Baristas, Plastic Surgery, Vests, Midlife Crises

Plus comics about Chris Evans, Sarah Manguso, and hats

Jan 08, 2020

Hi, I’m Edith, and this is a newsletter with links, personal writing, illustration, and comics. It’s a work in progress, and I’d love to know what you think. (Please feel free to reply to this email!) This installment is unusually long; I think it will not normally be this long.

If you’ve ever tried persuading any person to start making choices that seem obviously superior for them, you’ll recognize these [above-mentioned motives for why people refuse to make those choices].

Okay, that’s an awkward excerpt, but reading this EconLib blog post (which is a response to a response to an essay about economics, addiction, and mental illness), I thought of a small story I wanted to share. (I promise this newsletter will sometimes be about things other than addiction, knitting, and guys.)

But, I once dated a guy who, while I was still drinking, got me to admit that I had a drinking problem. We were sitting in my apartment discussing my alcohol habits, which had “started” to really bother him. He was smart, and the facts, as he presented them, were pretty incontrovertible, and finally I had to say something like, “Yeah, I guess I have a drinking problem.”

I hadn’t used those words before, and I could tell that he felt like we’d had a breakthrough. As in, “Finally, she’s admitted it.” The implication being: And now there’s no going back, and she will have to fix it. But it didn’t have that effect on me. It just slid off.

That was six or seven years ago. He offered to help, which I think meant that he was willing to go to AA meetings with me, which was moving, but also none of it really registered. I thought something like, No, of course I’m not going to fix it, of course I don’t want help, of course I’m not going to AA. Later, with another guy (or was it earlier?), I admitted a similar thing, saying, “Yeah, I think I’m probably an alcoholic.”

Anyway, that’s the whole story. You can lead a horse to water, etc. But then this is what I keep returning to: What happened when I did stop drinking? Was it boredom? Maybe there’s a reverse pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, when it comes to the reasons we do things. Beneath the desire to be beautiful and sexy, and the desire to lose control and laugh and not-think, is for me a desire to be not-bored, and eventually I think I hit that level. I keep writing about this as if I’m going to finally solve it. I should probably let it go for a while.

If you’ve ever wanted advice from a Twitter-addled gay Mexican with anxiety, here is your chance.

Hola Papi.

5. New year, new mildew
6. New year, new toothbrush
7. New year, new haircut

Outside. I enjoyed this list of “realistic new years resolutions.” Rather than a new haircut, though, I’m going with a new hairstyle: a different kind of bun (coiled around instead of floppily folded).

Why do I keep breaking my resolution to have a vasectomy?

Guardian.

Being against plastic surgery at 28 is like being against divorce when you’re single. What do you even know?

D Magazine. The excellent Sarah Hepola.

Every 10 days the box unlocks ... and I relock it. I ordered the box online, where it's sold as a "kitchen safe."

Spiralbound. I’m biased, because I run Spiralbound, but I love this story about the feeling of wanting to be not-preoccupied with something. Also this story about ferns, and this one about hotness. (All are comics.)

The other Nabokov.

LARB. Kevin? Kevin Nabokov?? (I haven’t actually read the story linked, I just wanted to make the joke!)

The fact is, most of the freedom I had before kids, I never used. I paid for it in loneliness, but I never used it.

Paul Graham (via The Browser).

...a really quite surprising number of readers clicked the link, did not get the urine vest, and emailed me to complain.

Money Stuff. I was in fact one of those people who clicked the link and did not get the urine vest, but I held off on emailing to complain. This is one of my favorite newsletters, even if I get the most pleasure from skimming it and knowing that people like Matt Levine (or, explicitly Matt Levine) exist. It’s like going to bed while the grownups are downstairs having a party.

"Hey," I said, happy to have caught her on a break from her job, "do you know anyone having a midlife crisis I could talk to?"

Oprah.

What happened was this: Fezzik and I had been separated for hours, which is hard on both of us. Often, when I am gone for long stretches, I wonder why I haven’t heard from him. I look at my phone expecting there to be a text. Then I catch myself: “You idiot, he can’t possibly text you!” And yet I’m hurt and bewildered that he hasn’t.

LARB. Okay, two LARB links in one edition, but I love this 2018 Jonathan Ames essay about his dog!