Got distracted by ~waves arms in all directions~
An explanation, a request, an introduction, a list.
Tedium's Ernie Smith: "I think that there's just something unique about the written form."
Ernie Smith, founder of the newsletter and blog Tedium, shares a bit of what he's learned in 15 years of indie internet publishing.
Defector's Jasper Wang: "You just have to know your audience"
Jasper Wang, co-owner and VP of revenue & operations, talks about the business side of the employee-owned blog.
The Content Audit
“The internet exists for publishing, after all”
Got distracted by a change in scenery
We moved last month. Two blocks and a world away. We loved our old apartment — though now in retrospect I shiver at the idea of spending another minute there...
Got distracted by antiracism
A month ago, if we were to talk about race in this country, I would have said something like: “The U.S. is systematically racist and has been since its...
Got distracted by an evening alone
I’ve been thinking lately about a night I spent alone outside of Dublin last year. It was at a retreat center, but I wasn’t on a retreat. I was there because...
Got distracted by yoga
Two years ago at Christmas Matt and I went on a week-long yoga holiday. Any friend that I told this, before or after, laughed incredulously. And indeed, me...
Got distracted by apple cider vinegar
What do you do when you’re feeling poorly? A few things in my arsenal: If I’m feeling run down, I like to take a shower and go to bed early, like my mom...
Got distracted by a wedding dress
Matt and I got engaged in November. He asked me to be his wife on our three-year anniversary, gave me a beautiful emerald ring while we were eating cacio e...
Got distracted by advice
I used to have a rotation of urls that I could type in and be pretty sure there would be some nice things to read there after I pressed enter. Now the only...
Got distracted by distraction
This week’s column is a meta column. It’s barely a column, a jumble of words cobbled together on the topic of distraction while I was busy being distracted....
Got distracted by citrus
There is a scene in the 1994 film Little Women directed by Gillian Armstrong in which Jo eats an orange. Played by Winona Ryder, she is sitting at the desk...
Got distracted by cabin
Matt and I spent a week in Barbados for Thanksgiving, most of it in a small Airbnb (we pay our rent on Matt’s credit card and get the points, so this...
Got distracted by a dippy
The other night I got a text as I was on my way home. It was Matt, warning me that our apartment smelled like a “tart’s boudoir.” I wasn’t really sure what...
Got distracted by clothes
There is a small thrift store up the street from our house that we go to most weekends, part of our neighborhood rounds. There must be several rich men with...
Got distracted by sugar
Yesterday I popped into CVS to buy a new lock for my gym locker and got distracted by the candy aisle. There was a lot to be distracted by: Halloween candy...
Got distracted by some drains
On a recent evening, I woke up and couldn’t fall back to sleep. It was the sink in the bathroom. It had been draining very slowly, and earlier in the evening...
Got distracted by ghost ships
Last week we watched Four Weddings and a Funeral, a movie that takes place in England in the 90s over the course of … four weddings and one funeral. The same...
Got distracted by noise
Before Matt and I moved from California to New York, there was a lot to be stressed about: the logistics of moving, of money, of getting jobs across the...
Got distracted by first aid
Recently in an elevator I overheard a woman talking about an incident she had witnessed on the train. “There was a woman keeled over, drenched in sweat,” she...
Got distracted by a park
There’s this park I like to go to just north of Houston Street and west of Broadway. We call it “the Soviet park” because it’s in the courtyard between two...
Got distracted by the archive
Several times a week, I think, “I gotta check the archive.” By this I mean, “search my gmail.”Everything is there; I don’t delete anything, just mark it as...
Got distracted by an emergency plan
Sometimes I like to think: What would I do if something bad happened?I don’t like to dwell on the particulars of what the something bad could be. I’ve been...
Got distracted by "xx"
When I first moved to New York, there was a brief period where I came in contact with a few people whose main greeting was kissing you on the cheeks, like...
Got distracted by interiors
The aesthetic of the apartment that I share with my boyfriend Matt is friendly animals. I only realized this recently, that we had an aesthetic, and it has...
Got distracted by minibreaks
I spend a lot of time searching for a perfect escape from New York City. I’ve been doing this for years. How many hours have I spent reading lists of hidden...
Got distracted by the timeline
Every so often I get distracted by the project of matching a year to a memory, of making a timeline.There are only a few years I remember off hand. 1984, the...
Got distracted by Russian oral histories
I watched the HBO series Chernobyl a few months ago, and found it sufficiently diverting. But after it was over, I wanted to know more about the regular...
Got distracted by passive income
Several years ago I had an idea for a website called the Breakup Site. It would be very simple: a single page listing links to advice columns and personal...
Got distracted by dachas
There’s a scene in Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Suspiria in which the psychoanalyst Klemperer, played as an old man by Tilda Swinton in heavy makeup, takes a...