Aww, I loved this so much. I've been looking for someone to tell me what to do instead of think about the world burning or the state of Texas generally.
My best friend is coming to visit me next weekend and I've been dreaming up the perfect itinerary. This is inspiring me to instead leave room for mindless gallivanting and deep talks fueled by wine and ice cream cones and silliness and lightness and other small glorious things.
Yesterday, while filling out a form on the internet, I was notified in big scary letters “birthdate is not valid” WTF. I saved it because of its absurdity and it made me smile
I needed this so badly today. Thank you. Trying to take deep breaths as I savour each bite of my cold-pizza lunch and admire the way my cat’s mustache looks so different when I see him in a mirror.
Lately, I've been reaching for small joys, or as I call them now, ordinary delights. I realized that I missed feeling delighted in my life. My outlook remained strong for the first year of the pandemic. I was taking the time in quarantine as a personal retreat to reevaluate my life. As the summer of vaccinated reunions came and quickly went, I'm finding it harder to access the optimism that I saw as inherently part of me in past years. Perhaps I am also missing the spaces and faces that make me feel like it's okay to be my quirkiest authentic self. No small thing at all.
And this weird hyper-specific piece is brilliant evidence of its own thesis! ✨ It’s definitely the brightest little sparkle in the sand viewed from the nicest resting angle in my beach chair, today. ✨
Which puts the whole narrative of your “Destined for Great Things Writing Day” in one of the best story-shapes ever: “Success, but not at what was originally aimed for, and after a fakeout-failure at the initial goal.” Why is that the best story in the whole world?? I just want to hear it over and over again sometimes...
Love, love, love this: "But when you step away from the darkness online and greet the weird and perfect artifacts you encounter on any given day with focused curiosity, you turn the high-rise mall back into a seaside cottage."
"It’s a Joseph Cornell box that you want to walk straight into, even though you don’t understand why there’s a big old key and some dice and a shell in there."
I was writing this morning about my ongoing contempt for The CMS, the way Course Management Systems (Canvas, Blackboard, and even the best I've used, Brightspace) all routinize education, even WRITING pedagogy, so that so much of the striving involved in learning is just dusty old man radio noise.
Your posts always arrive *just in time*, and I'm so grateful for your apt description of internet affects: "Instead of spending the day watching seagulls diving and falling in the fog, or opening a small door and discovering an empty jam jar filled with costume jewelry, you dash around a neon-lit mall, shouting at strangers, until you can’t remember how it feels to know a lot less and wonder a lot more." Correct. Insanely correct, tyvm.
i love this, and so needed to hear this today. i'm the kind of person that deplores how everything and everyone looks and behaves the same way online, like they were all spat out by the same algorithm... at the same time i approach everything i write with an attitude of, "how do i get the algorithm to love ME??" i worry that the things i write about are too niche, and then i worry that they're not niche enough. and that worry extends to everything else too: it feels like i'm rating every aspect of myself -- my appearance, my resume, the things i say -- against all the people that i admire in those respective categories at all times, on a sliding scale that always winds up tipping to "never enough" (what a profoundly female experience). i worry that this panopticon in which i watch myself relentlessly will stifle whatever words are in me. i'm old enough and have produced little enough that i know that my dreams of a book deal or even a sustained list of publications are NOT inevitable... they won't just "happen," the way i imagined they would if i just gave it enough time!
anyways... want to reiterate the goodness of your advice here. it takes so much bravery to know and explore and commit to one's idiosyncrasy. i admire it in you.
Aww, I loved this so much. I've been looking for someone to tell me what to do instead of think about the world burning or the state of Texas generally.
My best friend is coming to visit me next weekend and I've been dreaming up the perfect itinerary. This is inspiring me to instead leave room for mindless gallivanting and deep talks fueled by wine and ice cream cones and silliness and lightness and other small glorious things.
Yesterday, while filling out a form on the internet, I was notified in big scary letters “birthdate is not valid” WTF. I saved it because of its absurdity and it made me smile
I needed this so badly today. Thank you. Trying to take deep breaths as I savour each bite of my cold-pizza lunch and admire the way my cat’s mustache looks so different when I see him in a mirror.
Lately, I've been reaching for small joys, or as I call them now, ordinary delights. I realized that I missed feeling delighted in my life. My outlook remained strong for the first year of the pandemic. I was taking the time in quarantine as a personal retreat to reevaluate my life. As the summer of vaccinated reunions came and quickly went, I'm finding it harder to access the optimism that I saw as inherently part of me in past years. Perhaps I am also missing the spaces and faces that make me feel like it's okay to be my quirkiest authentic self. No small thing at all.
You and Jia T are two of my favorite geniuses. And you’re cited in the article!
This, as with many many many of your newsletters, is exactly what I needed to read today. Thank you 😊
This inspired me to write some weird shit instead of finishing what I was working on. so...thanks?
And this weird hyper-specific piece is brilliant evidence of its own thesis! ✨ It’s definitely the brightest little sparkle in the sand viewed from the nicest resting angle in my beach chair, today. ✨
Which puts the whole narrative of your “Destined for Great Things Writing Day” in one of the best story-shapes ever: “Success, but not at what was originally aimed for, and after a fakeout-failure at the initial goal.” Why is that the best story in the whole world?? I just want to hear it over and over again sometimes...
I loved this, thank you.
Love, love, love this: "But when you step away from the darkness online and greet the weird and perfect artifacts you encounter on any given day with focused curiosity, you turn the high-rise mall back into a seaside cottage."
"It’s a Joseph Cornell box that you want to walk straight into, even though you don’t understand why there’s a big old key and some dice and a shell in there."
I was writing this morning about my ongoing contempt for The CMS, the way Course Management Systems (Canvas, Blackboard, and even the best I've used, Brightspace) all routinize education, even WRITING pedagogy, so that so much of the striving involved in learning is just dusty old man radio noise.
Your posts always arrive *just in time*, and I'm so grateful for your apt description of internet affects: "Instead of spending the day watching seagulls diving and falling in the fog, or opening a small door and discovering an empty jam jar filled with costume jewelry, you dash around a neon-lit mall, shouting at strangers, until you can’t remember how it feels to know a lot less and wonder a lot more." Correct. Insanely correct, tyvm.
i love this, and so needed to hear this today. i'm the kind of person that deplores how everything and everyone looks and behaves the same way online, like they were all spat out by the same algorithm... at the same time i approach everything i write with an attitude of, "how do i get the algorithm to love ME??" i worry that the things i write about are too niche, and then i worry that they're not niche enough. and that worry extends to everything else too: it feels like i'm rating every aspect of myself -- my appearance, my resume, the things i say -- against all the people that i admire in those respective categories at all times, on a sliding scale that always winds up tipping to "never enough" (what a profoundly female experience). i worry that this panopticon in which i watch myself relentlessly will stifle whatever words are in me. i'm old enough and have produced little enough that i know that my dreams of a book deal or even a sustained list of publications are NOT inevitable... they won't just "happen," the way i imagined they would if i just gave it enough time!
anyways... want to reiterate the goodness of your advice here. it takes so much bravery to know and explore and commit to one's idiosyncrasy. i admire it in you.