March Newsletter from Michael Z
Whoa! Spring is coming. This "issue" contains: my current reading list, some thoughts on aging, and updates on the rabbits.
It’s March! I have committed to it being spring. It hasn’t actually been warm most days, but it has still felt springy. Some flowers are blooming, and a lot of birds are back. They are demanding bird seed, which is fair since we have a bird feeder.
I started feeding crows this week too, and it’s amazing. When I am outside one will now make a sound at me and I’ll go get the peanuts. My partner is a crow-feeding pro and advised me to crush the shells a little to make it easier for them, and throw the first few into the road (we live on a dead end street) so they can see them when flying overhead. There is a crowd of crows that live in the neighborhood and they are enjoying the treat, and seem to like me so far.
Animals actually tend to like me in general, and it’s one of my favorite things in life, being trusted by animals.
Reading
I haven’t finished anything this month so far. I kept trying books, and then multiple holds came in from the library at once. So I’m a third through one and still early in another. I put a couple aside for now.
I’m reading the sequel to the fantasy series I was reading last month; it’s called the Fox and the Falcon. I’m enjoying it so far. I haven’t read a series in a very long time. It’s fun to skip some of the character establishment, and to see new dimensions of the characters. The plot so far is…fine? I am having a little trouble getting as into it this time; I don’t love the new characters, mostly because I don’t have much information on them. I’m a third of the way through, so it feels like I should by now?
I also started a book called Macho Sluts by Pat Califia, which is at its core an erotic short story collection, but it has been republished several times and there are like five forwards/introductions. I haven’t actually read any of the erotica yet, but the intro parts have such interesting historical description of the S&M lesbian experience and activism in the 1970s and 80s. I recommend the intro pieces even if you don’t feel like reading the erotica. The author, who is a trans man but identified as a lesbian then, talks about trying to write and just exist and share information against the parts of the feminist movement that were actively anti-porn and often also homophobic. I really like hearing about queer history that’s just people talking about their experience. I’ll update on whether the other intros (and maybe the erotica) are good! I am not sure if I’ll like the stories; I am not much of an S&M person, but I like reading about what people enjoy.
Last January (2024) I read Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters, and really enjoyed it. It was the first time I read something and wished I could stay with the characters longer, because I got to know them so well, and they seemed so real. Last week the author came to Seattle for a couple book talks, and I got to go to one of them. I really appreciated her thoughts about writing, and how she described her process and what she wants to do with her writing, and how that interacts with other writing out there about gender experiences. I bought her new book and got it signed (yay), and had a really great conversation with my friend on the way home from the talk. I love thought-provoking books and conversations. I also got to finally visit the new(ish) queer book store and that was so lovely—it’s a great space and it’s clear that the people who work there are passionate about it. I also noticed ways they’re supporting community quietly in the space. I was sitting under a ceiling fan, and realized the only reason you’d have fans on in the winter is for air flow (reducing germs). I appreciated that. They had piles of masks by the door, and honestly I did not take one, but I liked that they were there.
Torrey Peters’ new book is called Stag Dance and I am excited to read it. It sounds different from stories I’ve read. But I have to finish those library books first!
Thinking about: Aging
I read this Substack post called “The Final Lap, or What It’s Like to be 89” and it was a really pleasant and thought-provoking read for me. It made me realize I do not have many elders in my life, and I would like to change that. It also made me think about the ways people my age are approaching the concept of the future.
This writer is 89 and near the end of the piece said he’s excited for his final lap (his last 10 years, which he’s estimating based on his family history). I haven’t heard anyone talk this way before. Still looking forward to a lot and feeling positive and being okay knowing the end is coming without wishing to hurry it along. I’m sure this is common to some degree, but I haven’t heard someone say it this way before. I hope that when I’m elderly I am not afraid to die, but am still very happy to be living and growing and changing still.
I am so used to young people feeling much less hopeful. I spent my 20s around of very tired, anxious, depressed people, and so I have been so used to very young people who feel like they’re waiting for the end.
Several months ago, I watched a TikTok that was a reply to someone who said “Wow you don’t look middle aged” and he said “Well, I’m 35, which if you assume we’ll all live to be like 55, that is middle aged.” And I was like…wow absolutely no? Stop that? You’re going to horrify the youth?
I think unfortunately, the real threats we’re facing with climate change and very frightening political behavior have created anxiety that has morphed way out of control, becoming a way to validate chemical-imbalance or individual trauma related depression as based in facts and not a disorder.
There’s something real to that—the economic and social conditions we’re under are really rough. There are many bad or exhausting ways to have an economy, but ours is also fed by isolation and loneliness, and I think that makes a huge difference. If you expect energizing social interactions after work you’re probably less likely to be emotionally distraught, and in a better place to organize any kind of political resistance, in my opinion. But our society has one way set up for passive community connection, and it’s expected to be churches. That certainly doesn’t work for everyone. I think alone we’re more likely to be depressed and exhausted and hopeless, and it makes sense that depression and our society’s failings are mixed together.
I’ve seen so many young people—my age, a bit older, even much younger than me, expect their lives to be cut short dramatically, and the reason is just vague sense of doom.
That is depression! I used to have a hard time imagining life after 30, and once I got there I had to recalibrate. I didn’t think anything specific would happen to me, and it wasn’t that I thought I might “give up”, which is another reason people with depression might feel that way. I just felt under vague threat all the time, and that came from my childhood, emphasized by the confusing adult world I landed in, and then all the people like me who went, “yeah, we’ll all definitely not make it to 60.”
I see young adults and teens similarly distraught and expecting nothing out of life. I think we hurt them (millennials, gen-x) when we talked about life that way online for the last 15 years. Millennials were “children” and then we were “old”, and in the waves of disrespect for us in our 20s, we reasonably felt anger and despair and powerlessness about the world we inherited.
Now though, we are making the world that younger people will inherit. A lot of us have kids now, a lot of us are certainly still loud on the internet, a lot of us talk to young people and just exist in the world. We didn’t get a great hand, but I think few generations do. We have to build the hand for people who are kids now. Gen-Z adults and teens are just reaching the place I was in last, and I hate that the way I and many people talked about life made them fear adulthood and the future. There are real threats to us now, and to our futures…but absolute despair will keep us from working towards improving conditions for us and the next generations. We’re the adults now and we have to accept that.
I think so much of that expectation of a short life comes from outside the political situations we’ve been in; our parents, our struggles to feel we have a place in the world, etc. How could that life go on? But it does.
I have a deep fear of death, and it started when my mom died. She died young—56. The age some guy on TikTok decided was normal.
It isn’t normal. I was and I am offended. Telling young people to expect nothing is irresponsible. Dismissing the tragedy of death in one’s 50s is offensive.
I know that guy is just depressed. And maybe doesn’t understand statistics.
Depression lies to us, though. So does anxiety. It also immobilizes us, and I see so many people, because I have met many people with the same conditions as me, giving up on life emotionally because it’s hard to sort out the real threats and the lies our minds tell us sometimes.
I have been working hard to expect a normal lifespan. It isn’t doing me any good to plan for nothing.
It was very helpful to read that Substack post. The writer is almost 90 and very athletic still. It’s interesting to see what life is like when you’ve been able to maintain health. I have been unwell for my whole adult life. I have fibromyalgia (a lot of pain, sometimes loss of mobility and bizarre injuries) and now some other issues. I spend a lot of time with people who are also chronically ill, and for a lot of us it’s kind of unclear how much is possible to change. I have a strong suspicion that my peak physical health will be my 40s. I was unwell my whole 20s, and I am in better shape now than I was for most of that decade. I am emotionally and physically feeling better. I track my moods, and most of my days are “good”. Even when I’m depressed, it is a less agonizing depression than it was at 25.
I enjoy reading about older people who are unusually healthy. I’ve often been in a state of giving up and not giving up at the same time. In my despairing moments I’ve still kept trying, and believing life can get better. When I was 24 I thought I’d never work again, but also that somehow things could get better. Both happened—people took care of me (and are again now <3) and I also was able to get jobs I could handle. I know that doesn’t happen for everyone, and I am so grateful for the luck and the privilege, but I think it also would not have happened if I wasn’t hopeful, and grasping on to other people with hope and plans for the future. If I had not tried to imagine a future I actually wanted.
I doubt I’ll be doing the things that writer is doing when I’m 89, but I could be okay. I could be still thriving, writing my books in retirement with my spouse and the rabbits who might for once outlive me. I might be someone who’s lived through a number of bad political moments, and a number of good ones. Who remembers this time with sadness, but also personal joy.
I look back at my 20s, and a lot of it wasn’t very good. But I met lovely people, had fun despite my pain and depression and anxiety, and got through it. My 30s has been much more peaceful so far, and I actually do not feel worse physically. I finally look my age—I have a few wrinkles now, and I enjoy that. Other people are developing minor aches and pains, and we can commiserate. I realized people don’t stop clubbing and get stoked about vacuums because they’ve given up being fun or forgotten how to, they’ve just been there and done that. All the things I wanted from feeling very young, I did or I didn’t do, but I have a new phase of young to enjoy and be annoyed by now. I am young, and so is that guy on TikTok, and I hope he understands that soon.
I don’t think anyone younger than late-20s actually follows me, but if you are and you see this, please don’t give up. Millions, billions of people have lived through bad societal moments. We have some unique challenges, but we can still work on them. And your body will age, but that doesn’t mean you stop living. We’re here ‘til we’re not. Some people will be like that writer—skateboarding at 89—but others will be much less physically well, at 89 or even very young, but still living and doing things.
One thing I’m working on is just starting things, doing things. I want to do a lot of living while I’m here. I hope I get to 89 and am similarly excited for my final lap, with plans for the future, even knowing it’s not much longer.
Rabbits
The rabbits have been in one room for the last several months, due to their destruction in other rooms. I think Tiramisu only cares a little, but Tilly I think would prefer to be able to escape Tiramisu bothering him. He often sits on chairs to minimize Tiramisu being able to come up behind him and jab him unsettlingly with his nose (he does this to me too and I hate it).
Tilly often sits on a little upside-down crate with a pillow on it that is next to my desk chair, and he’ll scratch at the back of my chair to get my attention. I turn around and pet him and it’s very sweet <3
The lights in my home change colors at certain times to remind my partner and I that bedtime is coming. Here are two cute photos of the rabbits during red light time.
Thank you so much for reading!
I’d love to hear from you! You can comment publicly with the button below, or you can email me directly at michaelzzaki.writes@gmail.com