The first iteration of this newsletter was all about moving slowly through January, about taking our time, about what it was like to have – for the first time in memory – five uninterrupted, agenda-less days off from The Bookshelf. It was about being comfortable with rest, about what 2020 may have accidentally taught me about the role work plays in my life, about the benefit of time at home with nothing to do.
Then Wednesday happened.
I was home alone, watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and prepping for reentry. (If you must know, I was filling out dates in my new planner.) I'm not even sure what possessed me – was it a news alert or a text or both? – but by 3:30 in the afternoon, I had switched to NBC News, slowly growing more and more confused and angry and sad, while Lester Holt and Savannah Guthrie guided me through one of the most horrifying events in recent memory. And that's saying something, isn't it, given all the horrifying things we've lived through in the last several months?
For the next seven hours, I remained glued to my couch, pausing every few minutes to text and Vox friends and family, at one point muting the TV so I could sob. I kept thinking about the men and women like Jordan, legislative staffers who'd headed to work simply to do their jobs, only to be interrupted by a hateful mob of ill-informed terrorists intent on destruction and murder.
I watched TV obsessively for seven hours, crying and praying and repenting and texting, then went to work the next day to sell books.
I know that life is like this, this mixture of the beautiful and the terrible, the wondrous, the mundane, and the sad. I know this, and yet it doesn't fail to surprise me, how we're required to hold it all loosely, how one minute we're talking about the 25th amendment and white supremacy and the next moment Jordan's asking me if tacos are okay for dinner.
As I walked through my week, I felt both resilient and tender. By Saturday, I practically crawled through our front door, not believing I'd somehow made it.
You did, too. We're here.
photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images
