Why it’s possible to feel nostalgic for something that’s terrible and sad — In Regular Times, walking home through the East Village on the first warm evening of spring would be like swimming upstream. Groups of people would drink spritzes and rosés in the open-air bars on St. Mark’s Place. …

The best part of my apartment was always coming back from outside — I bought my canary-yellow bar cart a little over a year ago, during a time when my days looked fairly similar to how they do now: I was home for weeks on end, rarely venturing outside. I’d devoted a month to the project of freezing my eggs, a decision I…

Effortless interactions are hard when everyone is wearing a mask — At my local wine shop the other day, I clumsily followed the list of procedures to buy a bottle of wine: Present the bottle to the cashier; sanitize hands before swiping card; use a sanitized pen to sign; put the pen in the “used” jar; bag your own bottle. “Too…

When we don’t have the big plans to look forward to, it’s time to focus on the small pleasures — This reminds me of ending a relationship. There’s always that moment after a split when you look over your calendar and realize how many plans aren’t actually going to happen. There’s the concert we won’t be attending together at the end of the month. There’s the weekend trip we can’t…

Turns out, having a sense of certainty about the future was always a luxury — Recently I watched a Broad City episode in which people were lined up outside a bakery for a macaron/churro pastry combo. It made me laugh — over-the-top pastry trends have been such a thing in New York City for the past few decades — but the scene also felt jarring…

My phobia of flying has been replaced by something bigger — In my old New York City life, the one that no longer exists, I used to watch planes fly one by one, in a stoic parade on their way to JFK Airport. …

An illustrated guide to being somewhere else when you can’t be somewhere else — Even New York’s die-hard defenders want to flee the city come summer. When popsicle-colored dreams of warm afternoons watching kids run through gushing fire hydrants fade, we’re left with all the obligations and dress codes of regular life — plus the added challenge of enduring tropical subway stations. An air…

But have you tried Coffee Meets Bagel?, married friends suggest when I complain about the bleak landscape of online dating. There are good men out there, the internet assures me after yet another male artist I trusted with my admiration has come out as a sexual predator. …