I did an event in 2017 with Connie Britton where I interviewed her about her work on stage for Smithsonian Associates. During the Q&A, someone asked for some advice, because she was feeling guilty about engaging with pop culture when things feel very difficult out in the world, when it feels like there are all these huge problems to solve. How do you enjoy a show or read a book?
I don’t say much during Q&A sessions, because obviously nobody is there to see me. But I’m not going to lie; on this occasion, I felt like I had some relevant experience. I think about this a lot; I hear from other people about it a lot.
So here’s what I told her, which Emily Yahr of the Washington Post was kind enough to write down and put in the paper:
Did you see ‘The Martian’ with Matt Damon? He’s got a big thing he’s trying to solve, which is that he’s stuck on Mars and he has to get back to Earth. And they spent a lot of time in the movie on the fact that he has to figure out how to grow potatoes on Mars. The potatoes on Mars do not actually get him back to Earth. He’s not actually solving the problem. But if he doesn’t have potatoes, he’s not going to live long enough to solve the problem and get back to Earth.
So, to me, my hope is, the songs that you love, the books that you love, the TV that you love, the conversations that you have about people that are kind of nourishing to you, help you — those are your potatoes . . . and you have to have that stuff in order to make it long enough to get back to Earth.
I’ve returned to this time and time again, and obviously I’ve thought a lot about whether it just makes me feel better, right? About the job I’ve chosen to have, doing cultural criticism and writing fiction? But the thing is … I really think this is true. Remember: the fact that he was growing potatoes didn’t mean he wasn’t also doing other things. It didn’t mean he wasn’t also trying to get back to Earth. It just meant … he had to eat. He had to make it to the next day in order to make it 150 million miles.
So, yeah. Space potatoes. If I’m spending a difficult day playing House Flipper 2 or whatever, that’s one of the things I’m saying to myself, is “space potatoes.”
To say the beginning of 2025 has been depleting is an understatement. Some of that is because of things going on out there in the world, but a lot of it is other stuff that you’ll just have to take my word for. Some of it is even happy stuff (my next book, Back After This, comes out February 25! Pre-order your signed copy from one of my great local bookstores!). And some of it is regular stuff that’s just a lot of stuff (Oscar season is my busiest time at work). Anyway, the upshot is that I cannot possibly deal with all this and also jump into every “I really should” project that there is. I really should clean out the basement. I really should clean out the freezer. I really should donate a bunch of clothes. I really should, I really should, I really should.
And the first thing I thought of was the sequence in Apollo 13 where Ken (Gary Sinise) is back at NASA trying again and again to figure out the right sequence to get the critical functions working without overloading the limited power that they have and making the whole thing shut down. Because there is no point in trying to do everything if it means the whole thing shuts down. You have to make choices. Some of them are bad. Some of them are uncomfortable. Some of them are not what you would do under normal circumstances.
My conclusion is that I can only understand the world via astronaut movies, which makes a certain amount of sense while also being kind of ridiculous. They’re problem-solving, which I like. They’re about people working together to do their best, which I like. Of course, the whole thing falls apart if you push it too far, because you’re in a community, you’re not a single astronaut, all that business. You have to get other people back to Earth, not just yourself, it’s possible to increase the power capacity that you have, yes, yes, all true.
But one thing I did yesterday was play several mystery-type PC games. I played one called Her Story, which is really just spelunking through video clips to try to figure out a murder. I played one called The Roottrees Are Dead, which asks you to assemble a family tree using archival evidence. I’ve also been playing Pentiment on the PS5, which asks you to run around the 16th century gossiping with a bunch of townspeople to figure out who stabbed a guy. (The spinning bee is a hotbed of gossip, it turns out.)
I feel like I can be well aware that none of these things solve any of my actual problems, while also forgiving myself for wanting to exercise the figuring-out parts of my brain. Astronaut movies and mystery games, maybe. (And yes, I have Return of the Obra Dinn; I just haven’t plunged into it yet.)
I have not given up on getting back to Earth. But for now: breakfast.