Each week, you’ll get a little personal essay and a little pop culture commentary and some other things along the way. This week’s topics, loosely speaking, include: insomnia, getting ghosted, and the perils of capitalism.
I don’t claim to be the best at many things, but for a while, I was the best at sleeping in. If I didn’t have to wake up before 9AM, I’d wake up at 12pm. Even if I did have to be up early, I regularly slept through my alarms: one time in high school, I woke up at 2PM to realize I had slept through the entire school day.
For something so luxurious, sleeping in always made me feel bad. I’d wake up sometime past noon and instantly feel tired – worse than that, I’d be so mad at myself for wasting time.
What could I have accomplished if only I could get out of bed a few hours earlier? Everything. If I woke up at 7am, I could work out or make myself a nice breakfast or write the Great American Novel. Everything would be solved if I could simply just become a morning person. Right?
I was wrong. For months, I’ve become physically incapable of getting a good night's sleep, jolting awake at 7AM no matter when I fall asleep. Against my will, I have become a morning person and I remain preoccupied with wasting time.
I’m on Week 3 of Not Working and every day, I feel like I’m wasting time. My rational brain knows this is false: I’ve written more in the past three weeks than I have in the past three years and I’ve cooked several (several!) meals that have required more than two ingredients. And yet – the fear of Wasted Time keeps me up at night and wakes me up in the morning. I’m wasting time and I’m losing the momentum I’ve worked so hard to get going.
To date, my life has been a series of “next steps” in pursuit of growing up. I was doing the right things. I was moving onwards and upwards. I had so much momentum and suddenly, I’ve lost it – the train has come to a screeching halt and I’m behind.
What exactly am I behind, though??? Not to be lazy and cynical and blame capitalism but here I go: we’re conditioned to believe that we are all on a timeline, moving from milestone to milestone in a quest for ultimate success and fulfillment. We compare our timelines against our peers, making sure we’re “on the right track” and “not falling behind.” If we’re not getting a fancier title or more money, we’re wasting time. But that title bump or salary increase doesn’t mean that said peer is living a better life or feels more successful or fulfilled!!
I have to remind myself that I want to slow down. Keeping up the momentum was killing me. The past three years of work were not easy – I loved the work I did and I cared about doing a good job but I so desperately wanted to be the “rockstar” people were telling me I was, I drove myself crazy. My scale of work-life balance tipped so heavily in one direction it broke. In the final few months, all I wanted was time off. Now I have it! Remind yourself of THAT, Colin!!! In conclusion: Wasted Time is a myth, one perpetuated by Big Capitalism.
The thing is - I know there’s no such thing as Wasted Time in other areas of my life. Case in point: as a person dating in their 20s in New York (shudder), the only way to date is to successfully convince yourself that every connection that doesn’t work out is not a waste of time. Maybe it taught you something, maybe you got a great story for parties, or maybe you just got a few good meals out of it. I say this as someone who has been ghosted multiple times (including once at JFK Airport*) and once had a server at dinner ask my date out while I was in the bathroom and the date not only said yes but then told me about it. Both were failures! But both taught me something – among other lessons: never date men from Michigan! If those didn’t waste my time – why can’t the same be true about my professional life?
There’s truly no point in retroactively deciding that you’ve “wasted” your time. I’ve decided that restoring my mental health is more important than quickly landing my next dream job. Do I fully believe this? Not yet! But I want to lean into the break, delete LinkedIn off my phone for a while, drive a long distance while listening to a celebrity memoir, finally put up a gallery wall in my room, and swim in at least one ocean. My hope is that, in writing this down, I can hold myself accountable and find comfort in stopping the train.
I want to sleep until 12pm again (even just once!) and not feel bad about it. You’ll be the first to know when I do.
WHINE WITH ME
Dispatches + recommendations from too much free time
READING
Blue Nights, Joan Didion: A devastating and poignant memoir about coping with the loss of her daughter and adjusting to the realities of aging. I had already starting writing this newsletter when I read the following quote, which so succinctly summarizes what I just spent 700+ words going on about:
“I promised myself that I would maintain momentum.
"Maintain momentum" was the imperative that echoed all the way downtown.
In fact I had no idea what would happen if I lost it.
In fact I had no idea what it was.”
WATCHING
Drive My Car (in theaters and now on HBO Max!): Yes, it’s a three-hour film in multiple non-english languages. But that should not deter you from watching this gorgeous story about love and grief and art. It’s unlike anything you’ve seen before, I guarantee.
Little Shop of Horrors (Off- Broadway): If you’re in New York or visiting anytime soon, I highly endorse Westside Theater’s production of Little Shop. I had the best time and am kicking myself for not getting on the Little Shop train earlier.
LISTENING
The Deep Dive, The Art of Small Talk with Casey Wilson: A podcast episode dedicated to the beauty of making small talk with strangers. It will make you laugh, it may make you cry, and it will make you want to strike up a conversation with the next person you see.
*(Sidebar – I was tempted to make a TikTok recounting the airport story when the ‘West Elm Caleb’ ghosting thing was going viral but, after one attempt, decided it was genuinely too embarrassing to share publicly. I think if I’m going to embarrass myself like that, you’ll have to pay me for it.)