31

I thought this morning about the past year and God help me but the first thing that came to mind — from a year when I got engaged, moved to London, and survived at least the first wave of a global pandemic — was being pitched by a San Francisco ad agency. They took us…More

insult and quarantinjury

The other week I read some WSJ puff piece about how locked-down Americans doing burpees for the first time keep spraining their ankles. I rolled my eyes at all the bumbling idiots, like I’m not someone who once tweaked my neck so badly shampooing my hair that I couldn’t turn my head for a week,…More

i love the passing of time

I mostly find it futile to read about other people’s preposterous ideas of the future, although it feels silly to say that from here in the middle of a pandemic during which we entertain ourselves by beaming our faces into one another’s homes.More

a girl can dream

I tend to have vivid, emotionally draining dreams that ratchet up in intensity until, just before I wake up, I realize with tremendous relief that I’m dreaming. So yes, that’s what I’m waiting for here: the end of the dream, or the deus ex machina, or whatever it is that doesn’t involve me sitting in…More

no pomp due to circumstance

To the second-semester senior who has been unceremoniously dispatched home by the coronavirus, just when you were about to depart on your victory lap…More

creeping crud

I used to joke that I would regret all of the postapocalyptic novels I read in my twenties and here I am, regretting all of the postapocalyptic novels I read in my twenties. More

all-day dining at the homesick restaurant

(With gratitude and apologies to the inimitable Anne Tyler.) I was in Palo Alto this past week for work. Now that I live in Europe, my once- or twice-yearly visits to the California office are a jet-lagged flurry of hugging people I thought had been fired long ago. (To be fair, they obviously think the…More

i’ll scratch your back…

As I start thinking about how to eventually market myself as an author, I’ve set myself to actually participating in social media. In case you’re wondering how that’s going for me, a misanthrope, here is an actual excerpt from my diary this morning: “It’s nice to see how engaging on social media begets engagement on…More