Work is not the antithesis of fun

Dirty martinis, clean sheets

Jan 27, 2025

HI EVERYONE. Thank you for all the love on my vocabulary post. And welcome if you’re new here! The ADHOC categories of the week are Addison Rae, Daily Themes, Housekeeping, Olive Juice, and Conversations with Friends.

Addison Rae

I sat on my couch on Tuesday and read Addison Rae’s profile in Rolling Stone after Zack sent me the link to hop the paywall. The interviewer, Brittney Spanos, clearly liked her—the portrait she paints isn’t completely one-dimensional, but undeniably flattering. As much as I believe magazine profiles should exist as critical portraits rather than PR pay-to-plays, I was delighted reading it. Addison comes off as bubbly, energetic, creative, and surprisingly self-aware. She knows that her lip-syncing origins on TikTok will always haunt her. She admits that her first attempts to break into mainstream entertainment failed (The pop single Obsessed and the Netflix movie He’s All That). But she kept working because she believed in the kind of music she wanted to make, and the kind of star she wanted to become.

Yes, it’s true that anyone can go viral on TikTok by accident. But to remain relevant, respected, and beloved takes astronomic effort (even if the brand is young and free). Spanos ends the article with Addison’s plans for more music, movies, and shows. I like ambition that isn’t disguised as something else.

“But I won’t beg for it,” she says. “I’ll work for it.

Daily Themes

In my final semester at Yale, I’m taking a class called Daily Themes where we write 300 words a day, five days a week. Although the prompts are fairly rigid and the turnaround time is tight, I’ve found incredible freedom in the fact that I can write about ANYTHING. I’ll open up a blank document, read the prompt a few times, and start to type before coming up with a fully formed idea. I’ve been surprised, amused, and disoriented by what I unearth. It’s a funny feeling, realizing you will never be fully knowable, even to yourself.

Every Wednesday, I meet with my assigned tutor to talk about my themes from the previous week. I told her about this newsletter and she said, “you’re practically doing Daily Themes already!” Which is kind of true! I may send out a bonus letter this week with the prompts and responses from metaphor week, if you’re interested…

Housekeeping

I used to hate chores. When my parents would ask me to unload the dishwasher, I’d argue that I had just done it the day before. For whatever reason, it didn't click to me that unloading and loading the dishes was something that had to be done every single day, because you keep eating and making more messes.

Now that I live in my own apartment, I still don’t think chores are fun, but I see them as important parts of being a functional, disciplined human. I see the value in wiping down the table after dinner and changing my sheets every week. Taking care of your space is the same thing as taking care of yourself. And sleeping in clean, crisp bedding is one of the greatest feelings in the world.

Moving into my freshman dorm room, 4 years ago.

Olive Juice

Recently I have been favoring savory drinks over sweet ones. My favorite cocktail used to be an aperol spritz, until one day I woke up hating the sticky citrusy smell. A few weeks ago in New York, I had a pizza martini that tasted like a crusty burrata slice and a Japanese cold noodle drink that tasted like soba and pineapple. On Saturday, I made my own drink with hot pickles and tart cherry and lemon.

Martinis are back, and they keep getting dirtier.

Fun is not the antithesis of work. They’re two sides of the same coin…you need one to appreciate the other.

Conversations with Friends

My friend

Nghi

sent me this Substack article called “Good conversations have lots of doorknobs.” It poses that there are two roles that you can take on in a given conversation:

Givers think that conversations unfold as a series of invitations; takers think conversations unfold as a series of declarations. When giver meets giver or taker meets taker, all is well. When giver meets taker, however, giver gives, taker takes, and giver gets resentful (“Why won’t he ask me a single question?”) while taker has a lovely time (“She must really think I’m interesting!”) or gets annoyed (“My job is so boring, why does she keep asking me about it?”).

I used to think that being a good conversationalist meant asking lots of questions. If I could get the other person to talk, I had done my job. But Mastroianni makes the excellent point that it actually might be selfish to put the burden of the conversation on someone else.

And asking your partner question after question and resenting them when they don’t return the favor isn’t generosity; it’s social entrapment, like not telling your friends that it’s your birthday and then seething that they didn’t get you cake.

Sometimes, I come home and complain to my roommates that someone wouldn’t shut up at our dinner—all they could talk about was themself. Instead of being in a conversation, I felt like I was listening to a podcast, and you could interchange me with any breathing human. But maybe my dining partner is also in their living room, complaining to their friends that I was so boring they struggled to fill the air for an hour.

I thought that championing curiosity and the idea that “everyone loves to talk about themselves” was a foolproof way to talk to anyone. But none of my favorite conversations have been in Q+A format. I hate answering a question and asking, “What about you?” because even if I care, it seems like I don’t.

Love you, thank you for reading.