The Cut - 'How Can I Learn to Be More Present?'

It’s been a year since packing up my life and moving across the country for my first job after grad school. I’ve had the greatest time this past year, despite the challenges and fears I had about moving. The thing is, this job has an expiration date. I’ve known from the start this project was temporary, and I haven’t been dealing with it in the healthiest way. For the most part, I try not to think about it at all, but it’s started to feel like this big, looming thing in the back of my head that begs to be acknowledged.

Lately, I’ve been having a lot of feelings of shame about “wasting” my time left in my city and not doing enough to fully appreciate my time here. I want to fully immerse myself in these next eight months or so and live as presently in it as I can, but I find myself mourning something that is still very much alive. How do I celebrate where I am in this part of my life without ignoring the tricky feelings I have about the hyperspeed time warp that is my mid-20s?

Which would you rather: being late to work because a truck spilled tons of Coors Light on the highway, or a bunch of pumpkins? Recent COVID questions, answered. Harry Styles is so good at so many things (music, charm, handsomeness) but not at everything, it turns out. This headline is pretty yikes, and we’re wondering who chose it — the author, or their editor? Cancer deaths are down and we know why; whale deaths are up and we don’t. Get ready for fall (memes), y’all. It’s the end of an era: Apple Music is replacing Pepsi as sponsor of the Super Bowl halftime show. France is trying to save indie booksellers from Amazon. Get ready for delicore. And you may have noticed that we link to Arthur Brooks’s Atlantic column “How to Build a Life” here often, so imagine our delight when we saw a new GQ encounter with him.

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