Front Row Center
Currently reading:
Heiresses: The Lives of the Million Dollar Babies by Laura Thompson
I feel like there’s a hyphen missing in “million dollar.” Copyeditors, sound off.
Books finished this week: 0
Library updates:
On Thursday this week, I was supposed to go to a thing after work. But I had been to many other things after work already this week, and I finally admitted to myself that maybe I didn’t really want to go.
So I didn’t. I wrote some stuff. I ate some stuff. I went to bed early.
I’ve been pretty busy the last few months, and I became intimately acquainted with the ways in which “a body in motion stays in motion” can become your default in life. I went zero to sixty, in terms of having a social life——or really a life at all. And I’m not just thinking about the height of the COVID lockdowns and trying to keep myself safe during the pandemic.
Pre-pandemic, I was the epitome of an introvert and a homebody. I wasn’t really doing much with my life outside of work and freelancing, and I felt like I was wasting every opportunity that was open to me as someone who lived in New York. So now that things have been busy, now that I have events to get to, plans to keep, and things to work toward, slowing down feels like failure. It feels like backsliding into the person I was, into a time when I felt low and terrible. I don’t want to go back to that, so I can’t slow down.
But the thing is . . . I can. And I need to. I love sleeping. I love a quiet night in. Rest is so important, and it’s also so easy to forget to do it. I’m working on being okay with that and being better about giving my brain and my body what they need to be healthy and happy. If I went zero to sixty, I’m looking for the thirty——the place that keeps me moving forward but doesn’t burn me out. Always looking for the balance, aren’t we?
All of that said, I’m going to keep Broadway as part of my routine, as much as I can. Just before lockdowns began in early 2020, I finally started seeing more shows, after it clicked with me that that was an option. I could just go after work, or on a weekend. If I had the means to pay for transportation and a ticket, which I did, I should do that more often. It brought me a lot of happiness.
A few years ago, I was looking at my bank account and realized just how much of my money was going to comic books and booze. I do want to get back on the comic book train, but it does give me a bit of perverse glee to look at credit card statements now and see so many charges to TodayTix.
YES, I saw Parade twice in one month; NO, I am NOT ASHAMED.
I was lucky enough to see seven Broadway shows in the month of April. I cried at most of them. (I did not cry at Moulin Rouge.) I feel so grateful to live so close to an art form I genuinely love, and glad that I finally feel comfortable taking myself to see these shows. But I shared most of the shows this month with two special folks, so shout-out to Tess for letting me tag along (I am genuinely still in awe and so inspired by your six shows in three days) and to Britt for sharing her lottery luck with me. I would never have been front row center for two of these shows if not for you!
Closing thoughts:
“Anything that moves you is art.” ——Shia LaBeouf on Hot Ones
(I’ve been watching a lot of Hot Ones.)
Total books read from the Moratorium Library: 34
(Total books added to the Library: 44)
You couldn’t expect me to walk down 45th Street multiple times in one month and just keep ignoring Bookoff. I picked up these beauties on my way to see Kimberly Akimbo.
