Going north, just a bit
I’m on vacation this week, but a resolution is a resolution, so here’s a Monday letter. The vacation was supposed to be an over-an-ocean vacation, and will now be in a car, up the coast. Was supposed to be to a country I’ve never visited before, and will now be a city I’ve been to twice or three times, familiar enough that I’ve lost track. But there will still be plenty new—every second of traveling with a toddler—that I won’t want for novelty. Not that I ever want for novelty. I don’t know if it’s the pandemic or age, but I prefer thee challenge rating of life turned as low these days as it can be.
That’s what I like about living in the suburbs, mostly, approaching the year anniversary of that change. Things are just easier. It feels awful to write that the day of a new climate report, but I get in the car and I go where I need to go and I don’t have to schlep or sweat or check if the subway is rerouted. This trip is like that—no flights to catch, no masks to keep on a toddler's face in an airport, no sim cards or international currency. Just a drive and as many lobster rolls as a woman can eat in four days. I already even know where the best ones are.
I hope you can find some ease these days, some of the familiar pleasures that don't require too much disruptive risk to reach. (The other thing I love about the suburbs is all the nature—the trees and the creek and the wildflower garden we got from three $2 seed packets. It just felt worth mentioning.)
Also a fun trick if you're worried about getting a work email on vacation that you really don't want to deal with—or even think about, or know about—on vacation is make a filter to put the sender's messages straight into the archive, read, and just remember to check for the email when you get back. It takes a bit of self-control, but hopefully you (I) will be actually on vacation enough to forget about it for a bit.
See you next week <3
Thank you for reading! Please pardon any typos or sentences that fade out half-way, they're what let me send this out free and weekly. If you enjoyed this newsletter and want to share it, or were forwarded this edition and want to subscribe, the link is tinyletter.com/jaimealyse. You can also follow me on twitter here, and when my book is done and ready to be preordered this is where I will tell you about that.