Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, Oct. 29-Nov. 11

Okay, okay, I'm back from vacation

This is the Fran Magazine Sunday Dispatch, a weekly culture diary for for paid subscribers. The Sunday Dispatch details what I’m watching, reading, playing, and listening to. Feel free to follow me on Twitter or Letterboxd. Thank you for reading!

Back to the grind

We flew back from Helsinki around five in the evening on Thursday and landed back in New York City at six in the evening, also on Thursday, but also at two in the morning. Since then I’ve struggled to stay up until 11 — not the worst thing in the world. I love an early bedtime and an early morning. I woke up at five yesterday, thinking it was eight or nine, maybe, surprised at how pitch dark the apartment was. I thought I might be able to stay up until the sunrise, but I slipped back into sleep before that could happen. Mostly I’ve been home since getting back — unpacking, readjusting, working, reading. When I was a kid, I would cry on the flight home from vacation sometimes. I don’t think I’ve done that since I went to Idaho two years ago for a writing residency, all the weight of the time and distance I’d been gone for hitting like a brick. This time I just felt normal, eager and itching and a little annoyed to get back into the swing of things.

The trip was pretty great overall — my first time doing any kind of “serious travel” since the worst years of the pandemic, some of that out of an abundance of caution but most of it because of a deficit of funds. It was great to explore and to walk and to eat and to learn. I like to keep vacation days pretty full, not necessarily overplanned but always moving, making the most of a day when I’d otherwise be seated in front of my computer. That said, I think there was only one day of the trip we didn’t sit in a sauna. I’ll get my film photos developed later this week, I hope. For now, here’s Tallinn’s Kadriorg Palace, now an art museum, taken on one of the loveliest days in recent memory.