This year, for some reason, I didn’t make any new year’s resolutions. I don’t know why. I think at the time I felt like I was coming up on 40, and that I would make a list to go along with a milestone birthday. And then my birthday came and went, and I still hadn’t made a list, and so I decided I would just give myself another year to finish all the fun things I had set out for myself last year. And then life changed so dramatically that aspiring to finish that list became impractical, if not unimaginable.

So now what? We’re a quarter of the way through a year that has already felt like a decade – though I hear that for some, time feels like its speeding up rather than slowing down – but at a juncture where writing down anything beyond an intention for the day feels like an exercise in frustration.

We are far from the point when After might come into view, but despite that, I have started to make – not quite a list, perhaps more like notes for a more hopeful time:

• Rainbow Cone, still on my bucket list, with my friends Alisa or Ashley or both.
• Coffee made by someone other than me, consumed from a ceramic cup, preferably somewhere pleasant and outdoors.
• Smelling other people, which, while not always pleasant, currently feels incredibly novel when it happens in passing.

In the interest of thinking about Something Else, here are a few things to read, and one thing to eat:

• The Nuclear Family was a Mistake — David Brooks for The Atlantic
• The Everyday Anxiety of a New Parent — Kelsey Miller for Cup of Jo
• The iPhone at the Deathbed — NYTimes
• Your Coffee Addiction, By Decade — The New Yorker
• Meal Prep Breakfast Sandwiches — Pinch of Yum