#48: The countdown
As you’re reading this, assuming you’re reading this within, say, six hours of receiving it, I am moving to a new apartment.
Maybe Baby is a free Sunday newsletter. If you love it, consider supporting it financially. For $5/mo, you’ll gain access to my monthly Q&A column, Dear Baby, as well as my weekly podcast. Maybe Baby is reader-supported, hence the lack of ads and sponsors. Thank you!
Good morning!
As you’re reading this, assuming you’re reading this within, say, six hours of receiving it, I am moving to a new apartment. As your eyes move across this line (this word!), I am either slipping a disc, experiencing my first real sweat of 2021, or at the very least swearing I will never move again. But let’s back up a little.
Last Monday, March 29th, was the one-year anniversary of my first newsletter, “A message from the void.” I thought about posting something on social media about it but then got very exhausted. Still, it was nice to reflect. When I sent that first newsletter I remember feeling such relief that I was finally writing again. In hindsight I’d only taken two weeks off after my last day as an editor on March 11th, also coincidentally the last day before New York went under lockdown for Covid-19, where it would stay for the next year. But it had felt like I was living in slow-motion, and the more I panicked the longer it took for each second to register on my internal clock. Days passed like months.
After one week of quarantine, on March 18th, and one week before I launched Maybe Baby, I wrote an Instagram post that went baby-viral about how no one should feel pressure to “make the most of a pandemic.” I say baby-viral because people still tag me in their reposts of it and oftentimes the words are translated into different languages, which feels like it means something about something. Anyway, I guess when I wrote that I was talking to myself more than anyone. I wanted to assure myself—really feel it in my shaky little bones—that I was more than my productivity. I needed to believe that, and yet the relief that washed over me once I finally wrote indicated something hadn’t fully clicked.
But there was something precious about that relief, too. Whenever my ability and desire to express something flicker on at the same time, something inside me comes to life. It’s almost like—you know when you’re sitting silently in your house and your refrigerator, untouched, suddenly whirs alive, and in that moment you become aware of its presence? Not disruptively or imposingly, just in the sense that it’s there and alive and doing what it was made to do? That’s how I feel when I write. Like a trusty little fridge, no different fundamentally from when it was silent, but somehow more there. I like to be the fridge, usually. I just wish I’d let everything melt every once in a while. Maybe that’s what summer’s for.
The next day, Tuesday, March 30th, I became eligible to receive the vaccine for Covid-19, marking the only time New York 20-somethings were jealous of New York 30-somethings in the history of the city; the perfect newsletter birthday present. A closing of a loop, kind of. The night after I got the shot I couldn’t sleep. My whole body ached and shivered, and I managed to keep the ball rolling on a stupid fever dream about furniture for hours on end. At one point I “came to” and concocted a plan about how I could deal with the furniture issue efficiently in the morning when I was feeling better, not realizing that the issue itself was one of pure imagination. Every single layer of delusion was worth it. Every time I lift my arm and wince I feel grateful for the people that made this last year somewhat bearable, which of course does not include Andrew Cuomo, despite his recent attempts to curry favor after his much deserved comeuppance.
On Wednesday, March 31st, I celebrated five years in New York City. By “celebrated” I mean I looked at the calendar and thought, five years ago I moved to New York, because I felt too tired from the vaccine to do anything proper and also there’s a pandemic so a martini at Bemelmans seemed tough to swing. On March 31st, five years prior, I landed at JFK and took a cab to my sister’s apartment in Chelsea. I filled her living room with eight boxes of all of my possessions, which I’d flown with as “checked baggage.” My brother came over from Bushwick and the three of us walked to dinner, ecstatic to be together again. I remember reeling the whole walk, looking around, so surprised I was there, in New York, living there. The host at Houseman sat us at a small table next to Meryl Streep, who was talking animatedly to the several women sitting around her table. I could barely focus the entire meal because I was trying to eavesdrop on her conversation, and I regret to report I retained none of it. (If you recall, my sister moved away in June.)
On Thursday, April 1st, I got the keys to my and Avi’s new apartment. We’ve lived together for two years now, not counting the year we spent as roommates followed by two years spent living apart, but this move feels fresh somehow. Maybe because I lived in this apartment before he moved in, or maybe because there’s been a pandemic and we just got vaccinated and the weather is getting warmer and we’re anticipating the coming months to register somewhere on the richter scale of 1969. Probably the second part. Either way I expect it to feel every bit like an exhale, in the sense that it will offer us profound relief and also that we’re very out of shape and moving will be physically strenuous.
On Friday, April 2nd, tomorrow for me, we’ll start officially packing up our quarantine lair. So far we’ve just been going through every nook and cranny, painstakingly purging, and it’s felt a little like purging the pandemic. I don’t feel resentful of this apartment or desperate to leave it specifically. If anything I feel a tenderness towards it, like it’s a strange classmate I got paired up with for the worst school project of my life whom I ended up loving forever. It’s never had enough storage and we’ve never gotten enough space from each other and our hot-water heater once broke for an entire year, but every morning it floods with sunlight and we’ve reorganized it so many times that it’s now the perfect little diorama of a shut-in life well-lived. Maybe the problem is that’s what it now feels like to us; we’ve spent so much time here over the past year that breaking it down like a cardboard box seems appropriately conclusive. Maybe you’ve been breaking something down, too.
“I’m excited to have a dedicated space for more casual thought and writing,” I wrote in my first newsletter, cue the laugh track. As you may have noticed, I have trouble keeping things loose and casual. But after a streak of newsletters about capitalism, decline, division, and pain, I can feel myself yearning for levity. And so I’m trying to keep it breezy this week, my newsletter a newly minted one-year old, my life in New York a newly minted five-year-old, my right arm back in working order. I’m trying to focus on these baby steps, one foot in front of the other, even as tailwinds threaten my resolve. The pandemic isn’t quite in the rearview yet, those in power continue to abuse and exploit it, and the reverberations of both will be felt for years. But there’s something in the air, a glimmer, even if just the literal sun, and I’m seeking it out with everything I’ve got, turning my face towards it like my future depends on it. Maybe I’m melting a little. I hope you can melt a little too.
1. “Black Hole,” an essay by Namwali Serpell for New York Review of Books, which my friend Verena sent to me, sans context, with only the words “an astonishing feat of writing,” so I’m going to say the same to you.
2. The devastating news about the anti-trans bills in Arkansas. If you have any resources to spread around you can donate to Intransitive, a trans-led group in Arkansas fighting the bills. You can also contact Governor Hutchinson and ask him to veto Bill 1570 (501-682-2345 or asa.hutchinson@governor.arkansas.gov). This isn’t an isolated incident. According to the Human Rights Campaign, “there are so far 174 anti-LGBTQ bills under consideration in state legislatures across the country,” despite the fact that trans equality is actually quite popular among most constituencies, even conservative ones.
3. “The Unionizing Workers Who Became Amazon's Biggest Threat,” a humanizing investigative piece by Lauren Kaori Gurley for Vice about the current fight to unionize happening in Bessemer, Alabama, where “one in four residents of the majority Black city lives below the poverty line.” It’s inspiring to watch these organizers fight this exploitive behemoth and totally despicable to watch Amazon try to union-bust in response.
4. “Do What You Love: And Other Lies About Success and Happiness,”a very readable book by Miya Tokumitsu, which I’ve mentioned a few times now. If you’re interested in thinking about the role and nature of work in modern America, this book does a really clear and compelling job of laying out the problems and possible solutions. It will also make you feel less crazy.
5. Sales Per Hour, my friend Michelle and Daniel’s short film that recently premiered at SXSW. They’re so talented and everything they do is good and I think everyone should love them as much as I do.
6. “The Therapy App Fantasy,” this week’s NYMag cover story by Molly Fischer, whose insightful, dead-pan writing always pulls me in (remember her piece about the millennial aesthetic?). Her look into text therapy and the dystopian result of TalkSpace’s (and similar’s) promise of “therapy for all” highlights the limits of technology, and more broadly the assumption that speed and ease are always better. Fischer doesn’t get into this as much but I think an especially off-putting feature is how these solutions don’t address but rather capitalize on the fact that so many people are in crisis. That’s not to say more accessible mental health services aren’t vital, but I shudder to imagine the moral hubris of these founders in boardrooms when they ask for more VC funding.
7. This Instagram account @justiceforgeorge to follow the Derek Chauvin trial for the murder of George Floyd. I also found this digestion helpful.
8. “The Impact of Inheritance,” by Meredith Haggerty for Vox about the emotional and political complexity of inheriting assets when a loved one dies.
9. My new dirtbag meal of choice, which is turkey, literally any kind of cheese, mayo, and mustard rolled up in a flour tortilla. Takes less than 60 seconds to prepare, makes you feel 18 again, and is basically devoid of nutrition.
10. Okay okay on a lighter note: “Dude, Where’s My Couch?,” a genuinely feel-good piece by Hannah Goldfield for The New Yorker about what happened when ABC Carpet & Home sent out an email about a shipment delay to 203 people who all bought the same couch, but accidentally cc’d instead of bcc’d them.
11. This YouTube video, which finally taught me how to put multiple photos from my camera roll in a single Instagram story…..jaw truly on the floor with this trick…
12. “All That Heaven Allows. Marc Jacobs’ American Dream,” an escapist little profile of Marc Jacobs by Thora Siemsen for SSENSE. Reading this reminded me of living in another time; there is thrillingly little mention of current events or social media.
13. This TikTok suggesting adult “tummy time” at the end of the day, a tip I’ve been laughing about since I saw it and also fully employing. IYHABIYLYK (if you have a baby in your life you know)
14. Paula’s Choice 2% BHA Liquid Exfoliant which I think is finally curing my mask acne. I always come back to Paula’s Choice...considering becoming an exclusively Paula’s Choice household actually.
15. Avi saying “Looking forward to it!” to the receptionist at his doctor’s office after scheduling an appointment over the phone, then hanging up and looking at me like, what the fuck is wrong with me, which I think perfectly sums up American culture.
Shall we end there? Seems right.
Thanks for reading, and if you’re moving too, good luck!
Haley
P.s. Not something I consumed but something I’m suggesting: The Horny Census, the survey my recent and beloved podcast guest Allison P. Davis created for her forthcoming book, Horny. You should take it!
This month a portion of subscriber proceeds will be redistributed to CAAV, an organization working to build grassroots community power across diverse poor and working class Asian immigrant and refugee communities in New York City.
Give me feedback • Subscribe • Request a free subscription • Ask Dear Baby a question