Unless you are magically perfect and always do everything right. (Sad to say, but doubtful.) Or if you’ve decided you’ve done enough to get better and now you can stay the same as you are forever. (Don’t do that. It makes things awkward for the people who have to interact with you.)
I am, at many times, an anxious perfectionist who has to accomplish things or I feel like I haven’t done enough. I have grown more aware of my own foibles over the years and have even come to accept a few of my shortcomings (maybe, just barely). I am making definite strides in the right direction.
But there’s some shit that I’ll just never learn. I’m going to wake up thinking I’ll change it today, then I won’t change it, and then go to bed promising myself I’ll do better tomorrow.
Hilarious.
You’d think by now I would just accept that there is some stuff that’s just not going to happen. But I absolutely will not. My brain is convinced that future me will unlock the key to the secret that changes who I am. (Narrator: She will not.)
Here’s what I should know better but will never actually learn.
I’ll go to bed early tonight.
I absolutely will not do this. Instead I will look up from bottle washing or from dog walking or from folding laundry and sigh heavily.
When I am training for races, I manage to convince myself that I’ll wake up early and run. I don’t. I managed to do this successfully for a stretch of a few months when my first kid was a baby. I will never get that magic back. Instead I will do the four mile run after the kids go to bed. (But don’t worry. I’ll still get to bed early.)
I’ll have more time to read next week.
In addition to going to bed early, I will also read an actual print book in bed before I fall asleep before 10 p.m. Oh wait. No. I won’t do that.
I’ll start regularly cleaning parts of my house on a schedule instead of when it gets too disgusting to stand.
Anyone who has ever known me my entire life can attest that I have never, not once, ever done this. (I sometimes have flickers of understanding, but they never last.)
I’ll get that that show on my watch list.
No, I haven’t seen The Wire or Friday Night Lights or Call the Midwife or Chernobyl or Killing Eve or Homeland or This is Us! Saved on my lists across various apps though. Don’t worry, I’ll never get to them.
I will successfully cook a healthy meal every night, work full time, do all the laundry and the dishes, update my blog, go on a run every night, and still get to bed early every night.
Just a parody of myself at this point.
I’ll invent time travel, go back to the Regency era, and find Mr. Darcy.
I will successfully convince people online that they should be more empathetic.
Never will anyone online be convinced of anything ever. It is why I type out impassioned defenses and then always hit the ol’ backspace before posting anything.
I will come to terms with the fact that I can’t do everything all the time and that’s okay.
Maybe this one’s not fair. I do come to terms with it sometimes and feel good about it on occasion. But it never lasts. Oh! There it is:
The self-improvement efforts I make will stick once I’ve made them and I won’t have to continually work on them like other humans do for reasons.
Turns out self-improvement doesn’t exist on autopilot.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to sign off so I can go to bed early, wake up at dawn to go on a four mile run so I can be ready for a full day of work, using my thirty minute lunch break to fold the laundry and prep dinner. That’ll give me enough time after dinner to read a few chapters and then hit the hay early.
This blog post brought to you by sick children and no sleep brain.
I subscribe to several newsletters and several of them are written by mothers of young children and they often talk about things that get to my soul.
In the past couple weeks as I’ve been starting new things in life and absolutely losing my grip on reality (okay, by reality, I mean dishes), these newsletters have been a source of comfort for me. I also don’t have time to do the things I want to do! I, too, have been neglecting laundry, forcing my husband to run through all the cycles until we end up with absolute mountains of unfolded laundry that need to hastily be folded and put away when we realize nobody has any underwear left.
Or, also as likely, to be folded and put into the correct hampers and then have those laundry hampers sit in your room for a week and you just pick the clean clothes you need out of the hamper as the pile of dirty clothes collects on the floor next to the hamper.
Yeah. I’m not much of a homemaker. Cluttered, disorganized living spaces are my bread and butter. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been absolutely abysmal at keeping my living spaces tidy. My desk at work? Immaculate. My family room? Please don’t look at it, you might go blind.
This problem has only compounded with having small children about. In the before children era of my life, I would just take a weekend to scrub the place down and try to pass myself off as a presentable adult. Now that my weekends are full of…well, kid stuff, I don’t have that option anymore. The only time you have available to vacuum is when the kids are taking naps or have gone to bed and that is not exactly the best time to get that chore done.
Add that to the fact that I’m desperately clinging to the parts of my life that make me feel like a complete adult human separate of having children (hello, blog!) and that causes everything to fall into even more disarray.
Sort of the state of having young kids, right?
NO. Get on the internet and figure out some life hacks, you lazy slob!
The key is motivation. The key is making a schedule. The key is being a magic fairy who can make both your kids sleep for 10 hour stretches uninterrupted. (If you possess this magic, please share.)
I have always liked exploring personal and professional development in the form of exercises and discussions and reading books, but earlier in this week I was in one that struck me in a weird way. The content of the training was great and the advice totally made sense and I thought there were actionable steps in there.
But not ones for me right now, I don’t think.
As the time came to an end, I wanted to ask if the trainer and if anyone else in the class had babies or once had babies and if they had any advice on how to wrangle the steps into being when you also shared a house with chaos.
I can set my running shoes out the night before and set the alarm early to get up and exercise. But what if I am up four times in the night? What if one of the kids wakes up before my early alarm even goes off? Where does the scale land when it comes to trying to balance getting enough sleep for the night and getting a two mile run in?
In the fall of 2019, a time so distant and beautiful I can scarcely remember it, I used to take the nights when it wasn’t my turn to put the toddler down and go to the gym, where I would run as many miles as I wanted to.
Now I never have a night off from bedtime because there are two of them and the baby still nurses and I don’t feel safe going to the gym so I can’t run after dark.
How do I life hack and schedule myself around that?
My husband is a swell dude. I could ask him to cover one night a week and try to go out and run at a more reasonable hour. Assuming it isn’t 90 plus degrees out that day. And then that’s only one run week. Not exactly a pinnacle of fitness over here.
I find this intersection of life approaches extremely interesting. In one corner is a bunch of tired moms (and dads) who are letting some things go just to get in a little relaxation or pursue one measly hobby. In the other is the promise of improvement if you just approach it from the right angle.
Is there a right angle? I don’t know!
Some people would argue that my giant pile of laundry and inability to sweep is not the right angle.
But surely neither is scheduling yourself into a corner so that you must run yourself ragged trying to get done all the things you want to get done.
Is the answer that there are simply no life hacks? That you can’t do all the things? Is that what prioritization is really about? Realizing that you have the pick the most important one and let the others fall to the side?
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I have a storied history as a perfectionist who can’t let things go. So it’s hard to accept I can’t do everything I want. I just have to try a little harder, schedule it out a little better!
Or I maybe I accept the encroaching entropy and do the little part I can to push back against it. Without sweating so much about all the rest of it.
So I guess my life hack is…let go of the life hacks.
And don’t worry so much about the unfolded laundry.
It really depends on your tolerance for long set ups and seemingly unrelated events happening. Also, as to be expected with a book written in the 1800s, there is some gender nonsense.
The book is largely a romp. But it’s a really long romp and sometimes it forgets that it should be romping along and instead starts meandering into asides and anecdotes. At those times, it is pretty boring!
So here are a couple things to consider when you are considering The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas.
This book is long
This isn’t really the book’s fault. If you think about the way that writing was done at the time this book was written, it would have been released in a serial format. The modern joke about this kind of writing is that Dickens was paid by the word and that’s why is stuff is so long.
Wrong book, right author. Note: This is just Vol. 2 of three. (Photo by Artiom Vallat on Unsplash.)
For reference, a typical audiobook is roughly anywhere between eight and twelve hours long. the audiobook version of Great Expectations is about 18 and a half hours long. The audiobook version of The Count of Monte Cristo that I listened to was 43 hours long.
For a better reference, in case you are not familiar with how long Great Expectations is, Game of Thrones (the first book in the series) clocks in at almost 34 hours and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the longest Harry Potter book) is 26 and a half hours long.
So. This is a long book.
I think read the way it was intended, from week to week or month to month in installments, would get rid of some of the drag. When you’re only getting a chapter or a few chapters at a time, you just want to read the next bit. It warps your sense a little of how long plots take.
When I watch a TV show all in a row that I had previously watched from week to week or when I reread a webcomic that I had read as it was updating, I’m always surprised by how quickly some plots resolve and how others play out. There’s a much different psychology between the two forms of release, and because of that, I hesitate a little to say that the middle part of this book is sometimes bloated, meandering, and boring.
But, well, we read books all in one go now. And the middle part of this book is sometimes bloated, meandering, and boring.
The first quarter and last quarter are fantastic
I say this with the caveat that it helps if you have a little knowledge and historical context. But I think it would still hold up even if you didn’t.
The first part is all about Edmond Dantes getting set up by a trio of goons who are jealous of him/are too drunk to not set him up (just…roll with it). The plotting goons are successful because the judge who reviews the case has some personal motivations for locking Dantes away. The scene where the trio plots to put Dantes away cracked me up. It was so full of fun characters being ridiculous.
The scene with King Louis whatever number he was also cracked me up. I don’t know if additional historical knowledge here helps or if everyone finds a king obsessed with trying to translate Plutarch is funny but I laughed.
The stretch where Dantes is in prison and the escapes is also great stuff. (Spoilers I guess but the book is about a dude getting revenge, so I don’t think is news to anyone.)
Then at the end after many shenanigans and plot machinations, everything starts falling into place. The plots and plans getting carried out or going sideways are all super satisfying. I found the last part of this book really fun to read and it was fun seeing how everything played out. Especially after slogging through some of the boring stuff.
There is some weird gender stuff
It can’t be helped. Some of the way women are written in this book plays out in a way that feels dated to a modern reader. Can we fault Dumas for it? It’s important to note and critique these things, but also, you have to expect it to some extent. If you don’t want to deal with it or only want to read books where this stuff isn’t as much of an issue, that’s totally fine! But here’s a quick rundown if you want more information to make a decision:
The female characters we are supposed to like or admire are pure women of virtue who are kind and naive and are generally angelic creatures who are judged or faulted for not being angelic creatures.
The worldly women who do stuff and are more active tend to have shady pasts or do villainous things (like poisoning a bunch of people).
There is a weird plot point where an innocent young woman (a teenager? someone in her twenties?) ends up in a relationship with an adult man who has been a father figure to her. This one gave me some serious eyebrow raises.
The angelic women can be parts of interesting things happening. For example, I loved the relationship between Noirtier and Valentine. But when the plot focused on Valentine’s hidden love affair? I sped up the playback so it wouldn’t take as long.
It is written in the style of the time
I guess duh on this part, but it still bears repeating: this book does not read like a modern day novel.
The type of language used, the storytelling tropes, even the vocabulary. All of it is a bit old timey. I think the story is good enough and written well enough that it’s not hard to follow, but it does take more concentration up front until you familiarize yourself with the style.
And then just accept that a lot of characters are going to launch into a chapters long stories where they are just talking a ton about something that happened. It will happen a lot. Will you zone out and stop paying attention while they do this? Maybe! Will it cause you confusion later on in the book? Ehhh…probably not.
Should you read it?
Possibly. Consider reading this book if:
You don’t mind reading long books.
You love a good and complicated set up and aren’t afraid to wade through things that don’t initially seem important or relevant.
You are interested in French history around the time of Napoleon trying to make a comeback or the restoration of the French throne.
You want to read more classics.
You like a good social commentary.
You are entertained by the idea of a dude essentially putting on a wig or a pair of glasses to disguise himself and then adopting an exaggerated accent for each one.
Consider avoiding this book if:
You don’t want to spend more than 40 hours of your life reading a single book.
You like it when plots move along at a nice clip and there are not meandering chapters that tell long stories that take awhile to pay off.
You don’t want to read about pure angelic women who must remain virtuous or be punished.
You don’t care about classics or really about French literature or history.
You don’t want to read a book that could have ended a lot sooner at Dantes just gotten therapy after he escaped from prison.
I thought it was worth it for the parts of the book that were a good romp. I thought some scenes were really funny. I liked seeing how all the plotting played out. I would have liked a bit of the story to be cut out.
Bonus points for Eugenie. This book would have been better with more Eugenie.
The movie, not the holiday. The holiday is fine, but fireworks freak out my dogs. The best part about July 4 is that it gives me an excuse to watch ID4 again.
One of the great parts about this movie? The special effects largely still hold up. (Twentieth Century Fox)
I’m not exactly sure where Independence Day falls in the cultural zeitgeist. It’s been my favorite movie since I was like nine (not counting the years where I pretended to be more sophisticated and like other movies better), but does anyone else really care?
All I really know for certain is that I love this dang movie and no matter how beloved it is by the world at large, I will persist in believing it is underrated. My husband also loves this movie and we quote it at each all the time for everyday situations. (Hot tip: Volunteering to drive? Say, “I can drive. I’m a pilot.” Whenever you get home from being out somewhere, say, “Hello boys, I’m baaaaack!”)
In honor of the recent holiday and the ridiculous status this movie has in my household, I’m serving up some fresh quotes that offer life lessons.
All you need is love. John Lennon. Smart man. Shot in the back. Very sad.
Julius Levinson, you wonderful weirdo.
Just to be clear, I’m not agreeing with the advice here. I don’t think all you need is love. There are very real obstacles that get in the way of love and those obstacles drive people apart and break up relationships all the time. David and Connie got divorced for a reason.
What I do support is spouting off quotes and aphorisms and then clarifying who said it and adding your own color commentary: “The early bird gets the worm. Ben Franklin. Invented bifocals. Had syphilis.”
Wouldn’t we all be better for this?
I’ve been sayin’ it. I’ve been sayin’ it for ten damn years! Ain’t I been sayin’ it, Miguel? I’ve been sayin’ it.
We use this one all the time in my house. Russell Casse has been telling everyone for ten (damn) years that he was abducted by aliens and he was a huge joke. Well, guess what? He was right!
The takeaway: Stick to your guns when you know you’re right. Even when people won’t listen. Maybe you can make some headway.
But if you’re driven to drink as a result, might I gently suggest therapy and other forms of help.
We got to work on our communication.
This is classic marriage advice. All married couples should have this embroidered on a pillow or tattooed on their persons or something. Work on your communication! All the time! And try not to withhold important information from your partner, like expecting the aliens to pull you in once you get close enough to the mother ship.
I could’ve been at a barbeque!
Have you been forced into some kind of obligation you would rather not do? (Like say, dragging an unconscious alien life form through the desert?) Unfair. Get mad about it if you want. You could have been doing something else! But now you have to be responsible.
This is why being an adult is not all it’s cracked up to be.
What is this? My God in heaven.
Really the follow up to this line, “So sue me, David!” cracks me up every time. Plus, David is delivering an important message about recycling. Let’s recycle, people.
You really think you can do all that bullshit you just said?
Great rejoinder. David asks Steve, “You really think you can fly that thing?” and then gets zinged back with the above. These characters are fully embodying “Fake it ’til you make it” here and I think that’s beautiful. Plus, both are able to pull off what they claim!
The lesson: Shed your imposter syndrome and embrace the uncomfortable. Make some bold claims and then try to fulfill them!
Well he just, um, did.
Another one said in my house constantly. This is after President Whitmore fires the Secretary of Defense who whines, “He can’t do that.” Well, bro, says Connie, he just did, so get over it.
People are gonna do stuff they aren’t supposed to do all the time. Sometimes it’s shocking and good. Sometimes it’s not as good. But what can you do but adapt?
He wants to impress me, he should get a job. Stop slobberin’ all over my shoes.
Boomer. You good boy. Your job is being a friendly, lovable doggo.
But Steve isn’t wrong. Dogs should get jobs. Freeloaders.
In conclusion
There are many many other quotes I could drop here, but writing this has made me want to go watch the movie again. So I’m afraid I’ll have to cut this short. Let me know if you learned any important life lessons from this classic summer blockbuster.
Looking for a job is pretty stressful and part of that stress is generated by applications. After all the hours you spend crafting a perfect resume and a portfolio and other materials, all you want to do is go find things that look interesting, attach your carefully curated information, and then go spend your time elsewhere.
But it’s not so easy as all that. Sometimes you have to fill out forms, either entering information from scratch or editing autofill forms that are a garbled mess. Sometimes you have to answer questions about availability and salary expectations and years of experiences. And sometimes you have to write a cover letter.
*cue screaming*
“I need a high five after reading the most brilliant cover letter ever!” What happens every time a company reads my application, probably. (Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash)
I have never liked writing job application materials for myself. And the cover letter is one of my most dreaded. For me, it’s impossible to feel good about myself while I’m writing the cover letter. Sometimes I am a little proud of the final result, but I always feel like an exposed dork once it’s been sent off.
Talking about yourself and your accomplishments is hard enough. Doing it in an engaging and meaningful way is difficult. Then, when you don’t get asked for a first round of interviews or receive a form email politely rejecting you, you have to wonder…did anyone read that cover letter in the first place? Are you screaming into a void populated by robots and keyword checkers?
How social media made my blood pressure rise (this time)
I started thinking about the usefulness of cover letters recently as I always do when job searching, and then I saw this post on LinkedIn about whether cover letters are necessary.
I voted yes so I could see the results and because I was feeling salty at the time.
I thought people might have some interesting insights on how useful cover letters were, so I dove into the comments. And…yikes.
A bunch of recruiter and hiring manager types talking about how cover letters were absolutely necessary and good (which is fine). Others discussing how a cover letter automatically moves someone’s application to the top of the pile. How they always moved applications with cover letters to the top of the pile but never actually read them.
I’m sorry, what?
Granted, there are probably plenty of job searchers who just stick a copy/paste cover letter on a resume and move on with their lives, but come on! To just say, “Well they wrote one so they probably care more than everyone else” and then never read them? I don’t like this.
As if reading my mind, LinkedIn then recently showed me this other post:
More of a humblebrag, I think.
I actually find this post hilarious (the author is obviously tongue in cheek here), but it is depressing that the idea cover letters are never read is so pervasive this guy can make a successful joke about it.
Curious about what the people in my life think about this stressful piece of writing, I took to social media.
Conducting some important and scientific research
When I posted a Facebook status asking people what they thought about cover letters, I had no idea the variety of responses I’d get. It turns out my friends are thoughtful humans and all of them had great stuff to say. I had a lot of responses from people who’d hired others and their thoughts on a cover letter’s usefulness.
Some of the points made about how cover letters can be useful:
If you are applying to a writing job, the cover letter can act as a mini writing sample.
If you are making a career change or your resume doesn’t quite match the position, you can fill in the blanks and tell your story.
If your resume isn’t quite as strong but your cover letter is great, that can bump you up the pile.
If the candidate pool is largely recent graduates without much experience, cover letters can help differentiate.
Basically, a good cover letter can help highlight who you are and if the hiring manager reads the letter, it helps them get to know you better and improves your chances.
When cover letters are not so useful:
For jobs where writing skills aren’t that necessary or where it’s much more important to have specific certifications and qualifications that can just be listed on a resume.
When you have a portfolio that highlights relevant work for the position and gives better context than a cover letter would.
When the positions are more entry level and there isn’t much to say about them so writing a cover letter is kind of pointless.
When they contain errors that make the application weaker (in this case, no useful for the applicant).
I had a few people arguing that for writing/marketing positions they wanted cover letters and others who said they’d rather see a portfolio and writing samples for those positions instead of a cover letter. And finally one friend made the brilliant suggestion that if you want a writing sample, consider giving a writing prompt instead of asking for a cover letter.
I want to note that all the above points are great but they are coming from hiring managers. The comments from jobseekers largely said they’d rather not write them. I got a great point that requiring cover letters can be too high a barrier for some applicants and cause extra stress for people who are neurodivergent. Should they pretend to fit the ideal candidate role to get an interview? Is this disingenuous? Will it end making them a bad fit?
A couple people commented that they suck to write but seems like including one increases your chances of getting contacted. Right? Right?
Because I’m a huge nerd, I kept track of my current job search in a spreadsheet. I noted the job, dates applied, when I heard back, and whether I wrote a cover letter.
So out of 19 full-time jobs I applied to, I wrote cover letters for six of those positions. A couple where I didn’t write cover letters required short answer questions, and those took enough time to answer, I figured they didn’t also need a cover letter. I got asked to eight phone interviews. Of those eight positions, I had written cover letters for three.
Which I guess means I had a higher success rate for jobs I didn’t write one for?
Part of this is because I tend to write cover letters for jobs that are more outside of my wheelhouse or are maybe a touch beyond my experience. I’m trying to provide the extra context to show I’m a good fit. But I get weeded out for whatever reason.
This is fine, but it can be sort of demoralizing. Some of the cover letters I worked hardest on, tried to be the most clever with, tried to really show who I was and what I could do got met with nothing but a rejection email. If that means my experience simply wasn’t there, I get that. But then did the cover letter really do anything?
I had one job interview this time around where the interviewer referenced my cover letter, and I was sort of shocked. I don’t know that I’ve ever had that happen before. It was pretty cool. At least I know that they read it!
Why I’d still rather not have to write them
I get that a good cover letter can help make your case. I do.
But writing a good cover letter takes forever. I carefully read the job description and pull out the bullet points that I think are important or that I have good examples for, leaving the points that are covered well enough on my resume. I go to the company website, see what makes them tick, see if they make any points that fit hand in hand with my own experiences. Then I try to craft the letter telling a story about why I want the position, how I’ve done work and have skills relevant to what they’re looking for, making sure to hit those relevant bullet points. After I do that, I have to go back and edit myself, condense my points, make sure everything fits onto a single page. Then I have to read again for proofreading purposes.
This whole process takes roughly an hour, sometimes more. Factoring in the entire application experience, applying to one job can take up to two hours.
That’s a long time! Especially because I am cramming in my job applications at night after the kids are in bed, after I’ve washed bottles and prepared things for daycare, sometimes after walking the dog or cleaning dishes or folding laundry. If I spend every weekday night doing nothing but applying for jobs that require cover letters, I might get in five applications over the course of a week.
Might.
The only reason I was able to apply for the number of jobs I did this time around was because I wrote cover letters for fewer than half the jobs I applied to.
And a couple of the ones I tried hardest on yielded no results.
There are plenty of reasons a cover letter can be helpful. I understand why someone might want one from me, especially because I’m often looking at content jobs.
But I’d still like to not have to write one and go to bed thirty minutes earlier instead.
I don’t know anyone who is feeling refreshed and excited and ready to rejoin the world right now. Pretty sure almost everyone is some kind of burnt out mess. Vaccinations helps, but have not provided the cure to our collective anxiety. Some people are planning to have a good time this summer, but I’ve also seen a lot of people posting about how they’re going to join the cicadas: go outside, plant themselves in a tree, and scream.
I’ve been telling my friends I’m a step beyond that. I’m the brittle little shells the cicadas leave behind. A pure human embodiment of insect remains.
I have spent a lot of this year screaming and crying and worrying myself into an anxiety spiral. I don’t think that makes me unique.
A pandemic happened (and is still happening! IT IS STILL HAPPENING). A whole bunch of political stuff hit the fan. We’re reckoning on the realities of systemic racism on a national level. There is an underlying layer of trauma in all our interactions.
Everyone is realizing that the way things used to be kind of…sucked? Maybe they shouldn’t be that way anymore.
So let’s not be that way anymore.
Traditionally, I am the kind of person who runs myself into the ground. I say yes and yes and yes and take it all on until I can’t remember the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass (shoutout to my man Frodo who knows what’s up).
In the past, my mom would give me stern talks about how I needed to tell people no. That it was okay to focus on my own stuff and not everyone else’s. These days, my husband is the primary “focus on yourself” pep talker.
And have I ever been in need of one of those talks. It’s nice to think that the end of 2020 brought about the end of all the stress. But it didn’t (spoiler alert).
Finally, I realized that making jokes about being a cicada husk wasn’t cutting it. I had reached peak burnout and needed to make a change.
So I did. I decided to leave my work situation and try something different. Forge a new path. Maybe, find a new job, embrace unemployment, watch the kids during the day, pursue freelance work, the possibilities are vast! If nothing else, taking a few weeks to find new work means more continuous time off than I’ve had in years.
I realize that not everyone is privileged enough to do this and that leaving your job without a backup plan is fully impossible for many folks.
But what if we all looked at ourselves, our little screaming inner selves and embraced the burnout? Can you just stop a thing (even a very small one)? What can you do for you?
A lot of people are doing it. Changing careers, looking for meaningful work, refusing to go back into the office. We should all do this! Embrace your burnout. Make a change. Be free! Even if that means a baby step, one dropped responsibility, a plan to start something that will lead to change. Fight exploitation and injustice on a tiny micro scale or a great big macro one.
We should all spend the summer as cicadas screaming in a tree. Because screaming is cathartic and wonderful.
Our massive cicada family can rise up and scream in unison. Let’s do something else. Going back to normal is not the answer. Let’s not do normal. Let’s do something different. It’ll be hard and weird and we’ll find ourselves burnt out again at some point or come to the conclusion we never really conquered it, we just harnessed it in a different way.
Give your burnt out self or friend or spouse a big old hug.
And then…I don’t know.
Anything can happen after that dried out husk blows away.
One day I will be able to live in a bookstore. I bide my time waiting for that day. (Photo by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash)
I read a lot of books and over the past several years I have tried to be more mindful of the authors I read and the stories I seek out. This first started with a concerted effort to read more women authors and has grown into reading more authors of color and LGBTQ authors.
Despite strides made in recent years to publish a more diverse range of books, publishing as a whole remains predominately white. This can cause a lot blind spots and weirdness and I’m glad those are being addressed and called out. At the same time, the progress can be frustratingly slow.
I’m thrilled that the book landscape is changing. And I love nothing more than a critical look at the so-called “literary canon” students have been taught forever. Do we really all need to be reading Charles Dickens still?
In 2020, a lot of anti-racist reading lists were going around, and people started pointing out that you can’t just read your way out of a problem. That’s definitely true. But I think it’s worth celebrating different kinds of stories and taking the time to look for typically marginalized voices. That’s why I’m throwing together a little reading list in honor of Pride Month and Juneteenth. I myself am a straight white lady living in the suburbs, so if you want to gets your recs elsewhere, I get it. But you might find something you want to check out below!
The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin
Genre: Fantasy
I basically force everyone I know to read these books. I am an unending hype person for the trilogy, which I typically try not to do with books because then it makes people feel awkward if they don’t love them too. But I can’t help it. Basically from the moment I started reading The Fifth Season, these books set my hair on fire.
This story takes place on a planet that is not our Earth. It is undergoing an apocalypse (more or less an extinction event that the people on the planet call a fifth season). A huge rift has opened up on the planet and things are not looking great. We follow a woman named Essun, who has the ability to control tectonic forces and is trying to find her daughter. She’s part of a small class of people who can effect the earth and are marginalized and hated for it. (If you get mad and cause an earthquake that kills people, that’s not great.)
On top of that, there are all sorts of fantastical elements at play. Creepy Guardians who seek to control this underclass, rock eaters, mysterious floating obelisks in the sky. And at some point you realize there’s no moon and is it a myth or is it real and it wandered off???
The action in these books is great, but the characters are so fantastic and the world is so complete. Plus, a bunch of mysteries get raised and then addressed in super satisfying ways down the road. Read these books!
Warning that there is a lot of death and violence and oppression so reading these books does not always feel good. And if you can’t handle that right now, it’s okay.
The Changeling by Victor LaValle
Genre: Horror/Fantasy
I had a few small gripes with this book (like how quickly the birth scene happened, but that’s sort of a personal bugaboo of mine), but overall it’s very compelling. Just take the basic premise that your wife becomes convinced that your infant son has been replaced by a changeling. She becomes so insistent that finally she acts on this belief, killing your son (who she thinks is really not your son) to get the real version back.
And then stuff gets weirder from there!
The actions that surround the changeling baby are really traumatic to read, but the book is making all sorts of observations about the horror and trauma of parenting and relationships and being believed. It is a ride worth taking.
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Genre: Romance
The first time I read this book, I was sick, and spent the entire day lying on the couch and absolutely devouring this book. It is super charming! Sometime in the last year or so, I picked it up again and took maybe 24-48 hours longer to read it, but still crammed it down as fast I could.
It’s not perfect, but you know what, I love it for that. The characters are super earnest and the love story is very sweet and ultimately everyone is trying to come to terms with who they are and how they present themselves to the world. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say this book has a happy ending and sometimes you just need a happy ending, dang it.
The set up is catnip for me. The son of the first woman president has a sort of pseudo-feud going on with an English prince. They’re forced to pretend to be friends for PR reasons and then, you know, feelings happen.
Fake dating is absolutely one of my favorite tropes that exists on this earth. I am a sucker for it every time. And the fake friendship bit really falls close enough that I can’t resist it.
I will say that all the characters are very quippy! At times it feels a little like the author watched too much of The West Wing (no judgement). I personally like this, but just a head’s up if you don’t like constant quippy cleverness.
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Genre: Science fiction
I believe that this one is short enough to be classified as a novella. So not only is it wonderful, but it won’t take up too much of your time!
I love this book. It is exactly my jam. Two agents on opposite ends of a time war leave each other missives in all sorts of weird places across space and time. And I am talking like, you chew on a seed and get the letter that way kind of weird places.
The creativity of the different settings is so fantastic and the way these characters start realizing that their dedicated antagonism has started giving them deeper connections than they intended is quite delightful. It helps if you like books largely composed of letters.
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
Genre: Non-fiction
I can’t tell if everyone in the world knows about this book or if it just seems like everyone in the world knows about this book. So its inclusion on this list might not be that creative, but it’s still well worth the read. It’s super important to be aware of the biases and deep flaws in the American justice system and this book really highlights them.
You have a through story about a man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and spent many years on death row, which in and of itself is worth the read, but then Stevenson gives us more. In addition to the main story, you will read about other people and other cases that highlight other types of injustice in the system. Just last week I read about a man in a Missouri prison who was originally convicted to life without parole at sixteen until the Supreme Court ruled that convicting minors to life without parole was unconstitutional. Bryan Stevenson worked on this issue!
I try to stay informed about this kind of stuff and my jaw still hit the floor multiple times throughout the book. I highly recommend it.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Genre: Literary fiction
I loved this book. It’s a fascinating character study, and I drank in every word. If you are a person who loves plot, this is probably not the read for you. But if you like the idea of following the lives of two women who grew up as twins in the same small town before parting ways for good and then also exploring the lives of their daughters, you might want to check it out. I should also mention that these characters are light-skinned black women and one of them manages to change her life by leaving behind everyone she knows to pass as white.
The issues of race, gender, and sexuality in this book are all explored in interesting ways, but ultimately, it came down to the characters for me. I loved following them, getting to know them, learning about what went on in their heads. And that’s really what the book is about. People being people.
Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall
Genre: Romance
The summary of this book mentioned fake dating and I was immediately in (see above).
Two men decide to fake date because they think it will help them both out somehow. Does their weird logic make a whole lot of sense? Not really! Is that one of the reasons fake dating plots are so great? Pretty much!
I will never tire of two people pretending to date and then actually falling for each other. I just won’t.
Not to mention the lead characters are fun and their chemistry is good and you really just root for them and want that happy ending to happen. I have been seriously considering rereading this one just because it gave me so many feel goods the first time around.
Also one of the main characters is a vegetarian and I appreciate that.
There you have it! I tried to pick books of different stripes to give everyone something. There are so many more, of course, but I’ve already rambled long enough. Drop your own recs in the comments if you like. My to read list gets worried if it drops too far below 100 or so.
I don’t know why tuba playing and this Shakespeare mural go so well together, but it’s a great match. (Photo by Jessica Pamp on Unsplash)
I have been a Shakespeare nerd for many years. Ever since middle school, in fact, when I decided one day for basically no reason that I was about the Bard. I toted around an edition of the complete works my dad had used in college and thought it made me deep or something. But then we went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream on a field trip and my Shakespeare appreciation got much less theoretical. I realized that the plays were actually good and not just something to pretend to be an intellectual about.
My exploration of my favorite Shakespearean couples is an exercise in dedicated intellectual rigor. (Much like my list of which Jane Austen heroes I would date.) Please know I take this very seriously.
Beatrice and Benedick
The Play: Much Ado About Nothing
I mean, how can you not love Beatrice and Benedick? There is so much to love! Here, I have bullets:
They are the best part of this play
Their repartee is genuinely hilarious
They would actually make a decent couple in real life
Hostilities turned to love is a great trope
Highly recommend you watch the movie version of this starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. It is so delightful.
Antony and Cleopatra
The Play: Antony and Cleopatra
Can the Romans handle the drama of one of their own being in a relationship with an Egyptian? (Spoiler alert: No, they cannot.)
I like Antony and Cleopatra because they are a little older, have been together for awhile, and then decide to partially conquer the world together. Couple goals, honestly. Also, there’s a little tidbit in this play I have always loved about Antony dressing up in some of Cleopatra’s clothes. Like a fun, sexy couple’s game. The uptight Romans are horrified by this. They are fools. This is a great detail!
Antony sucks to his wife and the fact that she agrees to raise the children he had with his mistress makes Octavia a true queen.
Mercutio and Benvolio
The Play: Romeo and Juliet
Forget Romeo and Juliet. I have eyes only for Mercutio and Benvolio. This is not a relationship that is explicitly written into the play, although when viewed from a certain angle, I think it’s implied. Mercutio and Benvolio seem to end up on stage just the two of them talking quite a lot. Benvolio drags Mercutio offstage for his death scene (a tearful goodbye between lovers???) and after he announces Mercutio’s death, Benvolio disappears. I personally think Benvolio goes into hiding somewhere and writes lots of sad poetry.
I am telling you, there’s a great love story in Romeo and Juliet and it has nothing to do with the title characters.
Plus, Mercutio is funny and Romeo is boring. Case closed.
Sebastian and Antonio and Olivia (and Viola and Orsino)
The Play: Twelfth Night
A girl twin and a boy twin are separated. The girl twin cross dresses and gets mistaken for a boy! Everyone is falling in love with everyone else. It’s so confusing and fun!
Antonio is definitely in love with Sebastian. Viola is in love with Orsino and he seems to be digging her but thinks she’s a boy and so can’t admit he likes her until he finds out that she’s a she. Olivia falls in love with the boy version of Viola, but then marries Sebastian thinking he’s his sister. (Confused yet?)
Personally, I think the best case scenario for this whole thing is for all five of these characters to be in love with each other. Except for the twins. They should not be in love with each other. That would be weird.
Nick Bottom and Himself
The Play: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
This dude is obsessed with himself to the point where the fairies give him a donkey head because he is such an ass (get it????). These shenanigans are hilarious and Bottom and the players are hands down the funniest part of this play.
There are so many couples in this play but the only guaranteed to make it is Bottom’s sweet sweet infatuation with himself.
Iago and Villainy
The Play: Othello
Iago is a top tier villain because he is so fun and everyone in this play is so easy to trick. Like, he gives a dude a handkerchief and Othello has a full on meltdown. And Iago just spends the whole play turning to the audience and being like, “I’m gonna go try to screw up this guy’s life now.”
Chef’s kiss, Iago. Please continue your nefarious ways.
Leontes and My Fist
The Play: A Winter’s Tale
Hoo boy, does Leontes suck. This man causes a lot of death and horror all because he randomly gets jealous of his wife talking to his friend? What is your deal, Leontes?
If I could punch him in the face, just once, I believe it would be destiny. True love.
In the past year, I’ve watched two space movies that showed up on Netflix–The Midnight Sky and Stowaway. At the end of Stowaway I noted that both movies are pretty quiet pensive little movies that leave you on a note of hope but also seem to be permeated with melancholy throughout.
Is that a common feature of space movies, I wondered, or do these two in particular seem to speak to living through a pandemic? Both were written and filmed before the pandemic hit, so they’re not a commentary on the way things have been for the last year. Then, I thought, maybe space movies always have been a reflection of the pandemic and we just never realized it.
People trapped in a small space, trying to get along because they have no other options. Being forced to reckon with how deadly to go outside.
It looks innocent now, but it will try to kill you.
Because the last year has been frustrating and claustrophobic and terrifying and also really sad, I thought it was fitting to pick some space movies I’ve watched recently and rank them. First, in order of how terrifying space is and then in order of how sad it makes you feel. Just like 2020.
This fits. There’s something here.
There are so many movies I could have included but didn’t, so if you think a movie needs to be on this list, let me know! I won’t add it, but I’ll let you know how terrifying or sad I think it is.
In space, no one can hear you scream
These movies have been scientifically ranked from least scary to most scary. Don’t argue with the formula.
The Midnight Sky
Something has happened to earth and it’s basically going to implode and kill everyone. That’s messed up, but it makes the earth scary, not space. There is a scene with the astronauts that proves space is deadly, but honestly, I mostly left this movie feeling like that space station was pretty cozy.
The Martian
This movie is one big fight to keep a guy alive when Mars and space keep trying to kill him. But there are lots of jokes. The scariest part is probably Matt Damon near the end and how bad he must smell.
Apollo 13
The whole movie centers around trying to get astronauts home and it’s suspenseful because space will definitely kill you! But it’s also a wholesome film about people doing a lot of creative problem solving. So it’s tense, the threat is there, but ultimately you get wrapped in a warm emotional blanket.
Interstellar
This is another movie where earth is really scarier than space because it’s so messed up. However, Interstellar gets bumped up the list because space can also turn thirty minutes for you into like three decades on earth and then you miss out on everything like your kids growing up. That’s scary.
Deep Impact
A giant asteroid could come wipe out the planet and there’s very little we could do to stop it. Even with an intrepid crew of brave astronauts. This move is pretty goofy and often corny, but it’s not that unrealistic. We know that earth has been visited by mass extinction events from space in the past.
Stowaway
The whole premise of this movie centers around space being hostile. Your equipment breaks, your plants die, all of you are going down. Also, the spacewalk in this movie literally made me so sick to my stomach, I had to look away from the television until my husband told me it was safe again.
Gravity
Space is so scary in this movie, it starts to verge on comic by the end. But literally everything that can go wrong will go wrong and it will remind you why space is a terrible idea! Don’t go to space! Just don’t do it!
Event Horizon
I don’t remember this movie very well, but it has eternally scarred my psyche.
Ugly crying brought to you by the stars
Now we take the same group and rank them from least sad to most sad.
Event Horizon
I don’t know we can even count this one. It will haunt your dreams but it exists somewhere outside of the sadness scale.
The Martian
Too many jokes! I am not sad. I am delighted.
Apollo 13
There is a strain of sadness in this movie (I’m bummed they didn’t get to land on the moon). But ultimately everything ends up okay. People figure it out! There is hope for us yet.
Interstellar
Everyone cries in this movie. Matthew McConaughey misses his children growing up. Anne Hathaway lost her boyfriend. Matt Damon was trapped on an inhospitable planet alone and sobs when he sees another person again. (Honestly, relatable content.) Even the ending is pretty bittersweet. But then all the weird stuff in the third act distracts from the sadness enough to kick it down the list.
Gravity
Is there a rule that astronauts have to have tragic backstories? Why must Sandra Bullock’s child be dead in this film? George Clooney floats away into nothingness to save her. Sad people trying to cope in traumatic situations is a whole genre and this one slides right in.
Stowaway
These scientists were going to get to figure out some cool stuff. Instead all of their experiments were ruined. And this guy who didn’t want to be on the ship might never see his little sister again. And he and his sister are orphans after an apartment fire from when they were kids. Plus the characters have to wrestle with a deep ethical question. As a final piece of sadness, Toni Collette is good in this movie and I wish she got to do more.
Deep Impact
Hear me out. This movie is mostly goofy and I don’t think it’s probably that good, but when the astronauts are saying good-bye to their families at the end and then the teenage girl gets her baby brother shoved in her arms by her mom? I was bawling real tears, my friends.
The Midnight Sky
This movie radiates melancholy. My goodness. Earth is not in a good place, George Clooney has a tragic past/present, and while he accomplishes his goal of preventing the astronauts from returning to earth, it’s not like all the people left on earth are going to end up that great. If you think about the implications of this movie for too long, you will get real sad.
There it is. The official rankings. I’d say that I don’t make the rules, but I totally made the rules here. Pick something to make your evening scarier or sadder. And if you’re watching Stowaway, consider having a barf bag on hand.
So you’ve realized you’re human this week and it kind of stinks.
I get it. I’m human too.
We all are.
I don’t know why watching sunsets make you contemplative about the world, but they do. (Photo by Heshan Perera on Unsplash)
We blast into the world with all that we are. And we screw up. We are disappointed and we disappoint. We unintentionally hurt someone. We say the wrong thing. We can’t get to our goals. We discover yet again that our journey toward self-discovery and self-improvement has hit some sort of obstacle.
We’re not perfect.
That last one has always been difficult for me. Whatever the right mix of anxiety and achiever lands you on perfectionism, I’ve got it. And while it can sometimes make my work better than it ever needed to be, usually it just serves as a reminder that it’s impossible to achieve the perfection I so innately crave. That I can’t get there. That I’m a human.
It’s served at times to make me into a procrastinator. I don’t have the right idea or the best approach, so I can’t get started. At other times it’s held me back from trying new hobbies and activities. When I do try a new thing, if I’m not good at it right away, my first instinct is to quickly give up and go back to what I know I’m already good at. (This philosophy has applied largely to sports of all stripes as I am a bad athlete to my very core. Oddly enough, this never applied to my writing even though I spent many years being one of the worst writers in the entire world.)
As I get older, I realize this trait in myself, and I work to mitigate it. I don’t have to be the best and I don’t have to achieve mythical levels of perfection.
This mindset allowed me to finally start running. I am a thoroughly mediocre runner, and I’m okay with it. I do try to go a little faster or a little longer, but I’m able to measure me against me. And the realization I’ll never run a record breaking marathon (if, in fact, I ever even attempt to run a marathon) is fine with me. I don’t run to be the best at it. I do it to take my mind off things, to pound out my frustrations and fears and joys into the pavement. To focus on a good audiobook at the path in front of me.
Sometimes, though, I can only get so far.
The last year and a half has been tough. The last six months, since my second daughter was born, have been tough in a different way. The past couple months since I’ve returned to work? Another difficult transition. And while I have triumphs and successes along the way, sometimes it feels like the full weight of all the toughness have compounded on each other. It’s pretty humbling to look at yourself and realize you don’t measure up to the standards you’d like to set for yourself.
I haven’t been quite getting there. I never really do, but I’m more aware of it lately. I’ll never be the Platonic ideal of a mother, although I do okay. I am far from the perfect spouse. I can be a decent daughter, a middling friend, a worker who keeps trying to find the solution.
But I can’t meet perfection. Not the kind I want. Not even the kind I’m sometimes willing to settle for.
So what’s the next step?
Breathe a little. Find something to appreciate. Maybe the feel of a dog curled up next to me in bed. Sitting exhausted in a rocker for another late night feeding, I can hear the patter of rain outside. Huffing and puffing my way down the sidewalk, I can watch the flowers blooming. Revel in a spontaneous “I love you” from the three year old. Appreciate a really well-written passage in a book I’m reading.
The little moments are there to fall back on. And while I’m far from perfect, sometimes the moments can feel a little like perfection.
Breathe a little. Find something to appreciate.
A beer? A cookie. I can compliment you.
So you’re human. You showed up late, you didn’t get enough sleep, you forgot to do an important task, you were a little short with your kids.
You and everyone else. All of us are making small screw ups and small corrections. Finding personal failings and potential successes. Looking at moments to rejoice and those to mourn. All of us are collectively grasping at our own forms of perfectionism and then, far more often than we want, falling short.
Gabs Writes 