First, from Ali, “What a 500-Year-Old Tree Taught Me About Putting Down Roots”: on restlessness and sturdiness and “quietly growing, year after year, in the same spot…forging safe soil for wildflowers to bloom.” This piece was published in Texas Highways.

And from Kate, “A Bridge Between”: on her family’s journey to a Columbia River town in order to honor their ancestors.

Yes, they might have played down below on the banks. They just might have! Picnics and bickering and stars. Or maybe it meant nothing to them. Just another spot. We set that aside and have it mean something to us.

This essay appeared in Oregon Humanities.

Thanks, as always, for reading our work! Let us know what you think in the comments.

K + A

Thanks for reading our letters: for more than two years!

When we started Letters from Home & Away in the summer of 2020, we didn’t know much about what was ahead: for ourselves, our friends, or our neighbors. What we *did* know was that we wanted to write down what we were experiencing, then share those thoughts with each other and with you. Getting to do so has been a privilege. Thanks again.

This letter (#50) will be the last you’ll be receiving in the traditional LFHA format. The reason why is an exciting one. Outside of our day jobs, Ali and I are spending more and more time freelancing for publications around the internet and even working on book-length projects. We’d like to use this list as a way to share that published work with you and provide updates about those larger projects if (cross your fingers!) they come to fruition. 

You’ll be receiving links and updates from both of us: Sometimes together, sometimes individually. We’re choosing to share a newsletter list because though writing is somewhat lonely by definition, we know that we create best inside of a community. We’re seeking to model another way of being a writer—collaborative, mutually beneficial—in how we share and promote our work, and in how we put our ideas in conversation with each other.

To that end, we’ll end (at least this chapter!) where we began, in New York City. We look forward to sharing lots more with you in the months ahead.

Kate & Ali

Dear Ali,

A few weeks ago, I was back in New York City for 36 hours between a family visit and a friend’s wedding. Some people (many people!) live in New York for decades. Some people (many people!) spend their whole lives there. I spent just two years for graduate school, then another twenty months commuting in for work. If time were money, this would be coins in the bottom of a purse.

And yet, of course, I feel as much claim to the place as anyone else. As much a right to write things down and call them mine: All the pink in the spring, a bag of salt-and-pepper chips purchased in a Harlem train station, a particular sliver of Hudson seen through a bedroom window.

Back in Manhattan, there was much that I remembered how to do. I remembered how to take the subway: which speed to swipe the MetroCard at (slower than you think), which express train to take and which express train to skip. I remembered the seafood place with the great crab dip at happy hour. I remembered the smell of hot pee on the streets. (Fondly! That was a sign of summer.) I remembered the almond horn at the pastry shop. I remembered where the bathroom was located at the magazine where I worked, and the vinyl-covered bench I laid on to collect myself before a big print deadline. I was proud of all I remembered: that knowledge in me dormant but not disappeared, lying just underneath the surface.

Of course, things had changed. Some of my friends still live in New York, but many do not, and the ones that do live in different apartments, or have new jobs, or new relationships. We won’t ever recreate our first time out in the city, slipping through a string of parties, taking a cab all the way back from Brooklyn because we didn’t know how to handle the subway. Remember your birthday, eating a frosted cake our friend made and carried through the streets of Harlem? Remember your baptism, in a bathtub?

As I took a cab out of the city to JFK, I expected to find myself longing for what had been. There was that midsummer light on the streets! The curve of the park. The crunch of the almond horn. I’m sentimental by nature. I’m used to missing things. Of course, I’d miss this.

And yet, my feelings were more complicated than pure nostalgia. I loved the city, but I didn’t wish I was back in the “old days.” I could see the old days for what they were. They contained some of the same sorrows and troubles that followed me now. And some of the things that bothered me then—a relentless commute, an ever-present homesickness—didn’t afflict me anymore. That was good, I thought.

I wasn’t happy to be leaving, either. Just as we’re prone to idealize the past, we’re tempted to reject it. I love my new job. I love my new state. Never better. As a culture, we’re so relentlessly optimistic that it can be hard to acknowledge ambiguity and pain: that some things are better now, yes, and some things are worse.

The most that could be said of life is that it had moved forward. A neutral category. A miracle, in and of itself, considering where we’d been. 

One of my last memories in the city before we left is of that trip to the movie theater to see Little Women. Do you remember? I took the train in to meet our group of friends on the Upper West Side. The snow fell in flakes the size of palms, and we slipped on its melt in the foray of the theater. All of us cried when Beth died. Afterwards we went and ate arancini at an Italian restaurant with checkered floors, and I went home via Grand Central, with its ceiling full of stars. 

This was the very neighborhood I sauntered around in for a day this July, also via Grand Central and its constellations. The weather was hot, not cold. I was wearing a new dress. Remote workers filled the coffee shops. I was two years older: and what a two years they’d been. I could hardly say anything was the same.

And yet, swiping my MetroCard slowly and placing my old order and leaning into the arms of a friend who said how are you and meant it, I was struck not by transience, but by resiliency: of places and relationships, if we’re lucky, and perhaps most centrally, who we are in the midst of both.

Everything changes, yes. Your favorite restaurant closes, and people you love get sick, and you meet new acquaintances, and ask new questions. It’s a cliché that nothing last forever. Nothing stays the same. But I want to argue that many things do: perhaps, especially, the difficult things, the questions we carry that haven’t yet resolved themselves, and the insecurities that nag, and the jealousies that rage. Age will allow me to outgrow them, maybe. But maybe not. Same goes for the things I’ve loved, and always will: carrying them with me, it’s cliche to say, in the visions I have when I look at a street and see the snowflakes, the arancini, women talking about a book they read as children that was adapted into a movie as adults. And things last not just in memories, but in who we are on a subconscious level, what concerns us and who we see ourselves to be, in our physical habits and our particular perspectives. The way we swipe a MetroCard.

The arc of history isn’t always toward progress, or resolution, or joy. At least, not yet. Perhaps it can be toward awe: How does it all hold together, still? Or acceptance. Or at least, an acknowledgment of how beautiful and grievous everything always will be, no matter our striving or avoidance, no matter where we live.

Not an idealization of what came before (“times were better then”) nor a wholesale rejection (“good riddance!”)

More like: That was joy and pain. This is joy and pain, too. I’m still myself. Here I am. 

There’s a comfort in that.

Love,

Kate

We’re still recommending our friend Nikki’s novel The Measure. You can find it reviewed in the NY Times here.

Dear Kate,

We started this newsletter on the Fourth of July in 2020. Two years ago — long, long years. So much has changed. I moved to Texas, quit my job to write, fell in love, and bought a couch. (The couch still feels like the biggest accomplishment on that list.)

I’m so grateful for our writing. Putting pen to paper helps me in so many ways: I remember details as I document my past, shape opinions as I refine my present, and clarify longings as I write about the future.

Writing opens me up to the world. Everyone I meet becomes a character. Every experience becomes a story. Being a writer is my favorite way of being in the world.

And yet, even now, I doubt myself. What if I actually suck at this? What if I never publish a book? What if everyone thinks I’m an idiot and this little hobby of mine is just one big joke? I live with this voice in my head.

Cheryl Strayed calls this voice “your invisible inner terrible someone.” (And yes, she is terrible!)

But interestingly enough, as I reflect back, these last two years have given me a gift, something to use against my invisible inner terrible someone: perspective.

People who once belonged in tidy boxes—offices, houses, schools, daycares—now flow freely. We’re all mixed up, and my favorite mixed-up place is the local coffee shop: corporate types on Zoom, elderly people reading paperbacks, moms splitting a muffin with their baby.

I love to watch it all. Most mornings, I spend $2.75 (or $6.75 if I get a snack) for the privilege of working somewhere other than my house, somewhere away from the dishwasher, the laundry, and the empty pantry. As explained by Simon Sarris: “This is expensive if you treat it as a coffee habit, but very cheap if you understand that it is buy-in for one of the few accessible spheres of public life.”

Public life is important: getting a glimpse into other people’s lives can offer much-needed perspective for your own. These days, I need that perspective more than ever. So I wake up, go to the coffee shop, sip my drink, and answer my emails. Then I eavesdrop. I eavesdrop on everyone. Absolutely everyone. (I’m a writer!)

Here’s what I’ve learned: Everyone’s work is silly.

I listen to social media managers chat through “Influencer Check In” calls. Hilarious!

I listen to sales managers set “Must Hit” milestones. Absurd!

Even the most important job in the world, motherhood, looks silly most of the time: playing dinosaurs, tossing kids around, wiping stinky bottoms. Admit it, it’s funny!

It’s so easy to become mired in the over-importance of our work. We put so much pressure on ourselves. As if the rest of planet Earth was waiting for us to accomplish something magnificent! We work not for the pleasure of process but for the final accomplishment of some invisible, impossibly hard result: “Someday I’ll be a millionaire. Someday I’ll be famous. Someday my child will be president.”

Someday I’ll write a novel.

With such perilous destinations in mind, the journey is all but worthless.

Living this way gives your “invisible inner terrible someone” the keys to the castle. It’s dangerous. Author Kevin Power let his terrible someone keep him from writing any good pages of fiction for five years! Day after day he sat at his desk, and day after day he produced nothing but anxiety. Why? He was writing not to enjoy the act of creation but to achieve an outcome — that impossible goal of “becoming a writer.”

“[I was writing] not out of an honest attempt to understand my own experiences and to communicate that understanding to others, but out of ambition, undiluted: the ambition to be a writer,” he explained. “I was unable to write about the things that had happened to me (growing up; falling in love; flailing around in college and after: all the stuff usually taken by young novelists as their material) because I never thought about the things that had happened to me. I was too busy trying to be a writer.”

The way out was through humility. He began again as an amateur. He became curious about his work rather than demanding. He realized his novel was “not a means of redeeming my life. More like: something to work on, while I lived.”

The words began to flow.

Working from humility and curiosity is freeing. Even Cheryl Strayed calls herself an amateur. She defines the word as “someone who does something for love.” What a beautiful idea. What if we all approached our passions as amateurs, motivated by nothing but love?

This still requires responsibility, lots of it. Strayed, who wrote the Dear Sugar column for years under a pen name, explained it well.

At first, she felt a wave of creative freedom at the idea of writing an anonymous advice column.

“I could boss people around without consequences,” Strayed wrote. “At last, for once, nothing was at stake.”

But ten minutes into her first day on the job, she changed her mind. Free from constrictions, writing only for love, her work felt more personal, more intimate than ever before. The stakes weren’t lower, they were higher. But in a good way. “Something is always at stake,” she explains. “Our integrity. Our internal sense of peace. Our relationships. Our communities. Our children. Our ability to bear the weight of the people we hope to be and forgive the people we are. Our obligation to justice, mercy, kindness.”

What if we all decided to begin again—at the beginning? Perhaps the answer is to take our work seriously, but not ourselves. We’ve got to be able to laugh. We’ve got to be able to enjoy. I want to relish every second of the journey and forget all about the destination.

I want to treat my writing—my relationships, my passions, my loves—not as my life’s work. Just something to work on while living.

XOXO,

Ali Montag

My Book Rec:

Our dear, beautiful, elegant friend Nikki Erlick published her debut novel. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a banger. It received a rave review from the NYT, and was selected as July’s book club pick for the Today Show. I can’t say this enough: buy it, buy it, but it!

Buy It

Dear Kate,

It’s Tuesday, four weeks since I’ve moved into a new home. The amount of money we’ve spent is astonishing: A new mattress, a new comforter, new sheets. A dining table, dining chairs, placemats. A Costco membership. Groceries from Costco to put on the dining table. Adult life is expensive.

It’s thrilling, how nice it all is. We walk our subdivision’s wooded trails and listen to chickens cluck. We touch the wet noses of dogs through the fence. We sip chamomile tea on the back porch and watch the sunset. It’s a pleasure to create a new life, fresh and lovely.

In the beginning, you must buy things. And in the beginning, it’s fun. There’s a thrill when you buy just the right picture frame. A zip of pleasure when you find perfect chairs on Facebook Marketplace. It’s proof of the life you’re creating: “I will be the sort of person who has a set of six dining chairs.” “I will be the sort of person who hosts dinner parties.”

There are so many things to buy. Things for every room. In our first week, we bought office supplies (desks, papers, pens); kitchen supplies (baskets, bins, Tupperware); laundry supplies (detergent, paper towels, soap.) Target sells something for every facet of human life. Most of these are necessary goods: we need laundry detergent. We need toothpaste. I’m not talking about luxury shopping sprees here; I’m talking about trips to Costco! But still, browsing the aisles of suburbia is alluring: choosing a delicious flavor of Bounty Unstoppables Scent Boosters for the washing machine, picking a Bath & Body Works candle to put on my desk.

And somewhere along the way, a feeling emerges: Wanting. Wanting more. There are so many things to want. When you change your address, catalogs arrive on your porch. Coupons arrive in your mailbox: 20% off at Wayfair, 15% off at At Home, 10% off at West Elm. It’s addictive. What about new end tables from IKEA? What about plates from Crate & Barrel?

“Don’t you want to have a nice home?” the catalogs ask. “Don’t you want to be a good person?”

Of course you do. After the house, I turned my gaze to the backyard. I had dreamed of an oasis, a place to lounge and read books, a place to gather friends under the stars. I could be a good person if I had a place like that. I could be welcoming, gracious, and relaxed. I could be happy, if only I had the Rockbridge Gray All-Weather Wicker Cushioned Patio Sofa & Ottoman Set by Real Living.

So I bought it. For $400, the Rockbridge Gray All-Weather Wicker Cushioned Patio Sofa & Ottoman Set by Real Living promised to “create an inviting place to gather in the great outdoors.” It came in a gigantic cardboard box. My family drove over to help me pick it up. We spent hours on the back porch assembling it. We tightened screws and twisted in fasteners, three people bent over a pile of wood and plastic. The afternoon heat boiled over. We collapsed in a sweaty mess. The couch was done.

Here’s what I have to say: The Rockbridge Gray All-Weather Wicker Cushioned Patio Sofa & Ottoman Set by Real Living is a fantastic couch. I love it. I do use it to read books, and I do use it to host our friends. From our patio’s couch, we watch swallows build a tiny nest of sticks and twigs. We watch a squirrel chew on an apple core. We drink our chamomile tea.

But from our couch, I also notice an important distinction: It is not because I am sitting on The Rockbridge Gray All-Weather Wicker Cushioned Patio Sofa & Ottoman Set by Real Living that I am joyful or fulfilled. It’s because of what the couch allows me to do. It gives me a place to read, write, gather, talk, listen. It’s simply a tool—a means to an end, not an end itself.

That’s what I have learned about consumption: It must not be done for the short-term pleasure of buying, but for the long-term joy of living.

There’s something so tiresome about consumption on its own: Buying, buying, buying. It’s hollow, endless. Your house may look beautiful, but your soul will be worn thin. Why? Because there is never enough. Shopping for pleasure contributes to what psychologists call “the hedonistic treadmill,” a desirous loop without any long-term satisfaction. If one couch makes us happy, will two couches make us content? No.

But everything about our culture tells us couches could make us content. In our culture, consumption is a kind of hobby. It’s how we express ourselves: The clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the food we eat. We spend so much time thinking about what to buy and where we will buy it. Whether we’re scrolling Instagram, driving past billboards, listening to podcast ads, or clicking around online, shopping is constant.

At the beginning of the spring, I was so excited to buy, organize, and arrange items for our new home. But a life lived only to make money and spend it is dreary. There is pleasure, but no joy.

In truth, what I was excited about wasn’t consumption. It was creation—the creation of our home, our place to gather and enjoy. That’s different. That’s full of purpose and connection.

Human beings aren’t meant to just consume. We’re meant to create. We’ve always been craftsmen—dancers, songwriters, blacksmiths, architects, bakers, cobblers, painters. We’ve told stories and drawn pictures since the dawn of time. Creativity is a uniquely human talent. But somewhere along the way, as we went from craftsmen to consumers, buying what we needed at Walmart, forgetting how to create anything for ourselves, we learned a new outlet for our creativity: Shopping. So often, I think our love of consumption comes from misplaced creativity, a desire to make and share beauty.

So at our house, here’s the rule I’m setting: consumption must be a means of creation. A means for setting yourself up to make something wonderful with your mind or your hands. Buy a desk so you can sit down to write. Buy candles for the guest bedroom to create comfort for friends. Splurge on the patio couch to read in the sunshine. Use the flicker of pleasure from consumption to ignite a larger fire within, the joy of creation. With creation, consumption finds meaning.

Because consumption alone shouldn’t be meaningful. Brands tell us our consumption should say something about our moral beliefs, our social values, our politics. But why should consumption be the method through which we shape and influence the world?Why not creation?

Thinking this way gives you access to a magical word: Enough. Because at some point, you need a break. You can’t spend all of your time making money and spending it. At some point, you have to decide you’re happy with what you have — and stop looking for more.

Already our patio furniture has some sunspots, a few stains from the squirrel and his snacks. Does this mean we should race off and buy another one? No. Because I can still read my books just the same on a couch that’s been bleached by the Texas sun as one that’s just come out of a box. If I’ve decided that’s alright, then I’m free. I’m free to sit, rest, and kick back. I’m free to do what I really love: Creating peace. Creating joy.

Because at some point, you must turn inward and look deeper, beyond the allure of shopping, buying, wanting. If you look within yourself, I suspect you might find something more interesting than a consumer. You might find a singer, or dancer, or reader, or baker, or gardener, or artist, or athlete, or friend—someone who is only longing to create.

XOXO,
Ali

My Book Rec: Delta Wedding

The book: Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty

Why I’m recommending it: In her book These Precious Days, Ann Patchett wrote an essay about her love for Eudora Welty’s writing. I immediately bought this book. Boy, I’m glad I did. It’s lovely. It’s about a Southern wedding in 1923, with descriptive sentences that you can taste and touch. I’ve never been to the Mississippi Delta, but somehow now I have been. It’s sharp, funny, and just as rich as wedding cake.

Dear Kate,

I’m engaged. Three months after our first date, he bent down on one knee with a small box. We were alone, on a quiet beach. He held out a ring: his grandmother’s diamond reset in a thin gold band. I said yes.

It wasn’t impulsive, it was planned. It felt serious and joyful, somber and celebratory, nerve-wracking and full of certainty, all at the same time.

Some will be shocked. Three months? Are they nuts?

Maybe. But it’s a beautiful thing to choose and to be chosen. It’s something our culture feels so disconnected from—the deep joy of making permanent decisions.

I’m not naive. I understand the statistics: “50 percent of marriages end in divorce.” Research has shown 20 percent of married men and 10 percent of married women cheat on their spouses. Today, marriage is declining. An increasing number of adults are staying single or choosing to cohabitate with their partners instead. The paperwork, the legality of marriage, feels like a financial agreement doomed for emotional and economic pain. It’s burdensome and constricting. “Aren’t we all too modern for this?” critics say.

But trends mean nothing until you examine the specifics. So here are the specifics.

We met at church. Our first dates were not dates at all, but long walks to debate and argue. We took loops around Lake Austin to yammer about big topics: religion, philosophy, diet, exercise, money, family. What makes a meaningful life? Is there ever such thing as a good person? What does “good” mean? (Our mutual friends find us exhausting.)

These days, we do the same thing over coffee and scrambled eggs in our kitchen. We talk to each other constantly—while cooking, showering, walking, reading, working. We’re like little parrots. Meanwhile, our text thread is so short I can still scroll to the top of it. Most of it says, “I’m here,” or “I’m parking,” or “Where are you?”

The reason we talk so much is that we have so much to talk about. We are very different people. He runs marathons, I like to take naps. He dropped out of college to start a company, bored by the inanity of learning without doing. I long for learning, the quiet sound of a lecture hall filled with scratching pencils. I’m cautious and controlled, he’s decisive and instinctive. He is the most punctual person I’ve ever met. I try my best to be on time. He jumps out of bed at 6:00 am. I fiddle with my phone until 7:30 am, or 8:00 am, and roll over until 9:00 am.

But we share core beliefs: There’s no such thing as a budget for books. Grey Poupon is better than Heinz. Faith comes first. Love the people around you. We believe in the value of inquisitiveness, asking “Why?” and “How?”

Here’s something important: He’s not a perfect person. We squabble sometimes about crumbs left on the counter or different visions for vacation plans. (I hate spending money, he likes to celebrate.) But I’m not a perfect person either. I can be crabby, anxious, and neurotic.

That’s what’s beautiful about the unending commitment of marriage. The flaws come too. We have space for messiness as well as joy. Within a lifelong commitment, I can free him from the burden of being perfect. Without the expectation of being the “perfect man,” he can be exactly what he is: A great man. (Crumbs and all.) That’s freeing.

I’ve never known a relationship where I didn’t have to edit myself or put on a show. “The pretty girl with a smile and a positive attitude,” cast of one. But marriage is different. It’s not a theater performance you can dance and sing then drop when the curtain closes—it’s constant. It’s all day, every day. No one can be pretty, polite, skinny, and peppy for forever. Failure is a certainty.

Yet he’s made a commitment to embrace me anyway, even when I’m messy, cranky, hungry, stinky, irrational, or too frugal. That’s not to say those characteristics are likable—they’re not—it’s to say that even when he doesn’t like it (or when I don’t like something he’s doing) we have a mutual agreement to keep going. To keep talking. To keep going on walks. To work through it.

Within the safety of that commitment, we can aim toward something nobler than perfection. We can aim toward becoming whole.

That’s an important distinction: unconditional love comes because of the commitment, not the other way around. So much of our culture—with shows like “The Bachelor” or “Love Island”—teaches us that the search for love is more important than the hard work of life in a relationship. We should hunt high and low for the perfect partner while casting aside anyone with blemishes. If they make a mistake, they’re gone. But once we find someone who is perfect, then we can fall in love. We’re looking for “the one.” Dating apps reinforce the idea: There are always more faces to swipe through. Your perfect match is out there, you just need to keep looking.

That’s why in most rom coms, the wedding happens at the end of the movie. The hard work—the search—is over. The main character has finally found the object of their affection, and they ride into the sunset together. Roll credits.

But for me, I’m choosing to believe the commitment is the beginning. It’s where the story starts. We’ve barely scribbled out our prologue. Where will the story go from here? I can’t wait to find out.

XOXO,

Ali

My Book Rec: Euphoria

My Book Rec: Euphoria, by Lily King

Why I’m recommending it: OK, first, this book has nothing to do with the weird HBO show I hear people enjoy. This is about anthropologists in the 1930s exploring Papa New Guinea. It’s honestly a masterpiece. I read all of Lily King’s books the same way I eat watermelon: in giant gulping bites. It’s so sweet, tangy, and yet relaxing. I know I’m in the hands of someone who will take me on an adventure and deliver me safely home.

Dear Ali, 

This year, if all goes as planned, I will attend seven weddings. Apparently, that’s to be expected — 2022 will have the most nuptials since 1984. This year will be very expensive. It will also be fun! Skirts and desserts and dancing with no shoes.

This is also the year of two reunions. One is for college, the other is for high school — and I’m helping to plan both. (Lame, I know.) One gathering is in April. The other is in June. One is in the East, the other in the West. Both involve Zoom committee meetings, Google Doc agendas, budgets, registration campaigns, and COVID-19 safety protocols.

Will grenadine make a signature cocktail look red? Like, really red? “Clackamas High School red-and-black” red? Can we price out some wood-fired pizza options? Will putting up the tent in that location block the view of the hills? Who has the contact information for our junior-year English teacher? Do Ubers go to that part of Massachusetts? These are the questions that consume my days.

Also: Will anyone come? And is it stupid to care?

Whether anyone will come is to be determined. (Spread the word! Tell your friends.) But is it stupid to care? Well, that’s a question I need to answer now. Why bring old college classmates together? These people live all over the world. They’re busy doing important work, holding diverse views, and forming their own families. Why ask us to remember some foolish, frenzied years we spent together when we weren’t yet fully ourselves? 

High school relations are even more tenuous. We were all connected only by chance, just birth year and public school–district geography. Many of us didn’t know each other even back then. My graduating class had more than 600 people in it.

— 

“Planning events” is kind of silly. Right? It’s for suckers. It’s easy. It’s frivolous. It is ordering the takeout for a work lunch, making sure to get some noodles sans the sauce your colleague hates. It is tying ribbons on bridal shower favors, and checking to be sure all the loops are same-sized. It is drawing up a wedding seating chart as strategic as any general’s battle plans. These tasks, whenever I’ve done them, have the tendency to make me feel a little goofy. Kind of embarrassed. This is women’s work, all color and flowers and sugar, no substance. It’s nice. But it’s not serious. 

Never mind that these jobs — making reservations and speaking with vendors, imagining how to create a space where people feel comfortable — are often the most difficult tasks I tackle in a day, involving calculations and strategy and creativity. They’re hard. They’re hard to do well. 

And so I’ve convinced myself that it’s important to care about the details. It’s important to care about caring for people: not with extravagance and flair, not with perfectionism and anxiety, but with thoughtfulness and warmth. 

The reunions will be nice. I hope. But this doesn’t solve the problem of the reunions themselves. I worry that only pathetic people care about remembering: people who are living in the past, and haven’t moved on. Or maybe only arrogant people care — people who want to gloat about everything they’ve acquired, how much better they’re doing than everyone else.

Or maybe: Reunions can be about something more.

—

Back to the weddings. I love the people whose names are on the invitations. But to be honest, I’m not just in it for the happy couples. I’m there for the guests. There’s little I love more than watching cousins and childhood friends, grandmothers and colleagues, all clinking glasses of champagne together. It makes no sense! And it makes perfect sense. 

Here, in community, something is revealed about the bride or groom I thought I already knew. All of these people, some bound by choice and others by blood, the friends of parents and parents of friends — it’s beautiful to see the richness of our existence, how connected we are just because. A groom may not be “close” with everyone who’s there. He may not even like all of these people. But they’re there, right? Show me a speech given by a shy father or a stumbling sister and I’ll show you myself, over there at Table 8, covering my sobs with a cloth napkin. Suddenly, I’m newly aware that all of us have childhoods and histories and personalities, only visible when we’re surrounded by people we love — or at least, people we’ve lived alongside, people who’ve shared something with us. A set of years. A place on a map. The song that was popular in 2014. The chili they served in the dining hall on Tuesdays.

People we’ve lived alongside. I’m under no illusion that these reunions, with their BBQ plates and commemorative tote bags, will bring any long-lost lovers together or rekindle any friendships. A nice occasion, no outbreaks of infectious disease, a break-even budget. These are my wishes.

And also, perhaps, for a sense that we all have belonged somewhere, and will always belong there, no matter what. To a town. To a generation. To a homeroom. These people — the ones whose names you’ve forgotten, the ones you might not see until the next reunion — know you. It’s true! At least, a little. At least, partially. That purple sweatshirt you used to wear. The way you used to style your hair. The math teacher you both had. How the turf on the football field smelled after a hot day. That diner up the street from the campus, and its French toast. That one cold winter. That election. Together, we comprise a collective history. We ground each other in time and space. We make up a history and a people, whether we like it or not, whether or not we work at it, whether or not we “stay connected” or even “care.” We’re still part of the class. We’re still part of the story.

Too much to ask of the Clackamas High School ten-year reunion: to remind us of where we stand in the human community, to make us feel a little more loved? Eh, maybe. Enjoy that bright red cocktail, at least. Don’t forget to register!

Love,
Kate

My book recommendation

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts — written in Italian, translated by the author into English — does not portray a person in community. Instead, it’s a diary of loneliness, missed opportunities and reluctant commitments. It’s sad: but beautiful! You can read it in one sitting.

I’m also halfway through The Sympathizer. Very good. Taking me a while. Overdue. Very sorry to the next person on the library hold list…

Dear Kate,

Last week, I wrote a letter about the difficulty of being together.

This week, I wanted to do some thinking about why that might be. I looked around at my neighborhood, my house, my day-to-day life, and I tried to notice all the little ways our modern world has been built for isolation and convenience rather than community. In so many ways, the things designed to “make our lives easier” come with short-term benefits and long-term consequences, indulging a silly conception of self-reliance and keeping us cozy in isolation without the necessity of community (or the sacrifices community requires.) Long before the pandemic, technology was teaching us how to live alone.

That’s worth noticing. We might not recognize it within the daily work of keeping our heads above water — answering emails, reading the news, washing dishes, checking Slack — but if we step back a bit, we can see that technology (broadly defined) has facilitated an unprecedented shift in the way we relate to one another.

For centuries, human life centered around a rhythm of commitments: The planting and harvesting of grain, the weekly liturgy at church, the rituals of weddings, births, baptisms, and funerals. Those commitments, practiced day after day, season after season, decade after decade, created binding relationships with other people, a sense of civic engagement, and a sense of individual personal responsibility. Lives were intertwined. People had to rely on each other in ways large and small: Borrowing a cup of sugar, sharing provisions in the winter, keeping an eye out for someone else’s children playing in the street. Together, in a community, responsibility and commitment offered purpose.

In the twenty-first century, technology evolved to empower the individual. We set out to move beyond responsibility, to pursue higher-order desires: choice, freedom, and convenience. The question was no longer, “What do I need?” but instead, “What do I want?” Modernity brought many luxuries: plane travel, television, the ability to enjoy fresh produce regardless of seasonality, penicillin. Yet it also brought an onslaught of loneliness. Responsibility is a communal endeavor—you must be responsible to someone else. Freedom, by contrast, can only be pursued alone.

How did this shift from the communal to the individual happen? What does it look like in our daily lives today? Let’s look at 10 examples of how technology can keep us apart.

1. Headphones: Historically, music was a communal activity. Italian operas, Mozart symphonies, and church choirs were always heard in a group. Record players and radios brought music into private spaces, but there were still other people around listening — neighbors next door, friends riding shotgun in the car. Headphones allowed us to experience music fully alone. Headphones gave us the sense that the music was made just for us, a soundtrack to our particular, specific lives; part of a movie in which we’re the main character. Headphones are also an incredible tool to keep people out, a barrier between you and chatty strangers. How much community have we lost with plastic in our ears?

2. Leaf blowers: Margaret Renkle recently pointed out that leaf blowers contribute massive noise pollution to America’s quietest places: Suburbs, parks, and recreation areas. Industrialization — switching from metal rakes to deisel leaf blowers — made the job easier, but at what cost? Quiet, once a common good, is now a luxury good. If our public places are less quiet, how much less often do we frequent them? How often do we stay home, within our silent walls, instead? How much community have we lost without the ability to ask, “Did you hear that birdsong?”

3. Television: Consider the emotions you feel watching cable news versus holding a physical newspaper. One is in your face, the other feels removed. One is linearly delivered into your eyes and ears, the other can be quietly scanned and considered, then put down. How much community have we lost without distance between events and our emotions?

4. Labor-on-Demand: Services like Angie’s List, Thumbtack, and TaskRabbit make it easy to hire someone to fix household problems. Care.com makes it easy to find a babysitter, Rover.com makes it easy to find a dog walker. In tricky situations when we used to rely on someone nearby — a neighbor to help with a leaky pipe, a local teenager to walk the dog — we can now hire someone to solve our problems instantaneously. We can pretend they’re magic robots, machines slipping into our homes to leave it tidy and new. No chit-chat, no recurring interactions, no problem. We don’t even have to learn their names. How much community do we lose when odd jobs are solved with a tap?

5. Airbnb: Did your parents used to have a section in the linen closet reserved for “guest sheets?” Mine did. It was assumed that anyone — a friend, a family member — might call the house with a request to stay over. You never know who might be driving through town. Now, Airbnb is so frictionless, we don’t trouble anyone with “houseguests.” We’d rather book a room than be a bother. How much community do we lose when we all stay out of one another’s way?

6. Uber: Needing a ride to the airport is the plot for at least three Seinfeld episodes. It’s such a strong mechanism for friendship. A ride to the airport is a favor that can be offered, taken, and returned again and again. It provides quiet time in the car, pleasant chit-chat about the trip, the possibility of picking up a snack on the way home. Now, that’s all but gone. Uber is too cheap, and too easy. How much community do we lose when we don’t offer free rides?

7. E-commerce: We never borrow things anymore. Need a cup of sugar? Just order it from Amazon. Need a lawnmower? Buy one. Need a book? Don’t go to the library, buy it. The sharing and borrowing of items — pots, pans, cookie sheets, chainsaws, sweaters — keeps people together. Individual consumption holds us apart. It’s faster and easier to meet our needs by ordering things online. As Ivan Illich put it, unfettered consumption means “there will be a further increase of useful things for useless people.” How much community do we lose when we all own our own cookie sheet?

8. Google Maps: We never get lost anymore! So many adventure movies are based on the premise of getting lost. Think of all the friendships, mishaps, and tall tales we’ve missed out on by never being able to get lost. How much community do we lose when we never have to stop and ask for directions?

9. Texting: Most of us maintain our friendships through texting. What if we owed each other more than that? One law of economics is that price is the best indication of value. We all know the price of texting is low: It’s cheap and quick. Therefore, its value feels low. A “congratulations!” text may as well have never been sent. But what if we communicated through mediums that were more expensive, that took more of our time? Hand-written letters, phone calls, walks through the neighborhood? Value could be given, and given again. How much community have we lost through cheap communication?

10. Glass: The advent of clear glass during the Roman Empire allowed us to see in unprecedented ways: We could see our reflection in mirrors, we could see light through windows. Without glass, our best hope was to peer at ourselves in ponds, to stare dimly in the corners of hovels. Glass led to telescopes and microscopes, eyeglasses and skyscrapers. Suddenly, we could see things large and small. Who knew that today, something as simple as glass would define our lives — the black glass of iPhone screens, the illuminated glass of TVs, the glass of fiber optic cables delivering internet to our homes. How much community have we lost to our own reflection?

In pursuit of ease and comfort, technology has drawn us deeper into ourselves and further from one another. Still, the writer L.M. Sacasas points out how a technology as simple as a dinner table can bring us together.

“The table gathers and separates and creates a setting for conversation, for fellowship,” he explains. “That’s been so fundamental to human experience. Food and sociability have been a centerpiece of human cultures throughout recorded history and beyond.” Gathered around a table, we can remember how to be with one another once again.

What tables are you sitting at this week? Hopefully we can share a meal over a common table together again soon.

XOXOX,

Ali Montag

My Book Rec: Station Eleven

My book rec: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Why you should read it: I have not yet started this book, but it is cheerfully waiting for me on my shelf. I loved The Glass Hotel, it was so quick and alluring. Also, this interview with Emily St. John Mandel is great. I love the energy of this quote:

“I often put books down without finishing them. Unless you’re reading for research and need to just power through to absorb information, I think it’s possible that life’s too short to spend time with books that you don’t love.”

Happy New Year! Today is the first day of a new season. A clean slate. A new beginning.

Yet, I must confess: I feel no burst of New Year’s energy. I feel no urgency to dedicate myself to eating fiber, no impulse to finally sweep up the crumbs underneath my oven. I should do those things—I should sketch out a list on notebook paper, tack it to my wall, and get started. I want to want to. But I don’t. Instead, I feel tired.

Why? Certainly not youthful drinking or fireworks. I toasted 2022 with a 10 p.m. bedtime and a cup of hot tea. No, I’m tired for a reason I feel guilty admitting: Being together with other people.

It’s no secret that the weeks leading up to December 31st are exhausting. There are the logistics of celebration: We must drive or fly to someone else’s house. We must host: Cook meals, wash sheets, wrap presents, write cards. We must load up our car with gifts for others and re-organize our closets to accommodate gifts from others. And all those gifts, that travel, those meals — it’s a significant financial strain for most American families.

But logistics aren’t the reason we come home from the holidays ready to scream into a pillow.

As hard as it is to admit it: it’s the people. It’s the relationships. It’s the hard work of being together with others. It’s the required awareness of your feelings, their feelings. It’s concessions small and large: Eating food you might not like, hearing political opinions you might not agree with, and having to smile anyway.

During the holidays, we’re ripped from our safe, daily self-centeredness and thrust into the reality of relationships. We may become frustrated, irritated, annoyed, and still, it doesn’t matter. It’s no longer about us: Our wants, our needs. It’s about the collective. It’s about the family. Among family, you must give—not just gifts—but of yourself.

That’s exhausting. I found myself unable to return phone calls last week, clutching at my time like precious coins. “I need it for myself,” I thought; time to read, to write, to rest. “I need to take care of me.” And yet, I wasn’t able to accomplish anything productive, either. Awash in “Dead Week,” the five days between Christmas and New Years, I seemed only to float, unbound.

Why is it so hard to concede ourselves to others? Why are we so deadset on maintaining an individual self? Why does that individuality never seem to get us very far?

I have no easy answers. I chafe at the idea of relinquishing my hard-fought identity (“I don’t like Waldorf salad!” “I do not want butter on my rolls!” “I am not a Republican!”) but I also worry it prevents me from embracing a rich closeness with others.

For example, this afternoon, I found myself ready to snap at my 91-year-old neighbor. Home from my morning errands, I stood on my front porch rubbing bleary eyes, fumbling for my keys, when she stuck her head through her screen door. “Well, good morning,” she said with a wink. Her finger waggled at me, offering what she considered a good-natured scolding for youthful New Years’ Eve indiscretions. “Pretty late to come home! Big night out?”

The insinuation seemed so absurd. Out … partying? I’d spent the morning at a coffee shop in Austin, trying (and failing) to write. “That’s why I’m tired,” I thought bitterly. “I was trying to work.” I clammed up, waved coldly at her, and slammed my door.

If we let it, any remark from a neighbor or a family member can feel like an attack on our identity. When judged, we become defensive. “I’m misunderstood.” “I’m underestimated.” “I’m being looked down upon.”

But here’s the truth: Maintaining any relationship with another person requires opening ourselves up to them. It requires allowing for an imperfect understanding of who we are. It requires nibbling that side dish you don’t want, smiling at a sweater you’ll never wear, and forgiving our neighbors for incorrect assumptions. No one can understand us fully — especially if we never give them the opportunity to try.

Still, it is uncomfortable. Painful, even. Why is it so hard to let go of our individuality, to feel comfortable as part of a collective? Why is it so difficult to be together?

One big reason: We don’t have much practice at it. So much of our lives are structured around the individual. Our jobs, our bodies, our political values, and ethical frameworks, they’re all solo pursuits. New Year’s resolutions offer just a glimpse into our obsession with self-improvement—losing weight, making more money, reading more books.

This afternoon, I spent a few hours at Red Bud Isle, a park in Austin. It’s a beautiful cape along the shore of Lake Austin, with giant trees and lapping waves. I was seeking quiet, a place to sit and think alone. Solitude seemed like the only answer to my fatigue, the only escape from the complex negotiation of relationships.

To my surprise, the park was bustling. Dog owners chatted about their pups, children called after their parents, people proclaimed “happy new year!” to one another.

It reminded me of an essay by Tish Harrison Warren. The daily practice of greeting strangers can go so far toward bringing us back together, she writes: “To learn how to love our neighbors we need cultural habits that allow us to share in our common humanity. We need quiet, daily practices that rebuild social trust. And we need seemingly pointless conversation with those around us.”

So maybe in 2022, my resolution will be that simple. What if I opened myself up and became more comfortable with slipping into the crowd around me? What if I let go of the effort of managing others’ emotions and perceptions? What if I just leaned toward a neighbor at a park and said, “That’s a cute dog!” Perhaps we’d all be better off.

Here’s to a year of seemingly pointless conversations, and all the connections they may bring.

XOXO,
Ali Montag

My Book Rec: These Precious Days

The book: “These Precious Days,” by Ann Patchett

Why read it: Sweet, sweet Ann. My grandmother gave me a copy of this book for Christmas, and I’m delighted to read it. It’s a collection of essays including a piece about her three fathers and her process of cleaning house. Wonderful! I think we both read these essays when they were published in the New Yorker, and I’m so excited to see them again in a collection with other pieces.

Photo of Red Bud Isle via KXAN

Dear Ali, 

In the last month, I’ve started delivering meals to homebound seniors and people with disabilities. Many clients can’t stand at the stove long enough to stir a pot, much less visit a grocery store. Volunteers pick up coolers packed with flash-frozen dinners — chicken fajitas, penne bolognese — and dairy items, either milk cartons or cheese sticks. Sometimes, they get packets of bread, or pears. One day, there were bonus burritos, donated in bulk by Meta, whose campus is in the same city as the distribution kitchen. “We have way too many,” said the coordinator, harried, as she threw a fragrant bag into my car. “You should eat one.” The tech company had offered abundance in response to scarcity. It was a well-meaning gesture, simultaneously too much and not enough. 

Route sheets list addresses in nearby neighborhoods. I drive from location to location, listening to Christmas music on the radio, parking my car in precarious places. The route sheets lead me through finicky gates and narrow hallways, past holiday decorations and signs warning off solicitors. In the inner courtyards of an apartment complex, a man screams while a baby cries. I ring doorbells, and knock as hard as I can, hoping the clients will hear. 

“Why did you start doing this?” a family member asked over Thanksgiving weekend as we sat by a fire eating chess pie. To combat poverty, I could have said. Many of these clients receive their meals as a government benefit. They live in mobile-home parks by the freeway and cramped apartments accessible only by slippery stairs. To serve the elderly, I might have replied. Some clients want to spend a little time together. We talk about the weather, and their pets. One woman told me that her location by the mobile-home dumpsters allowed her to strike up conversations with other residents taking out their trash. “What do I owe you?” another woman asked when I delivered her food. “Nothing,” I said. “Happy holidays,” I offer, lamely, as I leave.

The fire popped. I picked at my pie. “I’m sick of thinking about myself.” The relative chuckled. But the answer was an honest one. 

I started volunteering not because I was feeling selfless, but because I was shocked at how selfish I’d become. Three hours, every two weeks, plus money for gas — this was my penance, the actual “least I could do.” Many stops come with notes. Client is blind. Client forgets to wear his hearing aids — knock loudly, and knock again. GIVE MEAL ONLY TO CLIENT: Client worries roommates will steal his food. The clients are often concerned that I will leave before they can manage to make it to the door. “I’m coming,” they cry, again and again. “I’m waiting,” I say. “Don’t worry.” Driving the route makes me sad, though the clients are often grateful, and there are some signs of care. A friend sits smoking on a porch. A grandson collects a meal for his grandfather. There’s also neglect — tangled flower beds, living rooms cluttered with papers. And there’s so much need. A man shyly asks if I’ll bring in a package from the driveway. His gratitude at the gesture makes me sick to my stomach. It’s really the actual least I can do.

The Bay Area’s inequity is almost a cliché. Multi-million-dollar fixer-uppers and growing encampments exist in the same neighborhoods. Those of us in the middle — confronted by both obscene wealth and awful poverty — complain about gas prices, groceries, child care, and rent, which really are burdens for most of the people who live here. We bemoan the inequality, but see no way of solving it. The situation paralyzes: Why do anything if we can only do so little? Delivering a few dinners twice a month doesn’t solve anything. So why do it at all? 

Distributing the food does “put things in perspective.” When I drop off the empty coolers at the end of my shift, I drive home through the fog to my small, warm apartment. I mix cookie dough and put on soup. I call a friend. I walk around the block. I plug in the Christmas tree. I am reminded of how much I have. I am forced into gratitude.

But I don’t want to serve others just so I can feel better about my circumstances. I don’t want their situations to be a kind of consolation. At least that’s not me! How selfish. How dismissive. How cruel. Plus: I’m young. “Life happens,” so they say. These things, too — good knees, my memory, connections and consolations — can pass away. 

In the meantime, I continue to strive for more even as I see those who have less. The week gets underway, and I am filled with desires. I think that’s true for many of us. We want more than we already have, even as we recognize that for many, what we have would be more than enough. This is especially true at Christmas, a season when we’re encouraged to give cans to the food bank, purchase a toy for a drive, or slip small bills into a red bucket. We’re congratulated for giving just a fraction. I often spend more on my family’s stocking stuffers than I do on acts of charity.

The uncomfortable truth: We want the poor to be cared for, but we also want to be rich. With such unsavory ethics, how can any of us actually be part of a solution?

Dig into your motivations for doing good and you’ll quickly find contradiction. (At least, I do!) There are noble reasons, yes: Compassion and empathy, religious conviction and moral grit. And lots of uneasy ones. I want to be the kind of person who volunteers. Good or bad? I want to live in a place where everyone is fed and has someone to talk about the weather with. I also want to buy a house, give my kids opportunities, go on vacations — and do what it takes to make that happen. Contradictory? Impossible? Immoral?

For now, I have to set these questions aside. If I don’t, they’ll keep me from doing anything at all. Really, I hope that by delivering these meals, I’ll decenter myself entirely — think less about what the process is doing to my own soul, whether I mean it or not, and more about the physical, literal impact it’s having on others. Rice and beans are warming in microwaves. Milk is building up someone’s bones. I want to think less about the origins of altruism and more about how altruism is at work now: even if my actions are barely significant, even if I’m not the best person to do them. 

And I’m not. There are many delivery drivers on the routes, many people who donate more time and make better conversation. I’m always lost, and I can’t really parallel park. Last week, several stops in, I realized I’d neglected to give one client his frozen orange juice concentrate — his serving of fruit for the weekend. I returned to his apartment, knocked again, forced him to stand up and return to the door. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The work of justice and care isn’t only mine to do, and it’s ridiculous to think that it could be. Best to just do something, and then hope for more, hope that the repetition will change my incentives. Hope that a few hours every few weeks will prepare me for bigger sacrifices and greater gifts. In the meantime, someone will have something to eat.

Love, 

Kate

Searching for an organization to help fund this holiday season? Here are some of Ali and Kate’s favorite local nonprofits, located in places they’ve lived.

• Second Harvest of Silicon Valley: Distributes food at over 900 sites across the region.

• LiLY (Lifeforce in Later Years): Cares for elderly people living on the Upper West Side of New York.

• The Father’s Heart Street Ministry: Serves people without housing in Clackamas County, Oregon.

• Person to Person: Provides residents of Fairfield County, CT with food, clothing, and emergency financial assistance.

• Central Texas Foodbank: Provided 54 million meals for Texans in need throughout 2020.

• Inside Books Project: An Austin organization that sends free books to incarcerated prisoners throughout the state of Texas.

My book recommendation

I’m making my way through The Overstory, which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, little by little. Next week, over the Christmas holiday, I’ll be able to sit and read for hours at a time. It’s the kind of book that needs to be enjoyed that way, so lush with details and interconnections. So far, I’ve read its first two “interlocking fables” of immigrant families — Norwegian, Chinese — and their families — a chestnut, a mulberry. I’m moved by how Powers positions human frailty next to the lasting hope of ancestral memory and persistent nature.

Have any of you read The Overstory? Thoughts? (No spoilers!)

Happy holidays! We’re so thankful for your readership. Looking forward to sharing more books and ideas in 2022.

Wasting time. What a terrifying thought. It keeps me up at night. It snaps me to attention in the shower. It jerks me out of stasis and into motion. It comes in a flash: A picture of myself in the future, waking up to realize I’ve squandered a lifetime of opportunities. I had a finite number of moments to make something valuable—and I let them all slip away.

It’s a question always lingering below the surface: Am I doing enough? Usually, the answer feels like no.

Last week, I spent hours on my couch, alone. I stared out the window. I watched leaves tumble onto my porch. I did a little reading. I did a little writing. Mostly I sat. Mostly I stared. I used those hours to notice my feelings, notice my thoughts, notice the spindly legs of a bug crawling along the walls of my living room. I was awake for sixteen hours, but what did I do? To any outside observer—I did nothing.

Earlier versions of myself zipped through days with clarity: A 16-year-old with a binder of homework, a 20-year-old darting through an office, a 24-year-old cleaning up email inboxes. Those moments felt valuable because someone told me they were valuable. Professors, my parents, my bosses—everyone agreed: Finish school. Get a job. Go to work. I was provided a justification for how I spent my time before I ever even had to articulate it.

It felt good to be busy, to be moving. A sense of accomplishment is necessary to human flourishing. We need a purpose to feel productive. A sense of daily achievement isn’t trivial — it’s what allows us to derive meaning from our messy, blurry lives.

But as the years go by, something strange happens. Obligations and responsibilities sucker onto you like barnacles on a boat. You feel less and less in control of your time. There are endless meetings and work responsibilities and grocery runs and mortgage payments and laundry cycles and family phone calls. Bills pile up. Every morning requires something from you. You must give parts of yourself away over and over again. The passage of time begins to feel inescapable, like an ocean eroding rock into sand, day after day.

How do we respond? Typically, in one of two ways:

1.) Active resistance. You try to get in front of it. You decide to hyper-optimize every moment. You make a calendar. You schedule it out: time for work, time for vacation. Any problem can be solved by improving the efficiency of your day. If time is finite—if each minute is a unit of account to be weighed and measured—it’s your job to extract value from each one. You can succeed at work, you can succeed at home — all you need is more time. This reaction is popular among the wealthy, those who believe tomorrow will always be better than today. There’s always more, more, more. “Death has never made any sense to me,” Oracle’s billionaire co-founder Larry Ellison has said. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Peter Thiel all harbor sci-fi-esque ambitions of living forever. “Billions of dollars are being invested in the idea of immortality,” according to the NYT. Time, like any other resource, is just something to hoard.

2.) Passive ambivalence. Or, you suffer the inverse reaction. You develop a sense that time can’t be avoided—only endured. It’s impossible to fight off the waves battering against you. Why try? Long-term goals don’t feel worthwhile. You’re up against too much uncertainty, too much fatigue. Awash in the void of time, the best you can hope for are fleeting moments of happiness: The taste of a hot slice of pizza, the comforting droll of Netflix. Your job becomes maximizing short-term enjoyment. Consider the rise of TikTok, a “thoughtless hypnotism” machine designed to waste our days with pleasure and delight. At best, an ambivalence towards time gives us the freedom to relish a sunset or waste a few hours on the phone with a friend. At worst, it robs us of the ability to reap the rewards of devotion. Commitment isn’t a stagnant idea: It’s something that can only be enjoyed slowly, week after week, year after year. If you’re ambivalent to the passage of time, you can’t ever hope to feel the satisfaction of significant accomplishment.

It feels like an irreconcilable choice. Should we fixate on the future, or just enjoy the moment?

I think if we’re honest, we’ll see that both reactions are coping mechanisms to avoid something deeper, something scarier. Our lives are bound by fundamental limitations. We’re all going to die. Reaction #1 is a problem of denial, ignoring what we know to be true. Reaction #2 is a problem of inattention, a willful refusal to take ownership of our days. If we acknowledge that time is passing, acknowledge that our fleeting moments will come to an end (perhaps sooner than we think) we have to deal with the consequences. We have to accept responsibility.

It’s such a common experience: everyone is driven by a deep desire to have value, but everyone is equally perplexed about how to do something about it. So many systems are designed to smother that instinct, from our phones to our careers. How do we extricate ourselves from tangled narratives about what we should and shouldn’t be doing? More than any other generation, we have the freedom to do anything, but we cannot possibly do everything. Of course obsession and paralysis are the most likely reactions. What are our other options?

The truth is we have tons of other options. It’s possible to strike any number of compromises between structure and freedom, if only you’re willing to try.

Consider this argument from Collaborative Fund’s Morgan Housel: “So many people strive for efficient lives, where no hour is wasted. But an overlooked skill that doesn’t get enough attention is the idea that wasting time can be a great thing,” he writes. “The most efficient calendar in the world—one where every minute is packed with productivity—comes at the expense of curious wandering and uninterrupted thinking, which eventually become the biggest contributors of success.”

A bit of creative freedom is exceptionally valuable.

And, the opposite is also true: Sustained, committed consideration results in ingenuity, too. Consider this idea from Level Ventures’ Sari Azout: “I think that what a lot of people attribute to genius is actually just the benefit of time,” she says. “If you gave anyone a few months to think about something, they would come up with something very thoughtful.”

Too much structure and we lose meaning, too much freedom and we tip into floundering.

But in the middle—somewhere between the two—we find purpose.

On my couch this week, watching fall descend upon Texas, the season changing right in front of my eyes, I thought a lot about the passage of time. I thought back to the first fall I spent with you, Lauren, Nikki, and Rebecca in New York City. Back then, we could meet for picnics in the park, go apple picking, or sip hot cups of coffee at Pret A Manger for hours at a time. We were free to wander around, just some kids with a few dollars and a lot of time. Can you believe that was six years ago?

In those years, I remember sometimes feeling guilty about how much time we spent goofing around. Ali, you should be doing something productive with your early 20s! But now, as I look back, I realize we weren’t wasting time but investing it. We were putting in the hours necessary for relationships that would last for years.

I’m also thinking of our friends tonight because I’m cooking dinner with something delicious Rebecca sent me—a jar of sweet onion jam—and using it to marinate chicken. Marinating is a beautiful use of time. It’s the productive work of changing one thing into another; soaking in something meant to provoke a new taste.

Marinating might not feel like cooking (there are no flames!) but it is an unskippable step to create flavor. Letting something rest, change, and comingle with new ingredients is a reminder for us all: Each day, we become something new. Time passes, with or without us. The best we can do is soak it in.

XOXOX,

Ali Montag

My Book Rec: Overstory

What I’m reading: The Overstory by Richard Powers

What I think: I’ve had this book on hold at the public library for *weeks* and finally got it. This is a book about trees. Literally, that’s the whole plot. The life of trees. I’m only a few pages in, and I think somehow this book is already growing new seeds within me, ideas I might not understand until they’ve become towering, strong oaks. I’m looking forward to lying back in their shade.

Learn more: Check out this interview with Pulitzer winner Richard Powers on the Ezra Klein podcast.

Dear Ali, 

They call it “the Great Resignation.” Workers are leaving jobs they hate (or merely tolerate) for better ones. It’s “an expression of optimism that says, We can do better,” an Atlantic staff writer recently wrote. Workers are leaving in search of better wages, better benefits, better treatment, better hours. More power to them. Quitting isn’t lame anymore. It’s empowering.

Some are leaving because the pandemic has changed their priorities. Maybe (I’ll believe it when I see it) this last year-and-a-half has actually helped Americans obsess about their work less. We’re all going to die: maybe soon! So let’s choose life. Let’s retire earlier. A profession is not a personality, after all, and we should no longer value being special or important over being happy. Let’s pursue it, for real this time: work-life balance.

Ah yes, WLB. Something to strive for. The idea comes from industrial engineer Lillian Moller Gilbreth, whose family’s story is told in Cheaper by the Dozen. As a working mother, she made a connection between managed time and reduced stress. She realized that holding it all together, producing research papers and school lunches for her kids, would require careful intentionality, efficiency, and coordination.

Fair enough. But the phrase “work-life balance” has shifted from a radical tool of gender equality to meaningless corporate lingo. In job postings, it’s a benefit proffered alongside health insurance and 401(k) matches — as if our relationships, our time, our bodies, our very existence were equivalent to dental care and retirement savings.

We need a way to think about the labor we do for pay and the labor we do for free, our “productive” hours and our “time off.” But I don’t think work-life balance is the concept that will help us. Here’s why.

1. “Balance” is an illusion.

“Balance”: A perfectly weighted scale. Two equal halves, work and life. Or maybe, instead, a pie chart, segmented by activity. Eight hours of sleep, one hour of exercise, time allotted for TV and journaling and eating dessert and playing trains with your children. The proportions may change day-to-day, but at any given time, an ideal exists.

But is that ideal attainable? 

I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly thrown off balance: by emergencies, by calls for help, by my own moods and limitations, and by delights, too. A friend gets sick and cancels plans. Someone I love dies. Something I read makes me sad. There’s a small jazz combo playing at the park, and so I stop to listen for a while. I thought I’d run today, but I’m grumpy. The broccoli I planned to make for dinner has spoiled. The neighbor brought over cookies! We chat for a while. I procrastinated, and so I’m working late. I got excited by a writing assignment, and I’m working late. I’m not always healthy, or optimized. Tomorrow is a new day. 

“Work-life balance is a cycle, not an achievement,” write two academics in Harvard Business Review. To solve any imbalances, simply “pause and denormalize,” “pay attention to your emotions,” and “reprioritize.” Then, “make changes.” But what if making those changes is impossible, or unkind? What if the reason we’re pulled in so many different directions is because many important people and causes demand our attention, even our love?

We’re not in control of our lives. At least, not as much as we think. We respond to exigencies and needs and changing desires. We make sacrifices, and mistakes. We may not often feel like we’re at equilibrium, but hey: that’s life. No need to feel guilty about it.

In reality, balance “suggests a precariousness that isn’t helpful”:

The thing is, most days probably won’t look like an equilibrium. You might have to stay late at work and grab dinner on the way home one day or skip your work retreat this year because it coincides with your parents being in town. And there is nothing wrong with either of those choices.

I know we’re also supposed to eat a “balanced” diet — but does that sound very tasty? I’d rather have a nutritious diet, a delicious diet. When it comes to life, “balanced” shouldn’t be our cold, clinical ambition. “Full,” perhaps. “Abundant,” even better.

2.  “Work” and “life” can’t be separated.

Now that I’m working from home, the distinctions between “work” and “life” are blurred at best. I log in to my job at a desk that’s just feet from my bed. On breaks, I get the mail or put in a load of laundry. On lunch, I’ll run around the block a few times. Sometimes, I mix cookie dough while listening to an afternoon conference call. 

Physically, work and life are no longer separated, for me and many others. In my house, work is always impinging on life — a Slack message arrives while the electrician is here fixing the wiring. And life is always interacting with work — a phone call from home, the squirrels I can see out the window, the temperature of the coffee in my cup. Sometimes, this means I’m distracted. But not always. It just means that my days aren’t partitioned into segments —now I’m working, now I’m living. They’re fluid and cohesive. 

Even when I was in an office, life and work weren’t separated by clear lines — even though I had an hours-long commute on buses and trains between the two. How I spoke to a coworker impacted how I spoke to my husband. The way I sat in my desk chair affected how my back felt on an exercise bike later that evening. The articles I championed at the magazine were determined by my experiences outside of the office — and the conversations I had on the weekends were informed by what I was thinking about as an editor. I couldn’t stop “work” or “life” on the train, as I watched snow flurries streak by the window. I couldn’t break up my experience, myself, that way.  

I understand why we want to separate work and life. We (in theory: again, I’ll believe it when I see it) don’t want to get obsessed with our careers. That’s not cool. We want to situate our identities elsewhere. If not, we’ll tolerate low wages or bad bosses. We’ll have too-high expectations of work, insisting it will absolutely fulfill us. This will make us sad. Even worse, we’ll have disdain for those who work jobs for any reason other than ambition or passion. These are all good reasons to downplay what we do for money and emphasize other activities.

And yet, to divide work from life is an artificial separation. We are living while we’re at work. We are taking breaths, getting hungry, getting sleepy, telling jokes, fighting off a cold, using our fingers to type on a keyboard. Most importantly, we’re making choices — about how we treat people, how we approach problems — that impact who we are, that have real ramifications for our souls. This requires us to approach work — no matter what we’re doing, building a software program or fixing a pipe or delivering mail or caring for children — with more seriousness and intentionality, and with more respect for ourselves. 

It may be a simple idea. But partitioning our days into “work” and “life” doesn’t make much sense other than at the most literal level — especially if we define the mission of our existence more expansively. If we seek to be compassionate, or resourceful, or wise, those initiatives seep into every facet of our life, no matter what task is at hand.

3.  Distinguishing “work” from “life” puts too much pressure on “life.”

If “work” is dull and tedious, a required text on an economics syllabus, then “life” is supposed to be a beach read. What did you do this weekend? we ask, hoping for music festivals, fishing trips, lavish dinners, and alpine getaways. 

Every minute not working must be spent having fun — or else resting in a way that can be consumed on the internet. Reading a stack of library books with a steaming cup of coffee. Observing leaves on a walk. Having a “movie marathon.” Playing with an animal. Accidentally sleeping past an alarm, rising at last on Saturday morning with your hair in tangled knots and period cramps? Not appropriate for “life.” How about doing something disappointing — paying too much for gluey pasta, seeing a museum exhibit you hated, running late? Remove it from “life” immediately! Forget it ever happened. Feeling angry, sad, jealous, insecure? Nope. No time. “Life” is only two days a week, Saturday and Sunday, and they must be happy.

In reality, much of my time away from “work” is spent also working. I am cleaning, paying my credit card bill, purchasing Christmas presents, defrosting chicken, picking up a prescription, and filling up the car with gas. These activities are unspoken, though all of us do them. It’s just that the strict dichotomy of “work” (hard, serious, professional) and “life” (festive, joyous, free) leaves no room for sweeping dirt off the back patio, or waiting in line at the DMV. It also doesn’t make space for all of the work — parenting, caregiving for the elderly and sick, serving in a church or at a food bank — that isn’t compensated.

Honestly: Our loss. Because if we imbue these things, too, with dignity — the rhythms of each day, the nitty-gritty of relationships — we’ll find that life takes on more dimensions than work and play, required and optional. Life is all of it. It’s messy. It’s out of our hands. It’s the things we can expect and the things that we can’t. It’s all the ways that we contribute and are cared for, no matter where we are, and no matter what we are doing.

Love,

Kate

My book recommendation

What I’m reading: The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

What I think: Just started this book. I’m enjoying the way Wang situates her own experience of illness within clinical categories: “A diagnosis is comforting because it provides a framework, a community, a lineage… It says I am crazy, but in particular way.”

Something cool: Wang is the founder of The Unexpected Shape Community, which provides “resources for ambitious people living with limitations such as disability and chronic illness.”

We could be declarative: If you are burning your tongue on bacon, stop. It’s so simple. Stop it!

But that would be stupid. We would be completely ignoring the complexity of human experience, all the things that make our lives rich and interesting. It would be the literary equivalent of swirling cake frosting onto a giant pile of cow manure. We’d miss all the treasures within the muck.

So, we don’t. Instead, we ask questions. We wrestle with things, and read, and research, and call our moms, and call each other, and whine for a while, and then read some more. Then comes the hard part: we write. Not to offer answers but to make discoveries. To think in action. To think in collective.

This month, the staff at Ali & Kate Industries Inc. (pictured below, plied with iced coffee and breakfast tacos, seated at a coffee shop in Austin, Texas *detesting the scooters*) have been hard at work churning out writing. For who? For you, dear reader. So that we may swim in the manure — all that muck and confusion — together.

We tackle light fare this week: Pregnancy, capitalism, freedom, and obligation. Enjoy!

From Kate:

The Point Magazine: “Liberty and Limitation”

Today, Kate did the impossible. She published a thoroughly reported, empathetic, and emotionally engaging essay about the consequences — and beauties — of having a baby.

Does deciding to have children lessen your freedom? Yes. Will ambitious women be required to make sacrifices for the work of caretaking? Yes. Is the alternative, pursuing freedom at all costs, without any limits, inherently better? That needs unpacking, she writes.

Rather than seeing caregiving as a threat to women’s achievement, it should become more of an expectation for everyone, men and women alike. Caregiving should be accommodated. It should be celebrated. If our understanding of personal achievement is so threatened by basic needs and tenderness, maybe it’s time to reevaluate whether what “success” requires is worth it—whether demanding such things of people is even human, much less free.

Read the full essay here.

From Ali:

Well + Good: “I ran a mile for 31 days”

Ali took up running. Why? Not for the merits of aerobic exercise, but for developing a sense of self-reliance. Read the full essay here.

Fortune: “The Museum of Ice Cream is Back”

Would you pay $40 to wander through a building engineered to illicit selfies on Instagram? Ali went to the Museum of Ice Cream opening in Austin, Texas. It gave her a headache. Read the full essay here.

Architectural Digest: “Here’s why I’ll never go back to apartment living”

What makes a house a home? It’s a mindset of permanence, regardless of structural ephemerality: “In the end, all of our homes are temporary—one way or another. But what if we made the decision to commit anyway?” Read the full essay here.

XOXO,

Ali & Kate Industries Inc.

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It couldn’t be a more beautiful day in Austin, Texas. The sky is unmarred by clouds, the air has the fresh smell of September. A cool breeze ruffles the pages of my library book. I’m writing to you from beneath an oak tree with tall, wide branches. Squirrels zip up and down the oak’s trunk. A neighborhood cat yawns and crosses its paws.

There’s so much beauty in the material world: The rustle of dry leaves, the orange incandescence of fall’s first Monarch butterfly. Who could imagine leaving all of this behind?

You’ll be dismayed—if unsurprised—to know that’s the primary goal for many of our nation’s wealthiest members. Mark Zuckerberg, personally worth $135.2 billion, employer of 58,000 people, is working on it. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, a company worth $2.2 trillion, is working on it. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, personally worth $7.4 billion, is working on it. David Baszucki, founder of Roblox, a company worth $47.3 billion, is working on it. Unity, a company worth $37 billion, is working on it. Many, many venture capitalists, in charge of allotting further billions to fledgling startups, are working on it too.

They’re working on the metaverse, an immersive digital world. Here’s Mark Zuckerberg’s definition: “You can think about the metaverse as an embodied Internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it.”

The metaverse will be made possible with cooperation from all of the players I listed, through what Matthew Ball calls “unprecedented interoperability.” For once, everyone is on the same team: Trillions of dollars are lining up behind a common goal. In the metaverse, there will be no pandemic, they say. There will be no climate change. There will be only dreams.

Smart people are hard at work on justifications for the metaverse. Here are a few: 1.) It will offer new economic opportunities for people who make art and videos and music online. 2.) It will remove the burden of place from employment. 3.) It will allow connection in a fragmented world. 4.) It will solve “reality privilege.” 5.) The deepest, often unspoken rationale—perhaps the one we should take the most seriously—is this: The metaverse is happening, regardless, so we should prepare to make the most of it.

To me, each of those arguments is more concerning than the last, fertile ground for unintended consequences to bloom like mushrooms after rain.

I am no technologist, ethicist, or developer. Still, I have a stake in this future as much as anyone. This idea—life redefined by VR headsets or AR projections floating just past our eyes—matters. What we do with that idea matters too.

First, we know that when new technologies hit the mass market, adoption precedes obligation. Examples: If you can build an audience on Twitter, it will soon be a given that you should build an audience on Twitter. If you can make a TikTok dance, become famous, and buy cars worth more than your parents’ home, you should make a TikTok dance, become famous, and buy cars worth more than your parents’ home. If you can make yourself perfect—your face through custom skincare, your body through Peloton classes, your mind through meditation apps—you should do it, all of it. No matter the cost.

Consumer tech’s “opportunities” soon become our obligations. Ordinary people bear the burden of living up to “exciting” value propositions. When technology “democratizes access,” what was once unachievable becomes the default expectation.

Put another way by L. M. Sacasas: “We never go back.”

Can you imagine an obligation to plug into the metaverse? In the morning, you might be expected to pop on an Occulus Rift headset to show up for a work meeting. (Facebook’s new product, Horizon Workrooms, facilitates this.) After work, since you’re already online, you could stay in the metaverse to listen to concerts, watch movies, rock climb, or meditate. You could strap your kids into a headset and send them off to virtual daycare, too. The goal of the metaverse is to encompass everything: Work, life, friendships, all of it.

That’s a pretty sad picture. What about the scent of rosemary growing in my garden? What about the pink sunset beyond my front porch? If the economic incentives of the metaverse encourage trading these tangible experiences for a simulated digital reconstruction, it’s inevitable that our time in the real world will suffer.

Who will water the rosemary? Who will watch the sunset?

Here’s where a reader will email me: “Ali, calm down. The metaverse is an addition to our world, an option to make things better. It’s fun. You shouldn’t present it as a false choice.”

But I suspect the choice will be exactly that stark. The amount of money flowing toward the metaverse (and its surrounding technologies: VR, AR, gaming, crypto, etc.) ensures the impossibility of a middle route. There could be a path defined by moderation, humanity, and boundaries. We will never see it. Returns will be owed. Scale will be required. There will be no moderation.

As explained by a Silicon Valley founder: “Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t wake up every morning and say to himself, ‘Holy shit!—2.8 billion people use Facebook!’ Instead, he wakes up every morning and says, ‘Why isn’t the other half of planet Earth using Facebook?!’”

Journalists have raised questions over the technical achievability of the metaverse. I think that’s beside the point. These men, with billions to burn, have set their sights on it. Whether they achieve it or not, we’ll all be subject to years of PR campaigns, speeches, and CBS This Morning segments, extolling the virtues of living in a digital world. “We have disease here,” they will say of physical reality. “We have fires. Just slip on the headset, and it will all melt away.” Such promises—cloaked in the language of equitable access and economic opportunity—will become part of the water we swim in.

That’s a problem. As much as the possibility of a digital reality itself, the narratives around the metaverse represent some of the most concerning philosophies to emerge out of our fully online, post-pandemic lives.

Being in Place:

One such narrative is the abstraction of place. “The better that this technology for presence gets, the more you can live where you want,” Zuckerberg argues.

Here’s the pitch: In the metaverse, anyone could work for any company around the world. Digital avatars could shake hands and make eye contact online, meaning you would never have to fly to a job interview again (and neither would the hundreds of other candidates). The labor market would become more competitive, opportunities more abundant for all. Universities could admit students from anywhere, no dorm rooms required. Passports wouldn’t matter. Visas wouldn’t matter. Even timezones wouldn’t matter. The sun doesn’t affect someone wearing a headset.

With WiFi and VR, it wouldn’t matter where you lived: a studio apartment, a cabin in the woods, or a yurt on a mountain. Your children wouldn’t need residence in a particular zip code to attend public school. They could learn in a virtual classroom. You would be free to go anywhere, anytime, without consequences. You could always log back in, right where you left off.

Here’s the trouble: Our culture is fixated with the benefits of unlimited choice—living and working wherever we want—with little preparation to contend with the consequences.

Place is one of the most powerful tools we have to form meaningful social relationships. Before we met friends through Twitter, Fortnight, or Twitch, we met them on the playscape at school. We met them in parks, on sidewalks, or at neighborhood basketball games. We met them through the incidental encounters that happen when you roam a neighborhood with two feet. As Simon Sarris writes, “What creates strong friendships are repeated, tiny, and unplanned interactions.”

Zuck would argue that Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp connect millions of people as “friends.” But in a neighborhood of 2.2 billion, loneliness is pervasive. Why? Relationships are about intimacy, not scale.

“Familiarity is crucially the maintaining of weak ties, or else the maintaining of strong ties in weak ways,” Sarris writes. “Some things can only be made strong by binding one thousand tiny threads.” Familiarity is in the mundane: borrowing a cup of sugar, nodding at the neighbor who waters his lawn each morning, petting a dog who is a regular at the park.

There’s familiarity, then there’s serendipity. Think about all those romantic comedy meet cutes from the ’90s: A man and woman simultaneously reach for the same book at a bookshop. A girl meets her crush riding the bus. A man gets lost, he stops to ask for directions, and falls in love.

How many of these wonderful, unplanned interactions have we eliminated with the ruthless efficiency of technology? No need to brush hands across a shelf when you can order on Amazon. Our opportunities for familiarity and serendipity—both facilitated by place—are gone. Algorithms, recommendation engines, GPS, and calendars intermediate our lives now.

Embracing the value of place might be our best tool to stitch a strained, fragmented society back together. For example, consider a trip to one of the last institutions firmly secured by geography: The public library.

You walk in the doors, and you’re greeted by a librarian. She waves. Inside, it smells clean, like books. Everything is inviting. There are comfortable chairs and thick rugs. You’ve chosen this library not because of its prestige, or its financial endowment, but because of proximity. It’s nearby.

On the wall, announcements are pinned to a board: A cooking class is coming up. It’s free, provided by the library. On Thursdays, a group meets to read a novel. If you’re looking for a project, the community garden needs volunteers.

At the library, you’ll meet strangers. You’ll have to work at making conversation; you will not have mutual interests pre-aligned by a dating app or Twitter thread. These strangers will be of different ages and different socio-economic backgrounds. All you’ll share is place.

Then, on a Thursday night, months after you joined the reading group, seated around a table holding borrowed copies of Great Expectations and paper cups of hot cocoa, you’ll wonder how it’s possible to love a group of strangers so terribly much. You will take from this experience, but you’ll also give.

Every day, the library offers the opportunity for chance encounters. A writing teacher once told me: “The book you need is right next to the book you’re looking for.” Without the convenience of efficiency, we have the possibility of delight.

A few comparisons:

1.) At the library, geography is both a unifying strength and a limiting factor. The number of people who can visit is capped. (There’s a reasonable limit to how far you’ll drive to visit a library.) This limit, paradoxically, is what allows it to be an open, public resource. It is free to anyone, but not to everyone. (A library in the metaverse would soon be trampled with a stampede of influencers, ready to lay claim to a cool space only to desert it later when the herd moves on.)

2.) The library is not a passive piece of infrastructure. It is not an open, public “town square,” as so many social networks purport to be. It has staff. Trained staff. Librarians actively care for the most vulnerable and marginalized. Librarians listen. Librarians accept responsibility. Someone is in charge; rules must be followed. It is not a place for chaos. Don’t follow the rules, and you get kicked out. (Can you imagine Zuck maintaining decorum, much less any international regulatory standard, in the metaverse?)

3.) Perhaps most critically, the library is free. You do not benefit by being rich at the library. You benefit by being kind.

So much of the metaverse is about extracting value: what can be bought or sold? Which Marvel characters can be produced as avatars? Which NFTs can be sold as digital artwork? Which musicians can sell digital tickets? How long can we keep people trapped here, consuming, consuming, consuming?

Place, of course, is rife with this thinking too: Where is real estate the most valuable? Where can I make the most money? Where can I pay the lowest taxes?

It’s also true that place is inherently unequal. Some places are rich, with better libraries, gardens, art, and universities. Some places are poverty stricken, troubled by crime, left defenseless against decay. In the U.S., those two places might be only miles apart. Around the world, 150 million people, half children, are expected to live in extreme poverty by the end of 2021. In many places, running water is a luxury. Toilets are for the affluent.

It’s this vast chasm that gives Marc Andreessen a basis to argue for the metaverse as an antidote to “reality privilege.” We’re not all privileged with a pleasant existence. In virtual reality, everyone can escape to a brighter future.

In response, I pose this question: If you went to your grandmother’s house and found it crumbling — the gutters full of trash, the sink dripping, mold growing along the bathtub, garbage spilling onto the kitchen floor — what would you do? Would you suggest she turn on the TV? Would you turn out the lights, plug in headphones, turn up the volume, and help her fade into a fictional world of characters she can meet but never touch? “She can see the world through TV!” you might argue. “It gives her joy!”

I suppose this is an option. A better option would be to help. Clean out the gutters. Fix the sink. Scrub away the mold, and take out the trash. Sit with her, hold her hand. Ask her if she’s okay. Open the curtains, plant seeds in the garden, and wait for the butterflies.

In a small place, in your grandmother’s house, it does not take a Silicon Valley billionaire to change the world.

It just takes you.

What would the world look like if we always considered place from this perspective? What if we disposed of Silicon Valley’s “scale at all cost,” “systems thinking,” “macro” approach, and instead took up Wendell Berry’s philosophy: What if we think little?

A bed of flowers in the front yard. A wave hello. An extra cup of coffee, offered to a stranger. One little deed at a time, we can make things better.

We can embrace the restrictions of physical place. We can embrace friction, commitment, and responsibility. We can choose to be together for only the sake of being together, and through that choice, turn even the most desolate of places into butterfly gardens.

From Sarris again, “All worthy places were once unworthy, after all.”

My Book rec: Second Nature

The book: Second Nature

Why you should read it: I think I’m in a romantic relationship with Michael Pollan? To be clear, I’ve never met him. But he’s so detailed and revealing — in this case writing with intimate precision about a decade’s worth of maintenance on a small plot of land in Cornwall, Connecticut — that I feel we are intertwined.

Other things you should read: His essay on lawns. It’s… poetic?

Last fall, my friend and I took our husbands to dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory. We acted like it was a joke but really...it wasn’t. We wanted the brown butter and mizithra cheese pasta, a treat from our childhood. We planned to order it as part of a combo plate that also included meat sauce over noodles. 

There are dozens of OSFs. The location near my high school, large and dimly lit, had stained glass, a train car in the middle of the restaurant (!!), and bread baskets. The location we selected for this dinner, hundreds of miles away, had the same menus, the same velvet-trimmed booths.

So how was our meal? Delicious. The mizithra cheese didn’t come from a farm down the street. It was probably made in a lab, a mixture of chemicals and paste. What else would you expect from a restaurant calling itself a Factory? The pasta did not purport to be handmade. At the end of the meal, our complimentary spumoni arrived: pistachio, cherry, chocolate, melting together in a little silver dish. How was it? Divine.

As a kid growing up in the suburbs, I wore clothes from Old Navy and Nordstrom Rack. I wore makeup from Walmart, namely Maybelline Great Lash mascara that came in a pink-and-green tube. When I learned to drink coffee, I drank it in Starbucks. Later, I gravitated toward Peet’s, which felt sophisticated. (Turns out, Peet’s is owned by Starbucks.) My friends and I ate at Panera and Panda Express — chain restaurants in strip malls. We saw blockbuster movies, and drank cherry Icees. There was no Spotify tracking anyone’s listening patterns, so nobody knew which songs were playing through my headphones. (Off-Broadway hits, angsty folk.) There was no Instagram, of course, so nobody knew that I hadn’t thrifted my clothes, or visited a hole-in-the-wall café.

It’s not that everything I liked or did was “mainstream.” I found myself at some cool concerts, and wore sandals I procured from a drugstore in Hawaii, and read experimental novels I found at the library. But this was all happenstance. I did not spend hours on Yelp finding a trendy place to eat late-night burgers with my friends. We just went to Applebee’s, and had a good time. I did not comb through reviews about products — like I do now, before I buy eye cream, or a backpack, or sandals — that were niche and cool and up-and-coming but also somehow, already, possessed by everyone. I wasn’t ashamed of liking things that were cheap and commercial, basic and (shudder) suburban.

John Mayer. Black olives. Kirkland-brand wine. Cow’s milk. Subway honey-mustard sauce. Decor from HomeGoods. The band Maroon Five. Workout clothes from Marshalls. Shoes from DSW. The channel formerly known as ABC Family. The channel currently known as TLC. Jet skis.

Joining the “liberal elite”? Be prepared to disavow these pleasures. In academia, in the media, in big cities, in trendy circles, the surest sign of sophistication is how far away you are from Costco pinot noir and “Live, Laugh, Love” signs. Swear off any chain, any mall, and any restaurant with no reviews. (Unless it’s a hip, undiscovered little joint — in which case, don’t worry, the reviews are on their way.) Forgo the tacky. Scorn the “cheugy.” Think critically about everything you purchase, or eat, or deign to enjoy. Obsess about it, even. You can shop at Target, yes: but only ironically.

Avoid, at all costs, those suburban women (two words said to me, with scorn, by more than one New Yorker). These are women who shop at Kohl’s and cook with hamburger meat, who watch reality television, who engage with the monoculture. What rubes! What fools. Never mind that perhaps they don’t have the time, money, leisure, opportunity, or (and this is really it) ego to take all of their purchases and preferences so seriously. They just need school shoes. They just need to make dinner. No subscription toothbrushes, no “radically transparent” perfume.

This isn’t really about money. Many of us twenty-something elitists can’t really afford the “nice” chocolate and the “nice” plants and the “nice” candles, even though we buy them anyway. This is about class. It’s about culture. It’s about speaking a language of material goods that indicates we’re insiders.

Let me be clear: Local is great. Craftsmanship? Great. All products should be fair-trade and fair-labor. It is good to support a farmer, cheesemaker, or butcher who’s also your neighbor. Clothing that’s made in clean and safe conditions is better than “fast fashion” made by children. If only we could all afford fresh food, and jeans stitched by someone paid a living wage. If only that’s what the market incentivized.

Also, we buy too much stuff anyways. The movement toward owning one, higher-quality item rather than the fifty shoddy ones is good in that it encourages us to have and need less. Big-box stores and chain restaurants absolutely encourage overconsumption, and outsourced production, and bad working conditions, and low-quality bang-for-your-buck. The world would probably be a better place without them.

But I think we’re fooling ourselves if we say our reasons for preferring chic diners or craft cocktails or hand-sewn sheets or recycled-material tennis shoes have only to do with ethics, or the environment, or human dignity. We can buy good things for bad reasons. We like the farmers market because of the produce...and because we like being the kind of person who buys produce from the farmers’ market. Oftentimes, our good desires to be natural and handmade and anti-corporate and artisanal, crafted and curated and local, are intertwined with our desire to be seen as superior, to mark our identity, taste, and goodness by means of what we buy. We’re virtue-signaling. Or we’re just being snobs. Oftentimes, our obsessions over what we consume — the sourcing of our coffee, the provenance of our purses — allow us to ignore real injustices, to use stuff as a stand-in for justice. And sometimes, the companies that purport to be “better” — for us, for the earth, for our neighbors — end up not living up to their promises.

When I was a teenager, I spent more time living my life than thinking about the items and experiences it contained. That was nice. I don’t want to go back to eating the quesadilla burger at Applebee’s (I’m not sure my body could handle that anymore). But I do want to return to an existence that’s less classist, and less curated. Less concerned about products, and more concerned about, well, everything else. Able to admit — yes, it’s true — that HomeGoods has nice dishes, and John Mayer’s new album has some bops, and that pink-and-green mascara? It honestly works just fine.

Love,
Kate

My album recommendation

You guessed it: Sob Rock

Best song IMHO: “I Guess I Just Feel Like”

Reading material: This review of “Sob Rock.”

An actual book I recently read and enjoyed: On Freedom by Maggie Nelson (coming out 9/7).

Summer recipe: This fig cake.

That’s a question I’m too sleepy to think about. Here, the heat doesn’t feel dire, it feels lethargic. July in Texas languishes like your laziest middle school friend. “Want to lay around and watch movies?” she asks. She tosses her bike in your front yard, helps herself to a Gatorade, and plops down on the couch, remote in hand. You’re at your weakest. You should do your summer reading, or go outside and play a game, but Uptown Girls is on, your mom won’t be home until dinnertime, and a nap really does sound nice. You wake up at sunset, covered in drool, another day of youth helplessly wasted.

When you’re 13, summer ends. A note on the calendar —“Back to school shopping!” — is the expiration date for sunshine and irresponsibility. All too soon, classes and lunch bells will create routine. Quizzes and semester grades will mark success or failure. There’s a clear rule for how to spend your time: During the summer, enjoy. During the school year, work.

With that structure, a few weeks of freedom is a special indulgence. Without it? An endless summer becomes a terrible, terrible thing indeed.

This July, as the pandemic concludes (?) and something (?) new begins, each day feels like swimming through quicksand. I’m trapped in time, trapped by the heat, trapped by indecision. Movement makes it worse.

Each morning, my eyes fly open at 7:00 am. I need to get up! my brain says. There are things to do! Then I look at my phone. Oh. It’s just another day. There are emails, there are tweets. The weight of stagnation is like gravity, plastering me to my sheets.

Why bother getting out of bed before 8:00 am? So I can get a jump on a day that will look exactly the same as the last? I’ll eat the same breakfast I always do, clean the same dishes I always do, sit at the same desk I always do, and start on the same work I always do. During the day, the average temperature in the house will hit 82 degrees. My wall unit AC will clamor and bang, working its hardest to provide even that comfort. At night, I’ll sink back into bed, tired for no reason.

Another day of youth—now scarcely numbered—will be wasted.

The problem is one of structure: I have none. Every day is foggy and full of choices: Which pants to wear? What to make for lunch? What to work on? Who am I going to be as a person in this world? What do I want to do?

4:00 PM is the worst; for both the heat and the existential angst. It’s the end of the day, and the questions should be answered. They aren’t.

It’s not as though we haven’t had plenty of time to sit and think. By now, we should be taking action: planning for the future again, taking control of our lives and rebuilding routine. But how? With what priorities? Making money, or making friends? Getting a job, or writing a novel? Wandering, or buying a house? Anything can be possible, but not everything. Choices must be made.

But how? It’s so hot.

I’m reminded of middle school science class: An object in motion will stay in motion, but an object at rest will stay at rest. I remember the term “activation energy.” Something to kickstart the system, a change agent for a chemical reaction. Where do you get such a thing? Iced coffee and earnest ambition do not seem to be doing the trick.

Last weekend, I decided enough was enough. I woke up Sunday morning and flung off the sheets. It was time to act. I rose, dressed, and drove 80 miles per hour to the most productive place a person can go on a Sunday before dawn: Home Depot.

Sneakers laced, shorts drawstring tied, I pushed my cart with gusto. I would spruce up my front garden, I thought. Pluck weeds, repot my plants, clear out the throngs of flying, nibbling devils lingering in the bushes. I would work.

As the morning light spread across the yard, I swept dirt off my picnic table, put down bark mulch, and sprayed insect repellent along the siding of my house, taking care not to hit my basil or oregano. I would combat chaos. I would create order. In a few hours, with sweat and dirt streaked through my hair, the job was done. I lay on my floor, indescribably pleased.

Progress. It could be made.

Flat on my back, eyes beginning to close (this Sunday nap was earned, after all) the roof started to tremble. Tick, tick, tick. Something hit the shingles.

I opened the screen door just in time to see the sky turn inward and crack. Even the heat could no longer bear itself. Storm clouds broke open, rain obscuring my view of anything past the porch. I worried briefly if the house would hold together.

The rain fell so hard it snapped my sunflowers’ stems. The bark mulch washed away. Potted plants tipped over, MiracleGrow fertilized the street. The chemicals — carefully, strategically placed — washed away too, headed toward streams and creeks and watersheds. Fish and frogs and sparrows would soon take their bathes in my poison.

Nature is opportunistic. Rains in Texas are never wasted. By the next morning, the green tops of invasive bamboo began to poke their spears through the ground. Mushrooms flourished. Green weeds sprouted where they had just been removed. My yard turned to sludge, mud sticking to my shoes and caking the floors of my house, turning my white bath mat a dark brown. I needed to fix my yard (again), then I needed to clean my house.

One day of work. Still another day, invariably, unavoidably wasted.

In this season of life, it’s impossible not to ask: What’s the point of trying to make progress when everything returns to chaos?

It’s a law of nature that entropy propels any system toward disorder. Things break. Weeds grow. Well-kept gardens become tangled and overgrown if left to their own devices. Gardeners aren’t only responsible for creating a system, but for mustering the effort to sustain it. If we stop the work of maintenance, of pulling weeds and raking bark mulch and potting flowers, the system will go to hell. Our upkeep is the only thing that prevents it from falling apart.

That’s why the choices we need to make about this fresh chapter of life feel like big ones—because they are. We’ve been given a blank slate. Whatever we choose to build will require dedication to succeed: Maintenance and upkeep. The question, “Who do I want to be today?” can feel like something more dire: “Who do I want to be forever?”

With stakes that high, how could you ever choose?

Perhaps the answer is not to fight the chaos, but to learn from it. Have you ever looked at a mushroom? Fungus thrives in the places no one else wants to go: The muddy, the dark, the damp. Each mushroom cap is a beautiful collective of cells working together, forming intricate structures. Chaos is everywhere in nature: Birds nibble on seeds and scatter them to the wind. Honeybees spread pollen on their wings, flying in random zigs and zags. They perfume our world through indecision. Chaos, in fact, might be the most perfect order.

We all want to feel productive, to earn a sense of achievement and accomplishment. We want to be in control. But look around at what our efforts to tame, manage, and control the wilderness have produced: Drought and desperation.

Maybe strict regimens, clear goals, and adult to-do lists aren’t the answer. Nature’s chaos is not unproductive: Even rainstorms make things grow. Maybe we take our cues not from the systems designed by man, conquering through brute force, but by the systems of nature, striving and growing a little each day — with the sun and with the rain. Maybe we let time offer us an upward trajectory that can’t be explained, only watched, embraced, and enjoyed.

xoxo

Ali

My book rec: Bowlaway

The book: Bowlaway

Why you should read it: Written by local Austin, Texas writer Elizabeth McCracken, this book is just absurdly delightful. It’s about a woman named Bertha Truitt who opens a bowling alley. The characters are weird and lovable, they make mistakes, fall passionately in love, and die in freak accidents. There’s so much life in this book. When I’m feeling bored of my own reality, I dive into McCracken’s characters. In her world, you will not be bored.

What else you should read: McCracken published a new book of short stories this year, and it looks exceptional.

Dear Ali, 

Apologies for my delayed response to your last letter on friendship (which was lovely). My excuse? I’ve been on the road. Really, I’ve been in the air, eating snack mix consisting of mysterious “crunchy pieces” and “sesame bits” and drinking weak coffee, touching down in Nashville and Denver, Phoenix and El Paso, Washington, D.C. and Portland, Oregon. Once again, I’m sitting cross legged on airport floors next to electrical outlets, charging my devices and guzzling water collected from dirty drinking fountains. I had forgotten about Airport Kate. She’s ruthless. A survivor.

It’s the summer of travel, for those who can afford it and those who can’t. Hotel rooms and rental cars are astronomically priced and attractions are crowded, leading some tourists (apparently) to postpone vacations yet again. Airlines, meanwhile, cancel flights and shift reservations with impunity. Passengers turn unruly. But the need to “get out” remains, and the people pack into seats.

Around the country, I gather sounds and smells and tastes like souvenirs. In New Mexico, at a horse race, spectators eat nachos with cheese that’s too yellow to be real and drink margaritas that are mostly sugar. They bet on equines named “Backseat Gary” and “Bananas Foster” and “One Bodacious Eagle,” throwing bills across counters in exchange for paper receipts, watching the odds shift on the board. I stand at the edge of the track, close enough for dust kicked up by steeds to collect on the brim of my cowboy hat.

In Nashville, a woman in sparkles leads a session of square dancing. The participants, clumsy, kick and grapevine into each other. Later, a guitarist for a country band wearing slim blue jeans leans out a large picture window into the crawling street, all cigarette smoke and screams. He smirks, makes eye contact. Bachelorette parties dance atop party buses, shaking it for all who want to watch.

In Virginia, a gun and ammunition store sells its wares across the highway from a white steepled church. Surrounding both: Fields, cows, no cell service. My friend can’t get her car over the ridge we’ve parked on. Wheels spin. Fireflies blink. Later, there’s pie and melt-in-your-mouth brisket. As we return to the city on the backroads, fireworks explode overhead, extravagant patriotism.

Even on the planes, there’s something to see. Maybe too much to see (and hear, and smell). A toddler screams for ice cream. A man orders a diet Coke with ice and talks about the last time he went to Hawaii, on his honeymoon, with a wife who’s now passed away. A small boy behind me braces for takeoff. Once we’re in the air, he offers his feedback. “I am not used to that! I do not do that every day!”

Soon enough, I’m back home. Places and people become stories. I relay them to others, then put pictures on the Internet and give them stupid captions. There’s real joy here, at the multitude of pastimes and diversity of landscapes, even within just one country. Wonder. Empathy.

But travel can also feel like exploitation. I come to a place to have my fun, to marvel at others’ otherness. I turn livelihoods and passions into anecdotes, even jokes. I consume. I put money into the economy — helpfully, I suppose — but also bend that economy to my tourist whims, rely on broken systems of restaurant ranking and false pursuits of authenticity. I contribute to the bad traffic and the plane fumes. The Nashville dancers leave their trash on the side of the road. I spray clouds of DEET into the Virginia mountain air.

Back in April 2020, a hopeful pundit argued that “the coronavirus will change how we travel.” He described his own collection of experiences, more glamorous than mine: a glimpse of the Sistine Chapel, a tiger sighting in India. He bemoaned mass global tourism’s “sordid underbelly,” from pollution to sex trafficking. He encouraged us all to be mindful of these problems when we planned our next vacations — but didn’t offer many concrete ideas about how to do so. If you want to see the Mona Lisa, you have to stand in the sweaty throng. Now, we are back to “gorging,” as another, more recent opinion writer put it: 

In the years before the virus, tourism grew unsustainably and to excess, driven less by sincere wanderlust than preening digital self-regard. Technology hadn’t just made travel very cheap but had also cheapened it.

It’s true. Vacations easily become trips for the ego, all boasting and posting. But treating adventure and beauty and discovery like commodities isn’t an exclusively digital problem. Even if I leave my phone at home, I can find myself “gorging” on sights, consumed by what I’m extracting from them, too ready to gawk.

Don’t litter. Tip well. Keep your voice down. Wait your turn. Don’t use the airport outlets for too long. These are the easy rules. Don’t exploit, or exoticize, give what you can to a place you’re just passing through, even if only the dignity of your careful perception — that’s more difficult. It’s the task of everyone who finds themselves elsewhere this summer, delighting in the variety of human experience, the sheer size of the world.

Love, 

Kate

My book recommendation

The book: Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener

Why you should read it: This may be a pointless recommendation, since it seems everyone but me has already read this book — especially everyone who lives in the Bay Area. But if you, too, have been waiting on a hold at the library for 11 months (!!) do not give up. This anthropology of tech — hoodies, sweatshirts, kombucha, hubris, riches — is worth the wait, funny and damning and worthy of discussion. (Note: Neither Ali nor I liked the end.)

What else should you read? In the New Yorker last month: Does Tech Need a New Narrative?

Dear Kate,

On Memorial Day morning, I woke up in a $40 hostel in Bozeman, Montana.

I wandered into a bathroom shared by a dozen other travelers, backpackers, and hikers. It smelled like sweat and stale popcorn. I wondered briefly: Am I getting too old for this?

I got dressed and left to find coffee. Outside, the air was fresh with pine needles, the sun bright and sharp. I walked onto Main Street and found what felt like nearly all of the town’s 47,000 residents lining the sidewalk, waiting for the Memorial Day Parade to begin. Kids sat on their fathers’ shoulders, grandparents lounged in fold-up chairs. A Boy Scout handed me a flag to wave.

From a perch on the curb, I watched Bozeman’s local rodeo champions, Elks Lodge leaders, and war veterans wave their own flags, riding in WW2-era Jeeps or on horseback. A high school marching band played.

After the parade, while I ate eggs and hash browns at the counter of a local diner, a man in his 80s introduced himself. He wore a U.S. Air Force baseball cap. He asked if I was enjoying Bozeman and how long I’d be visiting. I told him I was just in town for a few days, wandering with my backpack. The world was open, I said. We could all go on adventures again.

We chatted for an hour, mostly about a shared love for small-town newspapers. He subscribed to 12. “Two in Minneapolis,” he said. “I like to know what’s going on in the big city.”

As he got up to leave and pay his bill, the waitress waved away his rumpled $20 bill. “It’s been taken care of, sir,” she said with a smile. “Don’t worry about it.” He turned to me.

“Did you do this?”

I did not.

Another man seated a few tables down smiled and tipped his own hat, emblazoned with a different branch of the U.S. military. “Thank you for your service,” the younger man said. They shook hands. A moment of mutual understanding passed. The older man rested a palm on the shoulder of his new friend.

Had I woken up in a different decade?

I was in Bozeman by happenstance. The Sunday before, I was sleeping on our dear friend’s couch in Nashville. The Sunday before that, I was sleeping on my brother’s couch in Manhattan. Montana was the last leg of the adventure. I was there for a family trip—a pre-planned meeting of extended relatives up in the mountains. The Internet economy lured me to extend my travels from Nashville straight to Montana: A budget airline flight from Nashville to Bozeman + three nights at the hostel (booked through Airbnb) was still cheaper than flights home to Texas and back. Adventure! I thought. Travel! Excitement!

If it sounds chaotic, it was. I visited three cities in two weeks. I took a laptop, a sweatshirt, two pairs of shorts, a little black dress, and a toothbrush. That’s it.

Finally, I would be out in the world, I thought as I packed. I imagined traveling—hopping on flights, walking briskly through airports, sending work emails from coffee shops—would make me feel like my old self. A woman with places to be and things to do.

But free to roam, with flights to any imaginable destination just a click away (credit card points!), an unlimited number of new people to meet, and nothing to tie me down but a backpack, I felt more unmoored than ever.

Where should I go? What should I see? The answer, it seemed: Everything.

When I first started planning in the cold weeks of February, my goal was simple: to reconnect with everyone I’d lost. I would go back to all the best friends, mentors, co-workers, drinking buddies, and neighbors who had been torn away by a year of unexpected circumstance. I would find them and hold them close.

Find them I did. There were parties, toasts, hugs, and tears. There was steak with chimichurri sauce, crispy cauliflower pizza, and roasted salmon drenched with lemon and capers. I could cry thinking about how lovely it was to see everyone, to hold our friends and pat their hands. I also marveled at the sacrifices made for me: “Need to do your laundry? Sure, c’mon over. Hungry? Dinner is just about done. Sleepy? Coffee is brewing.”

I found myself reflecting on the beauty of long relationships. Our friends have seen me at my best. They’ve also seen me at my worst. There’s an implicit promise in tossing a blanket on the couch: “I’m here for you tonight. And I’ll be here for you tomorrow.”

These relationships weren’t born out of thin air. They were forged in a particular place: the Upper West Side of New York. We lived there. We went to church there. We went to school there. (Well you went to school there, not me. I was busy napping in Riverside Park with an Absolute Bagel wrapper still stuck to my hand.) We were in each other’s lives. We were neighbors. Now, we’re scattered across the country, plunked down in California and Tennessee, along the East Coast and in my own little house in Texas.

Sitting at that diner in Montana, watching the locals in Bozeman spend time together, mark Memorial Day together, just be with one another, I felt a twist of sadness: What makes a place home?

Certainly not a $40 hostel.

Scroll through Twitter just once and you’ll find praise for a transient lifestyle. “Live as a digital nomad,” they say. Move from Airbnb to Airbnb. Never sign a lease. Travel wherever you want, whenever you want. Sell your possessions. Join the YOLO economy, and choose #VanLife forever.

Freedom, if only we could get it, would feel so, so good.

But as I’ve written before: Freedom is cheap. What we don’t acknowledge is the high cost of a life without commitment. Without commitment—to a place, to a family, to a group of friends—I wouldn’t have had anyone or anything to go back to. I’d have gotten my shot in the arm with no plans to make.

In 1978, social scientists published a study titled, “Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative?” The study compared the self-reported happiness levels of lucky victors, victims, and a control group. Did money make a difference in their happiness? It turned out, not really.

“The lottery winners were no happier than the controls, at least in any statistically meaningful sense,” an opinion writer at the NYT explained. “If anything, the warp and weft of their everyday lives was a little more threadbare. Talking to friends, hearing jokes, having breakfast—all of these simple pleasures now left them less satisfied than before.”

One of the researchers, a man named Philip Brickman, argued that happiness for all three groups was largely derived from one thing: Commitments. Especially when those commitments conflicted with freedom.

“Happiness,” he wrote in his book Commitment, Conflict, and Caring, “involves the enthusiastic and unambivalent acceptance of activities or relationships that are not the best that might possibly be obtained.”

Meaningful relationships are formed through commitment, not through freedom. You don’t need to search the entire country’s bars and restaurants for your perfect pals. Just pick some people, science says. Commit to them. They might not be NBA players or millionaires. But they’ll be yours. And that will be the best thing of all.

On my last day in Bozeman, I wandered through the town’s graveyard. I read the dates on the headstones: Grandparents born in the 19th century, parents born in the early 20th, children and grandchildren born in the 21st. The names changed through the years, Reginald and Hazel Lue becoming Kyle and Susan. But the titles didn’t.

Wife. Husband. Father. Mother. Friend.

What commitments will we be remembered by?

Today, as the world re-opens, there’s a surge of enthusiasm for tossing caution out the window and running headlong into the wind. For me, two weeks of traveling was enough. I’m thinking about how I can commit to my new home in Texas instead.

Yesterday, while I was walking through the neighborhood, my mailman said hi to me by name. By NAME! I wasn’t even at my own house… so he didn’t recognize me from my address. He recognized ME! I consider that progress. It might not go on my gravestone, but we all have to start somewhere.

Miss you lots.

XOXO,

Ali

My book recommendation

The book: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

Why you should read it: I expect everyone to know that when I refer to my close personal friend, advisor, and confidant, George, I am referring to George Saunders, a man I have never met. George is my guy. George is the man. George is wise, and funny, and smart. George did me the favor of publishing the syllabus he teaches in his Creative Fiction MFA course at Syracuse for the low price of $28. No cold winters in upstate New York for me! I will learn all the lessons George has to offer about writing and reading from my couch at home. Thanks George.

What else you should read: If you don’t have time for a full book about the craft and form of writing, check out this little essay George wrote on the subject. (He expands on a lot of these ideas in the book, but this hits the highlights.)

Dear Ali,

At Fort Bragg’s Glass Beach, there isn’t much to see. That’s what the guidebook says, but we go anyway. Decades ago, factories and neighborhoods dumped their garbage into the sea: empty pop bottles, appliances, and cars. Later, there were organized clean-ups. But the ocean helped, too. Waves smoothed the pottery and glass into trinkets, stones colored like amethyst and jade, amber and pearl. A few stretches of beach began to glitter. Word got to tourists, like us, who came to pick up the glass, put it in their pockets, and store it at home in jars or dishes. Maybe they looked at it after that. Probably they didn’t.

The beach is picked over. The reports were right. A lot of the rocks are brown and grey. My husband goes out to hunt in the tide pools for crabs, fish, and anemone, hopping from rock to rock. I push my feet through the stones. There are still some pretty ones left. I squat to try to take pictures in order to document that they were here. I was here. It’s not enough to witness. We can’t ever just let things lie. 

Later in the trip, we eat biscuits with jam and honey on a porch. In the distance, behind the highway, sea lions are barking. They’re pretty loud. It sounds like they’re having a party. Them too?! I take big breaths of cold air, trying to hold it in my lungs for later. I need all this rest and relaxation to improve me, to sort me out. I’d better enjoy it! I must enjoy it!

It’s the project of the summer for those with privilege. Let’s relax! Let’s relax aggressively, like it’s our job. Let’s have fun! Let’s reconnect! The prices of flights and hotel rooms are going up. Macy’s is back. It’s time to consume nature and food and art, host parties and take vacations.

But all of this fun costs money, and for money we have to work. All this fun takes time: and that’s time you could be working! Here’s our dilemma: It’s impractical to rest. Don’t rest too much. But it’s lame not to rest. You should be getting ahead. And you should be kicking back! Push yourself. Give yourself a break! I hate the phrase “work-life balance.” As if work wasn’t also your life. As if life happened only on weekends. No wonder we’re panicked about spending them well.

We go for a walk to look for whales. I want to see the whales because then it’s a story to tell: “We saw whales!” I look for breaches and blows. Nothing. The ocean is almost artificially blue. It doesn’t give me what I want, no matter how much I paid ($6) to drive into this state park and see it. 

In a beach town, we visit a wood shop, lined with beautiful tables, bowls, and chairs. Then a bookshop, shelves are stuffed with volumes. How much time it took for these carpenters and authors to make these valuable objects! I’m out here drinking hot chocolate “with whipped cream, yes please.” (It’s vacation!”) The homes along the coast with their walls made of windows raise one, all-important question: “How much do you think that cost?” Did the owner of that home waste her time driving around looking at cows? Or was she watching her investments instead? Watching the clock? Watching herself, to make sure she didn’t (inadvertently) waste her own life?

We drive for hours. One road takes us through redwood forests. Its curves are so narrow we have to honk when we go around corners. “Watch out: We are here!” We will leave but the trees will stay, bark like the skin of wrinkled ogres. I’m glad to be seeing them — though at times, it feels like too much to see. The Northern California coast is difficult to process. It’s an infinity of grassland and ocean, wildflowers laid so thick they look like pelts. It doesn’t fit into my ideas of progress, achievement, or time — time as something that’s always getting away from me, something to “make the most of” before it runs out.

In her lecture On Beauty and Being Just, the philosopher Elaine Scarry writes that seeing beautiful things doesn’t necessarily make us nicer people. And it doesn’t necessarily inspire creativity of our own. You can see lots of films and never make one yourself. You can have a sophisticated palate but be a terrible cook. But beauty does “confer aliveness”— we see the beautiful thing, and in our seeing, it becomes meaningful. Somehow, the beautiful thing does the same to us.

Beauty is, then, a compact, or contract between the beautiful being (a person or thing) and the perceiver. As the beautiful being confers on the perceiver the gift of life, so the perceiver confers on the beautiful being the gift of life.

Earlier, she writes: 

Beauty seems to place requirements on us for attending to the aliveness or (in the case of objects) quasi-aliveness of our world, and for entering into its protection.

The thing about beauty (or joy, or rest) is that it can’t be measured, or recorded, bought or earned or optimized. It can’t be neatly scheduled, then set aside. It can’t be stripped of its benefits, used for “self care,” and then left behind. Maybe someday, we’ll sit and look at the views from our glass-walled house, thinking we have “earned” them at last — when really, earning was always the wrong way to think about things.

On the way home, driving Highway 1, I freak out. My hands are sweaty. It’s getting dark, and there’s no median on the passenger-seat side of the highway. The highway curls around the sea cliffs like a swirl of caramel through ice cream. The ocean smashes itself against the rocks, hundreds of feet below. I imagine our car flying off the cliff. The radio plays only the words of a sexist rock DJ, and then only the words of a fundamentalist preacher, and then nothing, just static. The sun is setting, and the sky looks bruised: purple, orange, black at the edges.

How do you quantify “aliveness”? You can’t. You just know it when you feel it. 

More than a year ago, I was worried about the same things I’m worried about now: not having enough time for work or for leisure, for play or labor, sensing that these things aren’t so separate after all but still always feeling guilty about one or the other, terrified of waste and “falling behind.” To help, my friend taught me a meditation called “The Prayer of Patient Trust.” Here’s an excerpt:

We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. 

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress

that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—

and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;

your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,

let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don’t try to force them on,

as though you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)

will make of you tomorrow.

This summer, perhaps we need to settle down. Let life (all of it, work and play) just be life, not a series of exchanges and compromises, a set of exploited or wasted opportunities for advantage and gain. Trust that the world is working on us, without having to categorize or collect it, hoard or display or even understand it. Like debris in the waves, like it or not, over time, we’ll be changed.

Love,
Kate

My book recommendation:

The book: Having and Being Had by Eula Biss

Why you should read it: I love Eula Biss because she puts all of her thought processes — not just her logical arguments, but her doubts, insecurities, curiosities, and confessions, what she’s reading and what she’s questioning — on the page. In this book (which you and I recently read together at our friend’s kitchen table in Nashville), Biss turns her attention to questions about money and possession, consumerism and work. It made me feel less alone to know she’s thinking about the same things we are.

What else should you read? Earlier this year, I read On Immunity: An Inoculation, EB’s book on vaccines, fear, and our unavoidable interdependence.

Check out some of our recent work published elsewhere:

Ali has been writing about all things Austin, Texas:

• A mini-golf war memorial

• An essay on how the city has changed

• The tyranny of the modern farmhouse

Kate has been writing about tensions in contemporary culture:

• Winning yourself a new life

• Vaccines and patriotism

• And whether Silicon Valley is real.

In 1972, banners covered the West Texas town of Odessa, black and white signs painted MOJO WINS. Neighbors held each other and cried. Fathers shook hands and slapped each other’s backs, grins spread wide. That year, their boys had done it: The Permian High School Panthers were state champions.

“We were hoarse from screaming and yelling. We didn’t want to leave the field,” quarterback Jerry Hix remembered years later, long after his high school football career had ended. “Nothing can compare. I miss it.”

Photo credit: Robert Clark, Friday Night Lives

It was a moment of indescribable pride for boys who spent the better part of their young lives cracking ribs, ripping tendons, and puking under the Texas sun, working toward a single goal: Excellence at the game of football. It was a moment of pride for the people of Odessa, the few thousand ranchers and oilmen and beauty clerks who scratched out lives in the arid desert, watching and praying over their team.

It was also a moment from which many of those boys would never recover.

“My life’s never been the same since,” said Joe Bob Bizzell, a player who flamed out of college football and retreated to the dirt roads of Odessa. A decade later, he found himself still there, repairing pump jacks on an Amoco oil field.

“You live in a fairy tale for that one year of your life,” said a different player’s wife. “You’re worshipped, and that year is over and you’re like anyone else. We all feel our husbands have been unhappier with everything they got out of it.”

Players fell into alcohol abuse and lackluster home lives. Permian High’s athletic trainer called winning a Texas high school football championship the “kiss of death” for teenage boys.

“They’re popular. They’re in very hot demand, like a hot rock group. No matter what they do, it’s a hit. Everything they do is right,” he said. “And they just can’t find that again. What other job can they find that has that glamour? What’s the substitute? Find the substitute for it. The only consequence of it is a mentally crippling disease for the rest of your life.”

Why am I recounting Pulitzer Prize winner H.G. Bissinger’s reporting in Friday Night Lights? First, because it is a wonderful book. Second, because as I’ve been re-reading it this week, the story feels uniquely relevant.

Bissinger’s nonfiction account of Odessa and its Permian Panthers isn’t just a book about winning football games. It’s a book about the lingering cost of life lived on a pedestal.

Flipping through Twitter last week, this video, “A day in the life of a New York fashion student,” popped into my feed. Watching, it wasn’t memories of NYC, or outfit envy, or nostalgia for my own youth that I first thought of (that came later)—but the boys of Permian High.

By all objective metrics, this girl is living a fabulous life. She’s beautiful, with nice friends, fantastic clothes, a fun gym routine, and professional success. Her video has been watched 4.1 million times on Twitter. Kate Bartlett has 421,600 followers and 16,300,000 likes on TikTok. That’s very real economic leverage. Employers will race to capture the power of a smart, appealing young woman.

She’s playing an expert level of the game as it is understood in 2021: Attract an audience. Curate your life. Optimize for beauty and likability. Be authentic, but careful. Precise. That’s how you win.

The rules of this game were written two decades ago—entirely unwittingly—by pale young men trying to get dates from a Harvard dorm room. In the firehose of faces, you needed a strategy to stand out. The ultimate rule was born: Be something special.

The pressure to be “special” is hard to quantify. It’s like an ever-expanding gas, taking the shape of every space it enters. The tools are available: There are guides for how to perfect your skincare routine. How to use several thin layers of spandex to eliminate any suggestion of cellulite. How to raise venture capital. How to achieve ketosis. How to make $1 million before you’re 30. How to achieve the perfect pouty lip. How to self-publish a book. How to burn 11,300 calories.

You can be a champion at anything. Therefore, you must be a champion at something.

Like football, champions are rewarded by a crowd of cheering fans. Fans are where the money comes from: Season tickets and popcorn sales and T-shirts and sponsorship deals. But that audience is no longer a West Texas town of 15,000 neighbors and cousins and friends: It’s billions of blinking eyeballs.

The game isn’t played in stadiums, but online. It is no longer bound by the friction of the physical world. There are no tryouts. There are no coaches. There is no 4-year time horizon. You cannot graduate from the gridiron of the Internet.

16,300,000 people have watched Kate Bartlett on TikTok. That is 162 different packed crowds at the Darrell K Royal Texas Memorial Stadium at the University of Texas.

16,300,000 people saw her as young and beautiful and smart and successful.

16,300,000 people will expect her to remain that way.

But if it is irreparably painful to live under the expectations of a crowd for one year—just one season of football—what must it be like to withstand that pressure for…forever?

Imagine yourself in college. Could you have handled that audience? My college days were spent blessedly offline. (This is because I was uncool, not because social media wasn’t popular.) I wore some bad outfits, ate mac & cheese on the floor, brought greasy sacks of McDonald’s into the library, said and did things that I regret. But the stakes were low. I could make mistakes and learn. No one held it against me if I goofed up. I could apologize, figure it out, and be better next time.

In front of 16,300,000 people, the stakes are high. Mistakes will not be tolerated. Cellulite will not be tolerated. In the game, you must be perfect.

Ringing endorsement of “content creators” is everywhere. TikTok is the future of celebrity. OnlyFans is the future of empowerment. Instagram and YouTube remain the keys to the golden castle. A loyal audience is a wellspring of power: cultural, political, or economic.

You and I are both writers—paid only for our words and ideas. We both make content every day. It pays the rent. I certainly value the dissemination of creative work, understand it to be an important tool, and believe it worthy of compensation and recognition.

But then I read about the torment a 17-year-old girl endures from 100 million strangers. I read about the eating disorder she’s hidden. I read about the violent threats in her DMs, pings that reach right into the palm of her hand. I listen to her cry. Can you watch this video without feeling sick? Can you really?

“She’s the most powerful influencer in the country! She has it all!” adults will tweet. “She has scale larger than some publicly traded companies! You shouldn’t feel bad for her.” 

I think about these adults, strategizing about how to “leverage her brand.” They sit on Zoom calls. They make decks. I wonder if they get death threats. 

I think about the systems these adults will build, and finance, and scale. I think about how these systems will impact everyone else, everyone who is not famous, but is now convinced that perhaps they could be. Should be. 

I watch this video, a woman filming a dance for TikTok when a stranger appears inside her apartment. He has climbed onto the balcony. She shelters in a neighbor’s apartment until the video ends.

It’s easy to pretend the digital world is removed from the physical. It is not. I think about the millions of women streaming on OnlyFans. Are they safe? Then I think about myself. Have I tweeted anything that will reveal my home address? What have I posted? Who can find me? I feel sick. 

I watch content, and I watch, and I watch, and I have to ask: What are we really advocating for?

The truth is, we’re advocating for a giant scoreboard—something clear and definitive to measure our worth. Who is up? Who is down? We want the score to always tick higher, more, more, more. We want qualitative proof of recognition and connection and fame. We want to be champions.

Here’s a quote I love: “Most of us come to grief because we want too much.”

Wanting. It’s more addictive than nicotine.

Wanting emerges as a soft white fog, billowing over our thoughts. We love to rationalize it. We frame it as goal setting, as ambitious career plans, as a good reason to spend 10 hours behind a laptop. Of course you want to play the game—that’s how you win. Who doesn’t want to win?

The 1972 Permian Panthers were full of wanting: To win for their town, to earn the respect of their peers, to prove they were the best.

“You should set high goals,” the game tells us. “You should be a champion.”

But look closely: it’s just wanting.

“I have 20,000 Twitter followers.”
I want to be worthwhile.

“I write 3,000 words every night.”
I want to be understood.

“I just negotiated for 6 figures.”
I want to be valued.

“I eat organic foods, sleep eight hours a night, meditate, and optimize my work schedule.”
I want to be loved.

The game will not satisfy these wants. When you get too old, or too boring, or too careless on Twitter, the game will be over. It will leave you stranded in Odessa, Texas, alone, checking for rust on oil pumps.

We’re all in control of how much we play the game. We do not need to be champions. We do not need to watch the scoreboard. We’re allowed to walk off the field, to slam the gate of the stadium behind us. We can exchange the roar of the crowd for the quiet of a dirt field, a place to toss a ball around with a few friends—to play a game that makes us whole rather than leaves us hamstrung.

Isn’t that what we all want?

XOXO,
Ali

#TEXASFOREVER.

The book: Friday Night Lights
My rating: 🏈🏈🏈🏈🏈
Read more: An Unprecedented Look at the High-School Football Team That Inspired “Friday Night Lights”

Dear Ali,

Last week, Jared went to the emergency room for what ended up being a nasty migraine. The first day, he was very nauseous. At the store, I bought applesauce, crackers, and electrolyte sports drinks. I filled the car with gas, just in case. His vision was blurry; I turned off all the lights, and wrung out cold cloths for his forehead. The second day, when he still couldn’t see, and when parts of his body were numb (the inside of his mouth, the tips of his fingers) we went to the emergency room. The nurses filled him with fluids and painkillers, and scanned his brain for clots or masses. The scan came back clear. A few hours later, we were home. While Jared slept, I washed blankets. Later, I distributed doses of medication.

All in all, this was a minor episode. Jared was sick; now he’s back to reading law books and eating regular meals. But in the week since, I’ve had a familiar feeling, one I’ve encountered before after small crises have passed. It’s gratitude, yes — even small interruptions make you thankful for daily peace. But it’s also a recognition that when I was buying the ginger ale and asking questions of the doctors and running yellow lights on the way to the ER, I was happy. Not happy, exactly: fulfilled? Content? Certain, momentarily, that I was doing the right thing, in the right place and at the right time.

Some hospital visits last weeks, months, even years. Some sorrows drag on. I’m not talking about these kinds of protracted difficulties. I’m talking about the momentary, urgent needs that occasionally surface, and that you, yourself, are able to address — not because you are especially smart or compassionate or good but because you are there, a warm body who’s able to take out the trash and drive the car and heat up the soup. You are not making a choice to help. You are the only choice.

Perhaps we are “happy” in these moments because our own opportunities are limited. When you are called to a scene of need—a hunger that needs to be fed, a thirst that needs to be quenched, an anxiety that needs to be soothed—then you know that day will not be the day that you write thousands of words, start a business, or make the investment that will make you rich. You will not exercise or eat three balanced meals. You will not be frugal or beautiful. Self-discipline will go out the window. You will end up in an ER with no deodorant on and pimples on your chin. For lunch, you will eat a Shack Burger with fries and an iced tea. For dinner, you will eat cereal. Somehow, everything will go on, even without your daily obsessions. Why do you obsess about those things anyway? They suddenly seem extraneous and insignificant.

But like most “lessons learned,” this one—serving others is the surest way to satisfaction—doesn’t take easily. Make too many demands of me, and limits get hit. Make even a few demands, and I’m done! One week later, I’m already tired of reminding Jared to make a follow-up neurologist appointment, already forgetting the fear I felt that morning when I packed a bag, mapped a route, and went. I’m back to defining the value of days by an established set of criteria, back to my old professional panic. It’s the project of a life, perhaps, to live in “crisis mode” when there is no crisis— to learn how to hold things lightly so you can drop them and go.

How does that happen? Definitely not by hoping your husband goes back to the emergency room. Perhaps we just need practice, to put ourselves in situations (food lines, conversations, gardens) where people and other living things need us. That can become its own kind of trouble, the need to be needed. But let’s worry about that later. For now, someone needs our help.

Love,
Kate

My book rec: An American Marriage

As you can see from the festive seal on its cover, this novel was selected to be part of Oprah’s Book Club—so if you haven’t read it already, I’m surprised. I’m just a few chapters in, and I’m already enthralled by both of the first-person voices, Roy, a textbook salesman, and Celestial, a seamstress. When the newlywed couple returns to Roy’s childhood home, he’s accused of a crime he didn’t commit. That’s the part I’m at now.

From an interview with Tayari Jones:

The thing about novels to me is that novels take place in a space of ambiguity. Almost all the research I did on mass incarceration, let alone wrongful incarceration—there was no ambiguity there. If you arrest and convict an innocent person and subject them to the penal system, there is no second side to that story. I realized I had to write kind of to the left and to the right of the issue. 

The book: An American Marriage

Rating: So far, so good.

Read more: “If I Can’t Cry, Nobody Cries: An Interview with Tayari Jones”