Emily in France 🇫🇷 $7 Isn't Much to Invest in One's Sanity
Seven dollars for your sanity.
I was fifteen years old when I started carrying a Discman around with me everywhere. (Yes, I'm too young for a Walkman and too old for an iPod, and yes, I'm trying to resist the urge to make this factoid my whole identity, because that's just what you'd expect from a Millennial like me, isn't it?) I carried my Discman in the biggest pocket of my cargo pants or in the pouch of a bedazzled New York hoodie, which, if it had survived the past twenty years (hang on, I need to go lie down for a moment) would have been a top commodity by now. It hasn't. I digress.
Having music as the soundtrack of my life didn't make me any friends, and it didn't help with my propensity for walking into things, but it did make a lot of things – long walks, long bus rides, working out – more pleasant. And music remains a frequent companion of mine, to a certain extent. A year ago, when I drove through the Auvergne, Simon and Garfunkel serenaded me for fourteen hours a day. Each morning, when I unload the dishwasher in a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance-esque attempt to spend at least a portion of my day in the analog world, George Harrison and coffee ease me awake. When I hit my work limit at around 4pm every afternoon, that odd California accent so unique to Tom Delonge can snap me out of it and get another hour out of me before I really need to shut down for the day.
I don't listen to podcasts, so when I gave up my Paris métro pass two years ago, music accompanied me on my walks: to coffee shops, to the library, to meet friends. (Those were the days.) But with the pandemic, two things happened: I stopped needing to go on long solo walks for the purposes of getting around (there was nowhere to go) and I switched to an iPhone, devoid of a place to plug in my headphones.
A normal person would resolve this quite easily by buying AirPods, but my ears reject in-ear headphones, and besides, I didn't want to spend the money. So I just decided... not to listen to music anymore. And you know what? It sucked.
I only discovered very recently that another solution exists: a $7 cable that will afford an iPhone the ability to accept headphones. (I could have researched this a year and a half ago, but such is the resilience of my #enneagram9 wing.) And while $7 is a lot of money for some things – a large coffee with an extra shot, a fast food hamburger, a boulangerie sandwich – it is pennies when seen in the context of its results, in this case: the return of my long, meandering walks under a bright blue sky, and thus, a little part of my sanity I hadn't quite realized was missing until I got it back.
TL;DR: I. Love. Music.
Things I'm Writing
1. I think my favorite vintner right now (and honestly... for the past year or so) has been Jean Baltenweck, who, with his son, runs the Alsatian natural winery Clé de Sol. I had the honor of interviewing Jean about his commitment to biodiversity and natural wines with aging potential for Pellicle.
 2. Intermittent fasting is all the rage for its anti-inflammatory benefits, but some have steered clear of this practice, thinking it'll be torture. Dr. Will Cole shares why that's just not so, for Organic Authority.
3. If bulk buying seems boring to you, this roundup of 11 supermarket items you can buy again and again and again without ever getting tired of them is for you! For Food & Wine.
Things I'm Reading
1. I never read the backs of books, and it made my experience reading Savage the Bones even more interesting. More on the blog.
2. The indoor-outdoor dining debate shouldn't be one. Helen Rosner is a genius always but particularly in this piece for the New Yorker.
3. Black History Month is over, but intersectional feminism is forever. I loved this eye-opening, powerful essay from June Jordan on what it is like to be "a member of the most powerless majority on the planet."
A bientôt !