Waiting and Thinking
This week I am in a small Catskills village in upstate New York. It snowed today.
I'm here with a friend, each of us far from home (he's also British, and unable to fly home during a pandemic) and wow, the simple pleasure of sharing your space and time with a dear friend is heady after so many months of solo living. We both decided we didn't want to be in two silos in Brooklyn over the holidays and since we have been in each other's pods all pandemic (and are similarly cautious and regularly tested) we rented a house and a car and packed our things and decamped. Alone together. I miss my plants and I miss my stationary bike and I miss my cast iron pans but I'm also A-OK without them. Most mornings my friend and I eat breakfast together: avocado and eggs on toast, muesli, coffee with frothy milk. We cook very nice dinners from the cookbooks we had meant to use more often during the year. On Christmas Day I roasted a chicken and also made 'Top 10 of My Life' roast potatoes. Some evenings we get a fire going. Every single night we talk and watch a movie or a TV show and laugh or cry together, depending on genre. We read the newspaper of record IN PRINT, section by section. We have pie in the evenings, and a cup of tea before we retire for the night. We haven't been asleep before 2am once, and we know we're going to regret it when life continues in the new year, but we don't do any better. The house we're in is medium-sized, and there are trees and mountain views all around. I feel like a character in a Hallmark thriller, whose secret is about to catch up with her, in the form of a villain from her past. (The past is my Brooklyn apartment, where I have no mountains, no snowy vistas, no in-unit washer-dryer.)
I am so (mostly) relaxed. I read and I nap and I chat and I eat and I cook and I listen to podcasts and I edit my manuscripts. I catch myself doing that unhealthy thing of preemptively missing these weeks, even as we are in the middle of living them. I forgive myself easily, though. I can afford this self-indulgent behaviour. Winter is coming. The dark days of February taunt me from the near distance. Soon enough I will be siloed again. Waiting for the vaccine. Waiting for spring. Waiting to once again return to London. Waiting to mingle freely with friends again. Just... waiting.
This is only the fifth letter I have sent this year, and I know I don't need to apologise — we've been living in the same hellscape, have we not! — but I do feel sorry that I did not write more. Because it turns out that being indoors for most of this year meant I had A Lot of Thoughts, and more time than ever to sit with them, and tend to them, and watch them grow or wither on the vine, whatever was more useful.
I thought a lot about my work, for example: I did a lot of producing and radio-making this year, at This American Life, and I have learned so many new skills and honed old ones. I thought about the kinds of stories I like telling and hearing, and how I might get better at finding them. I got to know my colleagues so much better (and became better friends with them too, which is a lovely thing!) and figure out where our personalities align and diverge. I had a lot of thoughts, in concert with Nichole, about Thirst Aid Kit, and ending the run of weekly shows in early autumn. (I thought about that Jason Mantzoukas episode a lot too) I thought about my non-day job work, and how to make room, both in my brain and in my life, to do it in a way that fulfills and replenishes me instead of draining me.
I thought so much about my future, in a year when 'plans' really took a beating. I thought about my life in this country, and what it could contain, what it might repel or welcome in the next few years. I thought about distance and family and a child and access a lot too. I thought about concrete deadlines and ephemeral feelings and the place of chance and surprise in our existence. I thought a lot about creativity and discipline and mental health. I spend so much time thinking about leisure travel, and where I might like to go visit as soon as it is safe and ethical to: Japan, for sure. Vietnam. Nigeria. Italy again. Aruba. Jamaica. Brazil.
I had thought of waiting as a passive thing, a sort of stillness until the big arrow showed up and pointed you in the right direction with a pat on the head and maybe a set of instructions. I was disabused of this notion years ago but this year really cemented it. Sometimes waiting is just life. It's the stuff you're doing before you start doing... the other stuff. All of the stuff is it. It's all happening. All the time. Thinking and waiting. In a loop, in circles, on top of one another, cradling each other, Big Spoon/Little Spoon-style. Waiting is active. The preparation is the waiting is the thinking. A sort of paradox, but certainly the way I've been experiencing it.
Whatever you're waiting for, I hope you get it. It's probably already en route.