What Happens When What Lights You Up Also Keeps You Stuck?
On Emma Brodie's Into the Blue, an AI stew, a yarn grab bag, and a fiddle leaf fig that still needs light water and attention over time.
On the Nightstand
Maybe we have all spent too long pining away for someone who can’t or won’t love us in the way we would like. We try to move on, find ourselves in relationships we are merely using to fill the void, while finding solace in other vices.
Time moves even if we stand still.
The characters in Into The Blue by Emma Brodie are caught in this cycle that is a little hard to name. There is waiting, returning, recalibrating, trying to build something else, and still orbiting the same emotional center.
He disappears. He returns. He disappears again. And she remains tethered to the possibility that this time might be different.
Is it devotion?
The novel uses improvisation as a metaphor for life. We are making it up as we go. But I kept thinking about how uneven that can feel in practice. AJ and Noah don’t always move as equals inside it. Even when she steps away, there is still a sense that she is responding to something he sets in motion.
AJ does try to move on. That detail matters. This isn’t a simple story of waiting. She builds another relationship, another life trajectory, another version of herself that is not defined by Noah.
And still, he remains a gravitational pull she cannot fully step outside of.
I know something about remaining tethered to the possibility that this time might be different. Most of us do. The novel doesn’t judge AJ for it. Neither do I.
By the time the novel moves toward its ending, she has, in a sense, “won” him. Or worn him down. Or finally arrived at the version of the relationship that had always been deferred.
I struggled with that ending. Is there dignity in that kind of story arc? Is there dignity in spending fifteen years waiting for someone to become who you needed them to be? I’m not sure Brodie is asking us to decide. Maybe she’s just asking us to sit with the question. I’ve been sitting with it.
Emma Brodie said in conversation on Reese’s Book Club Live that this book asks what lights you up. What would happen if you just went for it? I kept thinking about that question while reading AJ’s story. She goes for it. Fifteen years of going for it. But what happens when what lights you up is also what keeps you stuck?
That said, there is something compelling about the emotional logic of the story. Even when I resisted parts of it, I understood why AJ remains tethered to Noah. The novel builds a kind of emotional inevitability that is compelling and beautiful to watch unfold.
Into the Blue is an unhurried novel that rewards patience. Readers who loved Normal People or Eleanor & Park will find something here.
Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
In the Kitchen
I did something this year that I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about.
I asked ChatGPT to write me a stew recipe. Not a tweak. Not a substitution. The whole thing.
It felt like a shortcut in a way I couldn’t quite justify, especially for something like cooking, which I’ve always thought of as slower, more intuitive, a place where you learn by doing and adjusting and getting it slightly wrong.
But the stew was…really good.
Good enough that I made it again. Good enough that it’s now in rotation.
And that’s where the tension sits for me. Because I didn’t earn it in the way I usually think about recipes. I didn’t test and adjust or inherit it from someone else, or stumble into it over time. I asked, and it appeared. The discovery process wasn’t there.
I didn’t expect to keep the recipe. Much less use it almost weekly in my crockpot.
I definitely didn’t expect to keep thinking about it. I haven’t turned to AI for recipes since, as I, like many, am struggling to figure out where AI fits actively in our lives.
But darn, that stew, although not pretty, was really, really good.
Where do you stand on this? Do you use AI in this way? I’d love to hear!
On the Needles
It was Local Yarn Shop Day last weekend, and my LYS did something I couldn’t resist.
They offered a “grab bag” option. They would curate boxes put together by the owner and send them out without you knowing exactly what you’d receive.
I ordered one.
There is something slightly unsettling about handing over your preferences like that, especially with yarn. Color, fiber, and texture are usually such personal decisions. I tend to be particular. I like to feel in control of what I’m making before I even begin.
And yet, I loved it.
Opening the box felt like a small shift in that instinct to control every detail. Someone else had chosen the palette, the combinations, the direction. My role was just to receive it and decide what to do next.
It reminded me a little of knitting itself.
You follow a pattern, but you’re also constantly adjusting your tension, gauge, and other small decisions that shape the final piece in ways that aren’t visible at first. There’s structure, but there’s also interpretation.
This just moved that line slightly further back.
I didn’t choose the materials, but I’ll still make something with them. Something that will, eventually, feel like mine.
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In the Garden
There are some days when I’m in a lot of meetings at school. CSE meetings, 504 meetings, team meetings. I love my job, but sometimes being on the screen makes for a long day. I was in meetings most of the day on Monday, and, at some point during my lunch period, decided I wanted a new plant.
Not in a planned way. More like an overwhelming impulse that felt disproportionate to the day I was having. We’ve all had these, right? (Right??)
So I went online and ordered a fiddle leaf fig from my local shop and then went back to my meetings. Yes, my local plant shop delivers. What a power move.
It was on my doorstep when I got home.
There is something slightly disorienting about that kind of immediacy. No wandering the shop, no circling the tables, no second-guessing the choice. Just the decision, and then the object, waiting for you.
And yet, the plant still needs the same things it always would. Light. Water. Attention over time.
Delivery doesn’t change that part.
I write these every week, if you’d like them to find you.
Thumbnail Photo by boris misevic on Unsplash