Welcome to the 103rd edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 102 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
I didn’t really started watching the Phillies until the summer, maybe early July. They were playing the Nationals, I think, in a game that was televised only on Apple TV on a Friday night, and I used that as a pretext to get an Apple TV trial (that I still haven’t canceled) and watch the Fightins.
I fell for this team. I’m not really sure why. I love to watch baseball in person, and I love to write about it, but I don’t have the attention span for the 162-game regular season. It’s hard for me to carve out a couple hours every evening at 7:05 p.m. for baseball. There are other things I want to watch, other things I want to do, other things I want with my time.
But as the summer dragged on, more often than not, I had the Phillies on in the evenings. I dragged out my spare desk and had it in position so I could set it up in the living room in front of the TV if I wanted to do work while watching them. I made an effort to get down for a game in August. By the time September rolled around, I was fully Phillies-pilled.
Maybe it was the dingers, maybe it was Bryce Harper, maybe it was the dirtbag, himboness of them. But most of all, I think it was a want to have a connection back to Philadelphia — one that the Eagles won’t give me, one that isn’t as strong with the Sixers. And the playoff run did just that.
It was my favorite part of the year. I relished turning a game on and texting with my friends what was going on. When the six-run ninth inning happened against the Cardinals in the NLWC, I was watching on my phone on a flight to Dallas. I watched the clinching game the next night at a bar in Dallas. The next week, I was picking up my rental car in Detroit when the Phillies broke open the NLDS against the Braves. I watched in the press box at Michigan Stadium the next afternoon when they clinched.
I dug deep into my “unreasonable itinerary” bag the next week for the NLCS. Chris got us tickets for Game 3, so I drove from State College to Philly that Friday afternoon, went to the game — an unreal environment that I’ll never forget — and then went out until last call. Then, I got up and drove back to State College for the White Out that night and watched from the press box as the Phillies moved to the brink. I got back up the next morning on three hours sleep and drove back to Philadelphia. I wanted to be there when they clinched, even if I wasn’t in the stadium. I felt like I had never wanted anything that badly when Harper hit his home run in the eighth. I took a tequila shot on Broad Street a couple blocks from where my great-grandparents lived. It was surreal.
Sports are both bad and good, but the rediscovery of community was a driving force for my Phillies fandom in the playoffs. It unlocked a feeling that I hadn’t felt in a long time. There was a joy in tweeting out, “Throw me into the Delaware” — a line from The Wonder Years’ new album — after each win.
And of course, it felt appropriate that I was alone when the World Series ended, listening to the radio call as I drove from Bloomington back to Indianapolis. There were so many swings during that run, but when I look back on 2022, its memory will be what persists.
Some thoughts on 2022
To be frank, there was plenty that I didn’t like about 2022, but that’s mostly because I wasn’t ready for what the adjustment to it would be. 2021 was a year of so much upheaval, personally and professionally, that I was always moving. The motion was continuous over the course of the year, and really, May through the end of the year are a blur.
2022 was the year that things started to settle down and where I had to begin to live with the changes that happened in 2021. I wasn’t really ready for it. I wanted the motion to continue and I wanted to keep racing around. I didn’t want to really have to sit with things. And in doing so, there was plenty that I didn’t like.
There was a lot that didn’t happen in 2022: I feel into some more sedentary patterns and became more unhealthy; I stopped keeping track of new music that I was listening to; I stopped keeping track of what I was readying; I stopped being creative; I stopped keeping track of what I was watching; I stopped taking photographs; I stopped seeking new and interesting things out. There was a distinct lack of curiosity in 2022.
On the negative end, it’s one of my big takeaways from the year, and it’s one of the more significant things that I’m considering entering 2023. I want to be more creative and I want to be more curious.
But there was still plenty of 2022 that stands out to me: Dan’s bachelor party in January; a new job; the Phillies; spending May bouncing between D.C., Richmond, Charlottesville, Puerto Rico, The Hamptons; seeing Cloud Nothings in November; turning 30; Dan and Jess’s wedding; going back to Baltimore for Amams’ wedding; going back to Oregon for the first time in three years; another White Out; visiting Kaz & Tali in Texas and going to the Red River Shootout; checking The Big House off my list; seeing Pavement; getting a PS5 (lol); making the extra effort to see some friends when I was in the vicinity; going to Vermont; going to Michigan. I know I’m missing so much in there, too.
I do appreciate all of it greatly. This is the trick: Forget a terrible year. 2022 was another year.
Some thoughts on 2023
It’s pouring in LA right now (I’m writing this Wednesday), and I want to venture out from my hotel room, but it’s really hard to think about making that effort. I want to do things outdoors when I’m in Los Angeles, and it’s not conducive to that right now. (I will stand outside in the rain and eat at Tacos Arizas, though).
I got drinks and fries with Kyle last night in Koreatown, and I texted him this morning that it feels like a level of maturity and contentment to feel fine with sitting in my hotel room this morning and not feel the urge that I have to leave, that I have to be out there. I’ll get there when I get there.
A New Year’s resolution that came to me this morning: Use the word “ambivalent” with its proper definition instead of using it as a substitute for “apathetic.” As a words guy, I guess that goes for the rest of the words out there, too.
The New Year doesn’t begin in earnest for me until Monday or Tuesday because of travel and work stuff, but I can feel myself already creating some momentum for the year. Maybe that’s the two $5 large coffees on an empty stomach. But I’m having a fleeting moment of positivity that I feel like I need to capture. So that’s what I’m doing.
So far, “ambivalent” usage is my only New Year’s resolution or goal. There will be time later today and this week and next week to write down more. But while I think 2023 will be another year — and therefore another terrible year to forget — I’m planting some seeds for things I want to do and accomplish. It’s the type of feeling that I’ll need to remember and capture in mid-February and again in early June and again on a 95-degree day in September and again when it starts snowing and the sun disappears in mid-November.
Where am I going to be a year from now? I guess I’ll find out.
Some books I read in 2022
Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang
The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality by Mike Sielski
You Will Never Be Forgotten: Stories by Mary South
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump by Spencer Ackerman
Blue Nights by Joan Didion
Severance by Ling Ma
Architects of an American Landscape: Henry Hobson Richardson, Frederick Law Olmstead, and the Reimagining of America’s Public and Private Spaces by Hugh Howard
How to Beat a Broken Game: The Rise of the Dodgers in a League on the Brink by Pedro Moura
Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados
Drifts by Kate Zambreno
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
How to Be Normal by Phil Christman
Mercury Retrograde by Emily Segal
How Did You Get This Number: Essays by Sloane Crosley
The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi
South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion
The Odyssey by Lara Williams
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Look Alive Out There by Sloane Crosley
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
After Henry by Joan Didion
How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
Miami by Joan Didion
Luster by Raven Leilani
The Clasp by Sloane Crosley
How Life Imitates the World Series by Thomas Boswell
The Long Season by Jim Brosnan
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Books I started in 2021 but still haven’t finished: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville; Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe.
Books I started in 2022 but still haven’t finished: The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020 by Rachel Kushner; A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.
Books I started in 2023 but still haven’t finished: Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy that Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994-2007) by Dan Ozzi.
Some articles I liked in 2022
These are the articles that were starred and/or had the ‘2022’ tag in my Pocket queue:
“Back To Normal Isn’t Enough” by Kelsey McKinney in Defector
“What Do Aaron Rodgers and Shailene Woodley ‘Agree to Disagree’ About?” by Rachel Handler in Vulture
“happy accommodations” by Brandon Taylor in sweater weather
“nothing stops” by Helena Fitzgerald in Griefbacon
“How To End” by A.J. Daulerio in The Small Bow
“SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE 22” by Meagan Garvey in SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE
“One year later, explaining my decision to leave sports writing; the only job I ever wanted” by Josh Vitale in Medium
“After Surviving a High School Shooting, He Was ‘An Empty Shell. No Emotion.’ Now What?” by Michael Rosenberg in Sports Illustrated
“Why Is Everything So Ugly?” by The Editors in n+1
“30 Under 30 Forever” by A.J. Daulerio in The Small Bow
The funniest thing I saw online in 2022
Rob’s thread of AI-generated imagery was the best and funniest thing I saw online this year:
Thank you for reading the 103rd edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
She had wet hair
Say what you will
I don't care
I couldn't resist it
—D.G.