The bumpy return to travel
how does packing work again?
This newsletter took a bit of a hiatus the past two weeks, but for a good reason: I was on vacation! I took my first real, actual, post-vaccine vacation that involved getting on a plane and using my passport, which had been collecting dust in a drawer since 2019.
Vacation itself was wonderful and provided a desperately needed change of scenery. I had forgotten how actually restorative it is to change up your routines for a week, to see a place that is not your familiar old city or neighborhood again. After a year of sameness, a year spent largely within the four walls of my apartment, I was overjoyed to go somewhere new again. And it was also incredibly refreshing to turn off the usual daily cacophony of Slack notifications, news alerts, emails, and tweets, and just read books instead.
But……. does anyone actually remember how to travel anymore? A funny discovery about trying to take a vacation again was realizing that I have literally forgotten everything about how to get to places outside of the five-block radius around my apartment! I used to travel pretty regularly and had all my routines and packing lists and airport information down by heart. But after a year and a half of not traveling, it felt like re-activating a part of my brain that had long been dormant. I was suddenly rusty at everything. How early do I need to show up at the airport? What size liquids are allowed? What’s the best way to get to the airport again? What do I need to pack? My suitcase had to be taken out of storage in a very high cabinet that I can’t even access myself!
So I loved this piece by Sarah Firshein in the New York Times which reminded me that I’m not alone. Many people returning to travel this summer are experiencing the same things: forgetting luggage and passports, forgetting how to go through airport security, forgetting how boarding a plane works.
In the Times article, Firshein interviews a professor who studies memory, who says:
Dr. Wang said that traveling engages what’s called “prospective memory,” or the ability to remember to perform a task in the future; say, bring a passport to the airport or pack sunscreen for a beach trip.
“With some prospective memories, once you lose that well-exercised routine, you may need to more consciously monitor your packing,” she said. “Before, when you were so used to it, you almost didn’t have to think about those things.”
This reminded me of the book The Organized Mind, in which I learned that our working memories can only hold four to five things at once. That’s why it’s helpful to write things down, because we cannot possibly remember everything — even if we think we will. We used to have these routines memorized, but over the past year, we had to use that space in our memories for a whole slew of new things like Covid protocols and mask requirements.
I felt the same way when starting to take the subway again earlier this year. I had the great fortune of being able to work from home through the pandemic, and didn’t take the subway for about a year. I used to have practically the entire NYC subway system memorized, but the part of my brain that held all that information — what lines run where, which lines connect to each other and at what stop, where to transfer — went into hibernation during the pandemic, and I felt sheepish as I clumsily tried to figure out whether I could transfer to the line I needed at Jay St—Metrotech.
This is, of course, a privileged problem to have. I’m thrilled and excited to be able to resume some of my favorite activities again now that I’m vaccinated. Not remembering how to perform the basic motions and routines of travel is hardly a big problem, if even a problem at all. It is unusual, however, to be collectively figuring out how to navigate a post-pandemic world. And I think a lot of people will relate as they resume traveling again this summer.
Good things to read
Stop calling food exotic, Washington Post.
Great Jones cookware and the illusion of the millennial aesthetic, New Yorker.
Unread messages, New Yorker. Fiction from Sally Rooney!!
Why can’t we be friends, Real Life Mag. On parasocial relationships.
We all have “main character energy” now, New Yorker. I’m a little late to this, but it’s great.
The sound of my inbox, New York Mag.
What quitters understand about the job market, The Atlantic.
Hard work is not inherently virtuous, Forge/Medium.
The imperial editor goes the way of the dodo, New York Times. On the death of the all-powerful celebrity editor — and the rise of a new, younger, kinder, and more diverse class of editors.
Enough with the beets!, Grubstreet.
You really need to quit Twitter, The Atlantic.
Good things to cook
Things I made last week and recommend: this ginger dill salmon with citrus and avocado, and an orzo pasta salad very nominally inspired by this recipe (Personally, I recommend skipping cooking the tomatoes and peppers and just going for a more classic pasta salad vibe — I threw in raw chopped bell peppers and cherry tomatoes, and added some cucumber too, and made a red wine and garlic vinaigrette. It was perfect.)
Recommendations
No affiliate links, just things I genuinely love and want to tell everyone about.
Over vacation, I read two incredible books that Renan gave me for my birthday and I’d recommend to anyone:
The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris. This book is so 2021: a tale of the publishing industry and diversity at work, but with a Get Out-style twist.
Gold Diggers, by Sanjena Sathian. A totally wonderful, escapist read: a story about Indian Americans growing up in the Atlanta suburbs, and what happens when they start making an alchemical drink involving stolen gold.
I also recommend this Tiktok, which anyone living in Brooklyn will especially appreciate.
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