Are you making good use of your time?

It’s been a while since I posted. (Hi!) On the eve of my birthday it seemed like a good time to take stock.

My thought for this birthday: Live like you don’t have infinite time—because none of us do.

I’m trying to be more mindful about making choices that reflect my priorities and principles, instead of falling into habit, or saying yes just to be polite or out of guilt. I’ve been prioritizing in-person visits, old-fashioned letters that travel through the mail, soccer matches, and my book.

I’ve stepped up my work with my local NAACP chapter. I’m spending more time at my two favorite libraries. I helped judge the John Leonard Prize for the NBCC (the winner: Tessa Hull’s graphic novel, Feeding Ghosts), and I volunteered at the award ceremony in Manhattan earlier this week. Some of the cool people there: Edwidge Danticat, Hisham Matar, Alexei Navalny’s editor at Knopf, Percival Everett, Teju Cole, Maxine Hong Kingston. It feels especially important to support writers, readers, and book critics right now. I know the world feels crazy, but I refuse to give in to despair. There’s too much work to do.

I was thrilled to attend Bridgett Davis’s book launch. Here’s the only picture I have of the night—it’s with her husband, Rob Fields, my friend since we were teenagers. Shout out to Troy Lambert, another old friend I was so glad to see there.

Bridgett’s book, Love, Rita, is a compassionate story of sisterhood. And a powerful reminder of weathering—the harm racism inflicts on the body.

On Monday, Mr. H and I head to Spain (entirely on frequent flyer miles). We’re staying with my high school friend and his husband and their three dogs. We’ll visit Granada, Córdoba, Seville, Tarifa, and catch a soccer game in Málaga. Then the four of us will spend a few days in Morocco. In high school, we carpooled every day to crew practice, singing to Culture Club and Rick James. And I’m hoping we have some old-time silly on this trip.

Talk to me in the comments. Tell me, as the poet Mary Oliver would say, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

As always, I’ll end by sharing the books I’ve read since my last post:

Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces
Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories
Lisa See, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
Percival Everett, James
Caroline Leavitt, Days of Wonder
R.O. Kwon, Exhibit
Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead
Karen Russell, Orange World and Other Stories
Amy Ferris, Mighty Gorgeous
Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead
Bryan Washington, The Family Meal
Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House: A Memoir
Kelly Link, White Cat, Black Dog
Ellen Meister, Divorce Towers
James Patterson, Along Came a Spider
Viet Thanh Nguyen, A Man of Two Faces
Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer
Steve Almond, Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow
Kathryn Davis, The Thin Place
Michel Faber, Under the Skin
Francine Prose, 1974
Jayne Anne Phillips, Night Watch
Denise Riley, Say Something Back
Denise Riley, Time Lived, Without Its Flow
Karin Tidbeck, The Memory Theater
Italo Calvino, The Complete Cosmicomics
Catherine Newman, Sandwich
John Updike, Rabbit, Run
Meg Wolitzer, The Wife
Rachel Kushner, The Flame Throwers
Helen Garner, This House of Grief
Gia L. James, A Place Called There
Susanna Clarke, Piranesi
Elisabeth Thomas, Catherine House
Ann Hood, The Stolen Child
Neil Gaiman, The Sleeper and the Spindle
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message
Josh Malerman, Unbury Carol
Jane Yolen, Briar Rose
Toni Morrison, “Recitatif”
Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey
Kathryn Davis, Duplex
Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These
Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!
Lisa Gornick, Ana Turns
Maria Adelmann, How to Be Eaten
Louise Penny, Still Life
Chris Whitaker, We Begin at the End
Kirsten Bakis, Lives of the Monster Dogs
Samantha Harvey, Orbital
Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace
Garth Greenwell, Small Rain
Melissa Pritchard, Flight of the Wild Swan
Miranda July, All Fours
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
Kelly Barnhill, The Ogress and the Orphans
Carol Weston, Speed of Life
Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest
Lindsey Fitzharris, The Butchering Art
Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland
Jonathan Evison, The Heart of Winter
Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments
Michele Filgate (editor), What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence
Leslie Jamison, Splinters
Tessa Hulls, Feeding Ghosts
Rebecca Nagle, By the Fire We Carry
Vinson Cunningham, Great Expectations
John Ganz, When the Clock Broke
Cindy Juyoung OK, Ward Toward
Carrie Courogen, Miss May Does Not Exist
Alison Espach, The Wedding People
Michael Amherst, The Boyhood of Cain
Bridgett M. Davis, Love, Rita

And a few re-reads (usually this means I’m studying something—POV, pace, transitions, fever dreams):
Kenneth Grahame, Wind in the Willows (just Chapter 7, “Piper at the Gates of Dawn”)
Claudia Rankine, Just Us
Joyce Carol Oates, “Heat”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Virgil (translation: Robert Fagles), The Aeneid