How’s your winter going? This season has been cold and intense, so we asked readers on Instagram how they’re keeping up their spirits, and hundreds of replies came rolling in. Here, 11 readers share great ideas for staying upbeat…

Above: “I’m a teacher in Minneapolis. During these months of ICE operations, we are hugging and caring for our students, staff and neighbors to the max. Here’s me and my bff, Otis, barely managing. Thank you so much for giving our community the attention it deserves.” — Mel

“Museums are big for my daughter and me. They get us out of the house, slow us down, and remind us there is beauty everywhere. We recently saw the Monet exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Watching my daughter take in the colors made the experience feel so joyful.” — Fariha

“My friends and I went all out to plan an Ina Garten themed dinner to celebrate her birthday. We even dressed up as Queen Ina, complete with bob wigs. The dinner itself was delicious (shoutout to Ina for the recipes!) and included tomato crostini with whipped feta, balsamic roasted beet salad, orange-roasted rainbow carrots and baked rigatoni with lamb ragù, and brownie pudding. I showed up in a big denim shirt exclaiming ‘how easy is that?!’” — Tenley (second from left)

“Five years ago, we moved to the Pacific Northwest. Be prepared for the rain, they said. Yeah, yeah we get it, it’s wet. No, but for real — it’s dark and cold and rains so, so much! Solution: sauna. All sorts of studies that talk about the health benefits, but wow does it warm you up and make you feel great. Bonus? Selfies in the sauna are hawt.” — Rosalyn

“Three of my neighbors and I have been hosting an art night where we teach each other crafts. A few months ago, I taught linoleum block printmaking. Before the holidays, we did pinch pots and sgraffito with my potter friend. Next up, jewelry making and felting. It’s been wonderful to spend time with women of different ages, and these meetups have inspired so much laughter and community.” — Susan

“My husband and I first tried cold water swimming during the pandemic. I just wanted to…feel something. I immediately got addicted to the high, he was like ‘that was fun, never again!’ Now, I’ve been doing it for six years, and my swimming friends and I call ourselves the North Fork Polar Bears. I’ve trained myself to stay in the water for 15 minutes. Learning to stay is a whole other art, and it’s just that: staying. Before I go in, I feel excited and nervous, and when I get out, I feel a rush of dopamine.” — Leah

“I bought a few Himalayan salt lamps, and I love turning them on and lighting all my candles. I’ve reframed the narrative: instead of ‘ugh, it gets so dark so early,’ I’ll say, ‘It’s time for my mood lighting.’” — Destinee

“Our Run Club has been going strong for 10 years. We lace up in the early morning, two or three times a week, year round. But the real power of Run Club shines in winter. Slogging through snowy sidewalks, jumping over puddles, and running in the dark on a 10° morning leaves us feeling alive! We end our runs with a coffee and gab session before dashing off to work or home to help with the morning kid shuffle. Knowing there is a gaggle of gal pals waiting on the sidewalk at 6:30 a.m. donning Yaks Traks and headlamps, gets us out of bed and through the season together.” — Sara

“My kids play travel hockey, so we are often doubling down on the cold with weekday practices and weekend games. We’re all excitedly following the Olympics, especially hockey and speed skating.” — Clothilde Ewing

“Out of nowhere, I have become a suburban bird watcher. It has been very cold here in Stockholm, so I randomly put up a bird feeder in the apple tree in front of our kitchen window. We’ve fed birds before, but I was never that interested. Now I’ve been spending weekends standing by the window and looking up common winter birds in Sweden to identify them. My husband seems as perplexed by this as I am!” — Mina

“I live in a particularly wintry Canadian city: Ottawa (hello, Heated Rivalry, season two!). I usually spend the season cross-country skiing, but now with a baby, our weekly highlight has become Mom + Baby Aquafit at a local pool, which I was delighted to discover is heated! Bliss! It’s very soothing on sore muscles from rocking and carrying the baby everywhere. Some babies get so relaxed that they even fall asleep.” — Fiona

We’d love to hear your ideas for beating the winter blues, if you’d like to share. Thank you so much! xoxoxo

P.S. Ten readers share their winter outfits, and 14 (more) ideas for staying upbeat this winter.

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By Robert Scucci
| Published 4 seconds ago

Working as an office drone is the worst possible way to spend your time, especially if your doppelganger is showing up for work, running circles around you, and tarnishing your good name. Not only does Jesse Eisenberg’s doppelganger do all of these things in 2013’s The Double, nobody else at work seems to notice that his primary antagonist is his exact body double. It’s a bleak reminder of how little your coworkers actually pay attention to things like who they’ve been working with for the past seven years, what they look like, and what they do for a living.

After thinking about it for a minute, it’s not even that far-fetched of a scenario. Having to wear a shirt and tie, commute to a central office, and sit in a cubicle inside a windowless room, all while attending meetings that could have been an email, only to be rewarded with a slice of room-temperature pizza left over from yesterday’s sales meeting, is more than enough to suck the soul right out of you and turn you into a shell of a man who locks in without soaking in their surroundings.

While The Double is clearly an unrealistic story, what’s depicted here doesn’t feel that far removed from what office culture could easily devolve into over the next decade. 

An Office That Makes Office Space Look Like A Beach Paradise

Set mostly in oppressively dank apartment buildings, corner offices, and cubicles, The Double centers on Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg), an office drone of the highest order who’s wandering aimlessly through life. Though everyone at the office works for a cold-hearted authority figure known only as The Colonel (James Fox), it’s never made entirely clear what anyone actually does for a living. It’s obvious they’re clerks for some wide-reaching, dystopian government agency, but beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.

This level of impersonality in The Double feeds directly into its central conflict. Simon frequently forgets his ID badge and is never recognized by the security guards or his coworkers. He has to sign a visitor’s form just to go to work, as if he barely exists. Simon feels this same kind of invisibility when it comes to his coworker Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), who lives in the apartment building across from him but doesn’t even know he’s there. He admires her from afar, often collecting her torn-up art projects and saving them in a notebook for himself.

It’s a lonely existence for Simon James, until he meets his doppelganger, James Simon (also Jesse Eisenberg), who appears out of nowhere and suddenly starts working at the same office.

James Simon is everything Simon James is not in The Double, which immediately creates a number of problems. Simon is shy, reserved, and lacking confidence, content to blend into the background and quietly move through life. James, on the other hand, is charming, assertive, and instantly recognized as a standout employee, despite doing similar work to Simon, who barely gets acknowledged by anyone. Slowly but surely, James begins intruding on Simon’s life, eventually earning Hannah’s affection, much to Simon’s dismay. To make matters worse, nobody at the office seems to notice that Simon James and James Simon are identical, calling Simon’s grip on reality into question.

As Simon spirals, he gets to know James better, and the two even swap places on occasion in an attempt to live in each other’s shoes. These exchanges usually backfire, further straining their already toxic relationship and forcing Simon to question what it even means to be alive.

Sounds Like Another Movie That Came Out At The Same Time

Based on the 1846 novel of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Double shares a similar premise with 2013’s Enemy, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. While it might be tempting to chalk this up to parallel development, the coincidence is actually stranger than that. Enemy is based on a completely different novel from 2002, also titled The Double, written by José Saramago.

Both films explore what happens when two perfectly identical men occupy the same space, and the personal fallout that follows when one’s likeness is used by someone else with questionable intentions. While they tell very different stories, they make for an interesting double feature if you want to see how two doppelganger narratives released in the same year end up echoing each other in unexpected ways, as if they were each other’s doppelgangers all along.

Strangely enough, both films also exist within liminal, brutalist environments, trapping their protagonists in fluorescently-lighted spaces as their identities fracture and their personal lives collapse while they try to figure out where they belong in the world.

As of this writing, The Double is streaming for free on Tubi. Enemy, which explores similar themes and came out the same year, is currently streaming on Max.