Social sabbatical aftermath

It’s officially fall and really feels like it. Here’s my question: what are the light jackets everyone is wearing this year? I told myself last year I needed to get new ones and didn’t, so I’m in dire need right now. I wish moto jackets were still cool because I really want to be on my Gap 2012 slay this fall. Instead, I’ll get a new puffer and grumble.

I think my social sabbatical really served as a summer season severer (sorry). This begins my era of hibernation, and I’m really scared. I was so sad last year and already feel myself creeping back into that hopelessness. I have this really tough project at work that some days I feel like I just stare at the screen and do nothing about. I’ll allegedly finish it at the end of next month, and I like to think I’ll be better at exhaling then.

I also downloaded this self care app called Finch (my friend code is 4KFGY5QJJ7) where users take care of a baby bird by completing self care tasks IRL. The default ones I got were pretty bare bones (Get out of bed; Brush your teeth), but I started adding ones custom to me (Floss before sleep; Clean something substantial around the house). You can also dress up your bird and visit your friend’s birds. It’s almost like a self-care Animal Crossing. I’ve really been enjoying it, especially as someone who should be in therapy but isn’t.

I was super excited for the sabbatical but of course immediately felt sad and weird upon its beginning. Mondays have become a crappy day for me lately because I don’t feel super comfortable taking adderall on big meeting days like this…but then I get nothing done at work. Plus I have this newsletter to do, which often feels like a chore. Like I mentioned last week, I just totally woke up on the wrong side of the bed and could not get in a good mood.

I cannot overstate how lucky I am to live with Meera who constantly makes me laugh and also cooks while I sit a few feet away and read. I stoved off the feeling of dread by remembering that the week has just begun, and I have plenty of time to feel successful.

Well, I woke up on Tuesday and felt meh, still very hard to focus even with adderall. At this point, I just felt angry. I ended up doing something I’ve never done before: I chose to go on a run. I didn’t have enough motivation to go to the gym but had this pent up anger that needed to go somewhere.

After work, I decided to just do a mile loop around my neighborhood in the industrial blocks with few people. I wore my extremely run-down Allbirds because I didn’t want to change my short socks for my taller sneakers. I didn’t realize how run down these shoes were until I was on my run. My mile took 15 minutes, partly because I’m slow and partly because my ankles were in so much pain from the lack of support my shoes provided, so I kept stopping. I was so angry at myself for not putting on better shoes, but the endorphins started hitting once I got home and stretched more. I tried doing a strength workout from the peloton app and ditched five minutes into it because they started doing pushups and I thought Nope!

I ended up doing an upper body workout with kettlebells while I finished the Sopranos making-of docuseries. I really enjoyed the two-parter and getting insight from David Chase about how the show was informed by real life. My one qualm with it was them showing the entire Melfi assault scene, which I found unnecessarily chilling. I wasn’t super satisfied with this workout but felt more proud of myself as time passed.

This night was my one midweek breaker of the sabbatical because my friend Hannah is visiting. I saw her the week prior, but this time she just came over and we watched the premiere of Dancing with the Stars and ate Lebanese food. The season is off to a fascinating start. My final 4 prediction is Joey the Bachelor, some young Disney girl named Chandler, Dwight Howard, and Steven pommel horse. I think DWTS is the perfect normie show and that watching it brings you more into the real world. If you have no reason to care, I recommend watching just to see how Anna Delvey does, who did this terrible dance to “Espresso” that was crazy to watch live. Being with Hannah through this made me feel warm and happy.

Wednesday was a more productive workday and I started feeling the effects of the Finch app working. I’m taking more moments to breathe and calm myself down. My boss got his flu and COVID shots, something I’ve forgotten about doing. I made an appointment at a CVS a 30-minute walk away, only to get there and realize that CVS no longer takes my insurance, so I walked back. Meera gets all of these free products from her job, so now I’m leaning back into an older era of being an overhead headphones person. I didn’t realize how sweaty it would make my whole head, but I liked feeling immersed.

My biggest goal of this sabbatical was to fully catch up on my magazines and podcasts, which I did. Doing these things always makes me feel better. I read the two most recent editions of NY Mag only to then learn of Olivia Nuzzi’s confusing affair with RFK Jr., which was a great night to be on Twitter. I also read the first-ever print edition of The Cut, which was a glossy, easy read. For podcasts, I’m caught up (until today, I guess) on This American Life, Code Switch, and this other podcast I’ll talk about in my journalism section. I also started listening to Bowery Boys, which is a weekly series diving into New York history. The past two have been on rich recluses.

Wednesday was another big television day with premieres of Survivor and The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. I only watched the first hour of Survivor because RHOSLC was starting and of higher importance, but I finished Survivor the next day. Both premieres were great, with the housewives episode’s dramatic editing making it feel more like a movie than a show.

Thursday comes, and my mom tells me she’s booking an impromptu trip to New York just for Saturday morning and afternoon. She assures me it has nothing to do with our call earlier in the week where I talked about how sad I am. Haha! I try to dissuade her since it takes forever to get into the city from JFK and back, but she pushes on. I’m excited to see her.

Work ends, and I need to go to the gym or something evil will happen to me. It has been weeks. I just need to rip off the band-aid. I don’t know why it’s so hard to do something I like, but it’s probably because it feels like such a massive time suck. Meera wants to play tennis in the park, but of course the court is full. Both of us are in need of some sort of physical resolution, so she chooses to go home and be cozy while I know that if I don’t get in the gym something evil will happen to me.

I get on the bike machine, something I haven’t done in a while, and hit a cool 6 miles while watching the season premiere of The Golden Bachelor (lots of premieres this week). I keep the episode going while I hit abs and lower body machines. These dudes don’t seem completely dickish, but they probably are. Joan seems cool. I finish the episode during my stretches. I feel the kind of happiness you feel when you need to puke and you finally do and it’s the kind that makes you feel relieved instead of more sick.

My sabbatical was barely a sabbatical. I had Friday plans to get chill drinks on the Upper West Side which I also included a 7th Street Burger run in. For Saturday, I woke up super early so I could get to the airport and take my mom through the train. I can’t rationalize her Ubering to Manhattan from JFK. Plus, we had a lot of work to do.

I crafted a four-part bagel tour in the West Village: Apollo, Greenberg’s, Pop Up, and Leon’s (somewhere I’ve never heard of but my mom had). I’d been to the other three’s other locations but knew they were perfect for my mom to try. We waited in lines and ate on nearby benches. I don’t think it’s easy to pick a favorite: Apollo has a special crunch, Greeenberg’s everything is everything, and Pop Up is clearly the best but also has heat on its side.

We were too full to go for Leon’s and wait in another line. We had enough fun just being together. I do have to immortalize a comment that made me laugh the most…someone said, Order for Doordash? and my mom turned to me and said, Woah, someone’s name is Jordash! We laughed for a long time and I eventually learned of the former social power of Jordache jeans.

I really wanted her to go to the Upper West Side and see what I think is the most Jewish place I’ve been to but worried we wouldn’t have enough time. Thankfully, we got to walk around a bunch, eventually passing a pizza place called Patsy’s. I asked her if she remembers the place we got pizza near Central Park during our first trip to NY together in maybe 2015. Passing the specific shade of green and font of Patsy’s sign, I felt like this might have been the place. We later got to the park, and I looked through pictures only to find pubescent pics of me and tiny Ben smiling with Patsy’s menus.

Meera joined us at this leg of the journey, and we just sat in the park and watched the dogs. A large cohort of men in speedos ran around singing Katy Perry, which sounds gay but I think was a frat hazing thing based on the mens’ voices. Meera and I also got to try a bagel from the first batch of bagels made at the Balena Bagels oven (and it was stellar).

We walked to Zabars and bought a chocolate babka for home, a black and white cookie for us all, and a lox sandwich for Meera (which she says might be her favorite ever). We sat in Riverside park and took in one of our last hours together. We really maximized this day, and it just felt so right to have my mom with me. Eventually, we make the trek back to Jamaica and say goodbye to my mom before she takes the Air Train.

The rest of the weekend felt socially manageable, a housewarming party later that night and an ice cream social (:D) the next afternoon. Things felt more balanced and cozy.

Did I learn anything from this sabbatical? Maybe. I’m happy I gave myself time to really beat myself up fully instead of being sad and going to other people to forget about it. I think I can be a bit of a wallower, and I was happy to have the freedom to do that. I also liked the amount of time I had to eventually warm up back to the gym again but still do other physical things throughout the week. I didn’t feel super accomplished at work but definitely better than other weeks.

Whenever I felt sad, I was happy to read and listen to podcasts to make me feel better. After reading an interview with Robert Caro, I ended up buying a copy of The Power Broker, which is a 1,000+ page biography on the infamous Robert Moses. I’m super excited to have this behemoth, even if it just serves as a decoration. If you’ve read or tried reading this book, please reach out to me.

I definitely felt a roller coaster of emotions during this week, and I hate that I’m writing about it on another cloudy Monday that I can’t feel super excited during. But I’m really happy I took some more time for myself. I don’t think I’ll get myself as packed as the temperatures continue cooling. My mood just feels really swingy wingy at the moment, but I’m feeling sort of better about how I’m dealing with it all. We press on!

I’m so busy it’s like my life is almost exclusively work. But I’m more engaged by my professional life and in my day-to-day work than I’ve ever been.

This would all be fine if I was in the sticks but I feel like New York City taunting me the whole time saying “You don’t really do me you just commute through me.”Am I doing New York wrong?

Or is in some perverse way being so broke you need to work non-stop the most New York thing I can do?

With love,

— Stan Clearoftheclosingdoors

Hey Stan! I’m of the opinion that you should be maximizing your happiness as much as possible. The way you’ve posed this question implies that you’re enjoying all of this work…so I wouldn’t change a thing. As long as you’re happy, you’re doing it —New York, the sticks, wherever life takes you — right.

This question sounds like anxieties based either in comparing yourself to others or to a version of yourself you envisioned. I think you’re just a bit surprised that you’re fulfilled by work, but this sounds like a great thing. That feeling of career accomplishment shouldn’t make you feel like a New York failure. Embrace what you’ve got, but make sure you have a social safety net in case that job gets more annoying down the line.

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