Happy July
Work advice and remembering High School
Good morning, good morning. Also, happy July? Unsure how we got here so quick, but here we are. To avoid sounding just as trite when August rolls around, I’m going to spend the next month taking chilled stone fruit on hot afternoon walks, deleting apps off my phone, following the old ladies at the farmers market to the good produce, going to the pickleball court alone to see if anyone needs a fourth, and sleeping outside as many nights as I can. I know pickle ball is sweeping the nation and what not, but I can’t say I’m someone who’s into the sport. A friend who plays regularly was visiting from out of town this weekend, so we ended up playing a few times at some courts by my house and I actually had a great time. Not because of the game itself, but because you end up hanging out with an empty-nesting couple named Mike and Cindy for an hour and like to think you really coaxed them out of their shells. Not many places in the U.S. of A. present the opportunity to comingle with other generations around a shared experience and overcrowded courts kind of force an introduction you otherwise wouldn’t have made. All I’m saying is, if you’re looking for a new friend, a boyfriend, or an older friend, you could maybe find them on the court.
Goodbye, Work Friends
Roxane Gay for the New York Times
I first became familiar with Roxane Gay in college when my fiction writing professor assigned The Best American Short Stories 2018, guest edited by Gay, but she is known for her more notable works Bad Feminist and Difficult Women. Gay has written the column Work Friends for the last four years and writes one last column before passing the baton to her successor, Anna Holmes. She reflects on her relationship with work, her first job working in the dish room of her high school dining hall, her time spent answering phones at a call center, and her years teaching after getting her PhD. The last four years mark a particularly turbulent time in the professional lives of many as the pandemic disrupted workplace norms. What an interesting time to give advice on the subject.
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City Walks
Leandra Medine Cohen for her newsletter The Cereal Aisle by Leandra Medine Cohen
What begins as a narration of a morning walk routine spent observing the outfits of her fellow New Yorkers, turns into an exploration of women’s tendencies toward shape shifting as a reaction to comparing accomplishments with others.
I could see my own participation in this flywheel — the way I get protective when I’m feeling good instead of spreading my wings to give shade where its needed, or shining brighter to give light where its dark. I could also recall how in some instances, I start to contract when I can feel another woman in flow — as if their expansion, their rhythm, their yes means my curling in, contracting, my no.
A woman’s susceptibility to adapt behavior based her surroundings is fairly noticeable when in a primarily male environment (corporate job, government position, etc.), but the deep roots of this tendency become even more apparent when in a setting of all women.
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Why You Truly Never Leave High School
Jennifer Senior for New York Mag
After watching Andrew McCarthy’s new Hulu documentary “Brats” about how a New York Magazine cover story that named him and a group of young actors in the mid eighties the “Brat Pack”, I was certainly primed to contemplate the past. Senior contemplates how her own high school memories and identities shaped her in adulthood and wrestled with the question if those formative years were as significantly influential as many claim.