Rest
Friday May 13, 2025
Looks like we made it. After traveling four out of the last six weekends, we’re finally home for about the next month.
Rest is a learned skill, I’ve found. Maybe not innately, but our society beats out of us any instinctual ability to relax from an early age, so that by the time we graduate college, the halcyon days of a childhood free of responsibility are propaganda enough to make people overlook how much of their time is devoted to stress and worry and convince them that the wonders of a childhood of leisure followed by peripatetic peaceful moments are satisfactory enough to procreate.
That’s cynical, but it does inform how I’d like us to raise our child. I want him to have the freedom of active rest. At least for a time.
I enjoyed this kind of rest for much of my 20s, especially living in Los Angeles. At college, I recovered from classes, homework, essays, and exams by playing sports and socializing. I never took naps, I never really wanted to be alone — my social life rejuvenated me. That was kind of the same after college. Working 60 hours/week in Hollywood for $26,000/year, I was broke, on welfare, and yet I still never wanted to be at home. (Partly because my home was a cockroach-infested, furniture-less hellscape.) My rest and recovery time was always spent out at bars, hiking, or just exploring the city I would never really call home. When I got a job at a startup, I cut back to 50-hour weeks, but was happy to spend much of my time at or around work because I worked with friends and, eventually, could ride my bike or e-scooter back home along the Venice Boardwalk. Work was central to everything I did, so even when I was “resting,” I was frequently talking about work. I didn’t do very much on my own or take time to just… chill.
When Lindsay and I moved in together (on the opposite coast) and Lindsay started her teaching career, rest eventually developed new meaning. Lindsay didn’t recover the same way I did. I think this has been the biggest tension in our relationship. I wanted to use all of our free time to go out and do things, see people, and have fun. Lindsay wanted to do that, too, but she also needed time to do… nothing. You know, rest.
Once upon a time, I misconstrued Lindsay’s need for rest as a disinterest or unwillingness to be social. It aggravated me, sometimes a lot. Over time, through communication and practice, we learned to understand one another and respect each other's needs, but I’ve recently started to live her perspective.
I’m 34. I don’t have the stamina I used to, and I was pretty ready to do nothing for a couple of days last weekend. Of course, there were boats to ride and oceans to dive in (both real and imaginary) and Chat GPT-curated wine tours to experience, so we rested my way last weekend. But I’ve reached the point where I’d prefer to spend most of my time at home with my wife, dog, and soon-to-be child. I spend sort of a ridiculous amount of time here, but I don’t get the vague FOMO anymore that somewhere there is something more exciting to be doing. In fact, I’m usually excited to sit down and read or watch something at the end of the day. To hell with the bars.
I went to field day at Lindsay’s school on Tuesday. I was supposed to grill for the kids, but because of the rain, it was moved indoors, and the grill was cancelled. I basically hung out in her classroom and supervised some of the indoor activities. When we got home, I was euphoric that we already had dinner ready, Goose was wiped out from daycare, and I could literally just sit until soccer that night. Lindsay goes to that school every day, no shit all she wants to do when she gets home is sit quietly.
We all rejuvenate in different ways. Even this forthcoming restful weekend won’t really be all rest. I’ve still got things to do around the house, errands to run, a yard to beat into submission. Might go out and buy a new screen door. Rest and responsibilities are inversely correlated. Soon, rest just plain won’t exist anymore, so might as well soak it up for the next few months.
One Song: Sly & The Family Stone - If You Want Me to Stay
Sly Stone died on Monday. I would never claim to be a music expert, but many of my smart music friends at Oberlin believed Sly was an enormously influential musician. For my part, “If You Want Me to Stay” was one of my comfort songs my first year at Oberlin. I listened to this and “Little Bit of Feel Good” by SomethingALaMode basically every day walking to and from class. I wore headphones a lot freshman year as I navigated a period of painful shyness I hadn’t experienced since middle school. I was incredibly ill at ease nearly my entire time at Oberlin, but Sly’s music was one big source of comfort in my most prolonged period of self-imposed isolation.
Slate wrote a great obituary about him that I’d recommend reading if you’re doing some of that relaxing thing.
One Quote: “But we're all gonna die, decompose into daffodils and dandelions/
The bees will use our flowers for whatever they like/
Make the honey that our grandkids will put inside their morning tea/
It's the thing of life” - Juliet Ivy
I really like this one Lucy Dacus song, “Kissing Lessons,” which helped me discover boygenius, which opened up a whole world of lesbian/queer/bi whatever indie electropop that has made me wonder if I’m a closet lesbian and, if not, then can I be one? All the ladies of boygenius, flowerovlove, Remi Wolff, Déyyess, illuminati hotties, etc. But man, Juliet Ivy just nails that grim messaging in a happy-go-lucky package that I can’t get enough of. Death is rest, right?
One Hollywood: The Rehearsal, Max
I told Zoë Garrett about this show the other night after soccer, and I didn’t really know how to describe it. Still don’t. Honestly, it’s really off theme, because Nathan Fielder’s commitment to his bit is anything but restful.
The basic premise is that Nathan believes through rigorous, extensively detailed simulation (aka rehearsal), you can successfully navigate virtually any difficult situation in life. So, he uses people facing real-life quandaries to carry out insanely nuanced rehearsals, burning HBO’s budget on carbon-copy sets and unknown actors assigned to study and portray the individuals involved in any situation. The A story for season 1 is a woman “rehearsing” raising a child from newborn to teen years. (Yes, they use real child actors throughout the process.) In season 2, it’s attempting to resolve one of the most common contributing factors to airline crashes. Of course, in both cases, Nathan himself becomes the main character because the show is really a rehearsal for his own existence.
There’s nothing else like The Rehearsal, and there’s really nothing else like Nathan Fielder. The man has such a bizarre ability to simultaneously have absolutely no interpersonal skills and yet elicit extraordinary, occasionally shameful honesty from strangers. Season 2 has an understated twist that, the more I think of it, makes it some of the most fascinating TV I’ve ever seen. Funny, jarring, unsurprising, heartbreaking — it’s just very real.
It’s hard to explain without giving too much away. The Rehearsal is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, but mostly you’re just keeping your jaw from falling to the floor at how wildly far he takes ideas. It’s helpful to watch his first show, Nathan For You to get a better understanding of the schtick, and appreciate that it’s really not a schtick. He is just a brilliantly odd man.
One Recipe: Tortellini and Pesto Salad
We’re all about meal prep in this household so that we may prioritize our rest. This was a great lunch this week. Took maybe 20 minutes to throw together, mostly because the water had to boil and the tortellini had to cook. Four cups is too much arugula; three will get it done just fine.