February Newsletter

Is this a media review newsletter??

I hope you’re having a good mid-late winter! I am almost keeping up with my goal to have small social gatherings each month. My partner and I tried in February, but attendance kind of comically fell apart. Oh well, at least we cleaned.

Happy belated Valentine’s, if you enjoy it!

I love Valentine’s day. It’s either a day to appreciate my friends, or it’s that plus a nice opportunity for a special date. I know a lot of people hate it; it can be a reminder of sadness about being single, or it can feel like something artificial and about selling things.

But I love the reminder to express affection, and the reminder that I have love in my life. Spending money is optional!

I also love romance in very symbolic and aesthetic way, and I enjoy Valentine’s Day in a similar way to Halloween. It’s a campy exploration of something important to me.

This month has been pretty slow in my life; I have been reading a lot, and listening to a lot of podcasts/watching them on YouTube. I’ve honestly been pretty anxious, both working on my work life and dealing with a lot of political fear. It’s not been great!

But I am happy about a lot of things anyway. My home life is delightful, my friends are sweet, and I have been feeling creative and inspired. Feeling creative and inspired while depressed is an incredible gift.

I have been still mostly off social media, and feel overstimulated by it when I check any feeds. I also noticed that all my inspiration gets sapped by it, and that feels pretty depressing about all the years that was probably happening. My brain gets pulled in so many directions and starts worrying about what every possible person thinks; my thoughts no longer feel private, even if I am not sharing anything online. Having been just slightly more online the last couple weeks, I have been avoiding this newsletter because I feel less interested in sharing, even though this subscriber list is pretty small.

I’m back though! I owe my own schedule a newsletter, and I am excited to learn what you all think of this one.

Also, my partner taught me how to replace a laptop keyboard, and now I blessedly have my “x” key back! I never knew how many words have an “x”. Especially looking for work, it was very hard to need to write “experience,” “excel,” “excited” and other resume “ex” words so much having to copy and paste a letter. Not to mention the “x” is the shortcut for cut! Whew.

Reading

I finished a book called The Deer and the Dragon by Piper CJ. It’s a fantasy romance. I am not often into fantasy, but when they take place in current times I am more likely to try them. The fantasy of the past or a more upper class setting isn’t usually interesting to me (I haven’t ever been able to get into Lord of the Rings, etc.) This book takes place in my current culture, and introduces some magic to it, which I do enjoy.

This is the first time I’ve read a book by someone I first encountered on social media. Usually, when I read books I try not to look up the author until I’m done (or maybe never look them up at all). It was very different to know how this author looks, sounds, and moves, and a few details about her life. I personally could not stop assuming the character was a version of her (the idea of which is painful to me about my own writing and I take significant lengths to try to avoid the vulnerability of that). It might have been from the writing itself—I’ve thought that with other books by other authors I knew nothing about—but it definitely influenced my read to have a sense of the author, and having heard some of the aspects she has said came from her own experience.

In some ways, I liked that—it was kind of fun to be in someone’s imagined world where they might exist. In other ways it felt like a kind of vulnerability that hurts me, which is definitely my problem.

I liked the writing; the characters were really enjoyable and I wanted more of them. I definitely want to read the next in the series, and I think that’s the outcome people are going for with the first in a series, right? It had some sad pieces that made sense, and it added depth that didn’t feel random. I get really irritated with books that are romantic, erotic, or otherwise fun that just throw in some trauma to make it “real”. I felt like this book actually succeeded at what those stories are going for—a relevant piece of someone’s experience that makes the overcoming of obstacles or the achievement of joy and pleasure more satisfying, or just create a more rounded character whose actions actually seem influenced by those events.

I did feel like it had that problem where the story ramped up pressure pretty steadily but tied up the plot slightly too easily. It was an overall good story!

I also finished Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. It’s definitely literary—I was sad the whole time reading it, but I also really enjoyed the experience. The words felt like being carried peacefully by water—once I caught the flow of it each time, I found myself falling one line to the next until many pages had gone by. It is a really sweet style.

The characters and plot felt very realistic, and the style follows the thoughts of several different characters. Reading how different people are processing the world is really interesting, and it’s pushed me to try harder to understand people a bit different than me. It felt very intimate to follow someone’s thoughts in the way they actually would have them, as opposed to typical narrative that relays everything as a memory or documentation.

There’s a character who’s pretty obviously autistic, and is relatable in a social way that I haven’t encountered in fiction before. He is paying attention and observant, but he’s still missing things. He’s aware he’s missing things, though, and I’ve never seen that in media. When I’ve seen autistic characters, they usually are completely oblivious to social cues and other people react to them more clearly like they’re disabled by this. This character is obviously disabled to me, but other people aren’t approaching him that way by default. I think it’s important to depict some autistic characters as oblivious to social cues, because some people are and if a piece of media tries to make that understandable to non-autistic people, I think that’s good. But I also really appreciate something I personally relate to on this axis. I am aware of social cues, and I often know when I’ve missed something. I’m also now wondering if characters are approaching him as disabled, and maybe me too, but I’m oblivious. Hmm.

I thought the plot was a really good depiction of grief. The tensions in this book felt very realistic, a little heartbreaking, but ultimately “okay” in the way people are ultimately okay at some point after a loss. It also depicts the ways that we can feel so bad even when nothing is wrong, because grief is a silent thing wrong for a long time, and it can be difficult to notice how it’s affecting us.

I understand why this book was so celebrated! I don’t often read a bestseller soon after it comes out, so it was fun to feel up on the trends for a moment. It was a gift and I’m very grateful for it! I got this edition, which has a beautiful and very well-designed cover, thematically:

This book has also pushed me to examine how I react to age-gap relationships, because they are a big part of the plot of the book. The two brothers in the novel are Peter and Ivan, 32- and 22-years-old; Peter has a 22-year-old girlfriend (Naomi); the Ivan has a 36-year-old girlfriend, Margaret. The narration follows the perspectives of Peter, Ivan, and Margaret. Peter and Margaret are looking at their relationships very differently. Peter seems a little aware of the power dynamic, a thought that comes in and out, but he doesn’t really seem concerned about any long-term damage to her, even though she’s in a pretty vulnerable life situation beyond even the age difference. Margaret is really torn up about what she’s doing—she doesn’t want to ask friends for advice because she fears their judgement, but she can’t really trust the reassurance of Ivan.

Spoilers, sort of

I asked myself over the course of the novel how I would feel if I knew these people. I think if I knew Peter, his behavior fits pretty neatly into the category where I would just tell him he is being fucked up. If I knew Margaret, I don’t know. I asked myself why—is it that she cares? Is it that Ivan is in a much less vulnerable situation outside the relationship? Is it that she is a woman? Or do those things go all together—she is a woman, and women have to care more about how they’re perceived; that she’s conscientious and if his life were more unstable, it seems like that would be too much for her to ignore?

By the end, it felt like Margaret breaking up with Ivan because of their age seemed like it would be the thing to hurt him, and so whatever, maybe they’re fine. I felt like Peter was being super unfair to Naomi, despite a seemingly happy ending for them. I wasn’t sure if the narration was drawing conclusions—it seems like it was meant to be a positive ending, and it was a relief to me that everyone seemed happy enough. But I have been Naomi, and I know she probably wouldn’t be long term. I think a real Ivan would probably be okay, in the way that all relationships can be a let down or be good.

Honestly, I mostly found the attraction implausible. I haven’t met a lot of 22-year-olds in awhile, but the last one I met I definitely thought was 15. But maybe they don’t all look like that. Overall, because of that, I’ve felt harsher and harsher every year towards people in their thirties who could date anyone under 25. This book made me question if that’s fair, or just usually fair.

End of kind of spoilers

It made me think about relationships where I was a young-20’s (and perceived as a woman) and the other person was older. I had four notable ones; the oldest person was a hook-up, the other three were boyfriends. I think two of them liked that I was younger, and probably liked that I looked younger than I even was, which is all pretty nauseating but was not something I processed at the time. One liked the power—the oldest man, I am sure of it, and I did the thing Naomi is doing in Intermezzo, trying to play a power game you can in some way win, but that is never as satisfying or empowering as it seems like it’s going to be. Is that really winning?

The last of the four was ten years older than me, but I still don’t think he was a creep. He was the age I am now, and while I more than ever cannot imagine doing that, I think his interest in me just matched where he was frozen. He was never gross to me, but eventually I needed him to grow up and he couldn’t, because he had already chosen not to. It was really disappointing to suddenly feel more grown up than someone ten years older than me.

I think that’s why my advice to younger people is that it’s probably not going to be worth it. Some people are being predatory, but some others are just immature. I’m sure there is some exception to this, but from my own experiences I feel the bitterness that a lot of people feel about this.

I had a lot of hookups with men older than me, and it was honestly mostly fine. I remember a couple of them fondly, a couple negatively, and most I’ve completely forgotten. But the ones that hurt me really hurt me.

I think it’s probably true there are exceptions, but I haven’t met them yet.

So it was interesting to examine this with a fictional character. I don’t know how to process that about my real values, because these were fictional people whose minds I could read. That’s not going to be the case in real life, so can this fictional scenario mean anything? It was at least an exercise for me in trying to be empathetic when my instinct is to be judgmental. I think it is important to be empathetic, even if in the end I choose to be judgmental anyway.

I don’t have much conclusion to that thought, but I’m curious what others think, especially if you have read this book, or another fictional scenario that asked you to empathize with a pretty real-life looking situation where you normally wouldn’t have much empathy. Or, do you always reach toward people with empathy before judgement? I can never tell if that’s something I want to aim for—if that would be personal development, or just a different way of operating. I very often reach for empathy, but not always.

Podcasts

I’ve been listening to so many podcasts! It’s been my go-to time filler for the last few weeks; in between parts of my day or during alone meals, etc.

These are mostly podcasts I found on YouTube, so I’ve also been “watching” them, but I think they’re probably about the same experience over audio.

The most frequent have been Perfect Person, Happy Wife Happy Life, and So True. They’re all comedy-based podcasts, so if that’s not your thing, you would probably not like any of them.

Perfect Person is an advice podcast where people write in mostly silly problems, and the host and a guest call them back and give them live advice ranging from actually good to very chaotic. I can tell some guests are unable to not take it seriously, and that would be me, so I enjoy that. The joke premise is the host is a “perfect person” as are the guests, which qualifies them to answer the questions. This podcast is sometimes a little stressful due to the chaos, but I enjoy it.

Happy Wife Happy Life a relationship themed podcast run by two lesbian comedians who are (engaged? married?) and start each episode identifying themselves as “deeply unqualified but deeply in love comedians”. They sometimes also answer questions, sometimes just talk about a topic. There are sometimes guests and sometimes they’re just talking to each other. I find this podcast pretty soothing and funny, and rarely stressful to me. It’s also been nice to hear people talk about a pretty healthy-sounding relationship online. It’s kind of rare??

So True is the most stressful to me, because the host is the kind of person who just says stuff and sorts out if he means it later. For example, he is a gay man who intermittently jokes there are no bisexuals and later states that he of course supports bisexuality which is very real. I don’t really recommend this one because it’s stressful in that way, but I am trying to practice tolerating people who align with most of my values but stress me out a little. I see the value of not being so afraid to fuck up online, so it’s helpful for me to see that even if it’s more laid back about that than I could handle for myself. If that seems okay to you, I’ll say that it also varies by guest a lot how funny it is, so I’d try out a couple. I do think it’s funny (it’s not just a stress tolerance exercise). There’s one with Chris Fleming and I recommend almost any video with Chris Fleming (he’s my favorite comedian).

Springtime??

It took me like two weeks to write this, so now it’s actually extremely beautiful out in Seattle and no longer feeling mid-winter at all. I am so excited to be in the sunshine! I love the climate of Seattle. I used to hate sunny days, because they were mostly hot and gross. I’ve always loved rain, and so I can both enjoy that here, and now I also enjoy sunny days because it rains so much, I actually appreciate it.

So, happy mid-winter or happy early spring, everyone <3

Thank you so much for reading!

I really appreciate your readership! If you have any comments on this newsletter, you can comment publicly below, or email me at michaelzzaki.writes@gmail.com

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