The Case For Adding More To An Already-Full Plate
The Case For Adding More To An Already-Full Plate
Learning to find joy when you're stressed and busy. Plus, some Halloween pop culture picks.
I’m an all-or-nothing person. This makes me incredibly productive when I set my mind to something. But it also can result in tunnel vision, and eventual burnout. I’ve been devoting all my energy to apartment searching for 5 weeks now (I’ll be writing about that soon) and the burnout is near. After Italy and Switzerland in early September, I told myself I’d set everything aside until I found an apartment. But then an opportunity to visit my dream destination—Seoul—came up and I did something very out of character: I said yes. When I got back I told myself I needed to find an apartment before my next trip to the Catskills (this week) or else I’d cancel the trip. When that deadline arrived and I still hadn’t signed a lease, I broke my promise to myself and went on the trip.
Can you enjoy yourself when there’s a million uncompleted tasks and high stakes deadlines nagging in the periphery of your mind? In Seoul, a hyper-stimulating city, it was easy to leave my to-do list at home. But this week, the opportunity cost of not apartment searching weighed heavy. Every few hours without service could have consequences—a late email response could result in me losing an apartment to someone else. My shoulders dropped a bit as the days went by but my heightened stress levels never fully came down. Every moment of bliss felt compromised.
What struck me about the landscapes up north this week was how many trees lacked leaves. Instead of the usual melange of fall colors, the mountains were covered in a rusty copper orange. It’s not because it’s cold, in fact, it was unseasonably warm. It’s been so sunny for so long, the region is in desperate need for rain. There was a cognitive dissonance in acknowledging the beauty of the landscape: every moment of awe was immediately following by the realization that climate change is real. There was life and death; beauty and tragedy in the same scene. I began to see the dead trees as a metaphor for my own worries—I couldn’t focus on the vibrant trees without noticing the bare ones, they would always be in my field of vision.
Perhaps this is the great project of life: learning how to hold this duality; how to find joy amidst stress or sadness or exhaustion. If we wait until our to-do list is complete or we’re not busy to take that trip (or pursue that relationship, or start that new project we think will bring us joy, for example), we might be waiting forever. So as much as I’m an advocate of saying no, this month I’ve learned there is some value in saying yes; in adding more to your plate.
Best,
Anna
After I wrote this essay I listened to this episode of Vibe Check, and a moment of dialogue echoed the epiphany I had this week.
Zach Stafford: “This country is on fire, we’re going through a crazy election, but even in dire moments, you can still find joy, and love, and happiness. Life still happens through all of this.”
Saeed Jones: “It has to.”
Published 📝
Forbes - Maritime Wellness: How To Spend A Relaxing Weekend In Halifax, Nova Scotia
With nourishing seafood, hydrotherapy treatments and its distinct Maritime friendliness, this seaside city is a wellness destination without even trying.
Reading 📖
It’s my favorite holiday! So here are some seasonal recommendations:
👻 The body is a haunted house.
🎃 Halloween has changed.
🍎 On picking apples in the lower Midwest.
🧙♀️ Why are all the witches talking about gatekeeping on TikTok?
⚰️ Halloween has gone full brain rot.
🧺 The case for having a picnic in a graveyard.
Watching 📺
I’m dying to see The Substance but nervous seeing it in theaters will be too scary (anyone been?). I like keeping anxiety-inducing content to a small screen. I was so excited to start the thriller Presumed Innocent for the spooky season but the first episode was too creepy for me (I guess I’ll have to wait for Jake to come to Broadway in Shakespeare’s Othello this spring). So I started another psychological thriller on Apple TV, Disclaimer.
Alfonso Cuarón has brought the 2015 book of the same name to the screen in this seven-episode miniseries starring Cate Blanchett. The premise: a documentary journalist (Blanchett), renowned for exposing others’ secrets, discovers she is the subject of a novel that reveals her own secret from 20 years ago that she thought she had buried. The show alternates between flashbacks and 20 years later, constantly keeping you on your toes as you try to uncover the journalist’s big secret. It’s shot beautifully and feels more like a film than a television show. I’m hooked.
Listening 🎧
When I want to listen to a deep-dive on some really niche topic, I listen to You’re Wrong About. Host Sarah Marshall loves talking about the Satanic panic (a moral panic of largely unsubstantiated allegations of child sexual abuse starting in the United States in the 1980s) and anything that falls into the American hysteria category. Turns out there is an actual podcast called American Hysteria, and Marshall brought on the host Chelsey Weber-Smith to dive into Halloween history, from the sinister pranks . I was surprised how little I knew about my favorite holiday (who knew pumpkin carving came from the Irish who would carve creepy faces in turnips to scare away travellers?).
Snacking 🍌
With New Yorkers making up a lot of the tourism market in the Catskills, you can find a good meal pretty easily. I love a nostalgic diner so I was excited to go to Phoenicia Diner. My guest and I split the trout skillet and pesto eggs and were disappointed. Another diner I had lunch at, Selina’s, was also not great. The best dishes were unexpected, like the smoked trout, creme fraiche dip and ranch-inspired salad at Dandelion (crunchy chickpeas are the best textural addition to salads). I was too busy to do much research before the trip, so I didn’t realize everything would be closed upon our late arrival on a weekday. Our hotel, Hotel Lilien, was nice enough to make us fried chicken sandwiches and fries even though their restaurant was closed. They told us Michelin named it the best in the region and I’d believe it.
Part of the reason I love Halloween so much is because I love any excuse to eat sweets. In Korea, everyday I tried a mystery dessert from the convenience store. I found the one I kept coming back to is their cream-filled buns (cream-ppang) that come in all different flavors (peanut butter, strawberry, salted caramel etc.). I was bummed I found a bakery that specializes in the cream-filled buns on my last day in Seoul, so I brought some back with me and froze them. I just ate the black sesame one this weekend and it was incredible.
A more natural sweet I discovered this week is persimmon. I’ve had them in desserts and savory dishes at restaurants but I’ve never bought one for myself. Sam Sanders describes the fruit as “a bougie apple that was too good to go to public school” and I couldn’t agree more. In the same Vibe Check episode, he shared an excerpt from this halloween essay that I will leave you with for the week ahead:
“I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.” - Colin Nissan.