I stepped down for a few reasons. First because I hate emails. I am sorry if you are one of the 4 people on earth who thinks e-mails are still fun, but they suck ass. I’m sorry, in fact, that so many of you are reading this via email. If I could figure out how to effectively deliver writing any other way, I would! Maybe one day I’ll start an old fashioned paper mailing list, but let’s be honest, you would probably recycle those too, because life is very overwhelming and most mail is now bills. Perhaps we will divine a way for me to send a pigeon to your door. Why aren’t tech companies working on that??

Anyway, running a committee is about half in-person creating a welcoming community and facilitating meetings, a job I love and am naturally suited for, and half email, a job that makes me feel like a crab doing yoga. The thrill of dispatching some of my e-mail threads has been well and truly life affirming.

I also stepped down because I think an underrated part of leadership is making room for other people to lead. Leadership is a muscle anybody can grow. But there isn’t really a gym to train it. It’s hard to get your reps in. And it’s especially hard as a woman in a male-dominated industry. So, you gotta take up space, but once you have, you also have to inspire and invite other people to believe they deserve to stand in the place you are standing. And that’s not really possible if you keep standing there!!!

And third, I stepped down for myself. Because I wanted to make room in my life for something I feel is coming. I’ve spent a lot of my career doing the work of community building, of joyful space creating, of organizing. I believe in that work! But I also see how easy it is to use fulfilling others to supplement fulfilling yourself. How easy it is to focus on the whole, and leave your own projects and dreams to gather dust. And, more frustratingly, how easy it is for other people to see the full plate you are using to feed others and assume you aren’t hungry.

Service to others is the easiest path to walk as an ambitious woman. Not that it doesn’t take effort to walk it, not that it is not noble. But it’s a well-worn groove in the earth beneath our feet. It’s surrounded by neon signs and big pointy, cartoonish arrows. A carnival barker stands out front, inviting you in. It smells like warm, freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies. There is not always room for women in leadership, but there is always room for women in service.

The path towards a woman’s own naked ambition is more treacherous. Nobody invites you in. You have to strap on your own hiking boots and climb towards a blurry and distant unknown.

As a writer, I make my own path out of words. I like to imagine every script, every line I type, even the words in this paragraph, as a path forming underneath my feet, carrying me forward to the future.

So… I guess I’d better go and finish that script I’ve been working on, huh?

Thanks for reading, friends. <3

-My dog got very sick with cancer and she died. It was horrible and sad and I will miss her forever. I have never known such grief. I wrote about it a lot privately but it still makes my eyes well with tears to even write this sentence so I will have to share that later!

-During that period, I was dealing with a lot of overwhelming health problems. Things have gotten a lot better in the past few months, but it combined with the grief to make me feel like I was crawling through quicksand.

-And then! Somebody who had no idea I was going through that sent me an email to tell me that they were disappointed my blog was no longer providing enough value for them! I thought I had turned the paid feature off but I hadn’t, whoops! So I cried a lot and felt very angry and then I officially did turn the paid feature off because I realized there is absolutely no point in turning what is basically your public diary into a transaction for a measly $5 a month! It turns out, monetizing your precious life is a pretty good way to make it feel like it’s not worth anything.

-Then my husband and I won a Halloween costume contest for the costumes HE MADE. BY HAND! They’re amazing! We’re dressed as our local bar where we play trivia every week. And then they put up an offrenda for our dog and we cried some more.

-A few weeks after that I dragged myself to the first weekend of a comedy incubator I was a fellow for and it was wonderful but I was also raw like chicken. More on Y’ALL later!

-Then the holidays came and I realized that I would have a nervous breakdown if I spent them doing anything but walking 20,000 steps a day somewhere I’d never been so I dug into the savings account and hauled my sick ass onto a plane to Italy (and Amsterdam, and Paris). It was gorgeous! It snowed in Paris! If you’re already going to have a nervous breakdown, I recommend at least doing it in the canals of Venice!

-Then I came home and wrote like crazy. I wrote a whole movie in 4 months (in between crying and medical appointments!), just in time for Y’ALL FEST! I flew to New York and pitched my movie and it was fucking incredible.

-I wrote a lot of videos for Adam Conover including Hollywood Killed The Sitcom, Zohran is Teaching The Left to Win, and Labubus are Proof We’ve Given Up

-I also went to Seattle (for a wedding - I did the flowers and the bride’s hair!), Chicago (for a wedding, I was a grooms lady!) and Portland (for the Global Improvisation Symposium, where I was a presenter and steering committee member!)

I used to think I could write through anything. Grief proved to me that sometimes words fail and all you can do is move, no matter how much it hurts. Eventually, the blisters turn into callouses and then you just keep moving. I think I genuinely needed to walk off my grief thousands of steps at a time. And going to all of those beautiful places and wandering around them really helped. I think I cried in every one! Now I feel almost human again. I guess that’s rising from the ashes, right? The literal ashes, which are now sitting on my mantle.

I hope to come back here and write a little more, about grief, loss, failure, fear, and joy. Because there is still, there always is, so much joy.

And speaking of which, oops! I have to go re-write that movie I mentioned earlier! I’m almost out of time before trivia! Love ya! <3 <3 <3 <3

Which brings me to my first, and really only agenda item tonight, slowing down the MurderBot. Hi, yes, I see your hand, can we please save questions for the end of my speech? … okay. More hands. I’ll just go ahead and get this first question out of the way:

Why are we trying to slow down the MurderBot, when it’s, y’know, a MurderBot? Why not smash it???? Unfortunately, about one third of our neighbors have been brainwashed into believing that the MurderBot is their supreme leader, and that everything he does, even the Murder part, is pre-ordained by God. Y’know, the same God that they believe will eventually come down from the sky and set all of us non-believers on fire. They skimmed their favorite book and only read the end. And the whole “loaves-and-fishes” part is in the middle of the book, so now we have the MurderBot.

That didn’t answer our question at all. Yes, I know. There’s a lot to cover. Really, if you’d just let me get back to my prepared speech… we’re all here tonight because it’s time to do another Bake Sale to raise money to slow down the MurderBot, so that hopefully in 2 years, the MurderBot won’t have destroyed the electoral system and we can make him even slower the fair and democratic way. Wooo!! Can I get a what what for slowing down the MurderBot??????????? Really? Nobody wants to cheer right now???????

Hold on, I see your hands. Yes, I did say that even after we win the big election we’ll just be slowing down the MurderBot. It’s true. We won’t be destroying it. But the good news is we can make it REALLY SLOW! And all the other guys want to SUPERCHARGE the MurderBot!!! So really, slowing it down is an extremely preferable option!!

Why can’t we destroy the MurderBot??? Well… because we need the people who funded the MurderBot to fund us. They’re kind of the richest people on the whole planet of GeepGorp. We accidentally let them steal all your money so that they would give us some. And yes, we could have stopped that 50 years ago, but in case you haven’t noticed, GeepGorp isn’t the kind of place where we “plan for the future”! Look around! Do you see any trains? No!!! We GeepGorpians are not good at thinking long term.

I tried to warn everyone! I stood at the mall with a sign! I asked you to sign my petition! And you all said it was cringe!!! So now GeepGorp has gone to the MurderBots.

Look. None of us in this room want the MurderBot to Murder. But if we want to stop it, we’re going to have to throw the Biggest Bake Sale This Town Has Ever Seen. And by that I mean, call your representatives and tell them, actually, you’re not a fan of the MurderBot at all. Unless you live in one of the states where your representatives don’t actually matter. You guys can just give us money. We could really use your money. We’re gonna set it all on fire in front of the MurderBot, and we think that’ll probably slow it down. It hasn’t worked before, but we feel confident trying it for the 578th time. And no, we’re not going to fix the part of the system that makes your votes not count. We really prefer just taking your money.

Please call your US representatives and tell them not to support this stupid fucking “One Big Beautiful Bill”. It may not be enough, it may feel stupid and futile, especially when you’re watching your neighbors be kidnapped and the GOP selling concentration camp merch for an “Alligator Alcatraz” being built with our tax dollars. All that shit is bad, and requires separate action. But still, I’d rather not have our Congress vote to Supercharge the MurderBot, y’know?? The phone number for the capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121 or you can use the app 5Calls. Love ya.

Grief is so weird, and it’s even weirder when it comes at the wrong time. It’s not time yet, for the grief, but I’m choking on tears and she’s staring at me and I can’t help but think Well, at least, when it’s the end, she won’t be surprised if I can’t stop crying.

It is so brutal and so painful and I don’t blame you if you stopped reading a million sentences ago because I don’t want to write about this and I don’t want you to hear it because I don’t want it to exist.

I’m a writer, and I have this place to write, and I don’t want to write. Not about my own life. I’ve been tearing through a screenplay about somebody else, somebody who can actually control and defeat their demons, somebody who can, in the span of only 90 pages, go from fuck up to Mr. Fix It. Isn’t that why we love movies and TV? They make us feel like we can control our lives, like if we’re heroes, if we get up and wipe our dirt-stained faces enough times after getting kicked in the teeth, we can win.

But I don’t know if you can win against mortality. Maybe the only way to conquer it is through stories.

My therapist asked what I think happens after we die. I think the world tells us that energy doesn’t simply stop. There is a cycle, everything drives everything else. Maybe other people are right, it would be nice if they were, that there’s some beautiful world up in the clouds where everything is loving and simple and exactly what we’ve always wanted and every dog we’ve ever loved is there. Maybe that’s why their life spans are shorter than ours, to give us time to accrue enough dogs or cats or turtles on the other side to make it less terrifying when we have to cross.

But human beings are such curious creatures. We need to be challenged. We can see that in the listless, stupid, destructive violence of the rich and coddled. They have not been challenged enough, and they have become broken as a result. I’m not saying everything should be hard all the time, but humans love to strive, we love to achieve. So how could we be happy in heaven? In a place where everything comes easily?

Maybe it’s just as beautiful that when we die, we live on in all the love we gave. Maybe it’s just as beautiful that heaven is in the hearts of the people we loved, people we liked, people we were nice to at the grocery store. Maybe when my dog goes to heaven, it will be inside my chest. And when I go to heaven, it will be inside other people’s chests, and she will live in there with me forever, like Russian nesting dolls of love. That the grace and love she has shown me will translate to the grace and love I give others, and they will turn that into grace and love they give to someone else. That instead of ascending, we radiate.

I’m not ready. I’m bursting into tears on our walks and I’m holding my breath at the vet and I’m begging her to eat and I’m not ready. We don’t know when it will come and I beg for hours and then burst into tears at the grocery store.

For now, she’s sitting next to me, breathing in and out, digesting the salmon that has gone from a treat to a daily meal, maybe praying like me that it doesn’t turn into diarrhea and we can just sit here together next to each other all night watching Gilmore Girls. My husband will come home with Taco Bell and she will look at me curiously, too tired to beg, and I will rip off a little piece of my tortilla against my better judgement and feed it to her, indulgently, so that wherever she goes, one day that I hope is far away, she knows how much I love her. Maybe if I love her hard enough, she will be able to find my heart when it’s time to live there.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back later with more. If you want to see it when it comes, you can subscribe here.

Subscribe now

Of course, then I have to keep going. Do I mean “not good” medically? No, I don’t. Medically, I’m hanging in there. I mean, you don’t wind up ass cheeks out on the table because you’re doing GREAT medically, but I’m fine.

“The richest man in the world stole our social security numbers the other night,” I babble. “And, like, so much more.”

She hasn’t heard of this, but the blurting is contagious, and suddenly, she spills out, “I’ve told my mom to stop speaking Spanish…Our papers are in order but… just in case.”

The doctor takes forever to get there, but the nurse and I stop counting the minutes. We fall into a strangely intimate conversation about racism and fear and food rotting in the fields because the people who pick it are too scared to come to work. She says she doesn’t normally talk about this at work, she thinks the doctor voted for him. It’s maybe the most profound conversation I’ve ever had with a stranger while simultaneously hoping there wasn’t toilet paper sticking out between my cheeks. When the doctor arrives, I remember what she said about being afraid of him and quickly change the subject. We both pretend to laugh at the doctor’s jokes. The hole in the space time continum snaps shut, and we pretend like nothing happened. The doctor gives me a shot in my ass, and as I leave, the nurse and I make eye contact. “I hope you have a good day,” we almost whisper to one another.

Afterwards, I go to the grocery store. Everyone is so normal. I want to scream, but I’m quiet. I buy a gallon of milk, and go home. I burst into tears in my husband’s arms. Then he shows me our new fridge, joyous to present the four different types of ice it makes.

The next day, at the vet, I sit in the waiting room, chattering with the other women who wait nervously with me. We all have old dogs, dogs we have loved for years, that we hope to love for years to come. Dogs with soft, white faces who lie at our feet. I see my vet and almost cry. My dog has cancer, but we’re there for her teeth. All is well. The vet feels like a doctor to me too, as she reassures me that I’m doing the best I can. She holds my dog like the baby I know she is, and I tell her that I don’t know if I believe in God, with a big g, but I do think animals represent what god means. They remind us that love is unconditional. “This means,” I laugh, “that you are a god whisperer.” She hugs me close. When my dog comes out after her nail trim, she has a bandana around her neck with a note. “Puddin, we are rooting for you.”

As I wait to check out, another dog comes in, tail wagging gleefully. “She ate chocolate”, the owner explains. Everyone in the waiting room tries to ease his fear with a story of the time our dog ate chocolate and lived to tell the tale. The owner’s hat says “Altadena”. The nurse asks if he lives in Glendale, and he says “For now”. As he walks out, he tells us all he lost his house in Altadena, in the fires. “Life feels like one crisis after another these days,” he confesses. I hold his dog’s warm face in my hands and command her to be okay, with all the love in my heart.

I cry the whole way home. I think about the heaviness of the world, how it feels sometimes like a thick wet blanket on my shoulders. But I cry harder remembering the vet’s arms around mine. Thinking of the tiny moments of love that burst through and make the light shine again, that connect us all, that hold the world up. What a gift to be able to see those beautiful things. The most powerful among us seem only able to see rage, fear, winning, losing, taking. Have they ever really felt the morning sun? Have they ever heard a song so beautiful it shimmers on the skin? Have they ever sunk their fingers into soft fur and felt a dog lean back into their hands? Do they even know what in life is worth fighting for?

That night, I go to trivia. My friends and I have been doing this trivia game almost weekly for over a year. It’s my friend’s birthday, and I realize that we celebrated her birthday at this bar last year too. We’ve celebrated the entire table’s birthdays, a whole year of meeting at the same bar, every week, for the ritual of love. Some might say it’s for winning, but I know it’s for love. We burst into laughter writing an acrostic poem about the quizmaster for Valentine’s day. We walk each other back to our cars at night and hug goodbye like we do every week. Love.

All love. It is all love. We are all love. Even when the world is dark. Even when we’re lying on the table, ass cheeks out.

Thank you for reading Brain Soup!

My friend Adam and I wrote a video about how America is a Casino for the Superbowl.

You can also support my work by subscribing.

Subscribe now

FIGHT
If you don’t act
One day, the birds won’t sing. 
You won’t hear the familiar lilt 
of an unfamiliar language, 
one aisle over in the grocery store. 
And you’ll wonder. 
Did I ask them to be quiet? 
Or was I simply too quiet myself.

SCREAM
The richest man in the world
Stole your social security number
So he could fire your cousin 
from the EPA. 
So he could deport your neighbor.
So the little lady down the street 
would miss her dialysis. 
So he could feel
Big. 

If someone stole your purse on the street
You would
At least
Scream. 

MAKE ART
Art is the one language
a facist doesn’t speak.
He could hold the paintbrush,
but he doesn’t understand 
why anyone would make anything
that isn’t gilded.

His loss. 
He cannot fully feel
Our sky. 

I LOVE YOU
is a poem,
in three words.
And a promise
to continue dreaming
of better days.

“We need to jiggle every damn door handle to see what opens up. When your mind says it’s over, you’re consenting in advance. Do not be discouraged in temporary defeats. When we are relentless, they will fatigue. Draw them out.” - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a brilliant video full of hope and possibility well worth watching.

Also “Elon Musk is one of the thinnest skinned MF’ers I have ever encountered in my life. That dude, you can get him twisted by looking at him. He’s so insecure, which is why he’s a white supremacist… Do not give them your fear. This is a monster that eats fear. That is what sustains them. Yes, this time is scary. Do not give them your panic.”

Download 5calls and call your rep today.

-We’re stuck inside because there’s dangerous, invisible, unknowable particulate in the air.

-We’re desperately clinging to first responder heroes.

-My news feed is full of tragedy. It’s impossible to look away.

-Many people we know have lost everything. More still have been forced to evacuate or lost water or power.

-When we went to the grocery store, all of the fridges and freezers were bare. Not from overbuying, but because the power outages forced them to throw all the food away.

-Nobody can sleep because the danger is constantly changing. Twice a false emergency alert telling the entire city to evacuate (which would be impossible gridlock mass panic) has gone out. It took ten minutes to correct the first one. The second one happened at 4am.

-People should be wearing masks, but almost nobody is wearing masks!!!! I am so worried for their lungs! I gave my neighbors masks, and they wore them for one day and then promptly gave up.

-We don’t know what we can trust. Instead of wiping down groceries, it’s should we boil water? Can we breathe the air? Who has power right now?

-We’re trying to stay out of the way so people who need resources more can get to them.

-Everyone is constantly texting to see if each other are okay, but it still feels isolated and alone.

-Everyone is banding together, desperate to help, with a bubbling undercurrent of rage and blame.

-Right wingers are already trying to use this as an excuse to take even more from vulnerable people.

-No matter how much the world burns, the people who work at Ralph’s and Starbucks and Amazon go to work every day. Service workers get no breaks.

-I feel like I should wash everything (are the fire chemicals in my hair???) but also like I should conserve water.

-I have no idea when it’s going to end, or what the world will look like when it does.

There’s all this misinformation I’m dying to correct- no, this hasn’t just affected rich people, no, there hasn’t been widespread crime especially considering our population size, yes our firefighters need a higher budget, but most of all…

This is an unprecedented, honestly previously unimaginable disaster. It hasn’t rained in months. January is normally a rainy season, NOT a fire season. You might remember that two Januaries ago we lost our old apartment due to torrential flooding the city was not prepared for.

The city is not prepared for climate change. Neither is the world. This is not just an “LA” problem. It is not a blue state problem. It is all of our problem, raining ash upon my roof. One day, it will rain ash or snow upon yours. But these winds were crazy. I’ve only seen something like it in LA once, during the “HurriQuake” on my 31st birthday. And at least then it rained. Now, we have no rain and no rain in sight. The streets are covered in debris, like we had a tornado. The shingles came off our roof. Somebody’s Christmas tree rolled into our front yard.

These fires have pushed deeper into urban Los Angeles than any of us have ever seen in our lifetimes. Yes, houses on the fringe of the city have always burned. But downtown Altadena? Never.

There are the obvious losses: homes, lives, The Bunny Museum. But there are and will be for months less reportable losses. I heard of a UPS driver who was summarily fired because his route- the palisades- simply no longer exists. Nursing homes and group homes burned down, losing jobs for their workers and valuable routines and sense of security for their residents. Already we can see the creeping hand of capital tightening its neck around our city’s recovery as landlords raise rents, Billionaire developers like Shithead Rick Caruso begin shadow mayoral campaigns while hiring private firefighters to defend malls, companies offer help with asterisks (like… U-Haul is offering 1 free month of storage! Sounds nice but will certainly help their business when people have nowhere else to put that stuff and they start charging in 2 months!!! Airbnb offers a limited amount of free rentals without acknowledging how they have gutted working class housing in the city… I could go on)

It feels weird to talk about how it’s affecting me because I’m so lucky. We live in an area with a separate water system, we don’t own a house, our apartment feels “safe”, we have an air purifier running.

We’re sheltering in place. We are miles from the fires, in the middle of both (and at one point all four!) Twice so far they’ve crept closer and closer, and we’ve watched them crest over hillsides we know and love. The song “I love LA” is everywhere, even in my dreams. It’s funny how much loss reminds you of love. I love LA becuase almost everyone here came to this city for a dream. Whether an immigrant searching for a better life, or an artist searching for a place to truly be theirself. It can seem plastic, harsh, and glamorous from the outside, and it is. But it is also full of art and dreams and the immesurable beauty of human hope.

We haven’t left because this is our home, and partially because my husband and I both have had a horrible cold all week. Not only are we exhausted, my asthma is flaring up and I want to stay close to accessible urgent cares and pharmacies. If we had universal healthcare, my proximity to the county I’m insured in wouldn’t matter so much, but alas! That’s not the world we live in. The world we live in is on fire. And we are fine. Fine. Fine.

If you want to watch the fires like an Angeleno, download Watch Duty. The best reporting I’ve seen is from Daniel Swain. The best public official to follow is LA Controller Kenneth Mejia.

If you’re looking to donate money, try well-known local mutual aid resources that will continue their work for the months ahead, like WaterDropLA, KTown For All, LA Public Defenders Union. Pasadena Humane Society is caring for injured pets.

You can also donate to firefighters: LAFD and the Anti-Recidivism Coalition which helps inmate firefighters.

There are millions of GoFundMes, all of which are worthy. I might humbly suggest looking for those who may not have as much help, like this one for disabled residents of a group home.

Thank you for your love.

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been in pain, and I’ve been fighting with my health insurance company to even get to see a primary care physician, and it just feels depressing to keep re-hashing it. I have to explain the problem over and over again to each new Anthem representative, to the state health board, to the department of managed care. Basically, it’s a full time job, and it sucks. In fact, I’m writing this on hold with Anthem right now!

I’ve been in a lot of limbo. Wonderful, overwhelming, bittersweet limbo. A creative dream came true at the end of last year, but it’s been much more complex than I imagined it would be, and it’s still up in the air, so I can’t talk about it. Then my dog got diagnosed with inoperable bladder cancer, and has been in chemo. Thankfully, I signed up for pet health insurance for her years ago, and it’s paid off once again! She’s doing well, and we get to see how the chemo is doing next week.

The point is, I’ve been struggling to figure out what to say. I mean, I’ve made a few writing for my friend Adam’s youtube. Two of my favorites are: The secret reason Dems keep losing, and a reflection on the American Healthcare System and Luigi Mangione (about which I have a lot to scream!)

Above all, I’m very tired, which is why I think the year should start in February. January is full of messages that it’s time to hit the ground running. New year, new you! What’s your resolution? What do you want to accomplish this year???? But I limped into this New Year (literally! I’m limping! AHHHHH!), so how am I supposed to hit the ground running? I hit the ground with a thud.

I take some heart from my New Year’s Project last year. I took a one second video every day and mashed them together in a compliation video. It’s amazing to see. Because while my animal brain is hard-wired to remember all of the difficult moments behind those clips, the clips tell a powerful story of joy. Of a life surrounded by laughing babies and cute dogs, of jumping into swimming pools and eating delicious croissants.

It reminds me that this year will be bittersweet too. That’s what life is. There will be joys an accomplishments I never dreamed of, heartache I didn’t see coming, and, knowing me, hours on hold with the insurance company. But at least right now, I get to spend thouse hours on hold sitting next to my beloved dog. I may not feel ready for the new year, but here it is anyway, ready for me. We will walk hand in hand together towards the future. Because as one of my favorite songs says, “By default, the future wins". Happy New Year <3

It wasn’t a five star experience. Nothing is with Anthem Blue Cross. I can count the five star insurance experiences I’ve had on one hand. Plus, in this case I’m calling because of a problem Anthem made up. They randomly changed my primary care doctor without warning, voiding all my referrals, including one that took me almost the entire year to get, that I now can’t make an appointment for. How am I supposed to give them five stars after that?

The man didn’t have a solution, only that he’d have to escalate the ticket and call me back. Which is better than the man I talked to last week, who reduced me to tears during a (scouts honor, not exaggerating) 75 minute phone call in which he could offer nothing, and spent long stretches of silence before saying “so… have I solved your problem??”

He wouldn’t escalate me to a supervisor because before he could he wanted to resolve my problem. Because if he didn’t, he would lose his job. But he couldn’t resolve my problem, because the company made it impossible for him to resolve.

The rating emails for both of these men have sat untouched in my inbox. Anthem holds them like a gun to an innocent persons head in a bank robbery. Five stars, or this guy gets it.

I know I’m thinking too much about this, and I should be honest in my rating. One star. This is definitely a one star experience. But I think about the delivery guy who dropped off our new couch this week. He reminded me how important five stars was to him. Then, later that night, he texted me again: “Sorry for the intrusion, miss, but if I don’t get five stars, I won’t get more work this week.” I’d intended to give him five stars because he didn’t literally set my house on fire, but I forgot. Zero stars for me… what if his children are hungry tonight?

Hypocrite that I am, I also use the five star system constantly. When Anthem assigned me the new doctor, I immediately googled her, begging the universe that I’d been assigned a five star doctor.

The last doctor was a zero star doctor. He was fresh out of med school, maybe 23. I begged him for physical therapy and he wouldn’t prescribe it. He didn’t really believe I was in pain until the x ray, which took months of hoops to get, confirmed that I wasn’t lying. My bones told the truth he couldn’t believe from my mouth. But he still didn’t want to prescribe PT. He wanted to start with a surgeon. He will prescribe PT if you need it, the doctor explained. I tried to explain back that it always takes months to get in with a specialist and he wouldn’t budge. Dozens of physical therapy appointments, I have a feeling, is less appealing to the insurance company than one quick appointment with a surgeon who will blame my “lifestyle” for my body’s problems. Zero stars.

When I googled the new doctor, she had 3 stars. One five star review (“she saved my life!”) and two one stars. “She never listens”, “She almost killed my mom”. Yikes.

I look back at my email. The insurance agent’s rating email stares back at me. “Please, five stars. It’s very important.”

I know most people would just give an honest rating. But I think about the times I’ve tried that. Nothing happens. The company doesn’t reach out to correct the experience. They just, I assume, fire the guy who couldn’t get the system to make me give him five stars. I don’t want that guy to be fired. I mean, he’s an insufferable dumbass. But I know how hard it is to get a job. And I know it’s not his fault. I don’t want to assign the stars to him. Who does it help?

This may be a controversial opinion, but I think even insufferable dumbasses deserve jobs. Or at least enough money to eat, to care for their children, to buy the occasional sweet treat that makes life feel bearable. I don’t take this position because I’m a kind person. I think it’s practical. Other human beings exist, even the ones I find exhausting and intolerable, and the truth is the more pain a person is in, the more exhausting and intolerable they become.

I know that because I’m in pain. And when it gets really bad I hear myself snap at my husband, my neighbor, the fucking Anthem guy. What’s the point of putting someone out of work with a low rating, knowing that the next person who comes through will be up against the exact same inefficient, unequal, fucked up system?

No CEO has ever asked me for a star rating of their performance. The CEO of Anthem can do whatever she wants: raise my premium, deny my claims, mandate a never-ending web of phone calls to exhaust me and sap me of any energy I might’ve used to make doctor’s appointments or contribute to society. When do I get to give Gail K. Boudreaux zero fucking stars? Never, because she’s actually doing great at her job: enriching the shareholders. I’m not the customer, I’m the product. That’s how it is. She doesn’t need five stars for that, though. She gets a nice bonus instead. 20 mil in 2023. A few bucks towards her paycheck for every appointment I can’t make, like a cartoon villain strengthening herself on the misery of others. Some Monster’s Inc. shit.

As I consider the ratings emails, my friend calls. She’s having a day too. I get in the car and drive over to her house, sprawl out on her sofa. Her dog jumps on my chest, and we both cry a little bit, and then scheme about how to get her celebrity crush to notice her. We imagine a world where she has a fancy British passport, where we have jobs with easy health insurance, where the President isn’t the President. Maybe instead somebody who sees healthcare as a human right, not a for-profit scheme. My friend’s dog falls asleep on my chest, running in his sleep, like dogs do. My friend hands me a cookie- “the cutest one in the bakery, because you deserve it”, she tells me. And I wonder if Gail K. Boudreaux has ever felt the class solidarity of your broke bestie buying you the best cookie in the bakery case because your health insurance sucks. Probably not. It’s a silver lining. I give it five stars.

I love grocery stores when traveling. It’s such an intimate look at another culture, you can almost imagine as you drift through aisles in a Kyoto supermarket what your life would be like there. It’s fun to see the ways the world can be different and the same. Everybody eats, but not everybody has “Club Corn” fried corn snacks at their fingertips.

So, after seeing the tortillas, I left my friends house and immediately sped to Vallarta. How had I never entered the Mexican grocery store only a few miles away, just behind the airport?

And I was not disappointed with what I saw inside. An entire stand in the store dedicated to fresh tortillas. A tamale station. Prepackaged freshly made rice and beans. The good kind of tortilla chips. Heaven.

As I waltzed the bright aisles picking up tres leches and enchilada sauce, I felt lucky. How strange, I thought, that some people want all of this to go away.

I’ve been following the election with a pit in my stomach much bigger than the kind I get entering Ralph’s. I hope and believe that that racist, anti-immigrant melted creamsicle will lose, but the fact that this election is even close is a mindfuck. I mean, one guy has literally said he wants “one violent day”2 and the mass deportation of 25 million immigrants. (I think the legal/illegal distinction is bullshit, but for what it’s worth actual number of undocumented people in the US is estimated to be closer to 11 million- a teeny tiny 0.03% of the US population. Still, Vance and Trump have made clear they’re happy to deport legal migrants too).

Walking through the aisles of Vallarta, it’s hard to imagine how Americans could feel anything but blessed by multiculturalism. When I’ve phone banked in the past, I’ve listened to white America talk about how dangerous our cities are (they arent!!) and patiently tried to explain that, having lived in a city for over 10 years, I find it joyful and comforting to be surrounded by so much humanity, so much culture, so many hidden gems full of the best tortillas in town.

I haven’t always been a city girl. I grew up in southern Ohio, a few miles from JD Vance (which is, fact check, not Appalachia!!), so I have an academic understanding of the kind of xenophobia millions of Americans are voting on. But it still feels fucking crazy to me. Imagine being a grown man afraid of immigrants! Embarrassing!! Skill issue!!! Go to therapy!!!!!

I love a lot of Midwestern culture: our weird obsession with chili, backyard cornhole, our snide politeness. But I feel embarrassed that, these days, our greatest cultural export is fear and hatred3. I’m so lucky to live in a city where I can see so much more. To not need a plane or a long road trip to find an aisle full of fresh tortillas. There’s a churro cart right down the street, and Vallarta a few blocks from there, and damn, that’s fucking beautiful. And that’s the America I’m voting for.

Visit Vote.Org to find your voter registration deadline or double check to make sure you’re still registered to vote.

I have a show coming up on SEPTEMBER 29 at 7pm at THE GLENDALE ROOM. You can get cheap tickets here or at the door. We have some really fun teams coming, we’re gonna have a great time, and I’d love to see you there because despite all of that I’m still a little NERVOUS! I used to perform every week, but since the pandemic opportunities have been few and far between in LA. So come support local artists doing weird goofy shit!

I’ve also been writing some videos with my friend Adam Conover! We’ve covered how America Hates College Students, Nootropics are bullshitand my personal fave How Streaming Destroyed TV!

What else am I doing? I’m pitching a movie, I’m writing a movie, I’m developing a couple of other pitches, I’m cleaning out my fridge after it decided to give up on life and spending hours fighting the insurance company for lifesaving medication … CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD!

Yesterday was the Emmys and I spent Hollywood’s most glamorous night at Hollywood’s most glamorous location: Universal Citywalk. As a lover of all things kitsch, I love walking around CityWalk screaming “THIS IS AMERICAN CULTURE!” I love how the neon signs are too big and the food is bad and the tourists are sure this is the big city and the parking lot is called Jurassic Parking.

We started the night at the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium and Savory Feast Kitchen. Yes, this is *technically* a real restaurant, and yes, it’s insane. FIRST OF ALL, the name! Toothsome! What?? I LOVE. The whole place is a monument to great ideas executed in a lukewarm way, and it’s incredible. The “restaurant” is theoretically steampunk themed, and they definitely spent all that budget on the costumes and forgot to put any art on the walls. My husband swears the last time he was there they had a dirigible in the center, but sadly there was none when we went.

The restaurant seems ENORMOUS from the outside and begs you to step inside and say “… that’s it??” In the one teeny tiny dining room (monumental since next door at Bucca de Beppo there are so many rooms you could host a polygamist reunion and keep the sister wives who hate each other apart), there are plain tables and chairs that are somehow too tall for an adult woman but too short to be a barstool. There is a wall of TV screens with pictures of turning gears and flying machines. The whole thing seems like they stopped about 40% of the way through designing it and said “good enough!” There are two costumed characters, Penelope Toothsome (I assume that’s her last name), and Jaques, her robot companion. It’s unclear whether Penelope and Jaques are fucking or she’s his beard, protecting him from his robo-homo-phobic family, but there’s definitely *something* going on between these two.

The food is, and this is the most loving way I can put it, ABYSMAL. Okay, the chocolate bread with salted caramel butter was fine, and the $19 cockatils are also fine. But the fries seemed microwaved, the “creme brulee” was a dish of chocolate pudding with a full centimeter of un-bruleed powdered sugar on top. It was insane and I loved every minute of it. We followed it with a stroll through the neon walkways and a screening of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a movie which follows no apparent cinematic rules whatsoever and is nonetheless a bizarre delight.

The whole evening was a joyful reminder that art is everywhere. It doesn’t have to be “good”, and honestly, slapdash chaos can provide its own kind of charm. Human beings came together and built this bizarre monument to our toothsome human condition against all odds. To me, that makes the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium/ Beetlejuice Beetlejuice date night equivalent to seeing the pyramids of Giza. Oh, what a wonder to behold the human spirit in all of its ridiculousness. 10/10.

Subscribe now

A glamorous profession. I mean, it actually is the times you’re getting paid well for it. But when you’re paid only in your own stubborn insistence that YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY it can feel more like putting on a dunce cap and going to dance in the town square. 💃

The funny thing about being a writer is how much your ability to write gets in the way of writing. While I’m trying to write a convincing enough lead up to two fictional people ALMOST but NOT QUITE kissing (save that for the season finale!!!), my brain distracts me by writing a parallel story about how I am stupid and/or pre-cancerous and/or one day going to die and/or not doing enough to influence the upcoming presidential election. 🇺🇸

One’s greatest strength is their greatest weakness, or so goes the literary trope. And writers are nothing if not one big, walking, literary trope, right? 💪

My greatest tip for finishing shit is to let yourself be a little bit dramatic about it and then slap yourself (metaphorically) back to reality. In the past few days I have left long, whinging voice notes for my friends about how I’m never going to finish this, gone to sleep, and then woken up and read what I wrote the night before and screamed at myself “ACTUALLLLLYY! I kinda killed it!!! Look at me go!” 🎉🎉 and then quickly… Oh fuck so many more pages to go. 🤪

I repeat this process ad nauseam1. The trick is to have enough friends (or when out, your Substack or journal), to be embarrassingly pathetic in front of. Being a little bit embarrassing is like a vaccine for the larger embarrassment that I will one day face when I finish this, where I send a 60 page PDF I shat out of my kooky lil’ brain to a stranger and go “Hope you enjoy!!” and then feel queasy for 48-10009 hours while I wait for their response. 😬2

Speaking of vaccines, new Covid boosters are out. I’m getting mine at CVS tomorrow! This entire post is brought to you by the benefits of herd immunity. 💉3

Hope you’re having a great week!

<3

ANDRA

Honestly, it’s so funny to notice that I had this exact same pattern LAST SUMMER because it’s like… fucking seasonal as hell of me. It’s giving plant. Like, I am such a pumpkin-ass-bitch. Summer is not my harvest season! Summer is the season where the seeds I planted in spring BAKE in the hot hot sun of my mind, maybe even begin to blossom, but if you pluck ‘em now they’re kinda just nothing.

My career is even being a little bit of a pumpkin-ass-bitch right now. We finally got the go ahead for a meeting I’ve been working towards for months and… the execs are on summer vacation. (Which is one of the annoyances of being a writer because writers don’t get paid vacation and every day that someone with a salary is on vacation, we’re waiting to see if we can make the payday to get our healthcare… but I digress…)

The universe is basically slapping me upside the head with “GIRL, CHILL AND GROW!”

So… I’m growing. I’m going to the beach. I’m watching the Olympics (trampolining while I wait for artistic swimming). I’m sitting in the grass under a shady tree in the hot sun with my beloved dog, who just turned 9 (I assume). I’m lazing in the pool. I’m having tiny freak outs with my therapist and accidentally making smoothies so large I have to drink them straight out of the blender. I’m eating tomatoes and strawberries and having ideas that aren’t quite ready for prime time.

I want to say I’ve been enjoying it, because I have, but the truth is I’ve been holding myself back from a lot of that joy. I’ve been feeling guilty about all the things I’m not. All the ideas that aren’t ready for harvest. All of the ways that I am less like a machine and more like… a plant.

But… I’m a plant baybee. Maybe those silicon valley dudes can run like a dual core processor (whatever the fuck that means), but I’m gonna be over here, growing like a weed. I’m tired of taking the soil that nurtures me for granted. If you are too, here’s your sign to ease into what’s in season. (shout out to one of my favorite songs.)

It’s time to be a summer pumpkin. Absorbing the sunshine, growing, filling myself and my work up with the nutrients to become a county fair winner in the fall.

I finally reached the end of one I started in March 2023. It starts…

“Beginning this journal up in the air- literally and metaphorically!I’m on a flight to Seattle to help my brother, who is currently suffering from a breakup and broken leg. My new house is still not fully unpacked as we slowly back away from losing our apartment and savings to fungal fuckery. I just turned in my last batch of freelance sleep stories and I don’t know what the world has in store next for me, work wise. Today is also the first day of WGA negotiations, a day that once felt so far off and now…isn’t. I’m not sure what happens next, but I hope it gets easier.”

Haha! It did not. And then it did. Life is funny like that. Here I am a year and a half later, and I know what happened next. How odd to know how much suffering and joy lay between that paragraph and this one.

Looking back on former accounts of my life with a kind of nauseous awareness is, apparently, not a new feeling for me. Recently, my parents brought me some of my childhood diaries. They are hilarious in their earnestness. In one from 4th grade, I list my new years wishes. A dream for “lots of snow” sits right beside the fervent “I WISH FOR RACIAL PROFILING TO STOP!!”

On most of the pages in my 4th grade journal, there are also scribbles from my 5th grade self, looking back on who I was a year before, and what I didn’t know. One of the journal entries even describes my in-real-time reaction to 9/11, complete with a darkly hilarious drawing where the people in the plane exclaim “Oh know!” and my 5th grade self comments “How could I know what this would lead to”, in reference to the Iraq war which I was vehemently against. (A stunning number of the entries in this journal are about what a fucking idiot I thought George W. Bush was. Same as I ever was!)

As a kid, I desperately didn’t want to know the future. I remember around the age of 10 deciding that I couldn’t read my horoscope in the local paper anymore. It made me feel sick, anxious, out of control. In the early days of the internet there was this website that would, apparently, predict the date you would die. The other kids at school were so excited about it, they didn’t just input their birthdates, but also, against my strong protests, mine. I cried and screamed so I wouldn’t hear the date.

For someone who would never willingly enter a time machine, I seem to do a lot of looking back on the past. I mean, how are you supposed to be a writer if you don’t?

I feel lost, sometimes, in the present moment. It doesn’t feel consistent. Anything could happen. The past versions of myself offer the comfortable reminder that I can grow and grow, get taller and bigger and somewhat improve my handwriting, but I will never not be the little girl who processes by looking backwards. Who keeps messy journals. And most importantly, who fucking hates George W. Bush.

I don’t seek out John Mayer songs. Before this morning, I hardly ever thought of him. Sure, he’d come on the radio and I’d go, fine, I guess, or I’d see him on a late night show and go huh, very punchable face, boring music, whatever.

BUT TODAY, Mr. Mayer interrupted my zen. I was lying on my yoga mat (not really yoga-ing as much as laying there trying to keep my eyes closed so I couldn’t see how messy my house is), listening to “Happy Morning Yoga!” on spotify when the song came on.

For a person who uses so many metaphors, I can be more literal than a man reading a single page of the bible out of context. Last week I was spun out by a jar of pasta sauce containing the words “MADE WITH REAL INGREDIENTS”. Real…. ingredients?????? By that definition, this pasta sauce could be full of styrofoam and the concept of time, all of which are techically real insofar as we have words for them and can percieve them in reality. I mean, what is real anyway???? And an ingredient is just something in something else. You and I are real ingredients in the soup of life, y’know???

Anyways, the point is, when Mr. Mayer came on, his lyrics were meeting the ears of someone who is at least a little bit not-fun-at-parties: Moi.

As I tried to muster up a happy baby or even a corpse pose, he crooned:

Me and all my friends
We're all misunderstood
They say we stand for nothing and
There's no way we ever could

and oh boy, my gears began to GRIND. First problem. Who is this rich guy to whine about being misunderstood??? I mean, Your Body is a Wonderland is not exactly an Angelou-level turn of phrase. We understand you fine, sir. My curiosity about who could possibly be in his also-misunderstood friend group was interrupted by-

So we keep waiting (waiting)
Waiting on the world to change

I can close my eyes and imagine a white woman in Michigan singing this while driving straight past a voting booth. And look, I get it. I exist in the world. I have been paying attention to the news lately. I understand how tempting it is to just…wait. To find ourselves powerless, to ignore how even our tiniest actions can ripple outwards into the world we wish to create. As I hopped onto the soapbox in my own mind, shaking my fist at the idea that change is something that happens without human action, Mayer warbled:

It's hard to beat the system
When we're standing at a distance

And that’s when I went off the deep end. It’s just a song, the voices in my head reminded me, but my inner shrill pedant was INCENSED. John Mayer is not standing at a distance from anything except fucking common sense. How do you whine into a song that will be delivered to billions of people’s ears that you have no influence?

Now! I know this is a very high bar to hold a man to who once told Playboy Magazine that his PENIS!!! was a WHITE SUPREMACIST!!!!!!!! Obviously he has the mental acuity of a dead flea in a bucket of shit.

But ideas are contagious! Especially when set to song!! Waiting on the world to change is a beyond-useless contributuion to the cannon of music about the world’s problems. But I am not just a person who complains! I have an alt!!!! So, to reward you for getting this far into one woman’s literalism, I made you a spotify playlist featuring songs that actually feel like revolution to me. Here’s a few highlights:

1. Jansports by Hobo Johnson - A brand new song that could legit make me cry about packing boxes in an Amazon factory, includes the lyrics “I saw my self-worth as a tasks I was offered, But your self-worth is much different than your market”

2. British Bombs by Declan McKenna- a 2019 banger about imperialism and resource wars. “It's a good old fashioned landslide, Killing with your hands tied, In the homemade rope”

3. It’s a Good Day To Fight The System by Shungudzo feat Joy Oladokun - I mean, this is self explanatory

4. I am by Emahee - embraces the radical self-acceptance that I think people are seeking in Mayer’s song

5. The Heart is A Muscle by Gang of Youths- “I will not spend the years depleted of my willingness to try. It won’t hurt this way forever, it ain’t worth the overtime”

You can get the full playlist here.

Maybe that’s why I cried after watching Ryan Gosling’s stunt double throw his flaming body into a wall over and over again for love in THE FALL GUY. Hollywood attracts dreamers, but it retains masochists.

You can’t survive here unless, at some level, you find struggle worth it for the story. In every good movie, the protagonist goes through hell, sometimes literally, to find heaven. It is only in suffering, in repeatedly NOT getting what they want, that our favorite movie characters become who they are always meant to be. You wouldn’t watch a movie where a person just has a good time for 90 minutes.

When I was first deciding to take on this career, my dad told me that it would probably take 10 years. (He wasn’t in the industry, but he’s been an avid reader of industry memoirs ever since I first told him what I wanted to do.) In October, I will have lived in LA for 10 years. I still don’t feel like I’ve “made it”. I’m always thinking about money, my car is held together by zip ties, I’m dashing this off before running to a babysitting gig.

But in these past 9 and a half years, I’ve also made my living either in “the industry” or by writing (okay, minus a few babysitting gigs). I’ve driven hard drives from Santa Monica to Silverlake, gotten coffee for nice people and assholes. I’ve had strangers at wedding receptions beg to know more about celebrities I’ve worked with, and pitch me movies that have no place on the silver screen. I’ve written for Youtube, for TV, for awards shows, and even for dog shelters. Some of that time, I’ve felt like I was “making it” and other times I felt like all I was doing was failing.

Maybe that’s why my husband (who also answered the siren call and works in the art department) and I found ourselves crying last night at the end of an action movie.

If you haven’t seen the trailer, it’s a rom-com about a stunt double who tries to save his ex’s movie to win her back. Somewhere between all of the rolling cars and explosions, it winds up being a movie about relentlessly pursuing a dream, no matter how difficult it gets. It’s a movie about loving the work even when it doesn’t love you back (or straight up tries to kill you). It’s about how the real dream is being a person with a union jacket and a big stupid hat and a sense that you’re a part of something bigger than yourself.

A few weeks ago, a writer friend asked if I even enjoyed writing. He prefers the part where it’s over, where people are watching, ooohing and aahing. Of course I like writing, I replied. That’s why I’m here. There’s something burning inside of me to leave something behind: to make something bigger than myself, to make someone laugh, to make someone feel seen. I can’t do that without the words on the page. Do I always love being hunched over a computer, trying to figure out the funniest way to end the act? No. Sometimes I hate it. My back hurts, my eyes blur, and I wonder whether anyone will even see the thing I’m spending my Saturday on. I especially hate the rejection and uncertainty. Just today I got turned down for a film grant I spent a month making the application for.

But it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a step in the journey. Like every good character, I have to cross the desert to get to paradise. I have to throw myself at the wall again and again, if only to prove I can get back up again. And one day, it’ll make a great fucking movie.

PS: If you’re looking for a movie that scratches the same itch but has less explosions and fight scenes, I also highly recommend Problemista, which also made me cry, perhaps because I am just a fucking cryer!!!

Those are some of the thoughts swirling in my head as I mark this anniversary. A year ago yesterday, a 2007 strike veteran was patiently explaining to me that technically, it’s not picketing if people are just standing still with signs. I was memorizing press talking points and meeting Bill Nye the fucking Science Guy. I was learning for the first time what a neutral gate was, and how much bad laws can fuck shit up.

I’m reliving all those things, viscerally, even if I don’t want to. I’m scrolling Twitter anxiously (though this time I’m checking on the physical safety of other protesters), I’m trying to figure out how to talk publicly about big issues that weigh heavily on my heart (war), I’m wondering how I fit in a larger puzzle of people who believe in a better world.

One year later, I remain steadfast in my belief that standing up for what’s right is worth doing. I would do it all again. I made some of my best friends, I probably fucked up my feet for life, I learned so much about my own capacity to push through pain and find hope in the darkness, and I finally figured out how to get writers to chant in public.

It has been a hard year. During the strike, I was screamed at by strangers, nearly flattened by homicidal truck drivers, harassed by creepy men, and I got sun poisoning and Covid and then sun poisoning again. After the strike, those scars took a long time to fade. The industry has continued to struggle from a wave of contraction and mismanagement that began before the strikes. As CEO pay has risen, jobs for writers and crew have fallen. We won a lot in the strike, but I haven’t yet worked under the contract I helped win.

None of that makes me regret, even for a second, giving myself wholeheartedly to the strike. I would do it again. It was the right thing to do. It made a difference. And I believe that, in the longer view of history, I will be able to see the changes our fight made. I know we won, even though victory is more complicated than we hoped it would be.

Today, after patiently listening to my long list of triggers this week, my therapist asked me to remember something good. I closed my eyes, and I breathed, and I remembered dancing on the picket line. I remembered that wiggling sense of hope: the feeling that while naysayers were quick to say change was impossible, I felt a patient clarity that the future was coursing through my veins, bursting out of my dancing heart.

Today, as so many powerful structures continue to push against justice, against change, against hope, that memory is a talisman. A better future is always possible, and the pain and loss it takes to build a better world is never in vain.

If I could go back in time and tell myself one thing, it would be this: it will be harder than you think, and you’ll do it anyway, because that’s who you are.

Subscribe now

How the fuck do we get through the day when everything seems so nightmarish? When it comes to personal anxiety, therapists often remind us that we should also envision possible positive outcomes. We don’t know which will come, but our chimpanzee brains have a negativity bias because that’s how we didn’t get eaten or some shit, and that makes us sad, and so to be less sad, we should remember that the chimp brain isn’t always right either.

Every social interaction these days seems to include a moment where we not-quite-jokingly say “Is everything just going to keep getting worse????” I get it. We’ve been burned by the dumpster fire. But a better world must be cultivated. Hope is a seed we must plant. We can spend the rest of our lives vacillating between biting our nails about the next world war and googling kitten pictures until AI becomes so prevalent we forget what real kittens look like, or we can push for better.

It’s hard to find things to feel genuinely hopeful about these days. When you google “Good News” you get a bunch of not-good-news SEO-optimized drivel about nurses who pooled their off days so one of their co-workers could get married. But you don’t need google, babe. You have me, and my wild optimism about highly specific things. Here’s a few to chew on today:

1. UNION WINS: Michigan recently repealed “right-to-work” laws. They’re the first state to do so in the 60 years since the idea was legally invented. In union circles, it’s these laws are sometimes called “right-to-work-for-less” becuase statistically, “right-to-work” states have lower wages and no additional job growth. So, what’s my wildest dream here? Beyond the obvious, that people in Michigan will now be able to form more robust unions and collect bigger paychecks, this positive change could influence other states to do the same. If you live in Illinois and your cousin in Michigan is suddenly living a better life thanks to the union, maybe you’ll actually feel compelled to show up and vote for people who would do the same in your state. 26 states are currently “right-to-work”. If that number starts to dwindle, with pro-union sentiment on the rise and activist unions like the UAW and the APFA making big strides, maybe we can wrestle back some power for the working class.

2. MAYBE ONE DAY WE’LL HAVE AN ACTUAL ELECTION: Even more interesting, Michigan is a swing state, and these working class wins were signed into law by a relatively popular democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer. This election year is exhausting for so many reasons, but mostly because we are currently watching 2 very old men, one of whom is a fascist nightmare and the other who is, at his best, a milquetoast nothingburger who a portion of the elctorate blame for being complicit in the horrifying circumstances in Gaza. It’s not a hopeful election. It’s a “well, maybe we can staunch the bleeding until they both die” election. 2024 seems set in stone, but if we’re lucky, democracy will last until 2028, at which point someone else will probably have to run. One of the reasons we’re stuck with Biden is because people are so afraid of another candidate losing. Maybe by 2028 Gretchen Whitmer, among others, will have continued down the path of pro-union legislation and become a viable candidate.

3. DEATH TO THE MEDIA MONOPOLIES: Fubo is suing Fox, Disney, Hulu, and Warner Bros Discovery, alleging that their joint sports-streaming venture is an attempt at a monopoly. Which… yeah… duh. I can’t see how it isn’t. Media consolidation sucks for a lot of reasons. Less jobs is a big one. I personally, am really not enjoying the less jobs aspect at the moment!!! But it also means less choice in media, less space for diversity of viewpoints, more homogeny, more propaganda, more money in the rich assholes pockets. Maybe Fubo will win this. Maybe it will inspire more anti-trust legislation. Maybe it will go to the supreme court and maybe Clarence Thomas will die on one of his rich-guy-trips and be replaced with someone who actually gives a shit whether we live or die. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE, BABY.

4. HONKY TONK BADONKADONK: That song just came on as I was writing this and I was reminded that whimsy lives. One great thing about being alive is that tomorrow, someone will write a new catchy song about butts. What a joy.

5. PERFECT DAYS: I recently watched this Japanese movie and I found it BEAUTIFUL and INTERESTING and ART. Maybe you will watch it and it will heal you too.

6. BABIES, DOGS, & SMALL WINS: Yesterday I taught my friend’s baby how fun it is to have a blanket thrown over your head over and over again. I genuinely recommend trying this if you are feeling sad. Also, my dog’s warm head is currently resting on my leg AND my bar trivia team got 1st place for the second week in a row!!!! WOWWWW!!!!!!

And now, forward, into the future!

The first thing the bot tells me, before asking my birthday, is that it offers convenient texting options to pay my bill. Every third thing out of this robot’s mouth is about paying my fucking bill.

I’m currently trying to get my primary care doctor changed. If you’ve only ever been lucky enough to have PPO insurance, what you need to know is that with “cheaper” HMO insurance, everything you do has to be approved by your primary care doctor, who is, for all intents and purposes, a mirage. I’m trying to see a specialist for nasty cough that won’t go away since I had Covid last August. I’m on 2 inhalers and 2 asthma medications, although nobody has yet confirmed if I actually have asthma. I can’t find that answer without the primary care doctor, who currently, according to the insurance plan, does not exist.

This “cheap” plan is still $600 a month per person. If my husband and I combined make less than $24,000 this year (which in LA is only 3/4 of our annual rent) the subsidy will cover all of that. If we make enough money not to be homeless this year, we will pay the premium back in taxes, up to $15,000.

In other words, we’re paying $1,200 a month to not be able to see a doctor. The phone bot reminds me it’s easy to find answers with their new app, which has the name of a human woman so that I will trust it. But I’ve scoured this app-woman for answers and she has none. I need human-woman, which I can only get to through phone-bot-woman.

Phone-bot-woman reminds me that she is experiencing a higher than usual number of calls. How many years will they be able to get away with saying the crushing need of humanity is higher than usual? When do they just start telling the truth? I’m sorry, we’re experiencing high wait times because our CEO’s private jet is taking up 90% of our budget.

Phone-bot-woman also helpfully reminds me “verification of benefits or coverage is not a guarantee of payment.” In other words, just because we say we’ll pay for it before you go do the expensive thing, it doesn’t mean we will.

The phone bot asks if I’m calling about the same issue I called about the last four times I say YES and then when a human answers they ask why I’m calling. They read the file. They tell me someone has already submitted a ticket, 7 days ago, can I just wait? I almost scream and they dutifully put me back on hold to try and track down the woman who submitted the ticket.

20 minutes into being indefinitely on hold while they try to figure out how to track down the only woman in this call center who may know the secret code, my dog needs to shit. Urgently. I balance the phone on my shoulder as I clip the leash onto her harness, and my soft cheek gracefully hangs up on this absolute nightmare. Thank god for technology and its inability to understand the human body. To my innovative phone screen, my face may as well be a finger.

I call back. The robot asks me three times if I’d like to pay my already paid bill again. It fumbles my birthdate. It cannot understand my member ID. Eventually a man answers without sharing his name. I explain that I’d like to be reconnected to who I was speaking to previously. He asks me if I know her name. Surely there must be a record, somewhere, surely the robot does at least one job correctly, I beg.

The robot does not do its job correctly. The nameless man puts me on hold. 20 minutes in, I get another call, and am thrilled to hear “Jenny from Anthem” on the other line. She tells me that multiple tickets have been submitted, but the ticket doesn’t guarantee the update. I beg for a way to escalate this.

I know this is not your fault, Jenny, I beg, but isn’t the whole point of the bills I keep paying so I can actually go to the doctor??

I wonder how many times any person who has ever run for President in the “greatest country on earth” has had to wait on hold and beg, beg, beg, for someone to help them with the loud, troubling, painful cough that awakes them every morning.

Whenever socialized medicine comes up, whether we call it “Medicare for all” or “European healthcare” or “please Christ just give me what Canada has”, politicians often disingenuously bring up a few points. It’s expensive, they whine, as though this utter waste of everyone’s time and breath that costs $1200 a month is not. You won’t be able to see your doctor, they lie through their fucking perfect dental-having teeth, as though it’s easy to see doctors now. There’s endless bureaucracy, they dribble from their surely lobotomized brains. All those things are already true. At least in other countries, everyone has the right to see a doctor eventually. We’d have to be crazy to believe this is the best system, that we’re really better off spending our money on bombs and not our neighbors lungs. I think we all know that.

And yet, we do not take to the streets. We’re too busy waiting on hold.

Jenny from Anthem is finally back. Are you still there? she asks. Yes, I reply. I’ll be here forever.

Is to eat every different kind of potato with someone you love

You may have to do other things

You may have to participate in the hamster mazes of human creation required to set up a bank account or pay a bill

You may have to learn the difference between an HMO and PPO because you are stuck in the tangled web of human existence

But all of those things you do in service of the next time you make a baby laugh

Of the next time you pet a soft dog

Of the moment when cool water touches your skin on a warm day

You are not failing

You are doing something nobody has ever done before by being exactly you in exactly this moment

And nobody has a manual for that

Because you are writing it with every breath

You are never alone

Everything you feel and see and say bounces off the souls around you like lights on a mirror

Every time you laugh at the trumpeting sound of a fart, you create the music of being alive

Every time you cry at heartache, whether from the great and mighty terrors of the world or the banal pain of forgetting that you don’t actually have the right kind of cheese in the fridge to make a quesadilla, someone else is crying with you

You are alive. You are the meaning of life.