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I guess it was predictable, but this summer is going way too fast. Tomato season is upon us. A handful of weekends separate us from Labor Day. I woke up the other morning, and the air was so fresh and crisp (even in New York City!) that it almost carried a chill. I suppose there is a little bit of sadness to this, but can I tell you something? This is my favorite time of year. August always has the slightest tinge of melancholy. I love it even more for that.

I love the quiet loneliness of Park Avenue on a summer evening. I love the sound of cicadas in Central Park when I’m out for a run. I love the sense of the neighborhood being emptied out. And because you know this isn’t going to last forever, because there’s such an obvious end date looming on the horizon (Labor Day, school starting back up), it reminds you to soak up every last moment.

When I worked in publishing, August was the slowest month of the year. The bosses would decamp to their beach houses, or take long trips to Europe, and even if they were still sending emails, those emails tended to be fewer and farther between. There was one summer in particular, when I was an editor at Random House, that was unbelievably slow. It was so slow that I was worried (I wasn’t getting enough submissions, I wasn’t working hard enough, etc), but then I decided—so what? Come September, it would get busy again. I would be putting in enough hours to more than make up for this. So I decided to try and enjoy my August guilt-free.

That was the August I discovered the pleasure of eating lunch outside (and, consequently, realized just how sad that sad-desk-salad-life, which I had long been living, really was). You have to be strategic about getting sunlight in the canyons of Midtown, but I found a little public plaza on West 57th Street, which got a full blast of sun right around when I took my lunch break. I would position my chair to face south, and eat my salad from Cognac (RIP) or Fresh & Co or Balducci’s, and read my book for a good 60 or 90 (!) minutes, and it felt like a vacation, right in the middle of the work day. And good thing I had all that reading time on my hands, because that was the August I decided, for God knows what reason, to tackle that marathon of a political classic,

When I worked in publishing, this was something of a pattern. August was the time of year that I tended to read very long and slightly random books. How about 1200 pages on the 1988 presidential election to go with your sunburn? How about the bafflingly complex syntax of by Henry James for those sleepy summer days? Sure! Why not! (Both are undertakings, but both are brilliant. If you’re a junkie for history and/or politics, I highly recommend What It Takes, which is more pertinent than ever these days, given that Joe Biden finally had What It Took. And, not gonna lie, at times I grew impatient with The Ambassadors, but part of the deep and soul-changing satisfaction of that book is the effort. The complexity is the beauty.)

Summer reading can mean a hundred different things to a hundred different people. It means a hundred different things to me! Ripping through a gossipy family drama while sitting by the pool; concentrating on a dense work of literature in the air-conditioned chill of a Metro-North train car. There was the summer I first encountered Nabokov’s as a broody teenager lying on a rocky beach in West Vancouver. There was the summer I decided to embark on re-reading Harry Potter (prompted by ; bless you, Binge Mode) for the first time since Deathly Hallows was published in 2007.

There was last summer, our first Covid summer, when I finally read (texting my real-time reactions to the dear friend who encouraged me to pick it up); when I finally read (perched on the window seat in my parents� living room, the breeze across the field picking up the scent of warm hay); when I finally read (quiet mornings on the screen porch, glass of iced coffee going slick with condensation).

This summer of reading has been all over the place. At Andrew’s urging, I read Michael Crichton for the first time (, which is so much FUN, and makes me understand why Crichton was so wildly successful). I finished (saying goodbye to those characters was devastating). I am re-reading , because that book seriously shook me up when I read it a few years back, and I feel ready for another dose of shaking-up. And I just finished reading the aptly named by Edith Wharton, which is maybe less well-known than her society-centric novels, but is just as perceptive in a different way.

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I still haven’t been on a plane since Covid began, but we’ve been moving around more this summer, taking mini-trips within the Northeast. We spent June out in Montauk, and spent parts of July visiting friends in Connecticut, friends upstate, family in Philadelphia, family in Rhode Island. We’ve had friends over for dinner at our no-longer-new apartment in New York. It’s been such a gift, getting to see so many loved ones—inside, maskless, absent those twinges of apprehension. It’s amazing how quickly that sense of normalcy returned. Here I am, hugging you, breathing the same air as you, doing the dishes beside you, waiting with you for the coffee to finish brewing, and it feels normal! The speed of this readjustment surprised me, to be honest. But the speed makes me glad, because it reminds me of how flexible we human beings can be; how capable we are of adapting to new conditions, as they come. (Yeah, obviously we don’t always adapt in the way we should—I read the news like everyone—but what I mean is, it’s within our power to do so.)

And thank God for that. Who knows what could change as the summer keeps unfolding, as the summer turns to fall? What can we count on? What is absolutely, positively, one hundred percent certain? Well�.pretty much nothing, I’d say. But here is a thing that I know for sure! If you’re reading this right now, you made it through a hellacious year-and-a-half. No one did that for you. You made it.

Lately I’ve been feeling the return of a certain quiet, both internal and external. Most of our socializing was packed into the earlier part of the summer. I crossed out a big goal last week, . We have some good things to look forward to this August (a wedding, a long-awaited reunion with a West Coast friend); but we also have some time to do nothing. Time to eat ice cream, and read good books, and feel the warmth of this world, a world which can be beautiful and difficult all at once; a world that is still here for us, even as the headlines turn grim. Time to soak this summer up, to stay as present as possible, because we don’t know what comes next, and this has always been true, but Covid has a way of really driving that truth home.

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Greetings from Montauk! We’ve rented a house out here for the month of June—the same house, in fact, that we stayed in last October, an extremely quirky old Victorian with a front porch, a creaky screen door, and perpetual birdsong. It’s been interesting, returning to the same place during this different season, and at this very different point in the pandemic. It was actually our month out in Montauk last fall that initially sparked my desire to start this blog (a story I will tell at greater length someday!). The sentimental attachment I have to this place is two-fold. I love coming back here for Montauk itself—the beaches, the running routes, the and and —but also because it’s a chance to visit that self-from-the-past, Anna circa October 2020, who was perhaps encountering new levels of isolation thanks to the f’ing pandemic, but also perhaps learning that the antidote to isolation is always closer than we think. This blog has been a source of connection in ways I didn’t quite expect, and I am grateful to this end-of-the-world beach town for bringing me to that realization.

Anyway. Why did I sit down and start writing this? Oh yes: summer reading! With this most glorious season upon us (the sky has been staying light until well past 9 p.m., and my ice cream intake has increased by a million percent), I’ve noticed that I’ve been writing these updates less frequently. And this is fine, except that I like writing these updates, and I like this way of keeping in touch with you, so maybe what I need to do is just � give myself a break. Keep these updates a little lighter and looser and freer. (Channeling the spirit of here, as in everything.) My plan for the summer is to say hello periodically, and tell you what I’ve been reading, and maybe share some related thoughts, but I won’t be getting too long-winded—because after the year you’ve just had, you deserve, we all deserve, to ignore technology and go outside and bask in bask in these long, splendid, sunny days.

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At the top of my reading stack right now is a book called , written by my dear friend . This fizzy, delicious, big-hearted debut novel comes out on Tuesday (tomorrow!), although I was lucky enough to get an early copy from the author herself. Emma and I have been friends for almost a decade now, which is kind of hard to believe. We met during our early years in publishing when we were both grinding it out as editorial assistants, a friendship that originated at a book club and then deepened over lunches in the cafeteria and happy hours in Midtown bars. We got to know each other better and better, eventually growing close enough to confide that most secret of secrets: in addition to our day jobs, we wanted to write. Or rather, we were writing, and we didn’t know what would come of it, but this was a thing we were doing. This was a dream we harbored.

And here she is, with her first novel about to be published by Knopf, with gorgeous blurbs from Paula McClain and Kevin Kwan and many more! I’m reading Songs in Ursa Major right now (and loving it), and I find it so cool, and so special, to recognize the spirit of my friend within these pages. Emma is one of those artists who doesn’t just possess creativity, but who also reveres creativity, who deliberately thinks about and reflects upon its power. This shows up, as far as I can tell, everywhere in her life: in her work as an editor, and in her , and especially in this, her debut novel.

Songs in Ursa Major is loosely inspired by the romance between Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, which, I’ll be honest, even though I consider myself a fan of both Joni and James, even though I have listened to Blue too many times to count, before Emma told me about this, I had no idea they had ever dated. James Taylor and Carly Simon, sure. But James Taylor and Joni Mitchell?!?! Fascinating. The heroine of Songs is a woman named Jane Quinn, a young singer/songwriter ascending in the 1970s rock scene. She’s a rising star with a fierce sense of self who embarks on a love affair with a more established singer. Jane, like pretty much every strong-headed woman who has ever tried to carve her own way as an artist, is forced to confront difficult questions around ambition versus integrity, around the loyalties of love versus the pull of change. This is a novel that asks the questions: What does it mean to live a creative life? What does that life look like?

If you loved A Star is Born and Almost Famous, if you loved Daisy Jones and the Six, if like me you have memorized essentially every word of Blue (this week is, cosmically enough, ), then you must read Songs in Ursa Major. Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll: it’s just the right thing for summertime. There is something mythical about these behind-the-music stories: they are familiar, and yet that familiarity doesn’t make them any less powerful. In fact, while reading Songs, I was reminded of about A Star is Born, from when the movie came out a few years back. The piece has stuck with me because of this particular observation:

A Star Is Born, meanwhile, is almost explicitly a work of mythology: It retells a fictional narrative arc that’s been . But like so many great myths of ancient times, the story is brutal—so as to make a point about the real world.

There are some stories that get told, and retold, and retold, and it would be a mistake to think that these stories are less powerful as a result. The act of retelling is the starkest possible evidence that these stories contain a certain essential power, a certain universal depth, which means we can’t help but retell them, over and over again.

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What else am I reading? I’ve recently finished the fourth book in There are five books in total, which means I have one book left, which is frankly devastating. This is the most delicious family saga that I’ve read in a very long time. I LOVE these books. They follow the upper-middle-class Cazalet family through the years surrounding World War II, through marriages and babies and deaths and divorces and broken hearts of all kinds. There are many trials and tribulations, but Elizabeth Jane Howard writes with such an English understated-ness, and I think this is the key to making the people feel so real. The matter-of-fact-ness only seems to amplify the story’s emotional impact. I’m envious of her narrative assurance!

I find myself falling into the world of these books in the same way I did those English novels I read as a girl, books like I Capture the Castle and Swallows and Amazons. I don’t know why I have such a fixation on these English stories! Maybe it’s my Canadian upbringing. Anyway, if you’re looking for a book series to keep you busy for a while (it does require some upfront investment; it wasn’t until about 50-100 pages into the first book that I felt totally hooked), consider the Cazalets. And if you don’t trust me,

For something considerably shorter, I loved (LOVED) . She totally nails it, and I can’t wait for the rest of this mini-series. I have an infinite appetite for content about Peloton. Probably because I formed some kind of weird psychological attachment/transference to Matt Wilpers and Denis Morton during the early days of the pandemic.

Speaking of transference, the last thing I’ll mention is a little random, from way back in the day, in honor of Janet Malcolm, who just passed away. Eerily enough, just a few days before Malcolm died, I was telling a girlfriend about my love for her book , which I read several years ago, and was completely fascinated by. Like, beyond fascinated. Malcolm’s death may prompt me to finally revisit that book, but , and so maybe this is just the thing to keep me busy while I ignore the work I really should be doing! And what are articles on the Internet for, if that not?

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Happy solstice, friends. Summer is officially here. No matter where this finds you, I hope you are finding a way to make this season feel extra summer-y. As Joni would put it, I hope your fingernails are filthy, and you have beach tar on your feet.

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Fortune cookie wisdom from a summer past, which seemed relevant to this post. In case you guys haven’t realized yet, I am a weird person.

I’m guessing, by now, you’ve seen the memes. Summer is right around the corner, and the Internet has told us to brace ourselves for it. Hot Girl Summer, Shot Girl Summer, Nap Dress Summer, Hot Boy Summer (is that a thing or did I make it up?), (lord help us), and so on. And already the memes have spawned takes! Just the other day I was reading in the New York Times about how teenagers are daydreaming about their #summer2021 highlight reels, and therefore setting themselves up for inevitable disappointment. So many memes, so many takes. I can’t keep up! I need to take a nap in my nap dress (and yes, I am predictable, I love that dress).

But this kind of feverish, hashtaggable discourse of expectation makes sense to me. We’ve all spent such a long time anticipating this season of sunshine and vaccines and gatherings. At least, I know I have. I probably started daydreaming about summer in earnest back in November 2020, when we were living through that fraught mixture of hope and fear: the election, the next case wave spiking, good news about vaccines, bad news about variants, winter bearing down on us all the while. Even by November I was missing the summer that had just ended. I dreaded the loss of those little sources of pleasure—outdoor dining, walks with friends—which would get harder as winter truly arrived. Next summer is going to feel so good, I told myself. I can’t wait to be warm again.

Those daydreams didn’t take any particular shape. When I thought about summer, I didn’t have any grand plans or bucket lists. The anticipation was both omnipresent and diffuse. Mostly Andrew and I repeated it to one another like a mantra in those frigid February days. Summer is going to be so great. Summer is going to be so great.

And now that summer is almost upon us: what do I actually hope it will give me? I think I was finally able to pinpoint it last month, in late April, when we were out on the North Fork. It was our first proper vacation (staying in a hotel, eating at restaurants, and most importantly, very much Not Working) in a long time. In Greenport we stayed at , a small and stylish hotel that I would return to in a heartbeat. Our room at the Menhaden faced Third Street, directly across from Goldberg’s Bagels. After a few days in Greenport, we realized that Goldberg’s seemed to be the hangout for the seniors from the local high school. Every morning, around 10:30 or 11, this sprawling group of friends would descend on the porch outside Goldberg’s and spend the next hour hanging out, laughing, just generally bullshitting. I’m making an educated guess about them being seniors, but I’m pretty sure I’m right. The high school is just down the street, and the kids had that vibe. That classes-winding-down, free-period, let’s-go-get-a-bagel-and-kill-some-time vibe. I kept catching glimpses of them through our hotel window, and it made me smile every time.

One nice thing about vacation, about stepping away from your usual obligations, is that it gives your mind the time and space to wander. And as the vacation went on, and my mind gradually went slack, I realized that the sight of those high school seniors across the street was speaking to something in me. This desire to have fun, but especially to have fun in a doing nothing kind of way. This—I realized—is the vibe I want to channel for summer 2021. I want to have fun, but I don’t want to overthink that fun. I don’t want to make elaborate plans. I don’t want to rush back to any level of pre-pandemic busy-ness. It was while watching those slightly bored teenagers across the street, making slightly too much noise, living out that actual literal version of , that the phrase popped into my head. My own private motto for this season. Forget Shot Girl Summer. I’m talking about Dumb Shit Summer.

Yeah, I thought. I like how that sounds. Dumb Shit Summer. What did it actually mean? Who knows. Where did it actually come from? No clue. (You expect me to understand the things that pop into my head?) This, I realized, is how I want to spend the summer months, with an excess of Dumb Shit. Like a slightly bored teenager, inventing stupid amusements to pass the time, feeling a little bit aimless and occasionally acting a little bit dumb. By dumb, I don’t mean seeking to endanger myself or others. I don’t mean being rude, or obnoxious, or thoughtless toward others. I guess what I mean by acting a little bit dumb (this is going to sound obvious, but bear with me) is not necessarily having to be smart.

We’ve spent the past sixteen months taxing our brains in very specific ways. It’s been a time of hyper-vigilance, of having to constantly assess our risk and adjust our plans accordingly. Is it worth the risk to go visit your family member? Is it worth the risk to get your haircut, or ride the subway? Have I planned out our meals so that I only have to go to the grocery store once this week? Or are we cool with eating in a restaurant? And if we are, I feel a particular kind of decision fatigue after these past sixteen months. (Strange, isn’t it, that a person can have decision fatigue while living within the tight constraints of a pandemic, but there we are.) While it was always possible to find bright patches amid the pandemic, those bright patches were rife with contingencies: would the weather cooperate? Would everyone get tested? Would the tests come back negative? Would the various comfort levels cohere? Planning an al fresco dinner with friends felt more like planning a military operation. At the end of the day, you couldn’t be spontaneous. You had to be smart about it.

The older you get, the busier you get. What follows is an increase in the value of your time. On this mortal coil, it often seems like a sin to waste any of it. So many different philosophies tend to converge on that same message. There’s the Puritanical redeem-thyself-through-work mindset. But there’s also the hedonistic YOLO mindset, which also says that you ought to seize every moment, carpe that fucking diem, etcetera. Life is short and precious! Are you putting it to good use? Because, after all, it’s disrespectful, it’s wrong-headed, it’s foolish to squander any of it.

But I think back on some of the stuff I did with my friends, back in those earlier teenage years, back before drinking and parties became a thing; our own version of hanging out on the Goldberg’s porch, just because. There was often a feeling of boredom and restlessness, of yearning to break free from repetition, a feeling probably shared by anyone growing up in a small town. We had a lot of time on our hands, and we truly did the most random shit to fill that time. We made up crazy elaborate stories about fake boyfriends who lived in Seattle because � did we really think people would believe us? We had a whole night dedicated to an Elijah Woods movie marathon because � does anyone remember why? We spent hours and hours on Funny Junk Dot Com (RIP), laughing at that until it was hard to breathe. There was never any sense that this time was being wasted, because, I mean, really, what else were we going to do with ourselves? Here, in this town, you have somewhere better to be? Really? Don’t act like you’re too cool for it. You’re not too cool for anything!

**

If I am tired of pandemic-decision-fatigue, I am also slightly dreading the return of non-pandemic-decision-fatigue. You remember what that felt like. Are you doing cool things? Are you traveling to cool places, eating in cool restaurants? Better think carefully about how you’re spending your leisure time, your leisure dollars. There are so many options! How do you know which is the right option?

But during Dumb Shit Summer, there is no right option. This summer isn’t the summer to be Cool, or Stylish, or Beautiful, or Smart, or Optimized, or Efficient. Are you kidding me? We just lived through a pandemic. We just lived through a pandemic! Of course I understand the desire to get back to normal, to make up for lost time, but there is no way to actually do that. I’m sixteen months older than when I first heard of Covid-19. No amount of Puritanical work ethic or hedonistic YOLO-ing can rewind that clock. Right now we’re in that liminal space where we’re only just starting to process everything we’ve been through. Liminal spaces can be uncomfortable, but they can also be magical. I would like to embrace this liminal space.

A fragment of poetry came to mind just now. I wasn’t expecting to invoke T. S. Eliot while writing a blog post titled Dumb Shit Summer, but, you know, once an English major, always an English major. I’m thinking of these lines from “The Hollow Men�:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

The shadow—the scolding voice in our head that tells us not to do a thing, that it’s stupid, that it’s a waste of time, that it might make us look foolish—is something I would rather live without this summer. Embrace the act. Let go of the over-thinking. Be a little bit dumb. Let the world catch me. If the time is squandered, let it be squandered.

And will I succeed in this? Probably not. This notion is easier said than done. Even while writing this post, I could feel the shadow creeping in, the inner voice saying: Come on, Anna, is this really a good use of your time? I mean, good grief! Here I am, trying to explain this completely made-up notion of Dumb Shit Summer, having spent a lot of words and a lot of hours on it, and I’m still not sure it makes any sense. Why do this?

But this summer is the summer to flip that question on its head. Why not do this?

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She’s real! She exists!

Earlier this afternoon, my agent texted me with a picture of the galleys. My own box should be arriving any moment. (UPDATE: I got them!!! See above.) And so, now that this novel exists as a physical object in the world, an early version of her future hardcover self, it feels like just the right time to tell you a little more about my third child, who, after a bit of delay thanks to the pandemic, will be meeting the rest of the world in February 2022. Allow me to introduce my new book, Our American Friend, a political thriller starring two strong-willed women, spanning from present-day America to Cold War-era Moscow and Paris and beyond.

Each of my novels has given me the chance to bring to the surface certain preoccupying themes and ideas. This, I think, is the great gift of writing. It forces you to sit down and clarify your thinking. (Often I feel like I’m performing therapy on myself, which sometimes feels amazing, and sometimes feels like…a bad idea?) I’ve loved writing each of these novels. Even as these stories have nothing to do with my own life—financial conspiracies, villainous frenemies, mysterious First Ladies—they have a way of posing questions that feel relevant to my life, and maybe, hopefully, relevant to yours. This new novel, Our American Friend, is about a journalist, Sofie, who begins writing the biography of Lara Caine, a (fictional!) First Lady with a murky past. Their relationship begins with a degree of professional detachment, but over time, it changes, and grows into something deeper and also, inevitably, more complicated. In many ways, Sofie and Lara’s lives have nothing in common. In other ways, their lives bring them face-to-face with the very same questions. To whom do they owe their loyalties? Should they act, or should they stay on the sidelines? And how do they measure their own complicity?

I spent the latter half of the Trump presidency preoccupied with writing this novel. It was a useful source of escape. At times my immersion in this world—daydreaming about the Cold War, about dark Parisian streets, about dead drops and coded phone calls—caused me to feel a degree of guilt. Escape can be useful, but not if it blinds you to the surrounding world. This book is fiction (I repeat, fiction!) but I think, I think, it was also my way of beginning to process some of the feelings about what it was like to live through these past years. None of this was a conscious process, not exactly, but the real world has a way of forcing itself into your writing, even when you don’t intend for it to happen.

Well, anyway, whoops—I didn’t plan to take that digression right there. I meant to keep this short and simple, a lighthearted preview of the book-to-come. I’m still emerging from headspace of this novel, and it will be a while until I figure out how to speak about it in a cogent way! So I suppose this is my cue to step aside, and let the book speak for herself. I’ll be sharing more about Our American Friend in the months ahead—I had a blast researching this book, which involved a little bit of travel (remember travel??) and whole lot of geeked-out reading, and just take it from Andrew, I would be delighted to talk your ear off about this stuff—but, for now, I will leave you with Sofie Morse and Lara Caine, two women who I have spent a lot of time with over these past few years. Two women who are simultaneously brave and cowardly, who are simultaneously selfish and selfless; two women whom I love with all my heart, but who also drive me crazy. I wouldn’t have it any other way!

**

A mysterious First Lady. The intrepid journalist writing her biography. And the secret that could destroy them both.

Tired of covering the grating dysfunction of Washington and the increasingly outrageous antics of President Henry Caine, White House correspondent Sofie Morse quits her job and plans to leave politics behind. But when she gets a call from the office of First Lady Lara Caine asking Sofie to come in for a private meeting, she’s intrigued. Sofie, like the rest of the world, knows little about Lara—only that Lara was born in Soviet Russia, raised in Paris, and worked as a model before moving to America and marrying the notoriously brash future president.

When Lara asks Sofie to write her official biography, and to finally fill in the gaps of her history, Sofie’s curiosity gets the better of her. She begins to spend more and more time in the White House, slowly developing a bond with Lara, who, to Sofie’s surprise, is entirely candid about her mysterious past. The First Lady doesn’t hesitate to speak about her beloved father’s work as an undercover KGB officer in Paris—and how he wasn’t the only person in her family working undercover during the Cold War.

As her story unfolds, Sofie can’t help but wonder why Lara Caine is rehashing such sensitive information. Why to her? And why now?

Spanning from the 1970s to the present day, traveling from Moscow and Paris to DC and New York, Our American Friend is a gripping page-turner about power and complicity and how, sometimes, the fate of the world is in the hands of the people you’d never expect.

“This should be catnip to political thriller fans—a smart, witty take on a fictional, foreign-born First Lady with a secret tied to Cold War espionage who tests the boundaries of friendship with her would-be biographer. This fast-paced novel about love, loyalty, and the secrets we should or should not keep will have you gobbling up each page.”

� Melanie Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator's Wife

“Our American Friend is a smart political thriller, sharply observed and well written.”

� Alan Furst, New York Times bestselling author of Mission to Paris

“An irresistible political thriller with wit and heart, Our American Friend is a fascinating take on a mysterious fictional First Lady and a moving, rueful exploration of love, loyalty, and the presence of the past. ”

â€� Amy Bloom, New York Times bestselling author of White HousesÌý

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The trees look different as the seasons change. Why shouldn’t we, too?

Through the long Covid winter here in New York City, I was pretty disciplined about certain things. For instance, I made a point of spending time outside every single day. I’ve always liked that Scandinavian expression, that there’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes. Though we may not have gone skiing this year (another post-Covid thing to daydream about), this winter gave me plenty of excuses to dig out my thermal shirts and long underwear; only now instead of gliding down a beautiful mountain, I was wearing them during outdoor brunches and Central Park walks.

I was also disciplined about working not-from-home at least once or twice each week. The New York Society Library has had safety protocols in effect so that members could work in the library (limited capacity, strict enforcement of distancing and masks, private rooms available for booking, etc), and this was a godsend for keeping my squirrelly-ness at bay. Whenever I could snag one of those private or semi-private spaces, I would pack my bag, walk to the library, and settle in for the day.

There were lots of upsides to these stubborn little rituals. The fresh air was good for me. Outdoor walks and meals were also the only option for hanging out with friends. And when I work at the library, I’m infinitely more productive. More than anything, these rituals broke up the daily grind. They made my world feel just a little bit bigger than the confines of this apartment. But there were drawbacks, too, thanks mostly to the ineradicable fact of it being winter in the northern hemisphere.

The library, for instance, has the very sensible policy of not allowing food or drink within the building (sensible not just for the sake of the books, but also because eating and drinking means taking off your mask, and, well, Covid). Which meant that, on the days I worked at the library, I took my lunch break outside. I’d get way too cold if I sat still while eating lunch, so I developed a strategy of eating-while-walking. On those January and February days, I would bundle up and head outside and eat my sandwich or salad or whatever while taking a brisk walk along the Bridle Path. And even on the days when the wind was howling and my fingers grew numb from the cold (it’s not really feasible to hold a fork while wearing mittens), I told myself: Look, you’re doing it! This isn’t so bad! And I told myself: Besides, spring will be here soon, and then this will be so much more pleasant!

This thought pattern often repeated itself while I was engaged in my various, stubborn, please-God-let-me-survive-the-winter routines. You’re doing it! This isn’t so bad! And just think, soon enough you’ll be doing this in warmer weather! Date night at Sant Ambroeus in thirty degree weather (initially burning my tongue on the soup because it was too hot, but by the time it cooled off, it was just � cold) because we needed to have date night. Taking a walk with friends during a bout of icy rain (sidewalks like skating rinks, almost wiping out a dozen times) because we needed to see our friends. Eating a partially frozen almond-butter-and-jam sandwich on my walking lunch break (the wind blowing my hair into my mouth while I was trying to chew) because I needed to work at the library. I was determined not to be chased inside, and I expected that determination would only strengthen as the weather got warmer. If I was disciplined about getting out of the house and seeking minor sources of variety in the depths of winter, who knew what riches would await me, come springtime!

But as the days have grown longer, and the temperature has warmed up, a curious thing has happened. Just when it has become so much easier, so much more objectively pleasant to carry out my old routines—the routines have dropped away. Some days I get out for a walk in Central Park, but a lot of days I don’t. I stop by the library to check out and return books, but it’s been several weeks since I last worked there. As spring has officially arrived, as the world becomes gentle and glorious—mild sunshine, cherry trees in blossom—I have suddenly and unexpectedly become content to spend a much greater percentage of my time in the confines of my apartment.

This shift kind of just � happened. I didn’t really understand it. It felt both surprising and unremarkable. It probably occurred in early March, around when the clocks moved forward, but the unremarkable quality of it means that the line is blurry, in my mind. I only knew that I was no longer possessed with that same sense of stubbornness. Morning would turn to midday, midday would turn to afternoon, and I still hadn’t gotten out for my daily walk, and that was okay. For some reason, those old routines no longer felt like such a burning necessity.

Recently, I was talking about this with a friend. Let me make a brief digression here and say that, if I’ve learned anything during Covid, it’s that there is literally nothing too mundane to talk about with your friends. We’re starved for novelty! Find the fodder wherever you can. Tell me the petty updates about your co-worker. Please. I mean it. Make a mountain out of that molehill! These conversations are important. Perhaps our lives have grown smaller and quieter, but they are still our lives; we still need to puzzle over them, question them, seek to understand them. It’s so much easier to perform this puzzling when you have a good sounding board. (A truth I have learned over and over again during the pandemic.) Anyway, I was talking about this with a friend, this sudden and unexpected shift in attitude. “I was so stubborn about these things,� I explained. “Through the whole winter. And now it’s spring, and I’m just � not.�

Up until that moment, I’m not sure that I ever actually used the word “stubborn� to describe those routines. I suppose, in my head, I always thought of those routines as inherently necessary. As rational. I had to take walks because fresh air was good for me. I had to go to the library because a change of scenery was important to my writing. But I hadn’t admitted to myself that these routines were also, fundamentally, a coping mechanism. To finally use that word—stubborn—made it clear. Something in my understanding clicked. “I think I was trying to prove something,� I said. “Like, I didn’t want to let winter defeat me. So I was stubborn about those things to prove that I wasn’t letting winter win.�

Stubborn date nights and stubborn walks and stubborn frozen sandwiches. These were my ways—tiny, silly, vital ways—of clinging to a sense of agency. What I have learned, through these past months, is that it doesn’t matter how small that sense of agency (of liberty, of freedom) actually is. Even the tiniest amount is better than nothing. We had been warned, last year, of the darkness that awaited during our Covid winter. I don’t think I ever really appreciated just how dark it would get. The case spikes that made previous case spikes look like child’s play. The insurrection at the capitol. The relentless sadness. There were days in January and February when I’d be standing in the kitchen, making my lunch, and out of nowhere I would feel such a crashing wave of existential despair that I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know the source, and I didn’t know how to fix it. The darkness simply arrived, without explaining itself.

I couldn’t prevent it from coming. I couldn’t prevent those crashing waves of despair. I had no control over those things. But I could do my best to keep myself afloat through all of it. How? By remembering what agency feels like. How? With long johns and mittens and N-95s and multiple pairs of wool socks. With afternoon walks that ended in darkness. With frozen fingers and frozen sandwiches. This my choice. I was still free to do this. In those dark days, it wasn’t enough to simply believe in this option. I had to prove to myself that I had this option. This faith required a demonstration. It was my stupid, pig-headed, life-giving form of personal protest against the pandemic. I’m not letting you win, fucker.

But the dark Covid winter is coming to an end. The seasons have changed. It makes sense that my routines have changed, too. Last week the park was crowded with people taking pictures of the cherry blossoms. Now I can go running in nothing more than a t-shirt. Now we can eat outside and not even require a heat lamp. I’ve received the first dose of the vaccine. I’m getting the second dose this week. Soon, the options of the old days will again be at my fingertips. Those small, glorious, life-giving chances to decide. Do I feel like getting a haircut? Or a manicure? Do I want to go to a museum? Do I want to hug my friend? It’s suddenly so much easier to believe in these options; to remember what agency feels like. I’m going to make it through. We’re going to make it through. The world hasn’t finished testing that faith—not quite yet—but with every passing day, it gets a little bit easier to keep hold of it.

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Surgical masks! Another Covid-19 MVP. And aprons, too. See, I can already tell that I’m going to have to write a Part Two for this list.

I’ll confess (though I don’t need to, because the proof is right there in the dateline) that it’s been longer than usual since my last blog post. I’m sorry! I blame the good weather! While I knew I was excited for the return of spring, I didn’t realize just how excited I was; just how much of a difference it would make, being able to go for a run in a T-shirt, being able to drink iced coffee again. Lest we forget, we’re still in a pandemic. How much of a difference can T-shirts and iced coffees really make in the midst of a pandemic? Well, according to my mood: a whole lot!

Thursday, March 11 was especially beautiful. At the end of the day, Andrew and I brought a bottle of wine to Central Park and sat on a bench and had a little al fresco happy hour. We were far from the only people with this idea. The park was lively. The sound of a Mister Softee truck jingled over from Fifth Avenue. That Thursday was also the day that pandemic-versary coverage really kicked into high gear. This day a year ago Tom Hanks was diagnosed with Covid. This day a year ago the NBA cancelled its season. It felt both totally bizarre and totally perfect that the pandemic-versary would turn out to be a day of such gentle, lovely, hopeful weather.

The Internet has been flooded with pandemic-versay coverage. This makes sense. It’s the nature of collective trauma: everyone has a story to tell.What day did you decide to take this pandemic seriously? Where were you when the world shut down? Those March days are so sharply etched in my memory (I’m sure they are in yours, too). And maybe, because of that, I don’t feel a great desire to tell that story again. I don’t need to write about those days in order to hold onto them.

A year (a year-plus!) into this, I am filled with gratitude for the very real light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel. I am also filled with gratitude for the little things that have gotten me through. Andrew and I made a game of this, last year. If we had to declare our Pandemic MVPs, our sanity-saving little things, what would they be? I’ve been wanting to write this list up for a long time. And let me forewarn you: this is purposely materialistic and silly. We should talk about the deep, meaningful, spiritual/existential awakenings wrought by Covid-19. But I hope there’s room to talk about the dumb stuff, too.

This is list is NOT comprehensive and, in fact, even as I type this, I can think of other things I should have added. But this has been languishing as a draft for long enough, and it’s time to share it with you, because what good is having these hot takes if you don’t get to share them with the world!?

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MY HIGHLY SUBJECTIVE MOST-VALUABLE-PLAYER AWARDS

2020-2021 SEASON, COVID-19 EDITION

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HALL OF FAME: PELOTON AND SOURDOUGH (I bet you’re all sick of reading about these things so I am going to spare us yet another rhapsody about the joy of fermentation and the inspiration of Robin Arzon. But yes, I love these things to a dorky degree, I am predictable, sorry not sorry!)

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Grocery list Google doc. I don’t trust Google docs. I never have. I don’t know why, I just don’t! For the longest time, in an attempt to drag me into the 21st century, Andrew tried to get me to write down our grocery list in a shared doc, so we could both add and subtract things as needed. I refused. I liked my method of writing things on scraps of paper and then letting those scraps of paper languish in my tote bag/wallet/pocket. But when we left New York and moved in with my parents last March, suddenly our grocery list required military planning: there were more of us, and we tried to go to the store as infrequently as possible. I conceded the wisdom of a shared, editable document. This document became our grocery list, but it also became the place where the family linked to recipes we wanted to make, and recorded what we cooked for dinner each night. We stopped using it a long time ago (“Last edit was on September 1, 2020�) but I’m so glad this document exists. I treasure this time capsule, with its a comprehensive record of what we ate every single night from Week 1 (white bean soup) through Week 17 (shrimp, tomato, and arugula linguine). For the record, I now see the utility of Google docs, but I still don’t quite trust them.

Ice cream cones. In May, Andrew and I stayed with his parents in Philadelphia for a month. One of the rituals we missed most was walking up to for after-dinner cones. On those balmy late spring nights, it just felt plain wrong not to be strolling the neighborhood with a cone of (objectively the best ice cream ever) in hand. Needless to say, eating ice cream out of a regular old bowl just isn’t the same. And then, one day, it occurred to us that we could buy ice cream cones from the grocery store. Not only that: we could buy sprinkles, too! This became our new ritual. We became very good (although not nearly as good as the teenagers at µþ°ù±ð»å±ð²Ô²ú±ð³¦°ì’s) at scooping and filling and sprinkling. After dinner, we took our cones and wandered down the middle of the empty streets. The neighborhood was so quiet on those late spring nights.

Baking scale. I promised I wasn’t going to talk about sourdough! But, briefly, please allow me to credit the practice of bread-baking to finally making me the see the light on a baking scale. People always said it was better and easier than using volume measurements, and they weren’t kidding. last fall, as the weather got cooler and my baking really ramped up, and I LOVE IT. I love not having to use measuring cups. Anything that means fewer dishes to wash = worth it, in my book.

. I asked Andrew to write this entry, because he is the evangelist for this particular product: “Five dollars and ninety nine cents is all it costs to slice and dice your way to COVID serenity. Order now and it will be at your door tomorrow.�

. I’ve had a meditation practice for a few years now, and before Covid, I never relied on any apps to help with that practice. I thought I didn’t need them. (In fact, part of me took pride in not paying for an app. Why bother, when I could get the right music/soundtrack on Spotify or Youtube? Take that, capitalism!) But when Covid hit, my practice grew wobbly. Sticking to it required a little extra help. So I downloaded this app, and even though I felt kind of like a sucker paying for it, I’ve become a fan. Sometimes I do guided meditations; sometimes I just use the music; but either way, it’s become like a friend to me, and having it right there on my home screen, staring me in the face, is a good reminder to keep up the practice.

(NYC) / (RI). When I was a kid, my family had a Friday night ritual called “pizza video night,� which is exactly what it sounds like. Every Friday night without fail, we’d order Domino’s and rent a movie from Blockbuster. (If I recall correctly, this began as a form of bribery to make sure my sister and I made it on time to the school bus every morning. If we missed a day, well, too bad—no pizza video night. Although I don’t think that punishment every actually materialized.) During Covid, once my parents� local pizza place in Rhode Island began doing takeout, we revived the tradition. It was a thing to look forward to, and a good way of demarcating the week from the weekend. When Andrew and I got back to New York, we kept with the tradition. Every Friday night we call in our order and walk down to Famous Ray’s and pick up our large pie and our large Caesar salad and let me tell you, the pleasure this brings me is without parallel. I know that someday soon we’ll have other options on a Friday night. We might get together for dinner with friends; we might sardine ourselves into a crowded bar; we might go to the movies; we might hop on a plane at LaGuardia or JFK for a weekend getaway. And I’m so excited for those days—truly, I can’t wait for those options to return—but I also suspect that a little part of me will feel nostalgic for those weekly trips to Ray’s, when our world was so small that even a simple cheese pizza could bring me this kind of intense, child-like happiness.

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Three weeks later and I’m still dreaming about these cinnamon rolls.

You would think, these days, that when a friend asks what’s new with you, it would be basically impossible to answer that question. What’s new? Nothing’s new. But with life having become so predictable and repetitive, I weirdly find it easier to answer that question. Because the variations are as rare as jewels, they stick out in my mind, gleaming and precious.

Like, in the Before Times, if a friend asked what was new with me, I would probably feel slightly self-conscious while trying to conjure something Interesting and Important. If I responded with something like, “Well, I made pizza for dinner,� or “Well, I found a new podcast I like,� or “Well, on Friday, I went to the movies,� I can imagine it seeming kind of � lame? (Really? That’s it? That’s everything?) But during Covid times, each of these constitutes a Big Deal, a thing worth writing home about. In February, I have felt this anew. If you ask me what’s new, I won’t hesitate to shout it from the rooftops. What’s new? Well! I’m glad you asked! What’s new is that I, Anna Pitoniak, in the year 2021, went to the movies! The movies! In a movie theater!

In late January, I saw someone post about this on Instagram, and because I am very susceptible to influence, I immediately started Googling. It turns out that a number of chains (, ; I’m sure there are others) will let you rent out a theater for a private viewing. You pick from a limited slate of options, you show up at your appointed date and time, you bring along your little pod, you enter a completely empty theater, and you’re in business. Earlier this month, when Andrew and I were up in Rhode Island to visit my parents, we made a reservation in honor of my dad’s birthday. It cost $150 to rent the theater, and it cost another $20 for the popcorn and soda and Junior Mints, but I am put in mind of that old MasterCard commercial when I tell you that the entire experience—the lights dimming in the empty theater, the taste of fake butter and Diet Coke, the feeling of being mask-less while not inside the house—was PRICELESS.

So, anyway, that was my February. I never thought I would be so elated to watch a mediocre movie in a down-at-the-heels suburban multiplex, but here we are. It was truly the best thing ever.

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Cooking. I really ought to call this section Sourdough-ing, because that’s what this has become. When I first embarked on the sourdough journey, I found a lot of useful guidance from . Beyond recipes and tips for bread baking, she has myriad good ideas for how to deploy your starter. When she posted about , they went straight onto my to-bake list, and one snowy weekend in early February, it felt like the perfect time to try them. Even though my expectations had been high (I mean, look at her pictures!), these absolutely exceeded them. They were incredible. After they emerged from the oven and I slathered them with that gorgeous cream cheese frosting, I was snapping away (like any new parent, I cannot resist documenting the sight of my precious children), and then—it was truly so weird—at the very moment I was about to text one of my best friends a picture, she texted me a picture of her cinnamon rolls, which had just emerged from her oven. In different states, using different recipes, with absolutely no coordination, the two of us had arrived simultaneously at the same end point. Weird! I took it as a sign from the universe that I was fated to make these cinnamon rolls, and therefore ought to have seconds.

Reading. I finally finished Stalingrad! It only took me � three months? Not bad. You can’t sprint your way through these Russian tomes. I suppose there are novels that deliver true life-changing profundity while also being easy-breezy reading experiences, but I haven’t encountered many of them. Much more common, in my experience, are the books that require you to work a little in order to access their true power and insight. (Three of my favorites in this category are Middlemarch, War and Peace, and The Ambassadors.) Stalingrad turned out to be one of those books. I’m so grateful to have found this book at this particular time. I found the reading experience to be strangely reassuring: watching these characters navigate the tragedies of wartime reminded me of the things people can endure, the ways in which they learn to survive, in circumstances far (FAR) more dire than anything I’ve ever encountered. This novel made me break down sobbing, but it also strengthened me. I’m taking a little break before embarking on the sequel, Life and Fate (I’m a masochist but not that much of a masochist), but already I’m looking forward to it.

Watching. We just finished season two of Mindhunter, which means I am now routinely Googling “season three Mindhunter update� and . Please David Fincher, please Netflix Algorithm Gods, please make another season of this show. Andrew and I binged this faster than we’ve binged anything in a while. I will say that I wasn’t hooked from the very first episode, it took until episode two or three to really get sucked in, but once I was � oh man. It has some of that same slow-burn-deliciousness, not to mention period-appropriate stylistic flourishes, of a show like The Americans. It takes this fantastically creepy premise—FBI agents studying the psychology of criminal sociopaths—and then intertwines the complexities of that premise into the lives of the agents themselves; and it does this without feeling heavy-handed, which is a credit to both the writing and the acting. I feel that I am both late to this party (I think the show got a lot of buzz a few years ago?), but also that this party has been tragically overlooked.

Listening. For some reason I’ve been on a kick of revisiting old high-school-era favorites. It started a few weeks ago, when I felt the random urge to listen to . I texted a few friends to wax nostalgic about our boarding school days, when Death Cab for Cutie was on heavy rotation in our dorm rooms. Then I spent the better part of the ensuing week listening to the album, wandering around the Upper East Side and quietly singing along (wearing a mask masks it much easier to sing discreetly in public), feeling both very close to and very far from my high school self. It’s a short journey from one Ben Gibbard band to another, so naturally, this week I’ve been revisiting The Postal Service and Give Up. How is it possible that I still remember all the words to “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight�? Anyway, in case you’re wondering, both of these albums absolutely hold up.

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