August ends in two-and-a-half days and September—more than January—marks the peak of new beginnings and ends. School starts. Summer’s lackadaisacal-ness supposedly ends. It’s the cusp of both kids’ birthdays. The spraygrounds shut off.
This year my kids will start kindergarten and second grade, and return to a weekday routine of babysitters and some activities, which hopefully they won’t protest too heavily. It’s a deep contrast to last year at this same time when we’d just moved back to Brooklyn. We were in a new apartment in a new neighborhood with new playgrounds and new alternate side parking rules. We didn’t know what school our kids would yet go to, or if they’d be able to go to the same school, though we hoped it was the public school we were zoned to. We didn’t have childcare. We were too late to sign up for most after school options. We didn’t have steady employment as a dual-freelancer household and I wasn’t sure if our health insurance coverage would extend or not.
Ada, my usual extrovert, struggled with the transition to a big, new public school and would hide away in her bunk refusing to come out every day for the first five weeks. We were deep in the throes of multiple concurrent ambiguous changes, which all felt like the rode upon each other. My anxiety had skyrocketed and I questioned why we’d moved back to New York at all. Yet at that time I wrote prolifically, as it was the only way of exhuming and releasing the feelings of the time.
In the spring I got a newsletter from Deez Links aka Delia Cai, a daily newsletter about gossip-worthy stuff in the media industry, which reflected on the idea of times for input and times for output. It’s cyclical, but in an inconsistent way—the periods aren’t always the same length nor do they happen with any predictability—but we flow between them with some momentum.
To quote directly from her newsletter, which quotes her friend Caitlin Kunkel:
A friend in my graduate program told me very simply that you need to input to output. So when I’m feeling depleted, I have a process I follow. I write down the things I’ve been watching and reading, and any events I’ve been to in the past few months. Pretty much 100% of the time I see that I’ve been staying in, working, rewatching things I’ve already seen, and reading comfort books (to be clear: there’s nothing wrong with any of those things!).
Then I make an active plan to input. I have a list of “hard” books (nonfiction topics I don’t know much about, older books like “Catch-22” I never read in school, things that are challenging) that I choose a title from, I watch older movies I’ve somehow never seen (“Network” being a recent one, wow, dark as hell, loved it) and I try to go see theater or comedy shows outside my normal sphere. I meet people for coffee to hear about their work. I read reviews of things and compare them to my own thoughts, or think about what I would do differently or which elements I admired and would like to do more in my own work.
After a few weeks of that, I start to have ideas again. I incubate them, start writing, stop taking in as much as I’m outputting, and then keep doing that until the cycle repeats itself. My life got a lot better a few years ago when I recognized this is as a cycle rather than feeling like I would never have ideas again and it was absolutely out of my control to ever coax them back. It also helps me take pressure off myself during times of ill physical or mental or emotional health to know that it’s just part of the cycle and I can let up for a bit and just input for a while without feeling guilty.
I’ve thought about this concept at least three times a week since reading it, sometimes openly contemplating if i’m in an input or output phase. But it’s also helped me be gentler on myself. Instead of chiding myself for not finishing a book or trying to think about why ideas weren’t “coming to me naturally,” I’m able to accept it may just not be where my momentum lays.
The summer has been a season of many inputs: visiting new places, YA novels, catching up on movies, meandering walks with friends, going deep into Olivia Wilde rabbit holes. I’m still waiting for the output to coax itself back to being, but also waiting with more patience, as though it’s a part of the cycle to wallow in rather than to get through, as quickly as possible.
What I’ve been consuming:
Reading:
Raising Raffi by Keith Gessen, novel, mostly because there aren’t a lot of collections of parenting essays by fathers. I like the stories that focus on communicating a Russian identity / language the best.
All three books in Jenny Han’s YA teen romance series, The Summer I Turned Pretty series after watching the show on Amazon Prime, mostly out of curiosity on the translation between print and TV but also because the cast is extremely adorable. Perfectly binge-able.
Just starting The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka about a group of obsessed recreational swimmers.
Emily Kirkpatrick’s newsletter, I <3 Mess, abut the fashion faux pas of celebrities. J. Lo’s wedding dresses, Nicole Kidman’s weird wig, and Harry Styles’ floral tights all in one issue. I truly gave zero effs about celebrities until six months ago and now that I’m thirty-nine truly enjoy the cattiness and commentary around it all. I can’t really explain?
Ada and I have been reading the Judy Blume series, The Pain and the Great One, which she finds highly relatable as an older sister
Eating:
Haribo peach gummies are the best.
Perfect summer pasta with zucchini, lemon and provolone along with hazelnut, ricotta, rosemary crostini at Cafe Spaghetti
The Fattat Jaj at Palestinian restaurant, Al Badawi on Atlantic Ave, which is a very near perfect dish combining roast chicken, rice, chickpeas, mint yogurt, crispy pita, garlic, and toasted almonds. It’s also BYOB.
The stone fruit tart at Burrow, the best tiny bakery in Brooklyn (like all good bakeries, get there when they open for the best choices)
Watching:
The famous Richard Linklater trilogy, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight (which is available on Prime for 2 more days), all in the same week, the latter two for the first time. Only sad this was my first time watching them through.
“Jumanji” (the 1995 one with Robin Williams and a young Kirsten Dunst), with the kids. They were obsess”ed.
“20th Century Women, the Mike Mills film with the great Annette Benning, Greta Gerwig, and Elle Fanning, as women of various generations all trying to help raise a teenage boy. (Didn’t love as much as “C’mon C’mon” but enjoy seeing how he explores parenthood in a multitude of ways)
As mentioned above “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” Also in a similar vein, Season 3 of Never Have I Ever, which I generally like but Darren Barnet is 31 and way too old to be playing a high school senior.
Listening:
Baratunde Thurston on Humility as a Path to Wisdom with wise words on the Time Sensitive podcast
Sam Fragoso at Talk Easy talks to Abbi Jacobson about her career, the “Broad City” years, and re-interpreting A League of Their Own (now on Amazon Prime) with a greater range of female identity.
Misc:
“Lee Friendlander’s Intimate Portraits of His Wife, Through Sixty Years of Marriage” by Chris Wiley in The New Yorker
Playing lots of Uno with the kids. Way more fun than Go Fish.
Math Cubes continue to be Julian’s favorite toy of all time, and he uses them to create all means of characters and vehicles from Star Wars.
The Cake Plates from East Fork Pottery. Who needs small plates? Like smaller than salad plates? I do, all the time, apparently. Perfect for a cookie, a few crackers and cheese, a handful of berries. Extremely useful!
Searching “meadow gardens” on Pinterest
Got the kids these STATE lunchboxes for school at Target since their old ones are pretty stinky. (They’re mysteriously $19.99 even though the same ones on the STATE site are $48.)
See you post Labor Day. Let me know what you’re watching, reading, listening to, eating, enjoying.
I enjoy your newsletter so much. Thank you for sharing with us. I'm also obsessed with your child's striped bedding! So cute.
oh the olivia wilde curiosity / rabbithole is endlessly deep, especially given the (former) proximity as BK mom raising similar aged kids! imagine the PERMISSION (and also resources) to disappear into a monthslong creative project - as she did w/ don't worry darling - squarely mid-pandemic in joshua tree and proceed to fall in love with the world's biggest pop star. like, the most alt universe fantasy i could possibly imagine from my non-famous daily life in the trenches in brooklyn with 2 little kids, desperately trying to clear enough head space to be creative. anyway love & always relish these, thanks