The Items Our EIC Can’t Commute Without

First, the bag. Because I am a little bit of a walking cliche, I have carried one Filson bag or another for pretty much my entire adult/professional life. I’m currently using the Padded Computer Bag, which it turns out has recently been “archived” by the brand, so I’m including the slightly smaller and far more ubiquitous Original Briefcase here. Carrying it won’t exactly cause you to stand out from the crowd, but I like to think it communicates to the world around you that you know a classic, good-looking, well-made product when you see one.

I have been trying my best this year to live at least some small portion of my life without my eyes being glued to a screen. Given that my job title is editor-in-chief of a digital publication, it has not been easy, but I’m taking wins where I can find them — and these two notebooks have been among my biggest. The Rhodia is specifically optimized for note-taking during meetings, with an extremely handy sidebar section for those pesky “next steps” everyone likes to talk about (and then ignore). The Midori is a more premium feeling and looking notebook that lends itself well to more creative endeavors. Both feel really great to write on, but the Midori in particular makes it feel like every thought you have is going to change the world.

Many moons ago, when I was an editor at a print publication and I was forced to make edits on actual printouts of magazine pages, which I would then pass back to the art department so that they could make my changes, each of us on the edit team used a different color pen so that the art team knew who to go to if they had any questions. We all used Pilot V5s. The editor-in-chief used red, of course; the managing editor used blue, and I, the lowly music editor, used green. That was in 2005, and 20 years later I have stuck with it, and at any given moment there are 3-5 of them on my person or within arm’s reach. They didn’t make the retractable ones back then, but now they do, and I’m all in.

I would not blame you for skipping right over this section because, wow, how interesting that I have chosen AirPods as my primary headphones for commuting. As something of a snob when it comes to audio quality, I resisted using them for a very long time, opting instead for more expensive options from dedicated, high-end audio brands. And while it’s true that, up until a certain point, at least, those brands were offering more in terms of sound, that playing field has been leveled in a serious way, to the point where everything else about the AirPods Pro 2 makes it an obvious choice — especially if you work within the Apple ecosystem. The battery lasts forever, they fit a wide range of ear shapes very well, and they connect like magic every single time, without fail, which is definitely not something I could say for any of the $400 options I used previously.

Sometimes it feels like roughly 55 degrees in my office, while at other times I would swear we’re butting up against 100. And I’m sorry, but sometimes I get sweaty, so I like to keep a stick of deodorant in my bag. Currently, I’m getting along famously with the Black Rose & Oud scent from the buzzy Salt & Stone. Highly recommended.

Because I use prescription sunglasses, I don’t have the luxury of being able to switch them out as frequently as I’d like, so I made the decision a while back to stick with the classic Wayfarer. And while I don’t exactly regret it, I do find myself occasionally lusting after something a bit different. I love this pair from Oliver Peoples, for instance. My Wayfarers get the job done, though.

I don’t know if it’s just because I’m old or what, but I have found in recent years that my hands become painfully cold pretty much immediately upon being exposed to frigid winter temperatures. I keep an old pair of cashmere-lined brown leather Brooks Brothers gloves in my bag for my commute, and I don’t know what I’d do without them. They seem to be discontinued, though, and if I had to replace them tomorrow, I’d look directly toward this pair from Dents, via Todd Snyder.

Extremely dry hands are yet another result of the frigid temperatures I mentioned above, so I’ve taken to keeping a tube of moisturizing hand cream in my bag at all times. I’ve experimented with some others, but this classic Kiehl’s offering is tough to beat.