Still Betting on Beginners Luck

How do you know when it's time to let go?

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The Sunday Letter #20

I’m hesitant to jinx things, but my husband and I are very close to buying our first home. Like all of our most impulsive decisions (getting married, getting a dog, changing jobs), it feels terrifying and exhilarating and heart wrenching all at once.

In a few months, my husband and I will be celebrating ten years together, and if all goes well, this new home will be our fifth move, and my ninth overall.

We first moved in together in our early twenties when we’d both gotten horribly sick of living at home. Together for two years at that point and stubbornly in love, we found an 800-square foot one-bedroom apartment in a basement near the university where we were both students. We had screaming neighbours and a chronic ant problem, and the floor was made entirely of bathroom tiles, so every glass item we dropped shattered immediately. Once, a balsamic vinegar bottle was the unlucky recipient of such a dropping, and even without a sense of smell I could tell that the place reeked for hours afterwards.

Two years later, we moved into a downtown two-bedroom apartment that overlooked the city from the 25th floor. In three (or was it four?) lovely years there, we hosted parties, graduated, and took our wedding photos on the roof. I lived there part-time while also living in Ottawa for grad school. Friends came over to drink full bottles of wine and then fall asleep talking on the couch. We smoked on the balcony watching sunsets. I pulled all-nighters to write essays and then crashed on the couch so I’d wake up with the sun.

When my husband got a new job, we decided it was time to take the next step and get a dog, so we moved into a nicer, and more expensive, pet-friendly two-bedroom apartment near the river. Our puppy spent her first year napping on the balcony and having her nightly zoomies up and down the carpeted hallway. But when she outgrew the space and needed a yard, we moved into this house, our first rental home together (where she promptly destroyed the yard, whoops). We knew that we eventually wanted to buy a house of our own, so we moved into this place hoping it would be our last move before we’d saved up enough to settle down long term. And now here we are, knee-deep in the rapid-fire process of buying a home.

All this moving has left my OCD-addled brain with a packing-phobia. As in, anytime I’m traveling or moving I’m plagued with the thought that I might forget something. It’s a fear that’s seeped into my writing as well, as I often fear that I’ll lose the ability to speak or remember my own ideas. But something new has opened up with this possible move, too: the privilege and the anticipation of being able to rest and settle down. To plant roots, to invite in a sense of permanency without the fear of being unsettled.

But this is still all hypothetical—we’ll find out in the coming days whether the process will be moving forward, and for now we just have to accept that it’s out of our control at this point, as if that’s easy at all to accept.

During this emotional rollercoaster of a process, in which we wagged and wobbled over whether to take the leap, my husband said to me, “What’s on the other side?” As in, what’s on the other side of this big decision, this wall we’re afraid to climb? The best things have always been outside of our own comfort zones, have always felt the worst in the moment when you learn which side you’re really hoping will win. As

Haley Nahman

wrote in today’s essay about searching for signs:

On one hand, I don’t believe the universe is actually sending us coded messages. On the other, clocking a sign and narrating its meaning is essentially confessing to a desire; it’s revealing in its own right.

In the midst of this process, as we wavered back and forth, my mom stopped by to remind me that her and my dad had almost purchased a different home than the one we ended up in—the one where I grew up, where I met the new neighbour who became my husband. “Thank god it didn’t work out like we’d originally hoped,” she told me. Because look at everything that came next.

But as I was trying to convince myself that I would be okay if we didn’t buy this house, this house I fell in love with at first sight, I wondered: How do you know that you’ll be okay, when you’re already in the moment? How do you know when it’s time to let go instead?

It’s a lesson I share with others constantly, so I was surprised that I’d forgotten to apply it during this chaotic process: thank god the things I thought I wanted the most didn’t work out. The jobs that I didn’t get, which felt horrible at the time and now have no impact on my actual career. The boys who didn’t ask me out. The schools that rejected me. Grateful for every path untaken, because here I am instead, with still so many roads and choices ahead of me, with no guarantee that any of them will be the “right” one. And thank god for that.

As

miri

recently wrote:

at every second a million different things could have gone differently and yes, then you would have been a different person in an entirely different world, but in the end, that has no impact on the here and now. This is kind of a truism but it’s harder to accept than it may seem.

I’m not superstitious, but I’m crossing my fingers on this one all the same.

*

Before we go, here’s Night Bird by Danusha Laméris:

This week’s recommendations

This week, I watched Run Rabbit Run (dir. Daina Reid, 2023). Despite a very interesting premise (Sarah Snook plays a fertility doctor whose daughter starts to remind her of her deceased sister), it lacked substance and a meaningful conclusion. Snook is fantastic as always though.

I also watched Viking (dir. Stéphane Lafleur, 2022), a French-Canadian absurd comedy following five strangers who are recruited for a science experiment involving replicating the interpersonal conflicts of astronauts aboard a space shuttle. Could have used a bit tighter editing, but really cool to see a French-Canadian production with such impressive cinematography and visual storytelling (loved the 2001: A Space Odyssey nods, too).

And finally, I rewatched a classic: Best in Show (dir. Christopher Guest, 2000). Worth it entirely for Parker Posey’s iconic delivery of “stupid hotel manager.”

*

I finished Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill (1988), which took longer than anticipated. Her short stories were sharp, brutally honest, and wickedly observant, and I found myself only reading one every few weeks, lingering with the characters in and between other reads. From one of the short stories, “Secretary,” which went on to inspire the 2022 Maggie Gyllenhaal/James Spader adaptation:

The word “humiliation” came into my mind with such force that it effectively blocked out all other words. Further, I felt that the concept it stood for had actually been a major force in my life for quite a while.

A brilliant breakdown from The Drift on Jack Antonoff, “pop music’s blandest prophet”:

At the extreme point, the pop song abjures any dream of artistic autonomy and shrinks down to a mechanism for delivering bursts of raw sensation — a scream of anguish, goosebumps on your neck, a whisper in your ear.

Scaachi Koul on being pitied: “I am furious. Every morning, I wake up with a renewed rage at her bad luck. It was supposed to be my bad luck; Why bring my mother into it?”

Esther Perel on how the TikTok-iffication of therapy speak is impacting us: “There is such an emphasis on the “self-care” aspect of it that is actually making us more isolated and more alone, because the focus is just on the self.”

Christian Pena in

La Cuenta

, “Mothering as an Undocumented Woman in America”:

As the eldest daughter of immigrants, as the running joke goes, I learned to carry the weight. To forge the path, no matter what. I set out to prove that no matter what, at whatever cost, we would not only survive, we would thrive.

I’m currently reading

sarah rose etter

’s new book, Ripe, and I loved this interview in which she dissects the writing process: “Finish the first draft. That’s it. It’s so simple, but we make it so complicated. Even if it’s messy and ugly and wrong, just finish it.”

Back in May, I shared a portion of Margot Robbie’s Vogue profile in which she mentioned that every week during filming, the cast and crew of Barbie got together for “movie church.” I lamented that I couldn’t attend said church, but then Greta Gerwig decided to bless us all anyway by sitting down with Letterboxd to share 29 films that influenced the film. I’m seeing it on Friday for a friend’s birthday so you’ll hear my thoughts next week.

Kyle Chayka Industries

on experimenting with AI in writing:

AI tools fundamentally promise to make things more convenient. They’re supposed to find or create information faster. But writing isn’t convenient. It’s not an instantaneous process — worthwhile writing by nature takes time and effort.

For Parapraxis, Lily Schrils on how boundaries became ubiquitous: “Boundaries do this by teaching us to relate to other people as if they are the one thing social systems are most determined to protect: property.”

And finally, a gorgeous new Jean Garnett piece in The New Yorker (a follow-up to her other twin essay in The Yale Review), on giving away her twin sister at her wedding:

“You want to be able to remain standing,” a therapist once told me. “You walk into a room, and no matter what happens, no matter who enters or leaves, no matter what anyone does, you remain standing.”

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Today would have been my dad’s 75th birthday. In his honour, here’s a band we bonded over, and a song he loved. Happy birthday, pops 💙

Reading: “I’m currently reading Bliss Montage and being reminded that Ling Ma’s mind works in brilliant ways. I also finished Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross and immediately reread it. It just made me feel that tender ache of young love (as a 29-year-old teenage girl) and I didn’t want it to end! Eagerly awaiting the sequel.”

Watching: “I loveddd A24’s Past Lives. It’s such a gorgeous meditation on the multitudes of loss that can come with immigration. On a very different note, I also loved Joy Ride. Finally, a raunchy comedy made by and for Asian American women! And speaking of movies, I’m rooting for the actors and writers on strike!” [PS. See Cat’s great review of Past Lives here! — Raq.]

Listening: “NewJeans’ Super Shy is on repeat!”

Life, etc: “Having a little glass of white wine and curling up with a book! Taking longer and longer walks!”

You can find Cat on Instagram and here on Substack @

cat on the internet

!

*Please note: this interview was collected prior to the SAG-AFTRA influencer guidelines being released, stating that “Influencers should refrain from posting on social media about any struck work.” To learn how to support the labour strikes, see here and here.

New word of the week: antediluvian (an·te·di·lu·vi·an) — adjective — of or belonging to the time before the biblical Flood; ridiculously old-fashioned. This one was reader-submitted (by my husband, lol).