chapter 25: life is the sum of all your average days
love for the ordinary moments and minutiae that make us
Let me set the scene for you: it’s an average Tuesday.
I wake up before my alarm; not a crazy feat, since I moved it to 8:20. Usually, I’d be finishing up at the gym by now, but I’m one of those annoying women who cycle syncs their workouts. Today, an extra hour and a half of sleep is all that’s on my exercise regimen. Josh woke up before me, and he teases me when I leave the bedroom: “I’ve been up for hours! So typical.”
It is not, in fact, typical.
My hyper-fixation breakfast is a bowl of peanut butter oats with collagen protein, walnuts, and cinnamon stirred in. It comes out of the microwave and it’s perfect, just like it has been for the past 10 days that I’ve eaten it. I’m feeling crazy, so I pour a little maple syrup on top. Like I said, it’s perfect (for now).
I’m ailing, debating whether or not I should go to work. I didn’t yesterday. Josh encourages me to do what I feel is right, but I don’t know what is right. “Maybe I’ll take a shower and then decide.”
Ever since I missed a week of class in junior kindergarten and my teacher scolded my mom for letting me skip crucial days of learning, I’ve struggled with missing obligations like school and work. A normal person would stay home if they felt like this, but I take a shower with the full intention of going in (read: I wash my hair). I was right, though. I do feel better.
My outfit, designed to minimize the feel of any fabric touching my body, consists of pleather sweatpants and a giant black tunic. My flats tie in a bow; my earrings slide into their holes: three on the right lobe, two on the left. The same every day, because decision fatigue is real and my standard jewelry is perfectly fine. Two pairs of underwear, just in case (sigh).
The train is fucked, so I take a different one. I read, both my book and the texts of the man sitting next to me. He’s typing in Italian, which is just similar enough to languages I know that I figure out he’s late to meet a woman named Marissa at Chanel in SoHo. The train stops at the station, and he slams his hand on his leg, swearing under his breath. He must be really late to meet Marissa. Is she incapable of shopping at Chanel alone?
The train makes me late for work. I wonder who was impacted more by the train delay, me, or Chanel Man? I hope it was me, but I fear it was him.
I want to eat lunch immediately, but I make myself wait. The longer I wait, the shorter the afternoon will feel.
The meetings are good, and my to-do list gets checked off. I eat lunch in the park, seeking out a singular spot of sun through the shadows of buildings and trees. A little girl falls in front of my table, sobbing. “Are you reading Harry Potter?” She asks through tears. Since she’s already having a bad day, I make it sound as if I’m not reading the saddest book ever written (A Little Life). She obviously disrespects my taste in literature, and I wave goodbye as her mom takes her home, tears still streaming down her face.
I finish the workday with little fanfare. It’s just an average Tuesday.
On Tuesdays, I go to the library to write. I’m always writing down my emotions and feelings and reactions, which are interesting to me but uninteresting to most people who aren’t me. Nevertheless, I spend hours each week cataloging everything. My morning pages, my gratitude lists, my Substack - all of it is just a vomit of the swirling thoughts in my head. Everything I write is about what I think or feel, but never what I do.
In the end, the minutiae of my days aren’t so important. But how strange is it that 100 years from now, my hypothetical great-grandchildren will read my journals and know nothing about me? Sure, they’ll know that I’m grateful for matcha and that someone upset me greatly in high school (I never write anyone’s name, so I hope they’re good detectives). Instead of getting to enjoy a snapshot of life in the early 21st century, all they’ll have is thousands of pages of processing, to-do lists, and self-reflection. The to-do lists, of course, will be mostly incomplete. As will the processing, because I’ve actually never gotten over anything in my entire life.
But I am not cataloging for them, after all. I do it for myself. Or, sometimes, for nobody. I don’t even read my journals.
And still, I felt compelled to write this. To leave work and come to the library and write down all the strange little details of my Tuesday, down to the two pairs of underwear.
Because what is life, really, but the sum of our most average days? This one, at least, is one I wouldn’t mind living again.
XOXO,
Madeleine
Next week’s newsletter will be about appreciating each season as it comes, aka a meditation on my favorite summer yet and how I’m bringing the same energy into fall + winter!
The remarkable is in the ordinary!