Cutting to the feeling
Last week was one of the rare perfect weeks we get in DC — not too rainy, highs in the 70s — and I’m really having to remind myself not to feel disappointed as temperatures dip back down this week. It’ll be miserably hot out soon enough, and I should enjoy the handful of weeks I can wear my non-puffy, actually nice coats before spring fully arrives.
This week, I am attempting to be a less chaotic reader; I remembered that I’m the only person on the planet who likes split squats; and I shared a few things I think you might like, including my favorite jeans1 and the BBC audio dramas I’m listening to.
I’ve joked to book friends that 2023 was my year of chaotic reading. I’m a huge proponent of quitting books (or most things, really) that you’re not enjoying, but I took this to wild and problematic new heights last year. When I finally bothered to tally in December, I realized that I’d read at least half of, then abandoned, 20 books. That feels like a lot of wasted time! So this year I’ve been trying to:
Be more purposeful in my reading selection (hence the Akutagawa list)
Abandon things I don’t like in the first 100 pages
Reevaluate the books I quit last year to see if I do actually want to finish any of them
The first two have been pretty easy to implement, just by paying closer attention. I think last year my tastes and preferences were in the process of shifting a bit, and I struggled to find and enjoy books as easily as I have previously. I finished almost no science fiction, outside of the books we read for sci-fi book club, even though that used to be my default for fun genre fiction. The only exception was that I read a bunch of John Scalzi novels, most of which I enjoyed — book club friends have heard this a hundred times, but I’d particularly recommend The Kaiju Preservation Society.
My decision to quit held up on reevaluation for almost everything (I’m sure I’ll be peer pressured into finishing the second sexy dragon book at some point), but I did end up deciding to finish three of them. One I ultimately regretted bothering with because it was, for me, really a slog. But Sarah Cauldwell’s Thus Was Adonis Murdered won me over (I think I just needed more time to adjust to her very stylized prose), and finishing The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store was a good reminder that I always enjoy the second half of James McBride’s books more than the first.
What I’m reading this week
For all this talk of progress, I am mildly concerned that I’m veering back into chaos this week after reading half of a book and still feeling undecided. I picked up Rivers of London a bit randomly because I wanted a long, relatively cozy detective series and liked that it had some fantasy elements. I keep waiting for it to really grab me or put me off for good, and I just keep feeling kind of meh about it. I think I’ll see at least the first book through, though; it’s a quick read, and I’d love to have a go-to fun series for the next few weeks.
Furthering my chaos concerns, I’m having another go at a nonfiction book I couldn’t quite get into last year. Chip War is by all accounts excellent, but it’s been slow going for me. I have no complaints, I just keep getting distracted. But I read less nonfiction last year than I have in ages and am making a bit more of an effort this year.
Our sci-fi book club is reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. I’ve read several of her books, but this one is new to me, and I’m enjoying it so far.
I continue to figure things out at the gym, slowly. I gave up on my efforts to come up with a lower maintenance hip thrust set-up and ordered a barbell pad so I can do the regular kind. Then I switched my routine around mid-week and, of course, forgot the pad when I went in to do leg day. But, I did find a weird machine that targets your glutes and gave it a try and it seemed pretty good! I’m not generally a fan of the machines, but I’ve been able to find one to fill in for a lift a few times when I’ve been in a hurry and the rack or space I needed wasn’t available. It’s been nice to have an easy alternative to just not getting something in that day.
While I’ve been struggling with the logistics of this dumb lift that I love so much, I’ve also been trying to figure out how to handle squats on my own. This is the lift that’s hardest for me. My back becomes uncooperative pretty quickly with back squats, and I have wonky hips that no amount of accessory workouts have been able to fix. I’d largely solved this problem by switching to front squats, and those are definitely easier on my back (I also had a brief foray into Zercher squats, which I kind of loved). But front squats are the worst — that brief sensation of choking as you get to the bottom and the bar goes against your throat is incredibly unpleasant! I did them every week and made a lot of progress when I had someone who would yell at me to go lower and keep my elbows up and force me to add more weight. But I’m struggling to maintain that level of discipline on my own.
Enter split squats.
Split squats are also kind of the worst, but in a very different way. Both front and back squats are fussy and require an enormous amount of focus on your form (for me at least — they come more naturally to some, I’m sure). And obviously you should pay attention to your form and do things correctly on all lifts, but you can just kind of muscle through split squats in a way that you can’t with the others (or again, at least I can’t). They’re unpleasant because you can just force yourself to just keep going until your quads are ready to explode without worrying about your back going out (just imagine I repeat that same disclaimer after every sentence in this section).
But I feel weirdly sentimental about them. They’re the first lift where I learned how to work to true fatigue, and the first lift where I was able to get beyond an intermediate level. I hated them so much when I started, but I resolved to do them with relatively light dumbbells every day until the movement felt less terrible and that helped immensely (I listened to the same song every time I did this, and to this day my quads burn a little whenever I hear Carly Rae Jepsen’s Cut to the Feeling).
So, this week, I realized that I could just not do front squats if I hate them and instead add in barbell split squats. And it was great! I do not dread leg day anymore! I do still, on the whole, prefer having someone telling me what to do at the gym. But I’m starting to feel like I can appreciate the freedom to adjust a bit every week and find a routine that I really enjoy in the moment, not just one that I feel good about having done.
I had vague aspirations toward documenting what I wore this week, thinking that might make me more likely to put on “real” outfits. Alas, I still lived in workout clothes and never even thought to write down what I put on for the occasional meeting. Maybe next week! In the meantime…
Random recommendations
Cooking: We had friends visiting from Texas for their spring break this week, which meant feeding a larger crowd than just Matt and Jose and me. One of the nights when I needed something quick, I put Sam Sifton’s chicken shawarma (from NYT Cooking) in the fridge to marinate that morning, and then that evening made the (extremely easy) chicken and paired it with store-bought everything else — we basically cleaned out the Cava dips section at Whole Foods and threw everything on the table with some rice and pitas. If you’re feeding a meat-eating crowd, I’d highly recommend.
Listening: Podcasts and audiobooks just don’t work for me (I don’t process things that I hear very well), but I recently decided I needed something to listen to and asked my friend Becks if she could recommend some audiobooks for people who don’t like audiobooks. She offered some amazing recommendations, but the one that really hit for me was Murder on Sex Island. And I think the reason I enjoyed it so much was that it was, I’m pretty sure, written to be performed. The author is a stand-up comic, not someone who writes novels. This led me down an audio drama rabbit hole, and I finally ended up at the BBC, which had exactly what I was looking for. I’ve been listening to their sci-fi-ish limited run audio dramas for a few weeks, and these are the ones I liked best:
Who Is Aldrich Kemp? (Limelight)
Who Killed Aldrich Kemp? (Limelight)
They’re all by the same author (Julian Simpson), and I’ve unfortunately not yet succeeded in tracking down his others. But I listened to another Limelight series called Harlan that was pretty good, though I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as the other three. I’m slowly working my way through Limelight, and would love other recommendations.
Wearing: I know it’s incredibly dicey to recommend jeans; denim feels like an extremely personal choice! But I’ve been struggling the last few months to find jeans that work during my body’s current indecision, and I finally found some that I love. I wasn’t on board with the wide-leg trend the first time around, despite being a geriatric millennial, but I’m all in now with these. They’re incredibly stretchy (but don’t look incredibly stretchy) and not cropped (I’m 5’9” and they touch the ground). I have historically been very committed to low- to mid-priced denim, and I realize the price on these is stupid. But they’re great.
This is truly the worst category of recommendation: Denim is so personal, I don’t know any two people who have the same preferences. But still, these jeans are really great, and I think you should try them.