So, I’m writing this summary of my taste in movies and T.V. because writing helps me formalize my thoughts and remember things, and I figured, why not subject you to this?

WHAT ARE MY TOP 4 MOVIES OF ALL TIME?

Pretend I was asked this on the spot and under pressure.

“Oh God. I’m not sure. Off the top of my head, I’ll say…”

1. Grey Gardens

2. The Last Unicorn

3. Hocus Pocus

4. The Favourite

However, those aren’t all current and don’t really reflect the genre I write books in, so that’s not very useful, is it?

WHAT ARE MY TOP 4 CURRENT MOVIES?

1. Aftersun

2. I Used to Be Funny

3. Bottoms

4. The Good Girl

   

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WHAT MOVIES DID I CONSIDER AND NOT MENTION ABOVE?

I’m into that feminine, coming-of-age, depression core genre (Girl Interrupted, The Virgin Suicides, Thirteen, Lady Bird…), animated movies that have an eerie vibe (like Watership Down), campy 90s children’s movies with whimsical elements (like Matilda, The Witches, Drop Dead Fred...)

I loved Bo Burnham’s Inside. Also loved Eighth Grade. Big fan of All of Us Strangers.

I watch the Before series every time it’s an option on a long plane ride.

WHAT ABOUT T.V.?

My top 4 T.V. shows are:

1. Fleabag

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

3. Normal People

4. Derry Girls

Recent (ish) shows I’ve been into are: Hacks, The White Lotus, A League of Their Own, Severance, The Handmaids Tale, Succession, Heartstopper, Our Flag Means Death, Feel Good, Work in Progress, Heated Rivalry, Somebody, Somewhere, and North of North.

I found the following shows funny: Wilfred (The one with Elijah Wood), What We Do in the Shadows, & The Last Man on Earth.

Also into Skins, Broad City, Girls, Schitt’s Creek, and Road to Avonlea.

CURRENT ACTORS I LIKE*:
*I hope these are all nice people.

• Olivia Colman

• Andrew Scott

• Nicola Coughlan

• Ayo Edebiri

• Daisy Edgar-Jones

• Eugene Levy

• Samira Wiley

• Clea DuVall

• Cherry Jones

• Sandra Oh

• Saoirse Ronan

• Paul Mescal

• Christopher Lloyd

• Elijah Wood

• Bradley Whitford

• Hannah Einbinder

• Rosie O’Donnell

• Elliot Page

• Bowen Yang

• Danielle Brooks

• Caleb Hearon

• Anna Lambe

• Kristen Stewart (in her weird films especially)

• Daniel Radcliffe (in his weird films especially)

• Jeff Hiller

• Connor Storrie

• Hudson Williams

• Ilana Glazer

• Abbi Jacobson

• Jane Fonda

• Mae Martin

• Seth Rogan

• Bill Hader

• Josh O’Connor

• Uzo Aduba

• John C. Reilly

• Megan Stalter

• Melanie Lynskey

I keep remembering more movies, shows, and actors as I read this over, but hopefully I’ve captured the essence of something here.

If you cared to read this, and have any recommendations based on my unsolicited taste, I love to be recommended things.

I hope you’re having a nice day,
Emily

Here’s what’s been on my mind lately:

1) Why am I perpetually covered in bruises?

2) I’m teaching a writing class this fall. I’ve never taught a writing class before, and I don’t have an MFA, so God help me. I have taught library related classes, so I’m capable of doing things like developing a syllabus and rubrics. I’m not, however, well acquainted with writing as a subject to study. Lord knows what I’ll impart on my poor pupils.

3) I tie-dyed some shirts with my sister and nephew about a week ago, and didn’t wear gloves (oops). My nailbeds are stained purple. I look like I’ve been clawing in dirt.

4) I think my pinky-toe is broken.

5) I handed in the first round of edits for new book, GARBAGE GIRL. I find editing really fun. Have I mentioned GARBAGE GIRL on SubStack yet? It’s about a grocery store janitor (fun fact: I used to be a grocery store janitor!)

Anyways, I’ve been eating slices of watermelon like steak with a fork and knife and watching Road to Avonlea. I am obsessed with Hetty King.

I hope you’re all filling your days with similar indulgences.

Happy July,
Emily

If you like “It Gets So Hot,” read First Summer by Ekin Oklap.
This book opens with the line, “It was so hot…” It’s a nostalgic, queer coming-of-age story set in the heat of a teenaged summer. Pitched as the queer gal version of Call Me by Your Name. (Hopefully if it becomes a movie, no one who stars in it exposes themselves as a cannibal, or worse! Dates a Kardashian !)

If you like “Dancing on the Wall,” read The Fake by Zoe Whittall
The Fake is about a pathological liar and the impact she has on a woman grieving her wife, as well as on a recently divorced man. Both this song and book deal with questioning whether someone cares at all, or just pretends they do.

If you like “Wannabeher,” read Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
Want to read a book about a lady living in a dilapidated house full of bees who’s obsessed with a large Swiss woman? Who wouldn’t? Both this song and book deal with being obsessive and wanting someone while also sort of wanting to be them.

If you like “So What,” read Perfume and Pain by Anna Dorn
A Los Angeles author attempts to revive her career and find true love in this nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. There’s some ironic self-awareness in both this book and this song, and a bit of emotional numbness too.

If you like “Big Stick,” read Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde’s essays about oppression pair well with this overtly political song that Muna used to raise funds for Pal Humanity.

If you like “Mary Jane,” read Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
This is a book about a pregnant woman who is obsessed with a lady she delivers pickle pizza to. Are you looking for longing and dissociation? Listen to this song and/or read this book.

If you like “Why Do I Get a Good Feeling,” read Broughtupsy by Christina Cooke
This story follows a young gay woman dealing with grief while she reconnects with her estranged sister in Jamaica. Both the song and book are about being pulled towards something emotionally dangerous.

If you like “Buzzkiller,” read Is This a Cry For Help?
I have to put my own book in here, right? Is This A Cry For Help is about a person who worries about the negative impact she’s had on others, how she’s let people down, and how sorry she is for being a buzzkiller.

Merry Muna,
Emily

Also, this is unrelated to this post, but did you know it can be life-threatening to do MDMA while on anxiety medicine?

Anyway. I’ve been thinking a lot about mental health lately. One thing on my mind is that in every instance where I’ve known someone who died by suicide, the people close to them mentioned social media, and how they compared themselves to others and struggled with feelings of inferiority.

In some of these instances, these were people who I was friends with on social media. Because of that, I’ve thought about how my social media presence may have been perceived by them.

In the past, when I thought of the whole “social media is a highlight reel” thing, I pictured people who intentionally try to create the impression that their life is perfect (e.g. people who post happy family photos in a corn field despite being on the brink of divorce.)

But I’ve realized there’s more to it than that. Social media is also a highlight reel because we aren’t taking pictures of ourselves when we’re miserable. It’s also often rude to post about negative things that happen to us because it usually involves others. There are so many reasons why it’s an illusion.

In the spirit of these thoughts, I’m writing this to share some behind the scenes realities of my own experiences with mental illness, especially in relation to writing:

• I take medication before public speaking (and in general).

• I have to lie on the ground after taking a phone call, or a Zoom call.

• I’ve never left a public speaking event and felt good about myself.

• I find myself masking or consciously managing how I speak to others regularly.

• I struggle to re-read anything I’ve written in the past, and often feel deeply embarrassed by it.

I could go on, but I wanted to share some of this in the spirit of being more transparent, and in the hopes that if anyone has ever looked at my social media (or anyone’s social media, really) and felt bad, you should know that it really isn’t the whole picture. (And my above examples are just in relation to writing. I could really bore you with bullets about my general insecurities and failures…)

In my new book, IS THIS A CRY FOR HELP, the main character is recovering from a mental breakdown. She mentions that her workplace gives a lot of lip service to mental health; however, in practice, when someone takes a leave for their mental health, there’s still a lot of stigma. Sometimes, there are these associations with being mentally ill and being attention-seeking, or lazy, or other negative things. I think society has improved in some ways in relation to this, but it’s usually focusing on this sanitized version of mental health. There’s still a lack of true transparency and understanding, and that’s part of why everything is such an illusion.

Anyway. While writing this, I’ve discovered people taking meds for erectile dysfunction and for their hearts also shouldn’t eat grapefruit, so I’ll end this by saying that’s not who I meant this note for; however, I wish you the best with your hearts and your penises.

Take care,

Emily

You’ll find more useful info there (including a toolkit) but here some highlights:

· Reading is a foundational skill, critical to learning and exercising our democratic freedoms.

· Individuals must be trusted and have the right to make their own decisions about what to read.

· Parents should not make decisions about what to read for other parents’ children.

· Library materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.

· Books are tools for understanding complex issues. Limiting access to books does not offer protection from life’s complex and challenging issues.

· All people deserve to see themselves reflected in a library’s books.

· Library workers should not be subject to harassment, intimidation, arrest, or threats of legal action for fulfilling their professional obligation to serve all members of their community.

· Free people can choose what they read but they cannot choose what the entire community reads.

· Censorship hurts democracy— how can we choose our leaders and laws if we don’t have free access to information?

· The movement to ban books is not a movement of parents, but a movement of partisans who seek to limit our freedom. (The VAST majority of demands to censor books come from organized political groups. They are rarely coming from people like actual concerned parents.)

· Assaults on our freedom to read are assaults on our personal liberty and democracy.

Free people read freely.

Go to uniteagainstbookbans.org for tools to help stop book bans.

Mostly, I was looking for places to read and write. (I’ve been reading So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan and re-reading Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu.)

I’ve had a lovely time. I have very positive associations with Ireland and Irish people, and I’ve found everyone exceptionally kind.

Many of my favourite contemporary writers are Irish. I loved The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue, and of course I love Sally Rooney. Naoise Dolan.

Before my grandma died, she told us to play the song “Galway Bay” at her funeral. She spoke about death very casually and openly. I remember her playing the song for me, visibly loving it, and saying—sort of like someone might say, “Turn this up!”—“Play this at my funeral!”

We did play it, and we visit her headstone every year at Christmas and play it there too. It’s an old Irish song about cultural identity, and about God making Ireland heaven. Here’s the version she played for me:

Hope you’re all well,

Emily

I’m someone who needs to sit in a quiet, dark room alone after attending even a brief social lunch. I find phone calls strenuous. I brace myself against something and exhale after hanging up, as if I’ve just finished jogging.

Publicly speaking for several days in a row, and then having a series of brief interactions in a signing line, feels sort of like being the subject of a weird social experiment; however, it was also really, genuinely touching to meet so many kind, supportive people, and I feel crushed by the experience.

Someone sent their brother to attend an event because they couldn’t come. He waited in a long line to get books signed. He also shared he read the back of my novel INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE, which is about a woman afraid of bald men, before lifting his hat, laughing, and showing me that he was a bald man.

In a similar vein, someone sent their dad to attend an event because they got into a car accident and couldn’t come (they were okay.) He was so sweet. He was filming for his kid and took pictures with me.

Someone showed me they had an EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM rabbit tattoo. Another person showed me they got WE COULD BE RATS tattoos.

A straight man wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs hat came to get his book signed, and told me he knew he wasn’t my usual demographic, but he loves literary fiction and reading about people who have different experiences than him.

Several people travelled to attend events (some from places that weren’t close.)

Someone told me that my books helped them while learning English.

I was given a very sweet letter, as well as a whittled wooden rat, a needlepoint of a rat with a library card, beautiful ink rat art that says “bite the hand that needs me”, a hilarious drawing of lesbian rats, library & IS THIS A CRY FOR HELP? themed buttons, all my book titles translated into Japanese, and crocheted flowers in the same colours as my new book.

Someone told me EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM helped them come out. A few people said it got them back into reading.

I felt very connected to many people who shared their own experiences with their mental health, neurodivergence, and queerness.

A few people mentioned they became friends because of a connection with my books.

I also met several people, including book sellers and writers, who I knew prior online, but hadn’t met in person, and they were all so genuinely nice.

An older southern sounding man, who did not have the look of someone in my usual demographic, showed me a passage from IS THIS A CRY FOT HELP? about how important it is to have access to information, and told me it was his favourite part of the book.

There’s more, but I’ll spare you. The crux of what I’m getting at is that, while I do need to go sit in a dark room now, I have been absolutely crushed by people being so devastatingly nice.

I feel very lucky (and guilty? Can I blame the Catholic church for this?) to have found such a sweet audience of people for my books. Thank you so much to anyone who came out to those events, or to anyone who has supported my books in any way. I feel just terrible about it.

Emily

PS. I was welcomed back to Ottawa to see this big airport advertisement for Heated Rivalry in the baggage area. (Regardez maintenant, ya’ll.)

Like a lot of people, I was drawn to librarianship because I love books. I quickly learned that libraries are about more than books.

The first class I took in library school taught me that public libraries are foundational democratic institutions. Free and open access to information from diverse viewpoints (without censorship, restriction, or surveillance) is a requirement for democracy.

My new novel, IS THIS A CRY FOR HELP?, follows a lesbian librarian returning to work after having a mental breakdown. The main character, Darcy, is grappling with grief and regret while being confronted by people pushing book bans and opposing programs like drag queen story times.

Right now, society is obsessed with a very sweet gay hockey romance story, and the radio is playing Chappell Roan. At the same time, we’re watching political violence escalate, censorship rise, and marginalized people get brutalized and murdered. Queerness is being culturally celebrated while queer people, and other marginalized groups, are being aggressively politically attacked.

Darcy is barely holding herself together while being asked to stand in defence of intellectual freedom, public access, and democratic values. Part of my objective with the story was to shed light on who we are expecting to protect things like intellectual freedom, and what we can do to help them.

At the end of the book, I include a page about what we can all do to support our public libraries (and in turn, the core values of librarianship, which include ACCESS, EQUITY, & INTELLECTUAL FREEDROM):

IS THIS A CRY FOR HELP comes out on January 13^th. I hope you check it out!

Emily

I wrote about Dateline in my second novel, INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE. The main character watched it a lot with her mom as a kid. That book came out two Januaries ago, which is now two of my birthdays ago, and two books.

It’s fun to mark time with books. I get to look back on periods of my life and think, “I was writing We Could Be Rats then.” It’s a fun marker of time.

I was born three days after Christmas, which makes me a Capricorn, though I don’t really buy much into horoscopes. (Which I think might be a Capricorn attitude to have?)

I do like the idea of a horoscope. I love the idea of anything magical. In fact, I’m inclined towards magical thinking. This isn’t always good. I sometimes tell myself things like: if the clock reaches the next minute before I pick up the thing I dropped, something terrible will happen.

I also like to humour the idea that how you spend your birthday, or New Year’s Day, has some enchanted connection to the rest of your year. I don’t really believe it does, but it’s fun to pretend it might.

I spent my birthday reading Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West’s love letters in this cabin where deer come eat carrots out of your hand, after eating at a restaurant where I awkwardly glanced at the table beside me and whispered, “Is that Matthew Perry’s mom with Keith Morrison?”

I hope this all means something good for my next year of life.

IS THIS A CRY FOR HELP? (my new book) comes out in two weeks, and I’m going on a book tour. I need to pack and renew my beta blocker prescription.

I hope you’re all enjoying the weird liminal space between Christmas and New Year’s, which is when I was born.

Emily

I don’t know if this is a symptom of one of the conditions I have, something to do with time since Covid, or something else—but I feel like I’ve never written anything before.

Every time I start writing a new book, I think, “I don’t know how to write a book.”

I’m starting to feel a little insecure about my instinct to say, “I have no idea how anything works” when it comes to writing and publishing because this is my fourth novel. I must have some idea. I’m sure I sound like an idiot when I say that…

And yet I don’t have any idea. Despite strongly suspecting it’s a fluke that I’ve ever written anything, and an even bigger fluke that anything got published, some part of me falls back inside my corporeal form when I unbox finished books. That’s usually when I face that, weirdly, I guess I did it.

IS THIS A CRY FOR HELP? is about a librarian named Darcy who just returned to work after having a mental breakdown. It deals with topics like: book banning, compulsory heterosexuality, lesbian marriage, regret, categorizing information, aging, bird facts, and it features several cats.

Canadians, if you pre-order from Ottawa’s lovely queer owned book store The Spaniel’s Tale, they’ll mail you a signed copy (with a sticker!) And if you’re American, and live near any of these areas, come keep me company (if you feel like it):

I hope you’re having a nice day,

Emily

I know I’m among many who have grown weary of relying on odious tech media billionaires for anything, including preserving our memories.

Digital media may survive a house fire better, but we were lied to about the internet lasting forever. Server maintenance is expensive. File formats become obsolete. Bug-faced billionaires take over and do weird larvae things…

I shared in a previous post that I have frequent intrusive thoughts about death. Given this, it’s occurred to me that if all our memories are locked up in Google Drives, it’ll be difficult for the people we leave behind to reminisce over our teenaged photos of us all binge drinking in corn fields.

My day job is IT adjacent, and sometimes I have conversations with people that suggest technological advancements are always moving towards something better. I’m confident that’s not true, given the primary goal of those advancements is for the worms to get richer.

They’ll keep degrading social media, streaming platforms, and anywhere they can get their feelers for the sake of piling more money in their bug-nests. And, as anyone who has had to log into four different streaming services to find a show only to have to sit through an ad for Wegovy knows, it shows.

Sometimes I’m asked if I’m worried about AI taking creative writing away, and I’m not. Maybe I’m missing something, but I think even if AI advances to be capable of writing things devoid of excessive em dashes, American spelling, and phrases like “weaving a tapestry”, it’s boring. Voiceless. I’m never going to want to read a book written by AI. How am I supposed to make assumptions about the writer’s personal life, their intentions, or take away anything insightful if the writer is lifeless?

I think there’s something we’re looking for when we read, or even log online, that has to do with connecting with other people. There are some exceptions where mindless AI satisfies the masses (like for ASMR, and some other use cases), but for the most part, consuming it is sort of like when a dog tries to eat a rock.

Anyways, here are some of the photos I got developed:

I hesitate to share this because I worry that writing it down will somehow make it happen; that I’ll die on Industrial Ave and people will feel bad, thinking, oh no, she died exactly where she said she didn’t want to.

So, to be clear, I don’t actually care that much about where I die. In fact, if I die there, I’ll think it’s funny.

My understanding (disclaimer: I have no expertise in this subject) is that we’re supposed to observe intrusive thoughts. Having the thought itself is fine. The problem comes from how we react to it.

I don’t think I react that badly. I don’t tell myself that every time I think of dying I need to count to ten, for example. (Despite having that kind of instinct…)

I think I might neutralize the thought by accepting it’s okay if it happens. I don’t think I’m supposed to do that—but there are only so many hours in a day. If I spend too much time trying to correct all my bad instincts, I won’t have any left to devote to the important things I occupy myself with, like doom scrolling, making soups, reading lesbian books...

I have frequent intrusive thoughts. I doubt I’ve ever held a baby without imagining some calamity. Sometimes I’ll be holding a baby and someone will say, “Watch out for that cup near you,” and I nod—but I’ve already been thinking about that cup, as well as the possibility of a sinkhole opening beneath me, or a well-behaved golden retriever going Cujo.

I’m not offended when people remind me to be careful. I’m comforted that others, too, are aware of the dangers surrounding babies.

Something I subscribe to (though I’m open to adjusting most of my thoughts, so please take everything I say with a grain of salt...) is that, in certain doses, most mental illnesses offer us something good.

This may be the mental illness talking, but in general, I think being anxious about baby safety results in safer babies, for example. Being depressed enlightens you a little.

I also think that, because I’m generally walking around thinking about how everyone’s going to die, I tend to respond to things like minor inconveniences, or people being rude, with some awareness that it’s small potatoes. It’s hard to care that much when someone says something rude while you’re thinking about how they, and you, and everyone around you, could drop dead at any moment.

Though, I guess sometimes when people behave badly I do find myself thinking, how could you behave like that? Don’t you know we’re all dying? And it makes me more offended. Maybe it all comes out in the wash...

I do feel acutely aware that many people have experienced people close to them dying, and that their lens and experience is coloured by that grief, and that we all need to be kinder to each other. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, “DON’T HONK AT ME MY DAD IS DEAD.”

Anyways. Thinking a lot about death is a quality the main character in my first book (Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead) has, but she does so with more panic. This is an example of how, yes, of course I have qualities the characters in my first-person narrated novels about anxious lesbians do, but it’s in a different sort of font.

I hope you all die someplace very pretty,

Emily

· A large plug-in ceramic jack-o’-lantern

· Felt pumpkin and leaf bunting (is bunting the right word? Garland?)

· A cauldron

I’m into Halloween. I feel the same way about Christmas. I like having pumpkins and pine trees in my house, and drying citrus fruit. It might just be that I yearn for paganism, or that—despite my criticisms of my Catholic upbringing—I feel nostalgic for that magical, slightly ominous aesthetic. Though, I know the Catholics stole a lot of that from the pagans, so maybe the root is the same.

This October, one of my sisters came to visit with my baby nephew. I have two older sisters. Here we are:

Before their stay, I collected toys from thrift stores. I had some blocks and picture books already, but not enough.

I remember being a kid, visiting houses without toys, and feeling disturbed by anyone who could find joy in a place devoid of stuffed animals. I don’t like the idea of a kid coming to my house and feeling that disturbance, so I assembled the following crew:

My nephew is a baby, so he probably would’ve been happy playing with my bowls and ladles, but my other sister has two little kids also, so it was time to amass more toys.

We went to Pumpkinfest at Saunders Farm, which is an elaborate fall farm destination in Ottawa. It has hedge mazes, a hayride, a witch house, puppet shows, and all that good stuff.

The next weekend, I went to Calgary for the first time for Wordfest, a very nice literary festival.

I have social anxiety so I tend to feel uneasy at these events; however ultimately, it’s nice to connect with other writers and readers. There’s a cool sense of community, and I always leave with lots of books to read. (I can’t usually buy them there, though. I just make note. I only bring a carry on, and books are essentially bricks.)

Before Calgary, the furthest west I’d been in Canada was Moose Jaw, where I went in July for the Saskatchewan Festival of Words. I’ve been to L.A. and San Francisco, but in terms of Canada, this was a new part of the world for me.

I’ve always loved traveling, and while public speaking and having a series of brief interactions with people gives me hives, I’m grateful to be sent places, and to meet people.

I went to Ottawa’s book fair the day I got back from Calgary and spent some time with the owners of A Spaniel’s Tale (Ottawa’s queer owned bookstore) and other local book shops. I was given crème brûlée. It was fun meeting people from stores I didn’t know about. Also, I heard gossip about which writers are rude. I won’t name names here, but next time you see me IRL, I’ll dish.

I find it harder to write this time of year. I don’t know why. I’m occupied doing all the things you do before a new book comes out (my new book IS THIS A CRY FOR HELP? comes out in January), my day job is busier than it is in the summer, and I’m just not in the right headspace. So, while I have more writing projects I’m working on, I’ve been leaning into writing more experimentally, without focusing too much on producing a (dun dun dun) book. I did write three short stories : one about a grumpy government office worker whose non-binary child won’t speak to her, another about a newly married bro-type man who suspects his wife is cheating, and a third about a lesbian woman living in her car with her pet toad.

I went on a blurb hiatus for the first time this fall (I think it was the first time, at least.) I agreed to read too much. Oops. Here are the upcoming books I blurbed (and loved): NERVE DAMAGE by Annakeara Stinson, CLEO DANG WOULD RATHER BE DEAD by Mai Nguygen, EVIL GENUIS by Claire Oshetsky, LONG ISLAND GIRLS by Gabrielle Korn, & SATURN RETURNING by Kim Narby.

Almost 100 kids trick-or-treated at my place on Halloween. I give out full sized chocolate bars and ring pops because, as I established earlier with that toy talk, I care that children associate my house with happiness. That said, I’d also be cool if—after seeing all my dried oranges and bones—they think I’m a witch.

Thanks for being here,

Emily

Every journal I’ve ever attempted to write started with a statement apologizing to the insentient journal for being self-absorbed enough to write about myself in it. I had several of those locking diaries as a kid that began, in my terrible little boy-like chicken scratch, with the disclaimer: I’M SORRY FOR WRITING IN YOU ABOUT ME.

I don’t think journals, blogging, or writing about your own life is self-absorbed when other people do it. I like reading blogs, memoirs, and newsletters. As a teenager, I always loved reading my sister’s diary (sorry, Mal.)

There’s this balance we need to strike when it comes to caring about yourself. A certain degree of self-absorption is healthy. I remember that dawning on me once, when I was particularly depressed. You’re supposed to be interested in yourself. What a relevation. On the other hand, too much interest in yourself is obviously harmful. Unchecked narcissism seems to be at the root of a lot of today’s troubles, I think.

When I discover things like my rising sign, celebrities born on the same day as me, and that Fran Leibowitz and I are both blind in our right eyes, a voice in my head says, “Big whoop. Who gives a shit?” I worry that sharing that sort of factoid is somewhat like sharing the details of a dream I had last night. People don’t care. It doesn’t matter. But nothing matters, really, when you think about things that way, and I actually like hearing about other people’s dreams.

This is my first SubStack. I don’t know what I’m doing. This was my attempt at not giving in to my compulsion to write I’M SORRY FOR WRITING ON YOU. I’ll try to share more here, including writing updates (My new book comes out in January 2026.)

Thanks for stopping by.

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