the thing is i like january

on beginnings, i guess

Hello and welcome to Hmm’s semi-annual stream of consciousness essay. A dispatch, more than anything. You never know when it’s coming but you do know it when you see it. It’s more of a self-indulgent recap, really, for when my mind can’t stop ping-ponging from one subject to another, never focusing enough to write a concrete and concise essay. Part of it is that I’ve fallen victim to a bit of a cold, which always makes me feel pathetic, but mostly it’s the state of the world, which seems to be journeying ever-faster to rock bottom, taking us all down with it.

But here’s a brief respite.

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I feel like you need this information: last week, or was it two weeks ago, a group of us were talking about resolutions, and I severely misjudged the vibe and instead of being like oh ha ha idk I would like to eat more fiber and maybe take up pilates again I said I would like to learn things for the sake of knowledge and generally become a more well-rounded person. A beat of silence understandably followed before I—again, and I cannot emphasize this enough, understandably—was roasted for the next hour or so.

From that day, before I was censured over my thirst for knowledge, etc.

God forbid a girl engage in a bit of earnestness to usher in the new year. You can be a little crazy in January. As a treat, or whatever.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, though. In fact, I’d written a facsimile of the above resolution via the obnoxious-to-me ins/outs format a few days earlier:

The last few years have felt slightly hamster-wheely, doing my best to stay physically and emotionally afloat, and wouldn’t you know it, I think it’s impacted my brain waves. You can make fun of me for this if you want, but: I miss intentional learning. Being intellectually stimulated on a regular basis. Reading fiction scratches that itch, sure, but it doesn’t eliminate it entirely. I find myself wanting more. So yeah, I guess that’s what I’m in pursuit of this year. More.¹

Another day of containing multitudes!!!

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I enjoy January, is the thing, for the same reason I like cracking open a new notebook and unsealing a fresh pack of ground coffee and replacing the ink cartridge in my favorite pen. It’s nice to turn a page into the unknown, not to make yourself anew but to believe that a better version of yourself is possible. Gentler and more logical, I think, to see ourselves as iterations rather than new year new meing ourselves into hating our past. Most of us overthink and overvalue our pasts; humbly, and not to get too Stoic with it, but may I suggest that a more it is what it is approach would serve us better? Especially in our personal lives.

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Another of my little intentions this year is to cook more. I am, you should know, cereal’s number one fan. Whenever I come back from a trip, my first meal is a giant bowl of cereal, ideally with peanut butter and granola and a sliced banana, topped with a generous dollop of yogurt and just enough milk to forge it all into a gorgeously crunchy mélange. I literally start craving it on my way to the airport, like Pavlov’s dog if he had trained himself. It’s the texture of it all, I think, and the just-right level of sweetness. All this to say: cooking, especially just for myself, is not something that comes naturally to me. I don’t wake up and think ah, yes, let me chop a leek, let me soak the lentils in lukewarm water, let me roast a squash and caramelize an onion so I can blend them into a nice sauce for my pasta. Like, to be clear, these are Nice Thoughts™, happy for you if you see yourself in them … but they are decidedly not my thoughts.

I wake up thinking of cereal. When I go to bed, I’m calculating how many hours till my next cereal. When my box of cereal is less than half full, I start panicking.

However. I am big enough to acknowledge that micronutrients are found in other products, products like the aforementioned lentils/leeks/squash/onions. And there is an inherent tenderness in cooking, in taking time to prepare food for yourself and others, that I find endearing. Satisfying. It’s also a gorgeous and socially acceptable avenue to dissociation.

For instance: On Sunday, after going on a long and sunny morning walk that had my endorphins absolutely buzzing, I took approximately 97 minutes to chop/mince one (1) celery stalk, one (1) carrot, and two (2) cloves of garlic. While they were sizzling away in the pan over a bit of olive oil, I cut up a potato (more on this below) and put a pot of water to boil. I lined up my jars of lentils and passata and my tube of tomato paste. I opened a new pack of fusilli. I realized I’d forgotten the onion of it all but it was a too little/too late situation. Next time, I thought. While the pasta was cooking and the potato was slowly (so slowly) softening in the pan under a simmering layer of passata and water I convinced myself was close enough to vegetable stock, I took the vegan parm out of the fridge and the nutritional yeast down from my little pantry, where it lives happily next to the smooth peanut butter.²

This is actually from a different day, sans potato, but it turned out better (I remembered onions) and since this is my newsletter, this is the meal I’m choosing to show you.

I’m impatient, so the potato wasn’t as cooked as I would’ve liked, and I’m shy with my herbs and spices, so the whole thing was less flavorful than it could’ve been. But it’s hard to fuck up a lentil-potato-pasta combination. Really hard. So I ate it all, marveling at my effort, regardless of its suboptimal results. I made so much of it, too. A normal person would’ve put half, or at least a third, in a little container for a future meal. Not me. I like leftovers fine but am kind of irrationally against meal prepping. I find it such a utilitarian approach to cooking and eating and frankly, it depresses me. Don’t tell me there are advantages to meal prepping—I’m aware of them and I still don’t like it. This is what having a personality is all about. You get to be illogical about things. It’s nice.

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Everyone’s been gushing about Lily King’s Heart the Lover and this is me telling you that I will not be reading it anytime soon. I’m sure it’s brilliant but everyone’s rec is like “omg so good i sobbed the whole time” and “this rewired my emotional core” and “i’ll never be the same” and okay I do love that for all of you but I’m all set for now, babes. I read Hamnet two years ago and my tear ducts are still recovering from that ordeal. I’ll wait till my next court-mandated reset, thanks.

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I have this idea for a dinner party game. I suggested it to a friend and she was like “okay so what I’m hearing is you want to assign people homework?” Which was fair. Harsh, but fair.

Here’s the game: you know the Spotify little blend feature, which is when you prompt the platform to create a playlist mixing yours and another user’s most-listened to songs? Other than sex and joint bank accounts, it’s the sluttiest thing a person can do. Ha ha should we make a blend?³ Okay, so like a week before the party, you randomly pair everyone up and save the blend playlists. Then, the night of, you play the blends on shuffle and each person has to name their playlist counterparty’s songs.⁴ Yes, it implies that you listen to it a few times ahead of the event, hence the homework comment, and the more different your musical tastes the harder it’ll be, but that’s the point! Learn about each other via music! Anyway. I leave this in your capable hands, readers, since I haven’t convinced anyone irl to play it yet.⁵

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For reference re potato (see below).

Things that have happened recently that have made me laugh: a friend and I came across a fountain pen shelf at a museum giftshop, I said “oh, I’ve been wanting to get into fountain pens lately” and she said “yeah I knew you were gonna say that;” I was minding my own business, grabbing a drink with a friend at a nice bar, when a French man tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a raw potato because he “wanted to talk to me;” last weekend, I played a Pictionary-adjacent game and not a single person was prepared for my violent lack of artistic skill, which reminded me of the time my middle school art teacher gave me an F- on a drawing and no, that’s not a typo. F minus.

I also ate a really great pizza last week. Memorably good. It didn’t make me laugh, but it seems important to honor it in writing.

Lastly: pistachios. That’s gotta be ending soon, no? Like, I love a baklava as much as anyone, but next time you feel the inexplicable-except-via-marketing urge to buy the pistachified version of a food item that historically has boasted an absence of pistachio, ask yourself: do I really enjoy pistachios that much? Is this the life I am meant to be living, unironically uttering the phrase I’ll have the pistachio one, please? There’s a connection to be drawn between the pistachio craze and society’s growing overreliance on ChatGPT et al. I don’t have time to pull out the red string and link the two right this minute, but I’ll let you think about it and we can come back to it. The year, after all, has only just begun.

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1. This isn’t me soft-launching a syllabus-esque future column for the newsletter, btw. There are plenty of people already doing that and I don’t really see myself improving upon their work. Besides, what am I gonna tell you, well, class, today I watched a lecture on Arthur Schopenhauer and as it turns out Freud stole a lot of his material from this depressed German philosopher? Yeah, no.

2. My favorite grocery store has mysteriously stopped stocking its crunchy peanut butter; I’ve adapted to this change with acceptance, grace, and charity. I do want to die at the lack of crunch in my life but I guess that’s what granola is for.

3. Hugely important note to all my friends (and family, God) I have these playlists with: I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT YOU.

4. Shamelessly inspired by Track Star, a show I’m obsessed with.

5. To be clear, I’ve only proposed the game to one friend. But still. I don’t take rejection well.