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“I had been so well socialized by graduate school that I was torn between which writing path to pursue, agonizing over whether I could write from various standpoints in various genres.” bell hooks, remembered rapture: the writer at work

🔖💀 Read If You Want to Give Something Back to Nature, Give Your Body by Caitlin Doughty (New York Times Gift Link).

I hope we get human composting in NC eventually. For now, we can donate ourselves to Western Carolina’s body farm.

Lately I often find myself feeling alert but unable to focus. This is a new vibe for me. If you’re a person who experiences this feeling regularly and has found a way to manage it, I’d love your advice. (I’m going to start by having a cup of coffee.)

Finished reading: 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write by Sarah Ruhl 📚

Read this because it’s on Austin Kleon’s list of books about motherhood & art. But it held extra delight for me because it’s also about the theater.

“Perhaps having children makes one increasingly distrust the symbolic world. Because suddenly nothing is as important as the very real particular.” Sara Ruhl, 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write

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This week’s Craft Talk from Jami Attenberg is another great one:

“Don’t ever talk yourself out of writing something because you don’t know how it fits in the world yet.”

Y’all ever think about how the worst moments in your life personally align with some of the most personally important cultural moments? 1989-1992 was a rough run personal but wow the movies of that time look large.

🔖 Read Creativity as Spiritual Practice by Rabbi Adina Allen (My Jewish Learning).

“Each of us is endowed with creative capacity simply by being human.”

📝🎭🎨🧶🧵🎵💃🏿 This is a reminder that I write Genetrix, a very occasional newsletter curating stories of creative mothers. If those are the kind of stories you’d like to know about, please sign up!

🔖📺📝 Read TV Recaps Taught Me How to Write Criticism by Joelle Kidd.

I love Kidd’s discussion of the role of pleasure in criticism.

🔖📺 Read Wednesday Addams Is the Ultimate Outcast by Miyako Pleines (Catapult).

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🔖 Read Haunted by the Ghost of 2019, Helena Fitzgerald

“A return to 2019 is an attempt to erase all of the losses that happened between then and now, but those losses, like the monster in a horror movie, will devour us if we refuse to face them.”

Want to read: Screaming on the Inside by Jessica Grose 📚

My personal Pokémon avatar was behind today’s advent calendar door.

A 3-inch figure of the Pokémon Psyduck. Psyduck's left hand touches their head, because Psyduck has a headache.

🔖 Read How’d That Thing Go? by Kate McKean.

“I don’t want a schedule, I want a sandbox. I want a list of things that need to be done and a container of time to do them, and then I get to pick.”

Yes! Life as sandbox game! I needed this.

Just listened to a super stressful strike townhall and I’m tempted to watch tonight’s Neverafter but I think TNG is the smarter move right now.

🍿 Watched Falling for Christmas.

I’ve been an unironic Lindsay Lohan fan since I saw Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, so I was delighted to see her in this adorable trope-filled bit of holiday fluff. Cute & funny.

Q asks Baby Q Amanda Rogers if she’s ever caused the spontaneous combustion of someone she doesn’t like, then gives Picard a look as if to say, “You see how much I like you? I haven’t combusted you! 😍” 🖖🏻

Trying to figure out if I can make a crow cane head work on my adjustable cane so I can walk the streets of Amsterdam pretending it’s Ketterdam and I’m Kaz Brekker… 📚

🎮 Apparently my Dragon Age: Origins character isn’t in leather armor that looks like underwear. She’s in her actual underwear because I guess I unequipped her regular clothes but failed to actually equip the leather armor. I’ll fix this when I’m next playing.

🎮 I’m more than 10 yrs behind & have already played Inquisition but some quick thoughts after 1 hr of DA: Origins:

  1. I appreciate that the music in the Denerim Alienage has Klezmer vibes.

  2. I do NOT appreciate that my leather armor is a bikini.

Getting blood work done, it’s been 20 minutes since my appointment time and I still haven’t been seen, fasting and haven’t eaten in almost 15 hours… Not happy.

My whole family and I are moving to Tom Bombadil’s house. He and Goldberry are such gracious hosts and we will be relaxed there. (Please note: we cannot actually do this.) 📚

Y’all don’t even know how transformed this fireplace is from just a couple months ago. W painted it white & my brother-in-law MM and I hung the mantel. First picture is after & second is before.

A brick fireplace painted white, a wide dark mantel hangs on the fireplace. Cream, red, and green Christmas stockings hang from the mantel. Greenery sits on the mantel with white candles spread through it. Above all this hangs a print of a painting of a red wooden building with a sign reading 'Catsburg' and a silhouette of a cat A brick fireplace, red brick painted over in places with cream paint.

The head teacher at my kid’s school for next year sent an email saying that the only school supplies he will need are a backpack and a lunchbox and I haven’t felt so disappointed in a long time. Guess I just have to buy school supplies for myself…