Draft Four: Everything means everything

Trash bins, burnouts, and sad dads.

I’ve tried something different in this letter. You’re reading an edited diary of the past week, interspersed with lyrics from The National, which I was fortunate to see once again Saturday night in Berlin. You can read while listening to this playlist of their music.

Sept 26

We’re half-awake in a fake empire

I woke up at 5:45am to the sound of the garbage truck. I think I unconsciously listen for it, as I usually go downstairs and wheel the bins back inside the yard, where I tie them up, so they don't get stolen. This is me on civic duty as the head of the homeowners’ association. No, wheeling the trash bins in and out is not part of the job description, but the bins were stolen three times in the past two years, so locking them as soon as possible after they’re empty is a smart move if you don’t want to spend 250 lei (50 euros) on a new one. And we don’t.

By the way, I woke up in my new bed, in a newly renovated apartment in Bucharest.

It’s done, almost nine months later. There is warm water, there are no pipe leaks, the windows close, the furniture is in place, the wooden floor is shiny once more. Of course it’s not perfect: one faucet smacks into the ceramic tiles behind it, a door has a birth defect, and the toilet seems a little too high (like maybe I should put a child’s step next to it). I often thought about making a magazine during this whole renovation process: it’s messy at first, when the ideas are still raw and everyone is just throwing stuff at the wall, when we go one route, then change course, when we knock down things we shouldn’t, but also accidentally turn improvisation into beauty.

But, as time goes on, improvisation should lead to mastery and craftsmanship: if you commit things to paper, you should do your best to make sure people don't throw it away. Edit obsessively, run a proof reading process both on the screen and on paper, chase design mishaps. Repeat.

You’ll never get everything right. There will be a typo, or a misaligned picture, or the odd machine error and smudged color. That’s your scratched windowsill, the chip in the wall, the lighter shade of paint than the one you intended. But did we ever print the equivalent of a toilet that’s too high or a faucet installed without checking if it fully opens?

I don’t think so. And I don’t think that’s being obsessive. I think that’s just delivering the quality and care you paid for. I am numb from the times I’ve heard Romanians tell me: “It’s good enough. You can’t really see it. No one will notice.” I admit, we all risk overdoing it on the details. Yet, proofing and making sure you deliver to standards should be common practice. Overdoing, at least for me, would be one more extra proof after the first two, or measuring distances and angles in microns.

It takes an ocean not to break

I spent Monday with the guy who turned on my boiler (a process I delayed because the radiators weren’t installed). He was deeply unhappy with how it was installed. Who did this, he mockingly asked. Your colleagues from the company, I replied. He mumbled something under his breath, then said: “we can cuss at them, too”.

He fixed what needed to be fixed but found another thing to complain about: you have low water pressure, he said. You should have just pierced down into the pipe coming in from the street and gotten water just for you.

He wasn’t suggesting stealing – his plan involved a water meter and everything. But he was suggesting doing something apart from everyone else, because you can never come to an agreement with your neighbors he said.

“They just talk and talk. Get your own pipe. Living together with others is a disaster.”

I’m tired of this “don't depend on anyone” vibe. I understand the temptation, but it won't lead anywhere good. I prefer to wheel the bin in and out for everyone, and ask them to do it when I’m not there. (They forget sometimes). Or to ask my neighbor who has a construction company to paint the first floor of the building, just enough so that city hall stops threatening to raise our taxes. Or use the electrician that fixed my lights to also put in a new intercom that locks the gate to the yard as well, so there are less chances for the bins to be stolen.

Perfection is a form of hysteria is something the singer Robin from Robin and the Backstabbers had taped to the mixing console, his way of preventing endless tinkering with a song. I agree. Endless tinkering is not healthy. Neither is taking the easy way.

There's a middle ground here – let's say a 7-8 on a 10 point scale. Quality – in connection, in editing, in construction, you get the point – probably is a tad uncomfortable, as it takes a little more effort.

Loose lips sink ships
Can we show
A little discipline

I’m on the balcony of my hotel in Athens, one floor above the street. Right at eye level is the balcony of an apartment undergoing renovation. Although it’s a narrow street with cars parked on both sides, there’s continuous traffic – yellow cabs at various stages of life, scooters, the occasional bus. There’s a storm warning for tomorrow, and the organizers of the conference I came for are worried. They’ve booked a cool industrial venue, with plenty of outdoor space.

I’m here with the European Press Prize – this is my fourth edition on the preparatory committee which selects the finalists, and my second year as the committee’s chair. It’s a responsibility I’m proud of, and the quality of my peers makes the job easy – there’s twenty of us speaking most European languages between us, from investigative journalists, to data visualization experts, to feature editors or even editors-in-chief. (On October 1 we’re starting to take submissions for next year’s prizes).

I’m happy to say the number of entries in Romanian (from Romania and Moldova) has grown and gotten better – Elena Stancu and Edit Gyenge were finalists last year, and Elena is also going to be on stage for a small live show EPP is doing here in Athens.

Me? I’m tired. I touched down in Athens at 12:30, checked-in at 2pm, and it took a while to wake up from a 30 minute nap. I have a hard time remembering when September started.

Sept 28

I am not my rosy self
Left my roses on my shelf
Take the white ones; they're my favorites
It's the side effects that save us
Grace

My mother would have turned 74 today. That number would have sounded soooo old to me a few decades back. Now it doesn’t – I think she would have made for a cool senior. As it is, she didn’t even make it to 60.

I don’t recall what she thought of Athens, although she must have traveled here, too. She travelled a lot in her final decade, as if making up for lost time. She loved Barcelona, Vienna, Oslo, which is one city she liked that I’ve yet to see.

She didn’t think she’d like New York, certainly not more than Barcelona. New York is probably the last big city she's been in. It was 2006, and I was living in Washington, DC with my then partner. We were lucky to share a studio in a building that had a swimming pool on the roof – which we didn't use as often as we should have. We watched the Fourth of July fireworks with my mother from the roof. And then we travelled to New York, took a boat and saw the Statue of Liberty, went up to the Top of the Rock, walked through Central Park. The city amazed her. Straight to the top of my list, she said.

I often wondered over the years what she would have made of my work in journalism, as I remember her being pretty disappointed with the profession itself. She would have been happy you're teaching, one of her former nurses at the hospital she worked at told me when I started doing workshops. Moreso when I started teaching at the university, which she had done for decades.

I'm going back again next week to teach narrative journalism to 3rd year journalism students.

Sept 29

The system only dreams in total darkness

We’re terribly tired in my profession. How we deal with stress, burnout, and mental health – both individually and structurally – was a highly requested workshop from our European Press Prize community meeting in Athens. So, we delivered: we asked the Self-Investigation project to talk about personal strategies (boundaries, habits etc.), but also newsroom changes we need to make. (If we don’t, the next generation will make these changes for us).

As we started talking about how stressed and always on we are, a friend who’s an investigative reporter walked out, joking she’s not sure she wants to become aware of how taxing the work is. Because it is: studies have shown that more than 60% of journalists report feeling anxious, and 1 in 5 is showing signs of depression.

I was nodding; these have been an exhausting few weeks, in a difficult year. (“Tired” is the word that appears most often in my journal recently). When the presenter showed a chart of signals that someone is at risk of a burnout, the room started giggling. “If you identify 3 or more symptoms, there’s a high change that you’re experiencing chronic stress”, it said. I’m currently checking all of them, and so were many of the couple dozen people in the room.

Here you go if you want to give it a shot:

1. Intensely tired

2. Restless sleep

3. More irritable than normal

4. More emotional than normal

5. You feel like you are rushing all the time

6. Hard to concentrate

7. Worry a lot, restless mind

8. You have more aches and pains than usual.

Sept 30

It’s a Hollywood summer
You'd never believe the shitty thoughts I think

I’m in the Athens airport, it’s not 7am yet, and there’s more than 90 minutes to my flight to Berlin. I’m one of those people who arrives at the airport with plenty of time to spare (hours, sometimes). I’m very safe to travel with if you’re anxious. But terribly annoying if you’re the kind who trusts the universe to arrange things for you to just arrive at boarding time.

The airport speakers are playing Johnny B. Goode. The group chatter in various languages is accompanied by espresso machines and coffee steamers. Last night, at dinner, a journalist friend from Italy asked the group if we get lonely while traveling. He sometime did. Looking back over the last year I remember many moments where I felt lonely, walking the streets of a foreign city, having breakfast alone in a café, or being in the hotel at the uncertain hour of 9PM, where you’re not quite sure if you should be out, or calling it a night. Traveling solo has some sublime moments, but also lonely ones.

A journalist friend from the Netherlands says she loves traveling alone and recalled being on the road once and calling a fancy restaurant to make a reservation for one. She bought a new dress, got a book, and went for a treat. One reason she called is so that the restaurant would set the table for one ahead of time, instead of removing the extra cutlery and plates when she sat down. But they didn’t; the table was still set for two when she arrived.

The floors are falling out from everybody I know

It’s past midnight and I’m my hotel room in Berlin, eating nuts with cranberries, drinking a glass of wine, and thinking about the two and a half hour long sold out concert by The National that made me jump, scream, cry, and feel all the feels.

It was a ticket I bought in January, and there was no way I would miss this. It took me a while to get into the band, but when High Violet came out in 2010, I was hooked. The album also features probably my favorite song of theirs, Bloodbuzz Ohio.

The National playing Bloodbuzz Ohio in Berlin on September 30.

I bought a tongue-in-cheek shirt the band recently started selling; it says “sad dads”. That’s because The National does sad music like few do. Even the up-tempo songs have serious existential angst in them (“I’m Mr. November, I won’t fuck us over”), and it’s why I love them. Their sadness is of the ordinary kind: “not the major devastations but the strange little ache that feels like a precondition to being human”, as a recent The New Yorker profile of the band put it.

“No amount of Transcendental Meditation, Pilates, turmeric, rose quartz, direct sunlight, jogging, oat milk, sleep hygiene, or psychoanalysis can fully alleviate that ambient sadness. Part of it is surely existential – our lives are temporary and inscrutable; death is compulsory and forever – but another part feels more quotidian and incremental, the slow accumulation of ordinary losses. Maybe there’s a person you once loved but lost touch with. A friend who moved to a new town. An apple tree that stood outside your bedroom window, levelled to make way for broadband cable. An old dog. A former colleague. We are always losing, or leaving, or being left, in ways both minor and vast.”

We were close to losing this band – to life, to Matt’s depression, to writer’s block, to the aftermath of the pandemic. But they bounced back – two albums in 2023, and a gigantic tour. I feel blessed to have been there to hear them tell this story.

Memorize the bathwater, memorize the air
There'll come a time I'll wanna know I was here.