Emerson

6:30ish: I wake up when my black cat, Tesla, returns to bed after eating breakfast and jam-curls her body into my side and goes back to sleep. Several minutes later, my partner F’s alarm chirps. I’m off work today, but she’s not. She goes back to sleep, but I can’t manage it. Instead, I turn to my phone and google different descriptions of the symptoms I’m having, despite having gone to the doctor and gotten a prescription. Health anxiety is very stupid.

7:30: I snap myself out of my hypochondriac spiral and go eat a banana. I get back in my warm bed with T and put on a podcast to keep myself from obsessing. I put the finishing touches on a post for the bookstore’s Instagram, inspired by The Substance. Before F leaves for work, I check in with her about buying tickets to an event at World Cafe in January and make her look at the Instagram post I made. I sleep on and off until…

9:15: My please-don’t-sleep-the-entire-day-away alarm goes off, and I’m pleased to report my brain actually processes it. By now, F and L have both left for work. I laze for a couple minutes, but the sound of our cat Carl’s plaintive mews proves too much: I must get up and pet him. I pluck one of last night’s chocolate chip cookies off the baking tray on the stove on my way to the family room, where I bestow a thorough belly rub upon Carl until he is satisfied. Carl is our most dog-like cat: He greets my partner L at the door and gazes longing out the window when he departs, revels in physical affection, and has an amiable why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along vibe.

The morning chill prompts a hot shower—more podcast. While I do genuinely enjoy the podcasts I listen to, they also serve as a body double when I’m getting ready in the morning, doing chores, or winding down at night—really, any task or transition I’m reluctant to start. Once I’m dressed, I do a couple tiny tidying tasks and start a load of laundry, the cloth napkins and washcloths I’ll take back to work tomorrow. (The bookstore where I work uses cloth napkins for date nights.)

10:20: Even though I’m technically not working today, I take 10 minutes to reply to a couple work-related emails. Being back in books is both rejuvenating and overwhelming. I basically want to work all the time, even though I give 120% out of excitement and end up exhausted. Before I moved to Philly in 2023, I worked at an indie bookstore in Maryland for eight years. My new job in Philly is the first time I’ve ever been a manager, and it’s more emails than I’ve ever received in my life. Some days I feel like I’m absolutely crushing it, and other days, I’m like uhhhh what am I doing. I love it, though. I write everything down and keep three different to-do lists. Thank you, Google Tasks. 

10:45: The moment of truth: Will I get sucked into season 5 of Virgin River, Netflix’s finest original production? Will I make a breakfast that is not a single chocolate chip cookie? Will I fall back asleep? Read a book? The unstructuredness of my days off can be daunting, but I know I need to cherish it before the craziness of the weekend at the bookstore. I decide I’ll make breakfast and reward myself with a jaunt down the block to Reanimator, where I can get a chai and read. 

Being in a reading slump as a bookseller is both embarrassing and totally normal. It happens to every bookseller I know. We’re expected to keep up with new releases, review titles publishers send us, read books for book clubs and events, read books that win awards, and read for fun, somehow, too. I read in bursts—maybe three or four books in a week, followed by two weeks of barely finishing a book. I’ve been in a fallow period (see: the aforementioned Virgin River), but I recently finished a graphic nonfiction book about autism and started a novel out in January 2025 by one of my favorite authors. It’s a middle grade novel about a trans kid who learns the leader of the transphobic “support” group his parents force him to attend may be a demon in disguise. I love the feeling of looking forward to picking a book back up. I’m 34, and it’s still wild to me that there are novels about queer and trans kids, for kids, published by mainstream publishers. 

2:00: I finish two books (I’m a Fan and Sheibeik ) while at Reanimator and grab drinks for F, who is finishing a grad school final this evening, and L, who’s in the middle of his workday. I take L’s latte down the block to his studio, where he does repairs and other sewing projects. He recently built shelves and a desk and hung up some art (including a giant painting of Gandalf), and it looks so cool. 

F gets home early because of the holiday weekend and digs back into her final project. I switch over laundry and try to distract the cats so they don’t wreak havoc in anticipation of dinner. I stress a little bit about work and try not to feel inadequate. 

F suggests a walk, and although I’m tempted to stay immersed in the midgrade novel I’m reading, I go with. We return some library books to the neighborhood branch. We see a black-and-white cat on the library patio, but I forget to get a picture. 

We time it so we get home at exactly… 

5:00 p.m.: Time to feed the cats their dinner! Speaking of, I’m supposed to be brainstorming our dinner but not having much luck. I am the least culinarily gifted of the three of us. Cooking for other people completely overwhelms me completely. 

I decide to ignore the dinner problem, fold the bookstore laundry, and start the new season of Great British Baking Show. I eat a little snack, of course. No one can watch a cooking show without a treat.

7:22 p.m.: I finally, finally, finally send a message to start the process to change my primary care physician and get a referral for a dermatologist. This is one of those to-dos that’s loomed over me for literal months (years?) and took five minutes to kickstart. Now I wait. 

L headed to the grocery store an hour ago to get dinner provisions. We landed on breakfast for dinner, which we do a couple times a month. L makes the best breakfast sandwiches I’ve ever had. Even though I had eggs for breakfast, I’m down for round two. 

After dinner, which is delicious, the rest of the night slips away. I put on a soft t-shirt and a hoodie and sweats. We watch half of Happy-Go-Lucky, and I head to bed before the movie’s over. I’m too sleepy to even partake in my nighttime regimen of Candy Crush/NYT word games/podcast. Tesla, of course, joins me soon after I crawl into bed.

Emerson likes horror movies about the supernatural and demonic possession but not home invasions or slashers. They’re @inperpertuity on Instagram.