happy sunset

Jan 04, 2025

Several chimneys silhouetted against a splash of dark gray clouds tinged fiery orange by the sunset. The sky is a gradient from goldenrod to light gray in the background. A plane contrail is visible, faintly glowing red against the clouds. Brooklyn, NY - November 15, 2024

Sometime in October 2023, in the midst of a ROUGH year, I erratically decided to try to catch the sunset every day. I needed more outdoor time, and it seemed to help my lizard brain to say goodbye to the sun intentionally instead of abruptly finding myself in complete darkness, especially as the days got shorter and colder. I had also recently returned to Instagram after a 3 year hiatus, and thought that posting the sunset—something that was once considered the peak of banality—would be a lightly subversive and maybe healthier way to engage with the platform: a regular signal to appease the algorithm, but one that conveyed barely any information.

So on days when I could, I ran down all the stairs with whatever music I was caulking my brain wrinkles with that day and escaped out into the golden light. Some days I dérived around the neighborhood, scouting out ideal photo locations; other days I just sat on a bench by the basketball courts in the park and watched the colors spill across the sky to the squeak of shoes on asphalt. When I truly couldn't escape a meeting in time, I tried to at least sit by the window like a sailor's wife and make eye contact with the pinkening horizon. Most days, I took a picture and shared the moment on IG stories.

A ring of trees and a tall brownstone is silhouetted against a blue gradient sky spotted with little puffy clouds, some of which are catching gold at their edges Brooklyn, NY - November 9, 2023

14 months and some new living situations later, I'm still doing this more often than not. I'm not a perfectionist about it by any means—I miss probably one out of every three or four, and I don't even bother trying on days when it's rainy or completely overcast. There's been some tech upgrades: I dusted off my old digital micro four-thirds, and I set up some automation so that my phone yells "SUNSET IS IMMINENT" in a robot voice so that I don't lose track of time. In the winter, it gives me 15 minutes of notice so that I can bundle up and scramble up to the roof I'm not supposed to be on. In warmer weather, I get a luxurious 30 minutes to wrap up whatever I'm doing and trek to the park, where I can watch the sunset while touching literal grass. Sometimes I catch it from a skyscraper in Midtown, a beach on vacation, reflected off of a glass building from a hotel room, in between buildings as I scamper to an errand. Every one manages to be different: so many configurations of colors, cloud formations, bird and plane traffic.

A messy grid of photos of the sunset taken from similar vantage points sits on a hardwood floor. Some of the sunsets are bombastic, others just muted gradients. The photos range in brightness and weather.

Why am I writing about this? Mostly, I want to commemorate something that has been a really positive part of my life, and to share it in case it inspires anyone else to find a similar ritual. As someone who's always been bad with routines, sunset time has helped me understand why other people love them so much. It's quietly joyful to make a date with myself and decide that it's important enough to keep most of the time. It's nice to just do something to mark the passage of time, which has been made ever more viscous and goopy by our supersonic news cycles. If sunsets aren't your thing, then take the same walk season after season (unless you live in a place where the weather don't change, lol), text your friends about the moon, get really serious about fruit harvests, treat celestial phenomena with feral religious zealotry. Give yourself a little time to sync your body's clock with the rhythms of our world.

Looking at a sunset over Albany from across the Hudson River. There aren't very many clouds in the sky, but each one is dark gray and lined with a vivid coral red. The sky itself is a beautiful gradient from deep blue to pale gold. Albany, NY - July 3rd, 2024