Last night, my husband and I watched an episode of Julia, the HBO Max show based on Julia Child’s life during the production of her television cooking show, The French Chef. I remember re-runs of the program on PBS when I was a kid, but I wasn’t interested in cooking then. I don’t think I ever watched a single episode.
But last night, after Julia finished, my husband suggested we look for The French Chef on YouTube. We ended up watching two episodes, and I learned more about cooking in those sixty minutes than in the last decade. Both of us were transfixed. Preparing dishes like Boeuf Bourguignon and Coq au Vin has always seemed so complicated—even mysterious—to me. But Julia convinced me I could do it.
Beyond my new appreciation for Julia Child, the HBO Max show got me thinking (again) about something unrelated to cooking: I waste too much time on the internet and, specifically, on social media. My Twists & Turns newsletter focuses on uncluttering our minds so we can get our creative work done, and for me, social media is almost exclusively clutter. So little substance is found there—and it gets worse all the time—that it’s mind-numbing. Clutter begets more clutter until there’s no space for anything useful.
