First Week

the capricornian terrors persist, book talk, and a resolution.

How long can I keep my Christmas tree?

I spent the holiday alone. After a nearly three week visit from my family who came to Paris to celebrate Thanksgiving, I needed a break.

If you can, I encourage everyone to spend at least one Christmas in their lives alone in a place that you love. It was one of the most indulgent experiences of my adult life. I walked through the empty streets of Paris, under a cloudless blue sky, listening to Vince Guaraldi, stopping to sit on the green chairs in Palais Royal and Jardin de Tuileries, watching lovers embrace on the Seine in front of the Eiffel Tower, standing in line for ice skating at the Grand Palais before deciding against spending 35€ for what ultimately would have been a single lap around the rink, choosing instead to continue on to Saint-Germain-des-Prés for an afternoon screening of Casablanca at Christine Cinema Club.

I walked home enjoying the twinkling lights which shone just for me, stopping at Super Miam in Richelieu for a bowl of spicy szechuan noodle soup. After 21k steps, I drank an entire bottle of Chablis in bed while watching The Holiday.

To appropriate and misquote Love, Actually, “Christmas is the time you spend with the people you love… and it might be that the people I love is, in fact, [me.]”

The sweet person who sold me my first Parisian Christmas tree for my first Parisian Christmas talked me into buying un sac sapin (a tree bag) for an additional 10€. When I asked for a clarification since I knew the words individually but was unfamiliar with the concept I discovered the literal translation was also the very obvious definition: a bag that is opened and placed at the bottom of the tree for the purpose of easy removal. When desired, one need only lift the bag around the tree, tie it at the top, and carry it to the corner for disposal.

Upon removing the bag from the small red cardboard box I discovered it was gold, a pleasant surprise as it matched the gold decorations I had just purchased from Monoprix.

In the past week and a half, I have seen these gold bags decorating the sidewalks of Paris, hugging the evergreen detritus of a holiday that has come and gone while mine remains at the foot of the still decorated tree standing in my living room.

Yes, there is a part of me that doesn’t want to let go. The part that felt a melancholic reluctance to decorate in the first place knowing that the decorations I put up would eventually have to come down, leaving the place – my apartment, my neighborhood, my city – with a slight feeling of emptiness in their absence. And perhaps an unwillingness to accept that the new year is here and with it the sobering realities from which I dissociated in the final months of the previous one.

The other part is simply laziness.

Speaking of sobriety, I am participating in dry January and having begun 2026 with a collection of birthdays I feel a newfound appreciation for the Capricorn psychology. The theme of these celebrants is one of resignation. They have come to understand, and accept, that by the time their friends and loved ones reach their birthday at the end of the holiday gauntlet they are exhausted and drying out. Everyone’s quitting or committing to something which brings a staid energy to their parties. We are cold, we are sober, we are turning inward in preparation for the slow march toward a hopeful spring and a raucous summer. We are getting back to work.

I have taken to writing by candlelight.

It is one of my many adult indulgences. And I have found that I work best under constraints, a realization that has come after a brutal start to the year that felt like running into a brick wall. The candle provides a deadline. As the wick burns I push through the desire to do anything but sit at my computer. I am holding my feet to the fire, as it were.

I’m halfway through a new script that is flowing out of me with surprising ease as I work each day to hit my aspirational page count. Before you applaud, I should provide the context that this script was due at the end of last year.

Sure, this deadline was self-imposed but it came and went and I woke up in January with a shock that the box on that list of 2025 goals remained unticked. Did I think it would appear in Final Draft without actually opening the application? I once heard an agent say, as they negotiated to pay a lower fee, that since the piece was an adaptation rather than an original idea, all one had to do for the project was “put pen to paper” but I have always found that to be the hardest part.

In a recent interview with GQ, Paul Mescal described himself as “a winter boy” and I find myself leaning into this identity myself.

The blustery wind enables me to do one of my favorite activities – stay home. The long dark nights and grey skies that blanket the city during the day encourage me to write. We are only a week in but I am starting to think that my anxious anticipation of my first Parisian winter was perhaps unnecessary. As is often the case, it turns out I may have overthought it. Where others crave the warmth of long summer nights, I fear I have always preferred the cold. I don’t like sweating, I don’t like hot sleepless nights, and with each passing year I find myself less inclined to wear shorts. But in the winter I come alive. I cuddle with my friends on the couch watching films. I go on long walks bundled up under layered sweaters from my ever growing collection. I read.

It snowed in Paris on the first two days of the first working week of the year, a generous reprieve from the uphill climb of getting back to work. The magic, albeit short lived, was enough to give me hope in what was otherwise a dark and seemingly unending capricornian slog. As you can tell, this is not my preferred astrological season.

The easterly winds, which Pierre tells me were responsible for bringing the snow, were quickly replaced with winds from the northwest bringing in its place a cold humidity that is admittedly less magical. The good news for my warm weather enthusiasts, the days are getting longer.

The tree goes out this week.

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What I’m Reading:

I finally pulled the trigger on book series that I’ve wanted to read for years but by which I have been incredibly intimidated. When authors are as prolific as these two are, one often feels overwhelmed with the question, where do I begin?

I recognize there are competing schools here but I’ve chosen to begin my Rachel Cusk edification with the Outline Trilogy. Not that this is particularly rogue but as I am a completionist, I struggled with the decision between beginning with Outline, the beginning of the trilogy, or beginning with Saving Agnes, the first of her oeuvre. I finished Outline this past weekend and received Transit in the post just in time to keep the Cusk train rolling.

Additionally, I got a kindle for Christmas! Thank you, mother!

This serves two purposes, one practical and one spiritual. The former was an acceptance of my circumstances, which is to say I am not in a place (residentially) to be building a library. I prefer to remain nimble for a tad longer.

And as I have been reading through many advanced copies ahead of a very exciting announcement of something I’m bringing back very soon, I needed an easier, compact way to engage with the sheer volume of galleys on my docket. Did you catch that little teaser in there? Watch this space ;)

The spiritual reason is a further attempt to ground myself in this new city. As an undergraduate I did an internship in fashion—my Devil Wears Prada era. I spent my sophomore winter in Manhattan, trudging through historic levels of snow, changing my shoes in the lobby of the company’s midtown office building, and most importantly, reading the New Yorker on my iPad on the subway. It felt so incredibly adult. I am reconnecting with that inner intern and you can catch me performing cosmopolitan commuter drag with my e-reader on the metro for as long as it remains too cold to comfortably walk long distances.

Inspired by Brandon Taylor, as I so often am, I have begun Emile Zola’s series of novels about Les Rougon-Macquart. The problem with my kindle idea is that I don’t actually have a commute, so I’m only a few pages into La Fortune des Rougon but so far I’m loving it.

What I’m Watching:

After several attempts to access the Golden Globes live stream on Paramount+ on Sunday night I gave up, turning instead to the seedy underbelly of London banking. Yes, I refreshed HBOMax four times at 3AM in order to watch Season 4 of Industry along with the rest of you. Am I the only one who leaves each episode feeling icky? I have always admired that British television is not afraid to go dark. Make sure you watch it in a safe space.

Speaking of dark, I recently binged His & Hers, a limited-series on Netflix starring Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal. The series is a crime drama adapted from a book and based on that description alone I can confidently tell you it is exactly what you think it is. And it’s set in Atlanta which is fun! I don’t remember the last time I heard someone mention the town of Dahlonega. Moreover, I’m impressed I can still spell that correctly on the first try.

LE CANARD EP 001: Jeu de Paume

My new series on love and dating launched last week for paid subscribers and features the first installment in a series about my attempts at finding love in the city I have come to understand is the home of the fuck boy final boss. Wish me luck!