It’s been a trying couple weeks. After two unsuccessful consulate visits and three rejected visa applications, I’ve given up on an upcoming trip for which I bought $4000 USD non-refundable flight tickets. I don’t often get excited for trips anymore but I was excited for this one. I won’t say the country but it’s one that has ongoing tensions with Canada after a suspected assassination a few months back. While I wasn’t told why my visa was rejected, I was told they’re not accepting any Canadians right now, likely because of the political conflict.
Amidst the visa stress, I was faced with two wake-up calls to the precariousness of my living situation and my job. With fears that I’ll lose both top of mind, I’ve awoken each day to slippery fingers that seem to drop and smash everything I touch. One day it was my favorite banana lamp, the next it was an empty glass jar of peanut butter that shattered into hundreds of tiny specks of glass. As I begrudgingly cleaned up the glass, some of those specks embedded in my hands, and so now I’m treating the bureaucratic headache of trying to get health insurance with new urgency. As I write this, I’m on my fifth phone hold with NY State of Health.
The other night I was so fed up, I decided to treat myself to a massage. When I used to live here I was so addicted to this cheap walk-in place I wrote a personal essay about it for Vogue. The woman I went to there, Lulu, has long gone so I saw someone else last fall. I was disappointed with the massage so I’ve been avoiding going back. This week I gave it a second chance and it was maybe the worst massage I’ve ever had. At one point when I wimpered in discomfort, the masseuse actually laughed. I walked back home against a freezing cold wind in complete defeat. The next morning I woke up to a sore throat that has since turned into a brutal cold.
By this point you’re probably thinking what I’ve been thinking throughout all of this—these are first world problems. While dismissing one’s grievances isn’t always helpful, I am trying to have some perspective. This is the first time in my life that I’ve not been allowed into a country on the basis of my citizenship. I just happen to have been born in the right place at the right time, and so I’ve been blessed with what is arguably one of the best passports in the world. I’m never suspected a terrorist at airport security checks and have been largely free to explore the world. Up until now, I’ve taken this freedom for granted. So many people in this world don’t have such a luxury, they are used to be denied things because of something as arbitrary as where they were born.
The apartment and job precariousness are harder to put into perspective, but I’m trying to remind myself that moving to New York and having this job are both dreams come true in the first place. Not all dreams are sustainable nor come easy. The unbelievable complicatedness of the health insurance system here has also made me acutely aware of how much I took my healthcare in Canada for granted. Even as I feel dreadful with this cold, I’m realizing this is the first time I’ve been sick this flu season. I was constantly sick as a teenager after a bout of mono, and I didn’t realize how rarely I get sick anymore until now.
When shitty things happened in my 20s, I used to have big emotional reactions that felt bigger than I knew how to handle. So I would suppress my emotions, and in the process, run away from my problems. I did the same dismissing of my issues as I’m doing right now in this newsletter but the difference is that back then, the whole “it could be worse” reframe was a form of denial. As a result, I would invalidate my emotions; denying myself the right to be upset, and so I never moved on. The problems stuck with me.
Now in my 30s, I acknowledge something shitty has happened. Writing my woes down here is a means of validating myself, something I would’ve never done in my 20s out of fear of sounding like I’m victimizing myself. Now, I don’t just fast forward to the perspective-check, I acknowledge the shittyness and then perspective-check. I also don’t blame myself like I used to because I recognize that there are larger forces in the world than me; and so much of what happens in my life is and will be out of my control.
Last weekend after a leisurely lunch and wander through the East Village with a friend, we ended up in Washington Square Park. Instead of continuing on through the park as we would normally do if we were on our own, we paused, taking in all the action of a busy Sunday afternoon in the square. With both of us observers for a living, we just stood there and people-watched. There was a man I likened to a pigeon prophet, feeding the birds and magically orchestrating their movements with his hands. There was the regular contemporary dancer who always looks like she’s crawled straight out of The Ring television dancing barefoot on a piece of cardboard. There was the badass old Asian man who sped through the square on a Harley Davidson with his bulldog in an attached mesh trailer.
At a certain point I realized neither my friend nor I were phased by anything that happened, no matter how much of a spectacle. I told her how my friend’s parents who visited a few days prior were mesmerized by everything they encountered in Manhattan. They wanted to go to Trader Joe’s and as we strolled the aisles, I realized even my favorite grocery store is now mundane to me. As this friend and I stood in the park completely desensitized, I thought of friends back home who would be so excited to even just be standing in Washington Square Park, let alone witnessing all the action around us. As much as I cringe at the idea of practicing gratitude, I had a moment in the middle of that square where I thought, despite all the shit going on, I’m so incredibly lucky to be here.
This is one of the few upsides to having the worst possible thing happen: everything after feels like a bonus. Losses that would feel like the end of the world before my mom died, now seem so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. So what if I lose a dream trip, a dream job, a dream apartment? When everything is a bonus, losing something isn’t as big a deal because it feels like something I wasn’t supposed to have in the first place. As I get older I realize that this is life: being able to hold sadness and gratitude in the same hand.
When asked how Regina King was feeling this week in an interview with Vibe Check she said, “My current vibe is the intersection of gratitude and sadness.” Alluding to the death of her son to suicide, “Life fully changed a couple years ago. I never would’ve thought those two things were mutually exclusive, they are always working in concert. Sometimes, the gratitude is flowing bigger than the sadness, and a lot of times it’s the other way around. But I’ll also add—acceptance is my vibe. Accepting that this is where I’m at.”
“Whenever you see scarcity, there also is abundance—they’re never exclusive,” responds host Sam Sanders, who lost his mom last year. “One part of our life is abundant while the other feels scarce, and the work is to say, ‘I’m good everyday.’ You don’t ever get to a point where it’s just abundance, or just gratitude.”
Best,
Anna
Reading 📖
This week the book giving me the most comfort is Benji Nate’s Girl Juice. Whenever I find a graphic novel I really like, I wonder why I don’t read them more often. They’re perfect for reading before bed—easy and light. I took a chance on this after seeing it recommended in the NYT, and it’s ended up being my favorite book in a while. It follows four female friends, each with their own distinct personalities, as they navigate the highs and lows of being a young woman: from sex to mommy issues to battling inner demons that feed off attention-seeking behaviour. It’s basically a Gen Z SATC, one I’m hoping will have its own And Just Like That.
Articles:
😭 How to stop catastrophizing.
🌿 Legal weed in NYC was supposed to be a revolution. What happened?
🙅🏻♀️ I’ve been practicing saying no lately, here’s why you should too.
📺 How Quinta Brunson hacked the sitcom.
👩🏾🍳 I’ve always had a soft spot for Carla Hall.
🙋🏻♀️ How come there’s never been an Asian Bachelorette?
🌷 A New York Spring forecast.
💕 Dating phrases applied to hiring scenarios.
Watching 📺
Anytime I talk about reality T.V., I begin with the same caveat I use when I talk about Taylor Swift—I’m a closeted consumer. As a teenager, I was that girl at the slumber party who insisted on getting the documentary instead of the romcom—I’ve always been more of a prestige T.V. person. But somewhere in the void of quality television in recent years, I fell into the dating reality rabbit hole.
So watching the latest seasons of The Bachelor and Love Is Blind has been the ultimate balm to my feeling shitty this week. I don’t think I’ve written about The Golden Bachelor here, but I should’ve because it was surprisingly good—the bachelor and many of the women were all widows which made the show a wholesome exploration of life after loss rather than the usual catty battle over a man. Still, the latest season of The Bachelor has me hooked, especially since the most controversial character is from my home province and most of the destinations featured were in Canada (Travel Alberta must’ve paid good money to get Jasper in). The destination placements actually worked: seeing them explore Montreal made me so nostalgic for my University days I’m now planning my first trip back in over a decade.
The new season of Love Is Blind feels like it might be the last I watch. What started as an enticing premise has lots its novelty and feels more contrived than ever. An editor I work with made a good point over coffee last week: the show’s central question shouldn’t be “is love blind?” but “is marriage blind?” Sure, all these cast members can fall in love in the pods sight-unseen, but where things go awry is when they try to build a marriage on blind love. All the media coverage lately has been about how this season proves people really are shallow, but what this season really shows is how a marriage can’t be sustained on a blind date.
Listening 🎧
My default defense mechanism to disappointment is to respond with humor. Instead of listening to a sappy song when I’m feeling crappy, I love the weird irony of listening to an overly rambunctious bop. So this week I’ve been listening to this old classic.
I love the cognitive dissonance of listening to this while walking against a cold wind and being bogged down in my problems. If you liked the topic of today’s essay, I also would recommend the aforementioned interview with Regina King.
Snacking 🍌
I cancelled pretty much all my social plans this week to avoid getting others sick. But one highlight outing was Bessou’s pop-up dinner in deep Brooklyn. Bessou was one of the first food stories I wrote and photographed as a journalist in New York, and so it was incredibly validating to have chef Maiko Kyogoku tell me at this dinner that our photoshoot all those years back remains her favorite 🥹. Reconnecting with her was lovely as was seeing an old photographer friend, whose photographs of the cherry blossoms in Fukuoka (a Japanese city I just visited last month) were on display.
To be honest, I was more there for the company than the food as I haven’t been craving Japanese since my trip. But having Japanese food in my recent consciousness made the creativity here that much more impressive. The most memorable dishes were the Japanese eggplant babaghanoush and whipped yuzu feta, yuba skin spring rolls and bright rainbow crudo. I wished I wasn’t so full by the time dessert was served because it was a fun—a black sesame chocolate taco filled with vanilla ice cream and topped with a strawberry rhubarb glaze.
At home, these are the things getting me through this cold:
🫐 Hilma’s Elderberry and Natrol’s Sleep Immune Gummies
🐝 Trader Joe's Bee Propolis Throat Spray
🧣 My new fave knit scarf (on sale) and cozy convertible slippers.
Wishing you a speedy recovery from your cold and yes, NY State of Health insurance SUCKS. Getting insured or even talking to a human is extremely frustrating! I feel your pain 💗.