Letter of recommendation: taking the afternoon off
I’ve been working a lot of late nights in February thanks to the slew of primary elections and debates that happened last month, so to make up for it, this week I took a random afternoon off work on Thursday.
I had no real agenda and just…. did nothing. I didn’t check Slack or email. I got a massage, then took my Kindle with me and walked around my neighborhood in the midday sunshine (which felt sort of revolutionary, daytime sun, because it is always dark when you’re leaving work). I had a really great sandwich at a place in the neighborhood and then got a chai latte and read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and watched people walk by and it was just such a nice afternoon? And then I finally started Love Is Blind after hearing everyone talk about it on Twitter for weeks.
A thing that was really nice about that afternoon was I forced myself to not do anything “productive.” Most of the time, even on weekends, I feel like I have to use my time in the wisest ways possible. Weekdays are filled with work, and then I pack my weekends with activities I want to do, plans to see friends, workout classes, writing time, errands, and trying to keep up with housework, barely. Weekends feel like very precious limited time that almost always has to be used productively; I’m rarely without some kind of agenda or to-do list in my head.
Taking a random weekday off of work, though? I didn’t want to spoil it by running errands or cleaning up my apartment, so instead I got to enjoy the totally underrated luxury that is time spent not doing anything productive at all, and it was delightful.
What I’m reading
Replaying my shame, The Cut. A terrific essay from Emily Gould.
The diet industrial complex got me, and it will never let me go, New York Times.
Life isn’t like the movies (even if you write the movies), New York Times. It’s Nancy Meyers!!
Starbucks: A reconsideration, Vox.
“I fail almost every day”: an interview with Samin Nosrat, The New Yorker.
A royal Instagram mystery, New York Times.
How our solo homes became our cocoons, Curbed.
My ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend is Lady Gaga, New York Times.
Recommendations
Things I want to recommend this week are all New York based (sorry to my non-New York readers!!): The Donald Judd retrospective at MoMA is so good. I also saw Hangmen on Broadway and it was so smart and funny and worth your time! Run don’t walk to Thai Diner (go early and beat the crowds).
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