Yesterday was a tough day. And I was just at the point of thinking that it would be a tough weekend when I agreed to meet up with my mom for a spontaneous errand. It was a beautiful spring afternoon in New York City. The streets were full, people were dining outside, the sun was shining, the air was clear. I started to feel refreshed as I wandered south from my apartment. Shortly after our errand, my mom and I happened upon some…

I was horrified to hear about the violent hate crime in Atlanta this week. I feel grateful for Stop AAPI Hate and the consciousness that has been raised around its anti-racist work. But the rise of anti-Asian hate incidents, which disproportionately impact Asian women, is tragic and outrageous. The murders happened this week against the backdrop of spring arriving in New York City. The first few days of spring weather always cause my neighbors to flood the park near where I live. The…

I came across a snippet from an interview with the playwright Tracy Letts this week. In it, Letts shared a candid account of what his life as a writer has looked like in quarantine. It’s candid, a little sad, and very relatable. He says, I’ve made nothing. On four separate occasions, I arranged my schedule with [my wife] Carrie so I could have six uninterrupted hours a day to write. All four times, I emerged from my office after two or three weeks,…

We’re coming up on the one year anniversary of pandemic lockdown. I spent the weekend thinking about the enormity of this, and about hard anniversaries in general. Hard anniversaries mark the passage of time since death, loss, breakups, or other traumatic personal events. We all have some of these in addition to the happier anniversaries in our lives. A close friend from college jokes with me that I have a lousy track record with springtime, and it’s true. As crazy as it probably…