This & That

Field notes from the weekend.

I’m coming up on nearly one year of publishing Is This It? every Friday, which feels both surprising and deeply on brand for this phase of my life. What started as a creative outlet somehow turned into a meaningful part of my week. Not just the writing itself, but the noticing. Paying attention to the weirdness of adulthood, parenthood, ambition, friendship, technology, New York, identity, aging, work, and the increasingly thin line between “having a full life” and “being psychologically overextended.”

But most weeks don’t arrive in neat essay form. Modern life feels fragmented, nonlinear, observational, overstimulated, funny, existential, and constantly interrupted by notifications and toddler birthday parties.

So before Is This It? turns one, I’m adding a Tuesday edition called This & That.

This is the stuff sitting in my Notes app. Half-formed thoughts. Things I overheard. Social observations. Tiny revelations. Things my daughter said. Things I noticed on the subway. Things that maybe don’t need 1,500 words but still feel true enough to share.

Here’s what I couldn’t stop thinking about this week.

We had two toddler birthday parties this weekend, which now somehow require the same logistical preparation as leaving the country.

Extra clothes. Snacks. Tiny water bottle. Wrapped gift. Backup snacks. Emergency wipes. A cardigan my daughter absolutely refused to wear but that I still carried around all day because somewhere deep in my millennial subconscious is the fear that another parent might think I came unprepared.

On the way downtown for birthday party number one, my husband and I were packed onto the 1 train carrying what felt like fourteen bags for a three-year-old. It was 90 degrees, mildly humid, and every able-bodied adult on the train was performing the sacred New York ritual of pretending not to notice a family visibly struggling.

Eventually enough people got off at 42nd Street for me to sit down with my daughter on my lap while my husband still stood next to us. At the next stop, a young woman sat beside me and immediately started engaging with my daughter. Complimenting her shoes. Her outfit. Making her laugh within about thirty seconds.

Once my daughter got shy, the conversation shifted to us. We learned she had just graduated college, recently moved to New York, wanted to work for The New York Times, currently did social media for a congresswoman, and, most importantly, loved babysitting.

Reader, I genuinely think we met our future babysitter on the subway. The New York City equivalent of finding a rent-controlled apartment.

She was also Canadian, which longtime readers know automatically gives someone an irrational level of credibility in my mind.

We exchanged numbers and by Sunday morning she had already texted references over while I was still trying to emotionally re-enter society after the weekend.

The whole interaction weirdly stayed with me because I realized how aggressively I tune the city out now. Headphones in. Sunglasses on. Mentally elsewhere. Existing inside my own little emotionally regulated bubble just to survive the sensory overload of New York.

Meanwhile, all around you are people living entire lives you know absolutely nothing about. People trying to become something, recover from something, move toward something. And occasionally one of those strangers ends up mattering to your life for reasons you never could’ve predicted four subway stops earlier.

Maybe I need to spend slightly less time shutting the world out.

Toddler birthday parties are fascinating because no one is fully relaxed.

The children are emotionally and physically ungovernable while the adults are politely performing wellness and emotional stability for one another.

Everyone is silently evaluating everything:

At one point I overheard a dad proudly explaining that this was the first juice his son had ever tried.

The juice was Honest Kids, which tastes like someone described an apple near water.

And listen, I admire the commitment. But eventually every child is going to attend a birthday party where they consume fluorescent blue frosting with their bare hands while screaming near a balloon arch.

At a certain point I wonder if parenting in Manhattan becomes less about the children and more about adults trying to convince one another they’ve cracked some impossible life optimization code.

Meanwhile your kid just wants cake and to run recklessly in circles with other tiny humans.

My algorithm lately has become aggressively convinced that I should become a “yapper.”

Everywhere I look, creators are filming themselves talking directly into the camera about absolutely everything. Grocery store observations. Relationship theories. “Things I would never do as someone who works in tech.” Five-minute monologues that begin with “Okay, so nobody’s talking about this…”

And now the algorithm has evolved to the point where the yappers themselves are telling me I should also start yapping.

Apparently this is how you become a creator in 2026.

And honestly? If there’s enough money attached to it, I’m open to humiliating myself publicly.

Because part of me does wonder whether Is This It? eventually exists beyond essays and newsletters. Maybe the future is me aggressively explaining observations from toddler birthday parties while speed-walking to work through Time Square while holding an iced coffee the size of my head.

Which, if I’m being honest, doesn’t feel entirely off brand.

I’ve been running outside a lot lately and my body has started responding like I personally offended it.

Everything hurts. I’m exhausted. Then the heat arrived and suddenly my exhaustion stopped feeling athletic and started feeling clinical.

At some point this weekend I was reviewing my credit card statement and remembered we still pay for a Peloton membership every month. The bike itself has mostly become an expensive hanging rack for clothes I don’t want fully drying in the dryer.

But I dusted it off. Literally dusted it off.

And within five minutes I remembered how much I genuinely enjoy it, mostly because of Cody Rigsby and his completely unhinged side commentary. Half the workout is cardio. The other half is listening to someone spiral conversationally in a way that somehow makes you feel more emotionally stable by comparison.

Which, realistically, may just be because we’re basically the same person.

I do think there’s something deeply millennial about realizing your parasocial relationship with a fitness instructor is now carrying part of your mental health infrastructure.

That’s This & That.

See you on Friday.

Chris