August Newsletter

Thoughts and a rabbit photo

Hello lovely subscribers! It’s time for my August newsletter. I’m mid-writing an essay, so that will be coming soon. Here is my August list of thoughts, opinions, reflections, and of course a bunny update. I hope you enjoy reading!

The sections are “Thinking about,” “Reading,” “Opinions,” “Little updates,” and “Rabbit update.”

Thinking about:

I’m thinking about writing itself. I have been in a bit of a tailspin trying to understand my relationship to it. I have been a writer longer than I’ve been almost anything. Being a writer is a core identity—it’s more important to me than being queer, or where I’m from, or almost anything that can be categorized.

I’m exploring what that means, though. I have this Substack, and I’ve posted nonfiction online for many years now. I have, however, rarely shared my fiction, and only made few attempts at typical success.

I’m turning 33 this year, and it has been feeling like Time. I finally feel confident in my experience—it’s been over 12 years now that I’ve been writing for an audience. I flip back and forth about where to start, though, because I have too many dreams to fit into each day.

I also want to play video games and bother my rabbits, which is quite time consuming.

I’m thinking about mortality. Multiple people close to me are dealing with older family members in hospice right now, and it’s very close to the anniversary of my mom’s death. It’s been over a decade now, and that loss does actually sting a lot less than it used to, but it has been surreal to watch someone else experience it so close to that anniversary. Honestly, the death day never used to bother me nearly as much as her birthday and mother’s day. This year has gotten me, though.

I’ve been thinking a lot about family, too, because of this. My relationship to my family, to my partner’s family, to the idea of future family (chosen, kids, etc.)

But I’ve also come back to a fear that “only started” when my mom died. I put it in quotes because at this point it’s she’s been gone for the majority of my adult life. I have been really afraid I am going to die too young. There’s been a lot of loss in my family, and most of it doesn’t really point to risk for me—some weren’t blood related, some deaths were likely caused by substance use catching up to people (and some people in my family haven’t seen any consequences of substance use well into their 60s-70s). There’s no reason—it’s a superstitious reason.

I’ve been trying to move toward treating my panics about mortality as part of my OCD. The trouble with this kind of mental health spiral is that there is always a kernel of truth being blown out of proportion. Yes, there are no guarantees on how long my life or my loved ones’ lives are going to last. That doesn’t mean thinking about it or worrying about it will do anything positive. Part of me thinks I’ll “use my time better” if I am hyper aware of my mortality, but if anything, it’s just taking up time and energy I could use to enjoy the time I have.

I had a sudden panic last week that if I got sick now, I would have spent most of my life anxious and mentally ill and waiting and trying to build myself into someone who could enjoy life. I have an urge to regret that—but it isn’t really something useful to regret, even if regret meant I could change anything. I had to do all of that—as far as I can tell, there wasn’t a way to not have had to build myself into that person. I was brought up to worry, and be unhappy, and reject connection and internal peace. I had to learn how to be okay—and I’m not all the way there, but I’ve made so much progress, and I can’t snap my fingers and choose to be all healed. I’ve moved faster than a lot of people, and I’m not an alcoholic, so I’ve already surpassed the capacity that many of my relatives had for learning how to chill.

I am really happy with the people in my life, and I think I’m happy with who I am. I want time to enjoy it. And I desperately wish someone could promise me that. But I know that I’ll enjoy life more if I stop worrying about it, so I’m going to try.

Reading:

Since we last spoke, I finished three novels—Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde, Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle, and Go Lightly by Brydie Lee-Kennedy.

Shades of Grey I found very interesting and enjoyable. It’s a dystopia, but the experience wasn’t like most other dystopian fiction I’ve consumed. The way the very flawed society is structured is very silly, and the silliness takes some of the bite out of it, making the reading experience pleasant. I often feel like I’m dragging myself emotionally through books where dark things are happening, but this one managed be appropriately upsetting and fun at the same time. I also think the silliness and strangeness made it feel less like “your society will end up like this” spooky and more “a society could end up like this” which honestly made it feel less Edgy and more “Let’s think about power and control and how it operates.” That feels more actionable to me—a lot of stories, or maybe just how people receive those stories, seems to be about being afraid, but the purpose of dystopian fiction should be to ask us to reflect and act where possible to keep nasty powers in check.

I think my favorite fixation about dystopian novels is that they tend to have an almost throwaway acknowledgement that the poorest working class is relatively free of whatever mind-games control bullshit the protagonist is going through.

I’m fascinated by the inclusion of the idea that people in the upper middle class and richer are playing life by different rules than everyone else—that the poor have laws and the rich have rules.

Poor people in these novels are often controlled by chasing enough physical resources, and people with plenty of physical resources lose themselves in more emotional and mental systems of control (until the point at which they face physical annihilation when they step outside those rules too much). I have a lot of branching thoughts about how those things blend in my own society—definitely poorer people are also controlled by mind-games control, but it does seem like we’re all playing by different rules that are hard to see from the outside. I wonder how the internet has affected this, with all our random thoughts flowing all over the place. Yet, even with the internet, I feel like I’ve mostly interacted with people similar to me, and that I don’t know what rules I haven’t had to play by.

Bury Your Gays was a fun ride. I read about 2/3rds of it in one day! It was very easy to read, and as a horror mystery it was very gripping and scary, but not too emotionally distressing, at least around the horror bits. It’s definitely a plot in service of a metaphor, which is something I really enjoy when it’s done well. I enjoyed finding the layers of the metaphor throughout the story, and something about the characters made them feel like they were both very real and also clearly metaphorical? An example of an idea? I recommend it if you can handle light gore and Queer Feelings.

Also, having heard Chuck Tingle speak (SPOILER), I knew the whole time that the main characters would survive—there wouldn’t be any present-day tragedy for anyone specifically called out as queer—a nice contrast with the title. And that made all the scary stuff easier to handle, for me. There is a real catharsis in reading a book called Bury Your Gays where you know that you’re safe from the trope itself.

I think this is something unique about an author who writes horror, erotica, and romance. The book had a horror and romance structure at the same time. One of the benefits of the romance genre is that most of the time you know you’re safe from any sort of devastation. Some books stray from this, particularly some thrillers I’ve read (bending the genre in the opposite direction of Chuck Tingle’s book). Horror fiction often promises that you’ll get a thrill from fear, physically safe from danger, but probably not emotionally safe from a sense of loss.

Reading something that had the emotional safety of a romance novel with the thrill of horror was excellent.

Go Lightly was a lot. It also had really gentle stakes, and I enjoyed that. It was about being 26 in 2017, and navigating relationships (of all kinds) and bisexuality and feelings of belonging. I was 26 in 2017, and was also a bit of a mess, and it felt very relatable in a lot of ways. I do recommend it!

Opinions

I’m here with some spicy opinions no one asked for! Today, I have some linguistic annoyances from my interactions with the internet. (I have also uninstalled TikTok this week again because I have other things to do, so I’ll probably care less soon) and thoughts about how we engage with the world.

1. I’m pretty late on this complaint (though I made it a lot to my friends in person) but there was a huge wave of wildly misusing the term “red flag” on social media earlier this year, like to a truly egregious degree. It bothered me a lot! It still does. I notice that it even eventually shift what my brain stored for what that term means, which is just how language goes, isn’t it?

   I was silently one of the people who was infuriated by the figurative use of “literally” for emphasis a decade ago, but it turned out fine…I think in practice I’ve almost never been confused by someone’s use of literally.

   My general complaint on “red flags” is that it originally popped into vernacular around dating as a description of small indicators that a person might later become controlling, violent, or otherwise abusive. I think I’ve accepted that this is going to be watered down to “indicator of wild negative behavior”. I think that’s honestly useful enough. I will stand by that “red flag someone isn’t hot” is egregious and people need to stop it. Which they maybe already have—or I just filtered it out of my life unintentionally. I didn’t do a great job of non-nuanced complaint here, oops.

2. I miss “I heard” as a thing people say. We’ve really lost something there. I say “I heard” sometimes, so that if I don’t remember where I got information, and I’m in a conversation (not a great moment to research something), we can have a conversation without commiting to whatever it is. I think now that we theoretically can look everything up, it’s hard to remember what I know and what I might know. People don’t say “I heard” to me very often…I wish we’d do that instead of committing to unverified information or never discussing our half-information. “Googling it” is honestly often not sufficient, and we can’t look everything up in a meaningful way. I’ll write more on this another time.

3. This will also be a whole essay—but I saw a TikTok from a writer awhile back that opened with “Don’t overestimate how many people agree with you” and I’ve been thinking about it for months. Sometimes there’s an assumption that the government is ignoring “the people,” and I think often that is true. But sometimes, because we expect that, we assume that’s what is happening, when really “the people” might be mostly disengaged from an issue, or in disagreement about what is right. It’s rolled around a lot in my head, along with the fact that a lot of people I know (and sometimes I) want to find a way to force “what’s right” onto the country (USA). I have been thinking about this: if you genuinely want to force it, that’s ultimately a desire to override democracy. I’ve been thinking over the past year about how the people with values I hate are also part of the country, they also vote, and I want desperately to change their minds, but they are part of the “people”, and what I think is right isn’t objective, because society is subjective. Sometimes I do value what I think is right over democracy, I do wish what I want could be forced. I try to admit that though. It’s not that all good people agree with me and bad people want different things than me, and we can just listen to the “good people”. If I want the way I interpret my values to define what happens, even if most people don’t want that, I don’t want a democracy. I definitely think it’s unfair that people with no stake in an issue get to vote on it—but that’s what we set up. So if we don’t want that, we don’t want that, you know? Just food for thought for now.

Little updates

Weddings

I went to a wedding recently, and remembered that I love weddings. There was so much crying from the family and friends of the couple getting married as they gave speeches; there was so much love and sweetness. In the last few years, I’ve been to more weddings, and because chosen family is so important to people in my life, it’s become so clear that weddings are not just about the relationship of the couple—it’s also about all the people who love them witnessing a happy milestone in their life. It can be about so many relationships. Weddings can be so many things, but this is what it’s been for the people I know, and it makes me want to cry, too. In a nice way.

I’ve been really surprised to feel like weddings make me view couples differently. They seem settled, safe. I don’t know if that’s about the people or about me, really. I grew up really looking forward to marriage, and I don’t know if it’s Society driving that feeling, or genuinely the way these couples actually behave, after. I also have felt more clear on my place in their lives after weddings—I think it’s seeing the full picture of their closest community that helps me understand my place in it, whether we’re extremely close or I just have the privilege of being there as a plus 1.

Summer

I had really high hopes for the summer, but found that I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as last year. I think because we went from too cold to too hot so abruptly, I had a deep desire to be home and try to temperature control my environment. I noticed the rabbits happier during the air conditioner times too; I think they prefer it cold, and having a consistent 68-72 degrees made them feel comfortable, rather than going with the outside weather or the heater on and off in the winter.

I didn’t go to many events. I did make it to the art festival in my partner’s home town, which was lovely. And I tried going to an art market I hadn’t been to before. I had a little bit of an ambition to make enough jewelry to try selling some at these small markets—but maybe next year.

I’ve also been scrapbooking, which has felt nice. I have multiple notebooks I intend to overstuff. I enjoy fanned out notebooks full of collage and writing, sometimes even little objects. It’s an art I never want to monetize, and especially as I try to pay more attention to submitting articles/stories for publication or making jewelry, it feels really important to have an art that I’d only want to improve for the sake of enjoyment and satisfaction, and maybe to show my friends. A memory-keeper is also always nice. I used to journal primarily my upset feelings, and these days I don’t—I try to write down general thoughts or nice things; sometimes I have to write out the complaints that I’d forget about soon—and throw those pages away. I may need to write them, but future me doesn’t need to read them.

The summer has been fine, but I’m feeling the pull towards fall. I used to be known as Halloween; people associated me with Halloween, and often mixed up memories of my birthday parties and my Halloween parties (my birthday is in October). I used to dress pretty goth (though a whimsical flavor of it). That part of me has faded in the last few years. For the first time, I actually put away all the Halloween decor this year. I moved in with my partner in November, and because their taste better aligns with a different part of my taste, the camp-spooky decor felt a bit discordant, and I just wasn’t quite that person anymore.

I’ll pull out the decorations next month, and we’ll see if they stick around. I might be a Halloween person again soon.

Bunnies

The rabbits have been doing this lately and it’s the cutest:

We did resolve the “digging all the hay out onto the floor” issue from last month! I thought it might work to put a piece of cardboard halfway through the feeder, so they could only pull half from each side. This worked! They can reach it all better than before, and cannot fit inside it anymore, so no more climbing in and digging out! I feel proud of this.

Thank you for reading!

If you have any thoughts I’d love to hear them. Do you relate, agree or disagree with my takes, have something else you’d like to share?

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