A Postcard from Home

A visual story—and reflections from bed.

💭 🛏️ Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Brooklinen.

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In bed, I’m surrounded by soft things: afternoon light, percale sheets, rabbit fur.

I catch a glimpse of Pepper’s soft paws bounding towards the edge. She wants to jump down. I want to go deeper.

Papers rustle as I close one book to begin working on my own.

It’s the only writing that’s coming somewhat easily these days—and take easily with a grain of salt. Nothing about life is easy right now. But on the page, I’m giving my characters some of the burdens. I’m letting them show me new paths forward.

Another way to describe this process could be daydreaming, although daydream feels like it’s missing something. It’s not stretchy enough. Maybe heartdream. Timedream.

Creativity in times like these assumes the effects of caffeine, keeping me upright and looking towards some kind of light, until the inevitable crash.

At night, I wrap a snake-like reading light around my neck, and a small glow appears across the pages of the novel I’m reading. Then, the battery symbol flickers as a warning: It needs sleep, and so do I.

Darkness is its own kind of blanket. Underneath it, my senses sharpen. Even though my eyes are closed, sentences snap into place. Sleep eventually pulls me in the direction of all kinds of dreaming.

One night, I dream of a distant past—when as children, we were asked to use our inside voices. When the sights and sounds of the world assumed a more vibrant quality. When we didn’t mind the volume because life was not yet measured in metrics.

A sidenote: I just wrote invoice instead of inside voice, which is telling, isn’t it?

Here is what else I tell myself: The modern demands that shape our days don’t have to define our lives. We can say a lot through quiet gestures. We can make a living and a difference. We can try, and we can dream.

Sometimes I feel like I’m repeating myself in these letters, but then I think about what Allie Rowbottom said in our podcast conversation a few years ago: “The questions in your writing are the questions in your life.”

The sentences in your writing are the statements in your life.

Speaking of repetition: Every weekend, it continues to rain. Every day, I wonder when things will change. It’s hard to rise and shine knowing the forecast and simultaneously not knowing what’s ahead. But when the clouds finally part and light flickers across the room, I realize that what gets me out of bed isn’t so different from what keeps me in it: noticing things from different vantage points, finding beauty in ordinary moments, embracing rest and acknowledging restlessness, nurturing my relationship with slowness, taking it all one moment at a time.

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At Home with Brooklinen

Earlier this year, I published an essay about cultivating a personal library and honoring my 20th anniversary in NYC. The piece also describes the layout of our apartment, which we redefined by turning what was supposed to be the living room into our bedroom. It’s become the center point of our home: an unchanging space through a pandemic, marriage proposal, everything in between—and always outfitted by Brooklinen, whose sheets have been the foundation for a good night’s sleep, and where many of my dreams have emerged. (Pictured here is their Classic Percale Bundle, which is great for summer. I’m also a fan of their Washed Linen sheets.)

As I continue thinking about the relationship between time and home—what routines become embedded in the threads of certain hours, and how those hours come to define our days—I wanted to share a few ways to make the most of your time at home, whether under the covers or on the edge of your seat.

Read at—and about—home

While curling up in bed with a book is my go-to for slowing down, I’ve also found that reading about home heightens my feelings and experience of it. From Ayşegül Savaş’s touching portrait of a young couple’s apartment search in The Anthropologists to Lauren Elkin’s richly rendered vignettes of her narrator’s space in Scaffolding, passages like these add a kind of texture to the stillness of reading without interrupting my attention to the story.

Powerful pages about home from The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş, Arrangements in Blue in Amy Key, Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin, and Too Much and Not the Mood by Durga Chew-Bose

Have a hard conversation

Movement has always calmed my anxiety. Although recently there has been something extremely grounding—almost nostalgic—about sitting down and having long conversations from the comfort of my bed, whether it's hanging with friends virtually or having tough phone calls with family members. Emotionally moving through nuanced moments in this setting gives a whole new meaning to my idea of a soft landing.

Watch the world

Depending on where your bed is positioned in your space, try to use it as a place to stop and see things from a different perspective: Look out the window. Watch a spider inch across the ceiling. Really look at the home you’ve cultivated.

When Pepper joins me on our bed, she’s rarely still, but her energy keeps me grounded in the moment. I’m watching her find her footing. I’m watching her watch a little corner of the world.

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For Your Next Chapter

If you enjoyed this slow story, here are a few others that might slow your scroll: