:
Only Child is a weekly newsletter about finding excitement in the mundane. Tell your friends and enemies to subscribe!
—Chuckry Vengadam (@churrthing)