Quarterly reads and reflections | April-June 2026
Well, readers, we have made it to the midway point of 2026. I know I say something like this every year, but more than ever this year has felt both incredibly fast and incredibly slow. I can’t believe it’s already July—it’s all gone so fast! And yet I actively have to calculate how long it’s been since my dad died. It seems like there’s no possible way it’s only been four months. Time has seemed strange since Covid, then having a baby, now wrestling with grief among the insanity of American politics and I’m not sure if these are “unprecedented times” or if it’s extremely precedented for our relationship with time to get wonky as we get older and experience more.
Perhaps in response to this, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own time day-to-day and week-to-week. I’ve been trying even harder to decrease my screen time. I still use and love my Brick, but I’ve also just been leaving my phone at a charging station as much as possible. I started by doing this whenever Louise was home. She’s really starting to form a picture of what it means to be an adult and I don’t want her to think it means constantly checking a phone. But in doing this, I realized that I don’t have the itch to check my phone when it’s not present. I just don’t think about it. And the not thinking about it makes me both more patient and more present. I can feel myself getting more life out of my days and it reinforces the habit. Of course I still both want (and for my job need) to check in on social media, but I just devote discreet times for that rather than sporadically looking and beginning the time suck. It’s made a truly meaningful difference in my life and I hope I can keep it up.
