Twitter, though, I love. I’m so used to instant gratification; I have an idea and I want to say it right away to see if its funny, if people respond to it, if people have other ideas to add to it — or do I like it less once I see it written down? Twitter is just a really fun and handy way to get ideas out there.
I use Twitter for news a little bit. I’m really not a journalist and I don’t do a ton of newsy pieces. Occasionally I’ll write about something that’s going on recently, but I really don’t do a ton of stuff that’s tied to current events. As far as other websites, I’ll check out the same things that everyone else does like Buzzfeed and Gawker – not on a daily basis really, but probably on a weekly basis. And I like to read Feministing on occasion, and I read Autostraddle, but that’s more of a monthly read for me. I like to read the San Francisco Chronicle. I think Caille Millner is fantastic; I try to read her at least a couple of times a month. I don’t read Reddit really. Every once in a while someone will send me a link to something and I’ll check it out. And I don’t really use Instagram or anything. I just signed up for Today in Tabs, but some times I have to let it build up until Friday to go through it.
When I was working a day job I had more time for reading blogs – which you shouldn’t do. You should work if you have a day job, but I didn’t. I read a lot more blogs and websites that I’ve since forgotten, but I have to write so much that I need to spend a lot of time thinking about my own ideas and figuring out whether or not they work. So I spend more time writing than I do reading during the day, but I like to catch up as much as I can after work. It’s not a conscious decision to not read so much, but it’s not really my main focus.
So I’m vaguely aware of the news in the way most people are, which is to say I’ll have looked at a newspaper or I’ve been in a room with a TV on or I click on headlines, but usually my first concern for the day is "What am I going to write?", not "What do I need to know?"
Writing about literature helps with that. I did all my news getting in high school and college, and now I’m slowly vomiting it back into the world. On any given day I am reading P.G. Wodehouse, that it just a given. I’ve been trying to be read a little more young adult literature this year because I haven’t in years past, so I’ve been trying to get caught up. I really loved Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and I’m reading Rainbow Rowell's upcoming book, Landline, that she sent me, which is really fun because she’s my favorite human being in the world and I love to read everything she writes.
I used to have a subscription to The New Yorker, because my grandmother got it for me, but I think it ran out. And I get Cook’s Illustrated because I do a feature about [editor-in-chief] Chris Kimball and frankly I’m obsessed with him. I got my phone, which is an HTC One, because I read in an interview that he has one, and he’s such a perfectionist guy that I thought he knows what’s up, and it would be a good way to talk to him if I ever met him. I think a lot about what I would do if I met Chris Kimball; I’d say about 10 percent of my thoughts any given day are concocting really casual scenarios where we happen to run into each other and we become best friends. He’s so terrifying and he’s the weirdest man in the world and I love him.