In Between
Finding comfort in Autumn, and the space between.
Hello. It’s been a while, but I’m back.
I’ve had some time to think about this newsletter and its format, so you will see a few changes here. First of all, I’m now on Substack. This gives me a single destination for all my newsletters to live, and makes it easier for you to read old ones. As you will see below, the essay in each newsletter will be longer but I will be sending these out once a month, on the first Friday of the month. Starting today. As Winter begins, please enjoy this essay about Autumn, which I wrote a few weeks ago.
As Side Note grows, and as I gain more spare time in my weeks, I’d like to increase it to fortnightly and eventually weekly again. Until then, it will remain sustainable in a monthly format. If you would like to support it, you can still make a donation on Patreon, but I don’t expect this kind of support until it becomes fortnightly and eventually weekly. Thanks for being here and I hope you enjoy the newsletters to come.
E.x
In Between
There is a river track I have walked for the last two months with the obsessive compulsivity one would associate with an addict. I walk it early in the morning and late in the afternoon, usually to the sound of the ‘Dissect’ podcast. The podcast, hosted by Cole Cuchna, takes one album by an artist like Frank Ocean or Lauryn Hill and breaks it down, one song per episode. It would bore the shit out of most people but I have analysed song lyrics from as early as I can remember, so stumbling upon it was like finding the gates to heaven. There are eight seasons and around 12 episodes per season and I have listened to each with the same sense of duty I approach the track by the river.
At the beginning of Autumn, I returned to my childhood home and have spent the entire season here. It seems fitting. Autumn has always felt like a transitory season - no longer Summer, not quite Winter - and a transition is what I am currently in. My relationship ended as the season began and I returned to this home to reset and recover. In June the apartment hunt in Sydney will begin, but until then I am Autumn. Sitting in the in between.
There is a psychological term used to describe the ambiguous and often disorienting state that occurs during a transition between one state and the next. This term is ‘liminality’, which was first developed in anthropology and is derived from the Latin word ‘limen’. I first stumbled upon it last year while reading a Sunday Life column by Jamila Rizvi, but it has reemerged to the front of my mind for obvious reasons.
The irony of coming home is that you feel both comforted and uncomfortable with the comfort. There is something embarrassing about it, or maybe it’s a feeling closer to failure. I can’t pinpoint the cause, but the effect is you don’t want to broadcast it. I’m not sure humans like broadcasting their liminal states. Our ability to comfortably sit in the middle, departing one situation but not yet arriving at another, is not something we are particularly good at. As the philosopher Alain de Botton once said, we are ordering animals. We like to pack the contents of our lives into neat boxes and label them appropriately. We like to feel in control. We like to feel calm. We don’t like it when the box is open, half unpacked.
My childhood home sits on a hill in the small, coastal town of Victor Harbor in South Australia. It is one hour’s drive from Adelaide and, when I left, it was home to 10,000 people. I don’t know how many people live here now. I was 15 years old when I was sent to boarding school in Adelaide, and lived with friends in the city after I graduated. Then I moved to Melbourne and, later, Sydney, where I have been for the past nine years.
Spending most of the pandemic in a one-bedroom apartment, and being unable to see my parents for most of it, meant the homecoming was initially met with a sense of relief. It was nice to have space and no neighbours and see the dog. I didn’t have to rush conversations with family. It was fun living with my youngest sister again. But the discomfort, be it embarrassment or a sense of failure or perhaps the temporary nature of this whole thing, was an ever-present nagging feeling. I’m not used to living with so many people. The coffee shop doesn’t open until 8am. I am onto my second coffee by then. It was hard not to see it as a metaphor.
One month in, I spoke to a friend who had spent the past six months at his family’s home in the country, and only recently returned to Melbourne. By the end of his time there, he didn’t want to leave. He told me the big cities would always be there. Perhaps opportunities to live with your parents are too, but they do feel fewer and further between. My perception shifted after that phone call. I had conversations with my parents that I don’t think I would have had. I have grown closer with my youngest sister. I have seen old school friends. The slower pace, a pace I once felt uncomfortable in, is something I have begun to enjoy. There is no traffic and space to think.
‘The hedonic treadmill’ is a theory explaining the observed tendency humans have to return to a pre-existing baseline level of happiness fairly quickly after a major positive or negative life change. It’s why the initial thrill of getting married or moving into a new house or securing a promotion tends to wear off. It is also why we eventually recover from the break up or the job loss. The concept was first written about in 1971 by two psychologists, Brickman and Campbell, in the essay, “Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society” and was originally known as hedonic adaptation. However, when Michael Eysenck compared the theory to a treadmill two decades later, the ‘hedonic treadmill’ stuck.
I’ve been sitting in the in between for almost three months now, and the hedonic treadmill has quietly been at work. Today, there is a sense of comfort and perhaps even contentment in the liminality, as I talk to the dog a little too frequently and bookend my days on the river track. The other day, as I walked and listened to Cole Cuchna breakdown Lauryn Hill’s 1998 album, ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’, I learned that the album, her first and only album after leaving the Fugees, is really an ode to living. When she was asked to describe the meaning behind the album title, she said she used the word ‘Miseducation’ to illustrate that her greatest learnings didn’t come from a book, or even from a time when life was going well. They arrived when she was challenged and hurt and forced to confront something. “When I thought I was my most wise, I was really not wise at all, and in my humility and in those places that most people wouldn’t expect the lesson to come from, that’s where I learned so much,” she said. “And so I termed the phrase ‘Miseducation’, not because it was a miseducation, per se, but just because it was contrary to what the world says is ‘education’. It was this education that came from life and experience and not necessarily [anything] academic… but related to living.”
This liminal season has felt like a miseducation of sorts. In this period of time, where I have been challenged and hurt and forced to confront certain parts of myself, I expected to feel like an explorer without a compass. Yet, in the place where I didn’t expect the lesson to come from, in the place where I just expected to live in the mess, I have learned so much. Coming home has taught me that everything changes and nothing changes. Your life falls apart and you put it back together. Years go by without seeing old friends, but it feels like no time has passed when you finally do. Autumn sucks, until you don’t want it to end.
Related (and unrelated) recommendations:
I’ve recently read and loved Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion, and Just Kids by Patti Smith. I’m so late to the Patti Smith party, but glad to finally be here. M Train is next on my list.
I loved this New Yorker article on vibes with my whole heart.
Heather Havrilesky, the resident advice columnist at New York, recently left the publication to write here on Substack full-time. I adore her work, and this post on making mistakes and overcoming shame is brilliant.
My life may have changed, but my obsession with playlists has not. Here is my annual playlist that includes every song that has brought me some joy over the year. It’s a mixed bag, but a fun bag.
I love a good celebrity profile and this British Vogue profile on Billie Eilish is worth a read, if you didn’t get around to reading it when it came out. The profile explores her recent transformation, new album, and choice feminism, among other things.
Dave Chappelle’s new podcast, The Midnight Miracle, is like sorbet for your ears. A mix of philosophy, music, and comedy. It is available on all the usual podcast platforms, but it is also going vinyl. Each episode is produced to fit on one side of a record.
This article on Australia becoming the new Hermit Kingdom, by Amelia Lester for Foreign Policy, went viral the other week and is worth a read.
This New Yorker article on the history of burnout is amazing. Read it.
Of course, the Dissect podcast. Here’s the Lauryn Hill episode I mentioned.
And Lauryn Hill’s 1998 album, ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’.
Thank you for reading. Side Note is a free newsletter that appears in your inbox on the first Friday of the month.