This is the first week of the school year in my eighteenth year of teaching. (I did take two years to go to grad school, but I taught classes throughout my time there, so I’m counting ‘em!) Some things have changed, and a lot of things have stayed the same.

Things that have changed are mostly technology-related. Generative AI has been a nonstop conversation for the past five years. This letter will not be about that. Teachers are so panicked about generative AI that conversations about phone usage are fewer and further between; we’ve all kind of settled into the foregone conclusion that everyone in every room will be addicted to a device, and we simply have to teach around it.

Slang changes, but the way I feel about it doesn’t. The specific reciprocal pleasure experienced between a student and myself when the student gets to explain a word or phrase to me is one of the greatest perks of my job. I’ll never forget being taught “flexing for the gram,” “spilling the tea,” or “it’s giving.” In 2017, I was young enough to get away with calling something “extra,” but I’m not going to be vocally observing a “Fanum tax1,” because I am forty. Nevertheless, I love witnessing the way language changes.

(I recently engaged in a divisive conversation about the verb “stan.” The lone Gen Z-er in the crowd said it’s a solidly Millennial phrase, but I don’t agree; I think Millennials established it, but Gen Z took it and ran. I heard it nonstop from 18-year-olds in 2018. Now it’s dated; I get that. Things get dated so quickly! Anyway, the divisiveness was around the origin of the term. The room was split three ways: those of us who correctly believe that the use of “stan” as a verb stems entirely from the 2000 Enimem song; those who believe that Eminem was aware of the term when he wrote his song, so he popularized it but did not invent it; and those who didn’t know Eminem even wrote such a song.)

What has stayed the same, reliably: the general mood as it relates to the time of the year. The only exception was the pandemic year, when I have no idea what the mood of anything was. I was in a digital classroom where I never saw anyone’s actual face. Otherwise, the breakdown among my students and colleagues is basically this:

September: We are excited. We have a lot of big ideas and plans. We are prepared. GOALS GOALS GOALS. This year will be different. This is the beginning of something. Anything is possible!

October: Still feeling pretty good. There have been some hiccups in the plans, but we remain optimistic. We believe there will be time to catch up in some near future. Things can still get back on track.

November: Uh oh. Now we’ve gotten sick; maybe more than once. It feels like our luck is worse than everyone else’s luck. It feels like an anomaly that we’re feeling really bad. We check in at a four out of ten. We go home and break up with our boyfriend / girlfriend / partner. It’s Chernobyl.

December: We are worn out. We are destroyed. What happened to us? And now there are finals; there’s the holidays. Everyone needs something; wants something. We are So. Tired. We think back to our September plans and we have to laugh at our own folly. But also, there was no way we could have known how shitty the last few weeks could have been! We just have to hold on and survive.

January: The world is dark, and so are we. We sleep more; we recoup. We spend some time tending our wounds. Who knew the holidays would be so wounding? Insult to injury! Then, begrudgingly, it’s time to make more plans. To pick ourselves up and set fresh goals. A little optimism arrives.

February: Never mind, everything is dark and hard.

March: Maybe things will be OK? But it does kind of feel like we’re out of time. It’s hard to make plans; the towers we began constructing have fallen. We’re working with mush.

April: A final push. Soon it will be summer. We just have to hold on to survive.

May: It is the apocalypse. But also — summer is so soon! Everything is going to be better in summer!

Knowing that these patterns are inevitable has helped me to shape my syllabi. Now I front-load all the hard work in September and October. That’s when I assign the longest papers, the big project, ask for the most in-class assignments, do the boring stuff. It makes a big difference. Not to brag (OK, jk, I’m totally bragging), but my course evaluations since I made this change have been immaculate.

On a personal level, there are also adjustments. The first one is to understand that you are asking too much of yourself. If you’re asking more than two things of yourself, it’s probably too much. It’s important to factor in time for rest, and to get sick, and to experience boredom. You have to assume that you’ll stray from the plan.

Our chicken Bird Reynolds is about to die. She’s actively dying in the false sunflowers right now; she has been for three days. She is so old; I don’t even know how old she is. She has been our chicken since we bought our house, and when we got her, she was an adult chicken. So she has to be at least, like, ten years old. You’re asking, “How long do chickens usually live?”

She has been through a lot. And now we’re waiting for her to die. Luke gave her some watermelon this morning, which she is unwilling to eat. She doesn’t want to eat anything; but maybe she will want to smell the watermelon as she leaves us.

I caught myself in the foolish thought, “Bird Reynolds just has to die, and then I can mourn her and then things will be back to normal again.” But everything has to die, and too soon. (Mary Oliver said that. She was right about everything.) Life is a series of endings and beginnings, and you mostly don’t get to choose any of them. So, instead, you have to expect them.

The best way to do this is to not ask too much of yourself, because it’s always going to be something. Over the summer, I usually give myself a thousand or so goals, because the days are long and stretchy, and I’m going to get a bunch of stuff done, right? But this summer, I picked only two things: I would lift weights three times per week, and I would work on my novel once a day. Now summer is over, and guess what? I’m really, really strong; and I have a draft of a novel.

So as you begin your semester, as you feel compelled to ask a lot of your sweet self, consider that life is already asking quite a lot of you. What is one thing that would be fun to work on? That would bring you joy?

Bird Reynolds, like all chickens, was really good at answering this question. Every day of her entire life, she thought it would be fun to scratch the ground and wonder if there were bugs nearby to eat. And I think her life has been pretty lovely.

Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.

Comics / Cartoons

I’m sharing the whale fall comic, which I put up last week; and then the slide show for the Yellowstone wolves comic, which is on Instagram but I also performed it for 20x2 last month. Finally, the cockroach comic from a while back I reference in the Loose Thoughts at the bottom.

Aaaaand here’s the wolves slideshow comic:

The Wolves slideshow

Housekeeping

• Speaking of Bird Reynolds, I put the Coop News on the internet, sort of. Slowly, I will add more to the Coop News’s Instagram page.

• Here’s the most recent issue, including four typos I have caught (so far! Because I do not copy edit it!)

• Let’s do another quarterly print! I will mail these to everyone on the Get Mail In The Mail tier of the subscription (they also get a bunch of extra things in their mailings) (if you’re interested, you can change the price to anything above $55 and it’ll go!); they’re available at a BARGAIN DEAL for the rest of you! Which one should I make a limited print of?

  Loose Thoughts

• Since I began writing this newsletter, Bird Reynolds died. She was brave and silent and once hid in a bag of chicken food from a predator. She will be missed, even though she never let us pet her. (Maybe that’s why she survived.)

• In college, I had a close friendship with someone named Alex Falcone, who lived in The Writing House, where I wanted to live. We remained friends after college; he earnestly and strenuously pursued comedy, which made sense for him, an inherently funny and idiosyncratic writer. He was one of the most successful comedians I knew early-on, in fact. He was on multiple episodes of Portlandia. Then he and his wife — who also lived in the Writing House and has, in the past, read this newsletter — moved to Los Angeles, where he started developing viral TikTok content. He was a working, touring comedian. This week, he reached a million followers on Instagram, which is an undeniable number. He made a little video about it, and in the video, he talked about how he has accidentally become an educational content creator. And you know, I hadn’t quite realized that this had happened — I still saw him as a really, really successful stand-up comedian! But the content of his that I’ve loved most, he’s right, is when he is telling the world that gifted and talented programs are a scam (preach), and that house spiders should stay inside houses. I think I need another bullet point to break things up here.

• So anyway, first of all, congratulations to Alex; a million is a lot of people, and I think it’s a big deal!? He tries not to make a big deal out of it by telling us that he is conflicted because Instagram is bad for us. True, fine. And still. His wife, also, is just one of the loveliest, smartest, kindest people, and occasionally I get an email from her and I can’t adequately communicate how good those missives are. They make me feel like there are truly good people in the world, quietly combing beaches. Another bullet point time, but still on this thread.

• Maybe this is more of a “housekeeping” item, but I, too, hit an Instagram milestone this week — 100,000 followers! I got a cake from Pie, Pie My Darling, which is a vegan bakeshop in Chicago absolutely worth the hype. A whole cake! Most of which is still in my fridge! (Alex got himself a slice of cake to celebrate his cool million, which probably just says something about prices in Chicago versus Los Angeles.) I don’t feel that conflicted about it; I like social media (sorry!), and I don’t feel particularly addicted to it (sorry again!), and I’m grateful that it has helped me get over my fear of wasps and learn about how to tend to my tomatoes. This is a HIGHLY INDIVIDUAL TAKE and I would sacrifice all of my private joy to make billionaires illegal, obviously. Next bullet.

• I, too, am thinking about my content. I do pay attention to what does well: lately, it’s pigeons and bugs. In short: educational content is also usually the content I make that does best. On the other hand, what does best most reliably is when I make something that feels really truthful to me in the moment — and it’s harder than you might think to manufacture that kind of thing. Like, I wrote this dumb little comic about how I came to love cockroaches (I’ll post it above, under “comics”), and after I wrote it I thought, “I like that. It feels truthful. But no one else will like it.” Lo: it is one of the most popular pieces I’ve posted this year. I guess I’m just saying what writers have said since the advent of publication, which is that writing for yourself is essential? Something like that? What do you think about this?

• What do you look forward to about fall? You’re right, this was a startlingly abrupt tone shift.

• How often did you get a new backpack when you were a kid? You probably don’t remember. I do think I got one every year! Is that the definition of privilege? My senior year one was BRIGHT ORANGE AND SEE-THROUGH.

• Yesterday I replaced the fly paper in my study and counted the number of flies that have died by fly paper since I put it up in June. The number is OVER TWO HUNDRED. Thousands if you count all their little larvae eggs that try to crawl out of their dead fly paper bodies. Sorry to say that out loud, but I have to put these thoughts somewhere; they haunt my nightmares.

• “Me” commented last week that they just launched a Substack, and that they’re having fun with it! Brianne recommended you all read their post about cicadas, so here it is for easy viewing:

Me’s Substack

The Magic Music of Summer

Thanks for reading Me’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work…

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a month ago · 21 likes · 18 comments · Me

• And finally, you all had a lot of things to say about makeup, and I dug up the links, because I am A HERO. Jana wears “OS-01 (one skin) tinted sunscreen moisturizer, Neutrogena acne cover up that I use only when needed, milk brand cream blush mini stick, and Sephora thick eye liner/shadow sticks. All of these fit into smaller than a pencil case and that’s the way I like it!” Melanie Cipher recommended this tinted CC cream (she notes that it is expensive but sometimes on sale), and mascara. Meg Olsen wears makeup practically every day and handed us her routine: “1) Laura Mercier’s Tinted Moisturizer Light Revealer 2) Tower 28 Beach Please Cream Blush in Magic Hour 3) Benefit’s Precisely My Brow 4) Lash Princess False Lash Effect Mascara and 5) NARS Afterglow Lip Shine Gloss in Orgasm. Sometimes I add eye shadow, usually Glossier Lidstar in Fawn, which I’ve read they may be discontinuing, which is a bummer.” Carissa recommends Jones Road What the Foundation and Miracle Balm.

• It’s harvest season. How do you use your zucchinis?

Dear Erins,

Happy Beginning of the School Year for all who celebrate. I’m writing this post while waiting for my students to finish a hand-written survey that I give them at the beginning of ea…

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First three are free, there are seven more under there!

1. READ: Lisa Jewell’s thrillers

This NYT list of the 50 best thrillers of the 21st century has been making the rounds, and it’s been a good conversation topic for my husband and me. (He’s recently started listening to thrillers on tape, and I am, well, thrilled.) I have read about a third of the books on the list, and there are none that I haven’t read that I want to read, so I’m in good shape.

The Lisa Jewell title on that list is None of This Is True, which falls in at number fifty, and I remember as fine just fine. But then my mother-in-law read The Night She Disappeared and loved it, and so I checked it out from the library and devoured it. And I happened to also be listening to Don’t Let Him In, which was also, actually, fabulous. Then I went ahead and read Watching You. And then I Found You. And you know what, you guys? These books were all outstanding thrillers. They’re distinctly British, pretty anti-man (you’ve gotta love that?), and a bit wry. Body counts aren’t too high, but they’re still really twisty. I will read them all. You too?

2. MAKE: Salsa out of anything

Late summer is harvest season! Something I learned last year is that you can really make salsa out of basically anything — you just need to combine a fruit, an herb, a pepper, an acid, and some salt. I always use lime juice, because it’s salsa, but I bet apple cider vinegar or lemon would also taste good.

Examples that I, personally, have tried and loved:

• cherry tomato + jalapeño + cilantro + lime

• peaches + mint + serrano + lime

• pineapple + cilantro + basil + garden pepper + lime

• plums+ tomato + Thai basil + mint + jalapeño + lime

Just cut everything up really little, stir it until it’s wet, and there you are. I also like to make my own chips (see picture) out of whatever bread-like flat thing is stale in my fridge by pan-frying slices in a neutral oil and then adding more salt.

3. APPRECIATE: It’s Appreciate Dahlias Season!

   

   I bet my mom doesn’t even remember this story, but I think of it at least once a year — at this time of the year.

   One time, my mom went on a garden tour of our neighborhood. She went to all our neighbors’ highly manicured gardens and looked at them in their full bloom. My mom is a gardener, and she said that at first, she was filled with envy. The dahlias. So many dahlias! Some, just as the name of one varietal promises, as big as dinner plates. She was not having fun. She was just thinking about how she never took on dahlias, which are known to be kind of fussy. And then something shifted, and she realized that she could stop coveting the dahlias and just appreciate them, like she was in a museum. “I decided I’m never going to grow them,” she said; “I’m just going to love them.” And really, it can be easier to love something when you have some distance from it; when you choose to appreciate without taking on.

   I have felt this way, a lot. I’ve read the most amazing short story possible, and someone younger than I am wrote it. “Short stories are a type of dahlia,” I tell myself. And then I get to just love the story.

   If you live in a place where there are dahlias, this is your invitation to notice them like you’re in the world’s museum; to worship, to allow. Dahlias are actually not a type of dahlia for me; I grow them. They’re not really that hard to grow, and they’re incredible because the little tubers multiply underground, and you can share them with your friends at the end of the season. I think the hard part is the digging up of the tubers, and storing them properly; I get that that can be a challenge. But they grow so well and are so stunningly beautiful out my window that I do, indeed, cultivate them. Still, even looking at my own dahlias, I think of this as the season of appreciation.

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Dear Erins,

Welcome. There are (checks notes) ten new folks this week, and that is a lot for a small community of fiercely engaged readers. (No pressure at all, by the way — we take any level of engagement here. It’s just that the people reading this newsletter are my favorite people. And that’s you!)

We are officially entering our sixth season of The Pai…

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Gather ‘round, children, as I am about to tell you the Tale of the Great Ninja Slushi Machine Collective.

This tale will mostly be told in screenshots of group chats, because that will give you the opportunity to literally see how a collective can manifest and come together to do something truly great; something heretofore unimaginable.

Or, maybe it was always imaginable. Two summers ago, I read a Strategist review of the Ninja Slushi. “Definitely worth the money,” goes the review. There’s almost nothing I love more than a blended, frozen beverage, because I’m a living breathing human animal with working taste buds. The Ninja Slushi will make margaritas, pina coladas, frozen mocha lattes, slurpable lemonade — and it has a rinse feature that makes it — and this is a direct quote — “not a nightmare to clean.” But it is $350. Even when something like that goes on sale, it’s still too much money for a machine that a normal person will use maaaaybe six times a year. Also, who perpetually has the counter real estate?

But that summer, I was actively writing KIN: The Future of Family. I was making the following illustration of things you could realistically share with your neighbors:

And as I drew this, I pondered the Ninja Slushi. Was it possibly the best existing candidate for a group acquisition? But I was on a budget, so I didn’t tell anyone my dream of co-buying this mystical drink maker. Actually, I told Luke. He said, “Hahaha, sure babe, fun idea, where are my manly construction worker boots?”

Then, a month ago, smoke was everywhere, and I got very depressed. Everyone in my vicinity got very depressed. Here is a portion of the conversation I had with my very close friends Kat and Diana about it:

And so, Diana said that she wanted a margarita (at the end of the world). Kat said her parents were renting a margarita machine for her dad’s birthday. And then the time felt right to drop the idea I’d been sitting on for years. “I think we should buy a slushie machine. Like, as a collective.” And I am very lucky, because my friends, who are also my neighbors, took this QUITE seriously.

We made a list of people who lived near us and threw parties sometimes. Kat, who is excellent at making things happen, texted those people. They were in. We began writing a bible.

Ten days later, Kat made a group chat. (She is VERY VERY EXCELLENT at making things happen. If you do not have one of these people in your life, become one.)

We read Reddit posts about the Ninja Slushi to answer important questions. Was it REALLY not a nightmare to clean? How heavy was it? Could a person who can carry a toddler also carry this machine up a flight or three of stairs? Should we get the XL version? IF SO, WHAT COLOR SHOULD WE GET!

Reader, we ordered green. We ordered it and it was sent to Erin and Stephen’s house for their son’s third birthday party.

Ultimately, between the nine of us, the XL green Ninja Slushi was $36.58 per person. Erin texted, “I also started making a spreadsheet for us a while back where we can put that we own that other people might want to borrow so that everybody can check the list when they need to. (Folding chairs, button machine, etc.) I’ll find it and share it in this thread at some point.” Which I bring up because, beyond being part of the Slushi lore, what a good idea in general!

On July 29, we got a text message with this photo in it:

The machine is, demonstrably, enormous. So, yes, a long conversation ensued about how we would move it, if we should buy something to move it with, how we would pay for that, what were the dimensions of this thing, etc. Erin made a cloud-based photo album to “log its journey.” We started talking flavors:

The flavors Luke pitched, by the way, were all just photos of flavors from various New Orleans slushy alcohol places, and included: Perfect Game, The Gutter, Octane, Swamp Thang, Call-A-Cab, Shock Treatment, Attitude Improvement, Wedding Cake, Jungle Juice, Hypnotic Chill, Crawgator, Wine Candy, Blue Muthafucka, Teal, and Pomegranate. The collective agreed that it would be good for us to focus on making Crawgator. Which, no one knows what that is, but does it matter?

Luke and I were traveling for the launch of the Slushi, but received the following from Stephen on the morning after:

Then the coolest thing happened, which was that I ran into a mom who I don’t know all that well, but our kids go to the same school, and she was at the slushie birthday party. She was talking about the party — what a rager it had been in the best way possible. And then she was like, “And they had a slushie machine! I don’t know how a person gets a slushie machine!” And I was like, “Oh I know how they got it. I literally know everything about exactly how they got it.”

Maybe you think this is a dumb story, and that’s fine. You may be thinking, “In this infinite era of madness and political upheaval and climate disaster, I cannot believe I spent twenty minutes reading some woman write about a slushie maker.” But that’s kind of my point: collective energy doesn’t have to be reserved for big, important things. When it’s used for outcomes that are low-stakes and joyful, it becomes a kind of practice. A project like this doesn’t make the more important collective energy harder; it makes it easier.

And now, we have a bonus reason to gather: Slushi Machine Collective Meetings. I mean, it would be irresponsible not to occasionally come together and all test out the machine — at the very least, to Crawgator. (Yes, I’ve decided Crawgator is a verb.)

Another thing that matters: I’d been having a really hard week when we pulled the trigger on the slushie machine. One morning I woke up to a sleepless night of stress dreams and bad pillows, picked up my phone, and saw that I had ninety-four missed texts. My initial reaction was, of course, terror. WHO HAD DIED? But then it turned out that it was eight of my very funny friends, all of whom lived in close proximity to my yellow house, making jokes about a frozen drink machine. I hadn’t realized that was exactly the thing I most needed that morning, but it was.

So let this be your sign that you, too, can do a fun, weird thing with your friends. It might be exactly the thing you need right now. And if you don’t need something so ephemeral and sentimental, then maybe the thing you need is a frozen mango bevvy. This idea checks both those boxes.

Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.

Comics / Cartoons

I am adding a new section to this newsletter as we enter our sixth year (!!!), and many of you are using Instagram less, and good on you. I’m going to post here whatever Instagram carousels I’ve put up, so they have a non-Meta place to live, and you can look at them without clicking the little pink camera.

Housekeeping

• Alright, everyone: I’ve been writing You Are Doing A Good Enough Job for five years. It continues to be a truly joyful, connective, and soul-amplifying project, and I appreciate that you (YES YOU, PERSON READING THIS SENTENCE) allow me to do it. So I would like to tell you about it!

• There are 9,632 of you! WOW. It would be an absolute fucking dream come true to get that number to 10,000 — so if you haven’t subscribed, please do! It is free! Or tell your friend to subscribe! Or your mom! I think I’m good for moms.

  Subscribe now

• There are 372 of you who pay to read this newsletter. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. If you’re considering it, you have chosen the right time, because I’m going to offer 50% off yearly plans. This is a thing I’ve never done, but five years, fifty percent, right? Paid subscribers get a bunch of extra content: more recommendations from my 10 things emails, a book club, PDF recipe books and advice documents, access to a living drive full of bonus stuff, and bird-painting classes! I try to really make it worth the cost, because I know times are tough and this is a big ask. But hey — act now and the cost for a year’s subscription is less than the cost of two ice matchas from the new coffee shop down the street from my house.

  GET 50% OFF

• Here’s where you guys are located! IDK, I just think this is interesting. When I launched, the vast majority of readers were from New Orleans and Portland, so it’s been weird to see this shift, but not in a bad way! UK, thanks for holding up such a strong contingent!

• I have restocked my classic “I LOVE” t-shirt, which has been requested by many of you. Please buy it so that I can justify making more t-shirts! And so that people will know you love river mud.

• I’ve also got an embarrassing amount of these pigeon shirts from a recent restock.

Loose Thoughts

• I apologize for alienating anyone without a uterus, which is about to happen.

• I have an IUD, so I get a very, very light, nearly absent period. Like, I don’t have to wear a tampon or anything. It’s VERY LIGHT. But it technically exists. Am I allowed to say I’m on my period? If really, it’s the same as essentially nothing? An amount of blood equal to the amount of blood a mosquito takes from me, basically? But also I am so emotional all the time? Like, at just the shape of a cloud, I will cry?

• Once, a Trader Joe’s cashier told me, and I don’t remember how it came up, that she had had an IUD and she got pregnant anyway. Do we think this is an appropriate thing to tell a shopper? Because I just went outside and sobbed when she told me that.

• I don’t actually cry as much as these two bullet points are making it seem.

• Thank you, Andrea, for these very helpful salad tips:

  • “I recently realized I have rules for salad which are a) only add three things to the greens, and b) oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper usually suffice for dressing. I also have some pro-tips:

    1) if you don’t feel like getting involved in designing a salad, just serve whatever you’re eating on a bed of arugula. Arugula still tastes good when it wilts and it doesn’t leave the filmy texture on your teeth that spinach does (I don’t mind so much, but the kid does, so arugula is one of the few green things he tolerates).

    2) if you are feeling adventurous, purslane may be growing rabidly in your yard right now and it is so very edible, has a nice crispiness to it, and you might even be able to mix it in with the arugula undetected by the kid, like I did last night.”

• And Bethann’s salad is also a stunner: “The best salad this week (and last week) is shredded kale and Swiss chard (we have so much in our garden right now 😱) tossed with shredded onion, thinly sliced Anaheim peppers, lots of cilantro, lots of lime juice, salt, pepper, and enough mayo and/or avocado to create a slaw-like dressing. Addictive, fresh, and great as a side or the base for any leftover protein.”

• How often do you wear makeup and what is the makeup you wear? I do not think this is a gendered question.

• My daughter is finishing her final year at her first school — which is really a daycare, but is also a school with a sort of Waldorf early childhood curriculum. In two weeks, she’s going to a public school, and whoa, how did this happen? I feel an overwhelming slurry of emotion.

• She has started saying “actually” a lot. She has started saying “well,” before every sentence, which is something that annoys me when Jenna Fischer does it on her podcast. Or USED to annoy me — I think I’m about to find it very endearing.

• Are there too many sparkling water options on the market or just enough? And do you think you should be able to call yourself a sparkling water if there is stevia extract in the thing you are calling sparkling water?

• Elder millennials: did you have Littlest Petshops, the first iterations? How do you feel about their evolution?

• This has been a lot of question asking and not a lot of saying of things. I am just tired and the sky is gray. The other day, I did some math and decided there are 1,700 types of weather. Today — medium hot, gray, wet air, wet ground, no active rain — ranks pretty low for me, personally.

• I wrote that last bullet point yesterday. Now it’s tornadoes.

Hi Erins,

I’m just returning from a week in South Carolina, where it was too hot for me! I can’t believe I’m saying that; I thought it wasn’t really possible for the weather to be too hot for me. Several summers in sweltering New Orleans had me swearing I was immune to wet heat. But I think it’s specifically Sitting In A Car heat that makes me feel sens…

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Hi! Tiny small introduction - I’m Kaitlynn! I make zines and write newsletters under the name The Mindful Narcissist, which started out as a joke in 2021, and is a bit that I have committed to. Going by this name has led to a lot of people approaching me at markets and telling me about their experiences with actual diagnosed narcissists, and I have added “this is not a newsletter about clinical narcissism” as the tagline to my substack because at one point half of my subscribers were psychologists working with clinical narcissism. I’m an artist and curator, and the work I make is rooted in collaboration and reciprocity, and the beliefs that time and urgency aren’t real and love is magic. These are ten things that I hope will make your life a little less convenient and subsequently, a little more joyful (read my inconvenience manifesto here)!

The Mindful Narcissist Newsletter

against convenience

So this all started with my 2025 goals…

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2 years ago · 5 likes · 7 comments · The Mindful Narcissist

1. PARTICIPATE IN: a reading challenge

Ideally, at your local library if they’ve got one! I’m on year three of doing my library’s annual reading challenge, in which they provide 50 categories and to complete the challenge, you get to read a book that fits each category. I also just got a copy of the library’s summer bingo challenge, which includes not-strictly-book-related items like doing a random act of kindness and checking something out from the Library of Things. (Does your library have something like this? At our library you can check out stuff like bike locks, bundt pans, telescopes, memory kits… and so so much more. It’s kind of the coolest thing?) I love to complete a little quest, and I believe that supporting public library programming is essential!!

2. KEEP: a pizza journal

I guess it doesn’t have to be pizza, but I can’t imagine a better comfort food to use to track one’s life. I bought these little pizza journals for my best-friend-house-mate and myself a while back on a visit to my hometown. I think the intention behind them is to test pizza at a variety of places and keep track of your favorites. The reality of what the journals have looked like for us is, we have one favorite pizza place in town and all of our entries so far, bar one entry from our trip to New York, have been at that same pizza place. At the bottom there is space for notes, which I’m sure is intended to be used to track information about the pizza itself, but we fill it with a tiny journal entry about our day.

3. QUIT: music streaming services

Subscription-model capitalism is baloneeyyyyyy when physical media still exists! I’ve been on a big inconvenience kick for a while now (as in, intentionally increasing inconvenience in my life), and quitting music streaming services has been one of my favorite inconveniences. I have decided it is simply not worth it to have an entire world of music at my fingertips. I love buying CDs and records from local artists, and borrowing CDs from the library. More little quests! If your town has a college radio station, this is another great way to get your music fix. Every college radio station I’ve listened to is manned by volunteer DJs who get to play whatever they want, which usually results in a lot of very niche playlists. Our local college radio has a DJ that plays a variety of contemporary Chinese music on Monday evenings.

4. LISTEN: Punjabi pop

This one has admittedly been much harder to do as a consequence of the whole quitting music streaming services thing. But the algorithm fed me a clip of Diljit Dosanjh’s appearance on The Tonight Show and WOW I am hooked. This does not happen to me very often, but the night I was fed that clip I went down an hours-long rabbit hole and stayed up WAY past my bedtime watching every Punjabi pop music video I came across on YouTube. One particularly notable music video plot includes a suitor impressing his lover’s parents by solving a traffic jam using his elite tractor-driving skills.

5. DRINK: poor man’s kombucha

   

   The recipe: a shot (or less. Or more! You decide!) of apple cider vinegar (with the mother, of course), diluted with one can of the sparkling beverage of your choice. I think my favorite flavor combination with apple cider vinegar is the Beach Plum La Croix. Benefits of this drink: 1) it is cheaper than kombucha, which has become an insanely expensive beverage, 2) it still has all of the good gut things that kombucha has, and 3) it has saved me from my mosquito allergies. (now is a good time to say that I have done and will do nothing to verify the claims of benefits 2 and 3 but they do seem very true and real to me) I have an awful allergic reaction to mosquito bites, and also the most delicious blood in the world. I have always been a mosquito magnet, which is very unfortunate combined with the allergy. A few years ago I came across an article on the internet that I didn’t actually thoroughly read, but (as far as I can remember) it claimed that regular apple cider vinegar consumption changes the pH of your blood such that it is no longer appealing to mosquitos. I went all in on that claim with no further research and have been consuming apple cider vinegar almost daily for years now and you know what? I barely get any mosquito bites anymore. Case closed.

6. CREATE: a zine!

Did you know that literally anything can be a zine, and probably most things *should* be a zine? (what is a zine? A small, self-published booklet! You say it “zine” like in “maga-ZINE”) And there are so many fun zine formats! I have included a video of a very easy way to make an 8 page mini zine with one sheet of paper, no staples required.

Things that I have made zines about: my soulmate best friends, every note I made in my notes app on a vacation, every pasta shape I tried in 2024, every duck I saw in 2025, tiny collages, all of the convenience store snacks I ate on a trip to Seoul, the strangers I met during a 17 hour layover in Iceland, ridiculous wine tasting notes… ANYTHING CAN BE A ZINE!

7. Prepare: your go-to karaoke songs

Some karaoke opportunities are planned, but others are thrust upon you. Better to always be prepared. My go-to songs are “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something, “If I Could Turn Back Time” by Cher, and “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” by Nine Days.

8. PLAY: The “don’t-look-it-up” game

In the interest of trying to increase inconvenience, a fun game to play is to try to remember the answer to something instead of just looking it up on the internet. For example: I was listening to Chopin with a friend and they asked what music era Chopin was a part of. Neither of us could remember, so we played the game and tried to remember everything we knew about Chopin and the music eras that we knew he might have been a part of. We went through historical events, his contemporaries, common motifs….every single thing we could remember from music theory classes we’d taken years ago. The best part of the game is that in the end, you don’t actually have to verify whether or not you were right! Sometimes it is just nice to see all the things you know that you can remember if you let yourself. Journey over destination, etc etc.

9. EAT: quick pickle anything

Summer is the season of the quick pickle. Cut your quick pickle vegetable of choice to a size that is nice to bite. Submerge in rice vinegar and a pinch of sugar. Maybe add some other spices if you feel so inclined. Follow your heart. Mix it up so the sugar is dissolved and let it sit for 15ish minutes - and you have quick pickles! We do this regularly with cucumbers, carrots, and radishes. It would probably work equally as well with other vegetables of similar consistencies. They keep well in the fridge for around a week.

10. MAKE: a short-term bucket list

    

    I started doing this when I was 18 - I made a “20 before 20” bucket list, which consisted of 20 things I wanted to do before I turned 20. Then I made a “25 before 25” list. Now I’m just about done with my “30 before 30” list. A few notes on the contents of the lists, should you choose to take on this tradition yourself: I believe the items themselves must be fluid. My lists change A LOT - because several of the things I thought I really wanted to do when I was 20 and making my “25 before 25” list were of no interest to me whatsoever by 22. How was 20-year-old me supposed to know what 24-year-old me was going to be really interested in? So I let the items change. As soon as I got into grad school, I took one item off my 25 before 25 list and changed it to “finish grad school”, a thing that I was basically guaranteed to do. The items on my lists are not all monumental tasks - they are mostly things that are pretty easily accomplished within the given time frame, but that could also be easily forgotten if they weren’t written down. As previously stated, I love a little quest - these lists of little (and not-so-little) quests feel like gifts to myself. If you happen to start a bucket list, connect with me and let me know what’s on it!!

xoxo,

the mindful narcissist

Let’s Discuss

I am very, absolutely too much, affected by the bees.

We got our first bees in April 2018. That was a good year for the bees. They were generally manageable; Luke invited friends over to help him do hive checks; all of our bee gear was crisp and fresh and white, unmarred by the wax and mold that would accumulate over the years. We harvested honey late that summer, and then the winter was cold and the hives died. Which we had expected. Onward.

It was never easy again. One year, everything went to plan until July when a swarm of yellow jackets descended, murdering all the bees and taking all the honey. One year, a hive got some kind of awful disease and they seemed to all die overnight. Honestly, I don’t want to get into the minutiae of all the truly awful things that happened to the bees, because I have made a lot of bee-related mistakes, and this newsletter is public, and people do like to email me and tell me I’m a bad person when I tell them about mistakes I’ve made around agriculture. (Why do people do this? What do they gain? Do they possibly think I’m not self-loathing enough? TRUST ME: I AM.)

Last summer, we had a not-so-bad year. We ordered two boxes of bees and two queens (you’re supposed to keep two hives at a time, for a whole bunch of reasons that I won’t get into because this isn’t a bee newsletter); one of the hives did great. I mean, the bees in that hive were mean — they stung Luke eleven times in one day. But maybe that’s what worked so well, was their meanness, their absolute insistence that they were in charge. The other hive died. It could have been lots of things.

But the hive that made it kept making it. It made it all the way through our brutal winter. In the spring, they were almost unbearably active, pollinating anything they could get their legs on.

This is already more about bees than I intended. But you have to believe me when I tell you that I am holding back. I’m wanting to tell you even more bee stuff than I am. (Did you know they have five eyes? Did you know they can understand the concept of zero? DID YOU KNOW THEY PLAY WITH BALLS?)

In June, the hive swarmed. I was deeply emotional about this, even after I googled it and realized that a bee hive swarming is the natural progression of things; it’s the way the hive procreates. The queen spawns a new queen, and then she takes half of the remaining hive away, and then they (I am not kidding) have a political rally to decide where they are going to go. The day they swarmed, the bees spent the afternoon in our next door neighbor’s pear tree. They looked like a volleyball up there. The next day, I guess the votes were in, and the bees were gone.

Half of our hive remained, and still, I couldn’t stop crying about this. I couldn’t explain this emotional reaction to anyone. It was similar to the feeling of watching videos of my daughter as a younger version of herself, and thinking, “That person is gone and I didn’t consent; there was no warning that one day she would move on and become someone else. It just happened. There was nothing about it I could control.”

Maybe you would need to see the bees swarm. It was a gush of thousands and thousands of little flying things exploding out of a place where, historically, flying things only ever entered. It was a flood. It was the solid blob of bees that dissipated into the sky, boundless and chaotic for a moment in time as they tried to orient themselves and figure out where they were supposed to go. The imagery of this – I watched it all day – was an outward expression of the internal experience of being alive. Filling and filling and filling until the day came where nothing more could fit inside the existing shape. Anais Nin put it this way: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” It isn’t just my bees, or even my daughter. It’s myself, too. The becoming we don’t ask for, but there it is.

Yesterday, Luke and my daughter left for South Carolina to visit family. I’ll meet them there on Monday. This will be the longest I’ve been away from either of them since my daughter was born. A terrifying thing is happening: I almost never have this kind of time to examine my own becoming anymore.

Last week, wildfires in Canada filled great swaths of North America with smoke. Chicago’s AQI number was off the chart on my phone. The New York Times said it was nearly 800. The day should have been beautiful; a seventy-five degree stunner I’d have wanted to spend at the beach. But I rode my bike to drop T off at daycare and immediately felt worse than I remembered feeling. I was sure I had a viral infection. But the symptoms never changed from lungs-and-throat-reacting-to-smoke. I just didn’t know it could possibly feel that bad. On day two of the smoke, I decided that I was going to be depressed. I felt tired of fighting, and I had the time to lie in bed and watch three episodes of TV, which is what I did. Also I cried, let myself cry. There’s plenty to cry about.

There are times when a person needs to fight, and I know that that’s true. But the hugeness of the smoke – the whole sky – was not wrangle-able. That was sad. All there was to do was give in to it for the time being, to allow the sadness to settle in for a little while. Like the smoke, it would pass.

On cue, the morning of the day Luke and T left, the new bee queen died. I assume that’s what happened, at least. I am no longer in the business of doing hive checks. I do not want to pull the bees out and look at them and try to force them to do anything differently. Their survival is for them to manage. While I was walking into the yard to feed the chickens, I noticed that bees were fighting their way into the hive in a way that could only mean the hive was being robbed. It had grown too weak. Maybe the smoke was too much for our bees, too.

Luke tried to reduce the entrance to the hive, and he burned paper to try to smoke out the robbers. I knew this was futile, but I loved watching him try. I thought, “It’s worth it to try sometimes, just so that you can attract the people who are going to love you.”

Then he and T left, and I spent the day watching nature undo herself. These bees make me so sad, but they also make me feel connected to everything that matters. Yesterday, I was only a witness, and that felt important.

That excellent bud quote keeps going, by the way:

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.”

There are parts of this season – my favorite season, for the record – that are hard. With so much bursting at the seams to live, there is more with the potential to die. The dying is inevitable.

But if we’re here, we’re here for all of it. And isn’t it something – if not everything– to be awake?

Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.

Housekeeping

• In three days, it will be the five-year anniversary of this newsletter. I don’t know what to do to celebrate this. Anything? Nothing? I thought something would have come to me by now — five is a big one, right? — but nothing has. Do you have any ideas?

• Last minute, but I’ll be in conversation tonight with Meg Richardson about her amazing new novel Paradise Pawn at City Lit Books. I’d love to see you there!

  

• I have an illustrator page at DiFiore and Company!

• i did an episode of the podcast “It’s Gonna Be Fine” about polyamory and non-monogamy and that kinda thing, and it was fun and great! Here’s the Spotify link.

• Sammi and I had a daily cartoon online for The New Yorker this week!

  

Loose Thoughts:

• Shelby wrote a long comment last week that I loved every single moment of, but here’s my favorite part, and I cannot stop thinking about it: “I taught myself a mental trick back when I lived in China and felt very homesick, which was to imagine how my future self would be nostalgic for my time in China. And then I would go out and eat some amazing Chinese food (the variety of which is almost unfathomable when all you’ve experienced is American Chinese restaurants), and bank the memories for Future Shelby. I’m glad Past Shelby did that. I hope you’re glad Past Sophie took all those daily baths, and can spend now enjoying all of the things that Future Sophie will miss. Maybe the trick will work for you too?”

• So, what I have decided I am going to do with my four days to myself — and I have already started doing this — is re-caulk the bathtub. The caulk was… black with mold. Just, next level mold. And there’s mold everywhere. I keep finding more and more and more mold. I PUT MY CHILD IN THAT PLACE EVERY NIGHT.

  • See, this is the kind of thing I write and then someone emails me and is like, “YOU ARE A BAD PERSON.” Like… I know? I’m trying to be better here?

• In non-sad yard news, the bean arch is killing it this year. We made the bean arch because of Joe Pera Talks To You, and every year it’s fine, but this year it’s a beast.

• The best summer thing I have discovered, thanks to my friend Megan, is Night Beach, where you go to the beach at night. This is next level good and important, and if you live near a natural body of water, I really do entreat you to make sure you do it at least once this summer. You just have to be there at night, and get your head in the water.

• What is the best salad?

Dear Erins,

I’m working on a (I THINK BEAUTIFUL) field guide of your recommended plants from last time — I’m doing them in watercolor, so it’s taking some time, but when it’s done, I’ll format it as a printable ‘zine and maybe even print some of them and put them in the mail?

Chicago has been in the clouds of wildfire smoke on and off for the past five d…

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Below the paywall: my favorite summer music find, and also I finally found shorts I love and I am buying a hundred pairs.

Enjoy!

1. ENJOY: Keyboard clicks and Clicky keyboards

   

   I am writing this to you from a keyboard that clicks in an very, very satisfying way. It may be rude to use this kind of keyboard in an office, but I’m not in an office; I’m in my own home, in a corner, in a place where the specific clack of this keyboard is welcome and joyful.

   It took me some time to decide that this keyboard (Logitech PopKeys, $99), which I first read about on Strategist, was worth it. At some point, it went on sale, and my ten-year-old desktop keyboard actually was due for an upgrade, so I pulled the trigger. It took me some time to recommend it because you get used to having your fingers kind of low on the silent-ish keys that we’ve grown used to, but over time, I have adapted, and now I look forward to the experience of clacking around on this computer, even if I do stumble a little more than I naturally might on my old keyboard. It is worth it, for the satisfying sound. Also, there’s a little row of keys that I got to program to be whatever I wanted them to be, and I went with these emojis: 💛😭🥦🐦. Which would you go for?

   If you don’t want to buy a new clacky keyboard (makes sense), might I interst you instead in The Keyboard Museum? It’s a free online space where you can listen to the greatest keyboard thunks of all time. The project has “36 mechanical keyboards and switches, curated and sound-mapped. From IBM Model M (1985) to Topre to thocky modern customs. Click any card, type on your real keyboard, hear it as if it were on your desk.” I spent too long on this website, and so will you.

2. READ: “Finding Friends, Legacy, And Leather Sluts At New Jersey’s Finest Holiday Inn” by Sophie Abromowitz

A friend of mine ( , who also has a great Substack linked there) published this piece in Defector this week, and it’s all the things: funny, intrepid, poignant, strange. If anything about leatherdykes, kink practitioners, and/or consensual BDSM interests you, this piece will be right up your alley. Sophie has long been one of my favorite writers; she can do anything. Come for the story of the International Ms. Leather and International Ms. Bootblack convention; stay for the exploration of transformation, chosen family, queer history, embodiment, and the ways communities preserve themselves through storytelling, ritual, and care.

There are too many good paragraphs to excerpt, but here’s one:

In the sympathetic vanilla imagination, kink is understood as escapism: The self-possessed girlboss by day unwinds by being a submissive painslut by night. But here the full-throated laughter doesn’t so much indicate escape as total engagement, a way to be nowhere other than your body and mind, here and now, on your own terms, in a space transformed for our own purposes.

3. MAKE: Tofu banh mi

Summer means it’s tofu banh mi seasons. It is so easy to make and so difficult to get wrong, and requires very little heat (none, if you want to make the peanut sauce and use raw tofu, which I would respect). Here’s how to do it:

• Get a good crusty sandwich loaf. Cheap, but key. You’ll toast it JUST before you put on the toppings.

• Whip up sriracha mayo. Truly, just add equal parts sriracha to mayo. I use vegan mayo.

• Slice your cucumbers reeeeeeeal thin.

• Quick pickle some shredded carrots and radishes (and maybe you want to do thin sliced jalapeños and purple onion too) by adding them to some rice vinegar with sugar dissolved in it. Let ‘em sit in that brew for like 10 minutes.

• Pan fry your tofu, set aside.

• Make some peanut sauce. I add a heaping spoonful of peanut butter to a dish and then add a bunch of soy sauce, brown sugar, rice vinegar, and chili garlic sauce. I don’t measure, i just taste. A little warm water and a tiny whisk will emulsify it.

• You might want to then cook the peanut sauce in a skillet and add the tofu until it caramelizes.

• Assemble. Wrap in tinfoil. Have a picnic.

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Dear Erins,

We have arrived at PEAK SUMMER in the Northern Hemisphere. Though it doesn’t feel like that to me, because there were lots of cool days in June, and then there was an imp…

Read more

Dear Friend,

Sammi and I recently sold our fiftieth New Yorker cartoon. I typed that sentence and then went back to make sure it could be true, because it feels like it has to not be true. But in fact, the number is somehow closer to 60, which I am telling you, I guess, just to brag about it.

I’ve had a hard time writing this post. First, because (as mentioned already) it feels braggy. Second, because I usually write the cartoons in partnership with my dear friend Sammi, and I would never force her to co-write a piece about co-writing cartoons. (Though, I did just text her to ask her if she wanted to add anything, so we’ll see if she texts back.) (Note: she texted back something too falsely flattering for me to repeat here in good conscience.) Third, I have the type of imposter syndrome (SORRY) where it’s like, “If I write about this, someone is going to pop out of the woodwork and tell me that I actually don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” But it’s been six years (and eight since we started submitting), and while I might not know everything about how to do this, I know exactly how I do it. And every time an artist writes something like this, I want to read it. It’s good to see people’s paths.

I remember clearly two important events that led to the beginning of this story.

The first one was that I was in the bath tub and it was winter break. (As an aside, I literally cannot remember the last time I took a bath, and that’s wild, because I used to take one pretty much every day. I wish I could still take a bath, but having a child seems to have obliterated the option. I used to lie in the bath and dream about the life I wanted; now I live the life I wanted and dream about lying in the bath.) I was devouring a Puzzles and Cartoons issue of The New Yorker. New Yorker cartoons, I thought, were kind of the perfect art form. Each cartoon had to do a lot with a little. They involved words and art. And at their best, they managed to be incredibly funny. For as long as I can remember, I’ve cared a lot about things being funny.

In the bath, I decided that I would pour some energy into getting a square-shaped New Yorker cartoon published in the magazine. At this point, I’d had a few Daily Shouts run online, so I had the cartoon editor’s email address. And – this is always true – you don’t succeed when you don’t try.

But when I sat down to try, I failed. I couldn’t think of even one cartoon, let alone the ten you’re supposed to pitch in a batch. A few weeks later, my friend Sammi, who was not yet a writer at The Onion, but was already the funniest person I knew, invited me to have drinks with her at a whiskey bar in Lakeview. (Or I invited her, or it was mutual. Sorry; whiskey was involved.) She pitched the idea that maybe we write together – she was interested in screenwriting a pilot or something. And here’s a thing that I think about a lot: I don’t know that anyone before had asked me to collaborate with them in this way. Like, people had asked (and continue to ask) if I wanted to illustrate their children’s books for them (no), but it’s rare that someone comes to you and is like, “I genuinely like the work you make and I want to make work with you.” It feels really good! And it felt really fun.

I was enthusiastic, and I also had these cartoons on the brain, so I brought up the idea of writing some single-panel gags together. My friend Sophie (no relation) often did New Yorker cartoons with her friend, so I knew it was a possibility, and Sammi was so funny. I just felt like she’d be good at it.

This was pre-pandemic, so at first we wrote cartoons together in person. We met up at The Office of Modern Composition1, which has an extraordinary view of Lake Michigan, and tried, independently, to write jokes. I cannot overstate this: we were both so bad at it. I remember, for example, sitting across from Sammi and being like, “OK, I have the caption for one, but not the picture. It’s like, something about sweater weather.” And then Sammi was like, “Yeah, that’s good.” You’re not missing anything, reader. That was all I had. AND WE THOUGHT IT WAS GOOD.

I’m going to try to dig up early brainstorming pages from those sessions, because I know I saved them and they are somewhere in my office. My memory is that we spent such a long time on those brainstorms, and they were just awful. We picked five of mine and five of hers, and I agreed to draw them. I thought it would be easy to draw black-and-white cartoons, but actually, working in grayscale is an art, and drawing in a visually cohesive and funny way is an even greater art. The drawings took me hours, and they were terrible. I sent them to Sammi and she was like, “THESE ARE GREAT!” This is an important thing for a collaborator to be able to do: to tell you the thing you made that sucks is great. You have to hear that you’re doing a great job from someone, just in order to keep going.

I sent in the ten cartoons, and of course, all ten were rejected. Here, though, we experienced some incredible luck. Emma, the cartoon editor, wrote us back! Emma does not have to write people back. She has a lot of people submitting cartoons to her. Here is what she said in that email, in case you ever send a batch and don’t get an email back – you can imagine you got this one. I think we were in the right place at the right time, and that’s why we got this.

So glad to have you submitting gags! Sadly, none made the cut this week (I get 1,000, show David 60, and buy 20, so don’t ever take it too personally). But I think these are really promising. I loved the Tamagotchi and crystals jokes and of course the drawings are excellent (especially Cats and birthday party). Only note is no need to draw a line between art and caption. Fine to just have it sit below. And I think best to avoid flat gray washes for backgrounds—they muddy things up a bit.

Hope that’s helpful and that you send more soon.

It was helpful, and unnecessary, and we were very thankful. We met back in person, repeated the process, and sent in another ten bad cartoons. She said they were “much better!” There’s an email exchange between me and Sammi where we are like, “WOW.” Ultimately, we submitted thirteen batches of ten – that’s 130 total cartoons – that were rejected.

The pandemic came, and now Sammi and I could not meet in person anymore. We moved to Zoom, which actually meant we could meet more often, since we weren’t having to get all the way downtown to write jokes. We replicated the process, except that we spent a little longer gossiping, and then we turned cameras off and went into our own caves for an hour each, and then got back together to read over joke lists. We typed the jokes into a Google Doc, and they were (and to this day continue to be) mostly bad. I know I am becoming a broken record with this “we were bad at this” stuff, but I think it’s important to know how much bad stuff many people have to wade through to get to anything remotely good.

AND – a new paragraph for this – an advantage to writing with a partner is that you can read each and every bad joke to her, without worrying that you’re going to end up wasting time drawing something that isn’t good. Sometimes she sees something brilliant in a joke I thought was stupid, and vice versa. Sometimes she’ll be like, “What if it was a hermit crab instead of a lobster?” and the whole joke is instantly ten times better. It’s great to have someone to sort through the raw material with. It’s also great to have someone to share your joke about Pinocchio going down on a lady who likes the way his long wooden nose feels and tells him to tell her more lies. That’s not going to be a cartoon — this is the New Yorker, people, have some class— but damn if it isn’t incredibly fucking funny to me.

So we had a rhythm, and we’d gotten used to rejection. We’d made an Instagram account for our rejects, and I loved seeing Sammi on a regular basis. Things were basically good.

And then, on April 4, 2020, right at the start of the first year of the pandemic, we got an email whose subject line was, “O.K.”

It felt like it must be a mistake, but I emailed to check, and it wasn’t.

What happened next:

1. Sammi and I exchanged EMAILS THAT WERE WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS AND WERE RIDDLED WITH TYPOS.

2. I mixed a gin and tonic. This is not a thing I ever did; I don’t even own gin or tonic. I had roommates who did. I put a lime in it.

3. I went up on the roof and thought about my enemy. I have one enemy. He doesn’t have to be my enemy, but he chose that path, and that is fine. It’s fine to have an enemy. I thought, “My enemy will see that this has happened, and he will be jealous. I’m so happy about it.”

4. I wished I had had a different reaction and felt like I was a bad person, because shouldn’t I just be purely happy about this? A life dream? ACTUALIZED? But oh well. You don’t get to pick your reactions to things, and at this stage of my life, I cared so much about making my enemy feel jealous.

   1. Now that I have a child, I could not care less. In fact, I wish my enemy well. More happy people is better. I hope he succeeds and gets all the things he wants. I want to stress that meditation, therapy, yoga, and an understanding of Buddhist philosophy did nothing to help me arrive at this mindset. All along, it just required that I be a type of bone-tired I did not know it was possible to be. There is simply no energy to hate an enemy anymore.

5. Several weeks passed, and eventually, our cartoon was printed in a real magazine, beneath an article about Boris Johnson. I walked to the newsstand near my house (I have no idea how this place is surviving, tbh, but it’s the best place on Earth), and bought four copies of the magazine. I told the guy behind the counter – it’s always that guy behind the counter there – that I was in the magazine. He was nonplussed. I sailed home on a cloud.

I think I imagined that we would submit another 100 cartoons and then finally sell another one maybe, but actually, once we’d broken through, it became much easier to sell the cartoons. We sold a cartoon about chickens in the next batch. And then we were selling cartoons like it was our job. Because it was our job!

It slightly, slightly irritates me that people think that I do not write the jokes because I do draw the pictures. I write half of the jokes, and Sammi writes the other half of the jokes. Both of our jokes are chosen, and way more of both of our jokes are rejected. I have, in fact, submitted some solo batches when Sammi’s been traveling, or whatever. But I don’t like doing the solo batches. I like every part of the ritual of meeting with Sammi: writing the jokes; reading the good and the bad out loud to her; hearing her say, “Yeah that’s funny,” even when something is not funny; and laughing until I pee at the jokes that she writes.

It’s amazing to look back and realize that we’ve been doing this for eight human years. I grew a person in my body and she’s become a Self since then. She is not interested in my job, but I do tell her, apropos of nothing, that I am a cartoonist. That’s what I wanted to be when I loafed in the 2018 bathtub with a magazine and a dream, and now that’s what I am. In fact, we got an “O.K.” at the exact minute that my daughter was born. (I found out later. I was busy.)

When that one came out, I took a picture of my tiny new person next to the cartoon in print and sent the picture to Emma.

Six years after our first “O.K.,” I still feel the same thrill run through my blood when I get another one. When I’m feeling sad (I have never admitted this to anyone before), I do a search in my Gmail for “Emma Allen O.K.,” and then just stare at the stack of “O.K.”s in my Inbox. It feels like when your crush texts you, BUT BETTER AND MORE. I let my stomach flip until I feel better, settled into this reality where somehow, I am doing what I wanted to do.

There are lessons here, and they feel worthwhile to share. One is that this is a thing that I do when I’m not doing my full-time job, or parenting. If I did not think this was the most fun thing to do in the whole world (I do think that), then it would not be worth the time it takes. Because it is… a lot of time. Another lesson is that persistence matters. I think we are drawn to stories where things happen fast, but nothing in my life has happened fast. Everything takes a long time, and the only way to arrive is to keep going.

And here’s something you might not have expected: I think Sammi is at a disadvantage because writing for The Onion uses a completely different part of your humor-writing brain than writing New Yorker cartoons. I know this, because I auditioned to write for The Onion a few years ago and was like, “Oh my god, I can’t do both these things. It’s like walking down a path into a deep forest, and then walking a mile back to venture into a totally different forest that’s in the absolute opposite direction.” That’s the only way I can describe it. The fact that she can humor-code-switch so easily ought to be vehemently applauded — and the same goes for anyone who writes more than one type of funny thing.

My process for writing New Yorker jokes now, which is something I am less bad at than I used to be, is:

1. Look at a boatload of New Yorker cartoons other people have written. Laugh and think about how I will never be as funny as those other people, but I will valiantly try to emulate them.

2. Think, “OK, what do I notice I’ve heard people saying a lot? And who would be the funniest possible person to say that thing in a cartoon?”

   1. For example, early in the pandemic, I wanted to write a cartoon where someone was saying, “Not everything is unprecedented.” It was at a time where people had stopped saying “unprecedented,” and had started complaining about people saying “unprecedented.” Here’s what I came up with. I still feel proud of this one:

   

3. Then, when that doesn’t work, think, “What is a thing a bird would say that a person might also say?” I write a ton of bird jokes. It does not always work.

4. Look around the place I’m sitting and notice objects and think, “What’s something people sometimes say about [item]? And who would be the funniest possible person to say that thing in a cartoon?”

5. Text Sammi that I need ten more minutes, because who can write ten jokes in an hour? It’s always too ambitious.

6. Think, “OK, but how hard will this be to draw?”

Joke-writing is the most searching-for-the-muse-like writing I have experienced. It’s like sitting very still near a place you know an owl lives. If you are still and quiet enough, the owl will come to you. The joke is the owl. Don’t poke any nests, or you will fail.

Re: drawing the cartoons. I thought it would start to take me less time to draw, but in general, drawing or painting anything has started taking me a longer time the more I learn. This is also true about cooking, right? You realize there are ways to make the food good, and then you don’t want to cut any corners. My drawing has gotten better. But there have been funny jokes we’ve written that suffered because I couldn’t possibly draw it. New Yorker cartoons, like anything else, are their own language, and you slowly learn to speak it. It’s fun to learn a language!

Sometimes I want to read about someone’s craft, and some of you have expressed interest in that too. Nevertheless, at the heart of this is something human: I wanted to tell jokes, but for reasons I won’t go into here, the stage wasn’t the place for me. Now I’m in brilliant company, doing something that some of the greatest humorists of all time also did. This was a way in; a door. I try to tell my students that there are always other ways in. I tell them, too, that the world wants to hear their voices, even if they don’t care about everything they have to say. And once in a while, even though everything is garbage, it’s worth reflecting on the fact that we are a species that is able to make, and to laugh, and to try new things on for our entire lives, and that’s actually kind of really special.

Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.

Love,

Sophie

Housekeeping

• Lol, Sammi and I have a New Yorker cartoon in the issue of The New Yorker that came out two weeks ago!

  

• I think probably lots of New Yorker cartoonists have written a version of this essay but better — but I never miss ’s newsletter, and has my favorite newsletter for cartooning craft.

• Less than three hours from now, I’ll be at the Gerber-Hart library to discuss “Kin: The Future of Family.”

  

Loose Thoughts

• Thank you for all the seriously kind words about the library bench! I have to go through and respond to comments, but I see all of them, and feel them in my heart.

• We are in the middle of a heatwave. I like it, and I am sorry.

• I know this is the wrong thing to feel about it.

• I am sitting in a non-air conditioned room sweating with the fan on my face.

• But ants are crawling on me, too, which I guess I shouldn’t blame on the heat, but I do. You forget how often ants come. They come and then they’re here. They have no boundaries. They are very smart.

• Can we talk for a minute about jumpsuits / rompers? I love them as an ITEM, but I CANNOT STAND THE WORK I MUST DO TO PEE. The one that Kat got me from Big Bud Press (used, and I still think it cost $900) is great because it has a simple zipper on the front. That’s not too much. But the one I rented that I’m wearing now has TWO TYPES OF BUTTONS. Why? I am sitting here with it mostly just unbuttoned because I am going to have to pee soon. Actually, I have to pee now! But I’ve got to get this newsletter out, it’s ridiculous how long this one has taken me.

• What do you guys feel about all the talk about protein these days?

Hi there Erins,

This is the monthly paid post where I answer a question or two. You should ask one! Anything goes.

An interesting thing happened to me yesterday (or, I happened to an interesting thing; the verb “happened” is often a little ambiguous). I read a great question from someone named Melanie, about sobriety, and spent a long, long time writing a…

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I’ve got a few guest 10 Things posts in the pipelines, and this is one I’m particularly excited about. I love all the amazing things that does, and I have a feeling you’re about to be a fan. Their Substack, is exactly the flash of hope and joy you need in your Inbox (so let me make it really easy for you to subscribe!):

everything is an experiment

rambling inspiration and creative practice from hope amico

By hope amico

I’m keeping the whole thing above the paywall so you can enjoy this fantastic offering from a brilliant writer. Here’s hope!

We probably don’t know each other, so here’s a little about me. I am a multi-disciplinary teaching artist, currently based in Portland, OR. Since 2008, I have designed, printed, and mailed a postcard with a prompt for response every month, and I call it the Keep Writing project.

I lived in Louisiana for many years and still talk about it to anyone who will listen. You can see my projects and upcoming classes at hopeamico.com. I also send a weekly newsletter on substack, everything is an experiment. When Sophie asked for guest list writers, I responded immediately because I love sharing about things that excite me.

1. CARRY: A tiny notebook.

   

   Something small enough to fit in your pocket. Great for lists, but also for noting funny/beautiful/magical occurrences. You can turn them into short stories like David Sedaris, or remind yourself at the end of the day that life is worth living. You can also make your own with folded copy paper and a stapler (ask any 9 year old how) or check out these from Blackbird Letterpress.

2. MAKE: Something every day.

   

   Or every week at least. Sit and draw from your front porch or doodle when you’re on a Zoom meeting, or write a postcard or cook something. Create something. Ideally off screen. Bonus: give it away. And if anyone asks you why, let Nick Offerman explain why we should make things.

3. WATCH: How to build community.

   

   There’s a lot of talk about community but how do we actually create community? Host Chris Duffy talks with Hanif Abduraaqib in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, on the How to Be a Better Human podcast. Abduraaqib is a poet and cultural essayist, which means his writings about basketball and music have the heart and depth of poetry.

4. GET INSPIRED: Make a note to yourself.

   

   There are a million reasons to want to give up but there are at least as many to keep trying. Write down the reasons to keep going and hang them on their mirror or over their workspace. Or treat yourself to a letterpress print from Atlanta based Tenderheart Press. I’ve had a “TRUST YOUR STRUGGLE” print over my bed for three years to remind me that its ok to have a hard time, but also get out of bed. .

5. RELAX: Have someone read to you.

   

   Maybe a favorite childhood book, or a poem or two. If no one will read to you, I will. I recorded a poem every day in April for National Poetry Month. Tuck in.

6. LISTEN: Sabine McCalla - “Don’t Call Me Baby”

   I just received my vinyl copy of Sabine’s latest album, all deep and salty, rhythmic and inspired. I don’t remember the first time I heard her sing, but she once reprimanded me for arguing with an 8 year old at a summer camp. She was right, I was being foolishly stubborn. This record will be drifting out my windows all summer.

7. ENJOY: summer.

   

   After many years in New Orleans, I still think of summer as a time to survive. Now that I’m in Portland, it is more about savoring the long days without losing your mind. Wherever you are, no matter how tired, do a few things to make summer special: get yourself a popsicle mold, a fan, and a list of the closest places to swim. Now you’re ready for fun, any afternoon.

8. SUBSCRIBE: Two very readable newsletters

   Margaret Killjoy’s newsletter Birds before the Storm , gives practical advice about current events with an eye to to the long view. She is an anarchist student of history, who talks a lot about nuts and bolts of how to take care of each other.

   Birds Before the Storm

   Individual and community preparedness. Memoirs of an anarchist life. Reflections on history.

   By Margaret Killjoy

   If you want a slightly softer, more internal magic, I always read I Love Love Anything is Possible, even though I delete about half my inbox everyday.

   I love love, anything is possible

   I Love Love; Anything is Possible is a newsletter about making your life magic when everything fucking sucks, walking hundreds of miles on foot, homosexual longing of all kinds & laughter as catharsis when crying feels boring as shit.

   By luca j. davis

9. LAUGH: Taskmaster is back.

There’s a new season of Taskmaster, a British game show with impossibly foolish tasks, and dumb prizes. Season 21 includes Kumail Nunjiani, opens with a prank, and a new episode is released every week. You can watch the entire archive on youtube, for free, including last season, featuring Jason Mantzoukas, who actively tries to destroy the set.

10. VOLUNTEER: Anywhere.

    

Preferably in person. Make a commitment to show up every week or every month to an organization you care about. I have volunteered with a local dog rescue, made food for a local free fridge, and tried to donate blood (more than once! But my blood iron is low! Even with a pill!) If you prefer to stay home, get yourself a pen pal through Black and Pink. I promise, seeing other people regularly, writing to incarcerated folks, showing up to do something you like to do, will do more to keep you human than nearly anything else.

Thanks for having me as a guest, Sophie. I love lists.

Dear Erins,

Wow, well… it has been an eventful long time since I photo-dumped at you — which always reminds me, with delight, of what I always imagined it was like to do a slide show…

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A Note for You, If You’re Having A Hard Day

Dear Friend,

My daughter, T, has started sleeping in our bed.

She doesn’t start out there. She starts out in her own bed, where it’s the right temperature, the right darkness, where all her stuffed animals live, and her books, and her approximately nine million things purchased to try to get her to sleep. She’s always had trouble sleeping through the night, and I was the same way as a child. I think the night is incredibly scary. It is an appropriate universal balance that we must experience this horribly terrifying thing once per 24 hour period.

Anyway, she falls asleep, at first, in her own bed. That’s good – that means if my husband Luke and I are lucky and the time is 9:30 p.m. or earlier, which is about 50% of the time, we can watch an episode of Taskmaster. And then we’re living the dream. In the middle of the night, she comes into our room and crawls in between us. To make this work, we have three separate blankets on the bed – a silky one for her, a light one for me, and a behemoth that I bet is rancid with sweat by now BECAUSE IT IS SUMMER AND THIS IS A DOWN COMFORTER MY DUDE for Luke.

Maybe this sounds horrible to you, but I think it’s the best possible case. I bought a king sized bed when T started having sleep problems (outside of a crib) two years ago. I thought that a big enough bed could accommodate all three people, and it’s true, as long as one is fairly tiny.

OK, so, I’m not sure if I know how to make what I’m about to write next not creepy. Is it creepy? You tell me. (I hate the word “creepy,” by the way. I was trying to think of a synonym, and came up with “disturbing,” but unfortunately, “creepy” is the word I mean here, and so I have to use it.)

I liked to stare at my first boyfriend’s face while he slept. I remember the thoughts I had in these moments: he was so soft, look at all those little hairs on his ears, the skin over his eyelids like paper. He isn’t the only boyfriend/girlfriend/bedfellow whose sleeping face I have studied. Suffice it to say that if you and I dated and you ever fell asleep around me, I sighed deeply while considering your eyelashes.

I thought that this was a feeling that couldn’t be beat, but I didn’t know what it was like to watch a child you love sleep. If a child is asleep, then something about this moment is safe. They’re so vulnerable, and nothing bad is going to happen to them here or now. There’s nothing like it. My daughter’s drowsy eyes; her dreams about tall sunflowers who can talk.

The other great miracle about this sleeping arrangement – a beautiful thing that I am aware is mercifully temporary, like every wonderful thing about raising children – is hearing T’s first thought of the day. First thoughts are gauzy and wobbly, unsure of how to be solid or if they can even stand. They’re feral: one foot in the subconscious and the other in the light of day. Usually, we only get our own. Grown-ups know not to wake up and say truly bizarre things out loud to their partners or cats. But for a long time, children are un-self-conscious, and my daughter is still in that life stage. A rare gift.

Yesterday, she had a nightmare. (She calls these “night mirrors,” and I imagine she isn’t alone, since it makes a lot more sense than the real word, which is essentially “night female horse.”) When she woke up, I asked her to share about it and she launched into a hard-to-follow narrative about a gooey monster and a frog best friend. “But it was all OK in the end, because Ribbit saved the day.” Phewf. Thank you, Ribbit.

Luke said, “That sounds scary. You know, I remember my first nightmare.”

This shocked me. What forty-something man remembers their first anything? But given just a moment of thought, I remembered my first one, too. Or, at least, a very early one. I guess you hold on to early fear. It teaches you something.

“What happened in your first nightmare?” T asked.

“I was Little Red Riding Hood, and I was very tiny, and a big huge wolf was after me. No matter what I did, he would find me.”

“Mine was like that too,” I said. “Except, it was a robber. And he stole Winnie the Pooh, right out of his house, while he was sleeping. And there was nothing I could do to stop him or to save Winnie the Pooh. The robber just went down a dirt path and was gone.”

T asked, “But what was the happy ending?”

Nightmares don’t have happy endings. That’s what makes them nightmares. A nightmare with a happy ending is just a “weird dream.” At our initial confusion, T clarified. “You know, because everything ends up OK in the end. So that can’t be the end of the story.”

It occurred to me that maybe T had not dreamed about Ribbit saving day (that part of her recollection was suspiciously devoid of detail). Maybe she’d written it. I could try that.

I said that I woke up all of Winnie the Pooh’s friends, and we got together to try to figure out where the robber was. We all went together to the robber’s house, and Winnie the Pooh was in there, and he was OK. And we rescued him. It surprised me, how good – how actually kind of (SORRY SORRY SORRY BUT) healing? – it was to end the story like that. I hadn’t realized it had been cut off in the middle, but of course, it had.

Luke escaped the wolf in his re-imagining. T was satisfied and moved on to who she wanted to cosplay that day.

While she was eating breakfast, I thought about a recent nightmare I’d had where T and I both died in an explosion, and I could hear her ghost voice but not see her, and she said that she didn’t want to be dead and that she was afraid. How could that dream have been OK in the end? I imagined that I found her, and that we were spirits, and that even as spirits, I could hold her. And I would say to her, “It makes sense that you don’t want to be dead. We don’t know very much about being dead. But here I am, and I will keep you close to me.” And in this iteration, that would make her feel better.

What an incredible trick. I felt like I had to tell you about it.

It reminded me of that quote that goes, “Everything will be OK in the end, and if it’s not OK, then it’s not the end.” I don’t know if life is really so pithy, but the sentiment is comforting. As long as you are awake to the reality that there will be hard and messy parts in the middle, is it wrong to feel the glimmering possibility – or, if you dare, the likeliness – of OK-ness when the story comes to a close? No. It is not. We’re all just trying to be brave enough to fall asleep at night. We’re all just trying to be brave enough to wake up and live.

Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.

Love,

Sophie

Housekeeping

• Yesterday, I got an email from the Rogers Park branch of the Chicago Public Library that said this:

  Hi Sophie,

  The Rogers Park Business Alliance has generously supplied art pieces in front of our library for the past couple years.

  This spring, they contacted me and asked for list of book titles, highlighting local authors and important titles, to decorate a bench that would replace the previous sculpture.

  The bench was just installed yesterday. I asked them to include your book, Kin, and they gave you a great spot:

  

  I did actually immediately start to cry. The library is my favorite place. I feel so, so grateful to be alive at a time when there are libraries, and to live close to a good one is also a gift I can’t overstate. This is… I mean, I’m gobsmacked. 😭😭😭😭😭😭. (I got a keyboard where you can type 😭 as a key. Very useful for this kind of moment.)

• Sammi and I had this cartoon in The New Yorker last week:

Loose Thoughts:

• It’s fly season, and 99.99% of my loose thoughts are about flies.

• I listened to Stephen King’s memoir, because I’m mid-novel process. It was written in 1999 and reads like that, but it was fun to think about how some people get to make grand, sweeping statements about writing, in second person, as though they are universally true. I like that kind of confidence, and I had a good time listening to the book. Also, even if it’s totally an act, he is so obsessed with his wife in this book. Like, nonstop obsessed with her, reads out loud some of her poems in there… he’s just crazy about her and they met so young. IDK is it OK for me to think that’s cute?

• I have not read a Stephen King book, and I don’t plan to, because they’re scary.

• FLIES.

• Last week I asked about summer wardrobes, and here were some of your answers:

  • walrus: Summer wardrobe staples: shapeless linen dresses, kavu short overalls (shortalls? shorteralls?) with succulent print - all with generous pockets.

  • L. Jones: my wife and I both have House Dress, which in our home is a spaghetti strap, lightweight sundress that you change into after taking your Outside World clothes and bra off. You might get the mail, sit on the front porch, or walk the dog after dark in it, but you would not run any errands in it because you wear it until it is see-through.

  • Krissy: My summer uniform is Duluth Trading Co’s Dry on the Fly shorts (super comfy, lots of pockets) and Old Navy Luxe Sleeveless Tops. I sometimes think I should find a uniform that looks nicer or more put together, but this is comfy and allows me to move in all the ways I want to. I have a dozen of the tanks in different colors and a few pairs of the shorts, and it means I never have to think about what to wear, which I also love.

  • Becca: My summer uniform is nylon running shorts with the built in undies (because I HATE wearing actual underwear) and pockets and a cotton Fruit of the Loom tank style “sports” bra. If I’m leaving the house I’ll put a t shirt on.

  • Jana: Absolutely would recommend Duluth Trading Company Heirloom short romper. I got mine on poshmark and it’s a lovely greenish shade. I don’t see them on the website but here’s a diff red one on poshmark. Just size down, they run big.

• This time I’m going to ask about salads. What is your salad take? (I tried writing “hot salad take” but all I could see was “hot salad.”)

• Today I’m going to get to the beach for lunch, and I need to land at 12:30, so I’m signing off a little earlier than normal. You’ve gotta take seriously these days where the weather is appropriate for Beach Lunch.

Hey There Erins,

June is in full-swing, and I have that specific sadness that comes from wishing time could stretch out and take up more space than …

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Comin’ atcha with 10 timely suggestions. If you are dying to know, in a long-winded way, what I really thought of The Sheep Detectives (movie) and Yesteryear (book), my full impressions are below the paywall. But everyone gets to (and SHOULD) take advantage of my summer playlist. IT IS HERE!

— Sophie

1. BUY: Bee Creative watercolor paper

   

   For years, I’ve been like, “I can’t find any watercolor paper I am willing to buy besides Arches Cold Pressed.” The trouble is that Arches cold pressed paper is very expensive. But I went down a watercolor rabbit hole, and someone recommended this brand, and I’m thrilled about it. It’s got a nice tooth, is heavy enough, doesn’t warp, and holds pigment really nicely. The price point ($15 for 30 sheets) is good, too. What a relief!

2. INSTALL: A hummingbird feeder

   

   If you live in North or South America, take advantage of the fact that you likely have access to the world’s smallest birds, who subsist on sugar water and are the only bird that can fly backward. Something you can do to have joy for the entire summer is to buy a $12 feeder, put in some sugar water, and install it today. The thrill when you get your first visitor is unlike anything I can describe. Complement with trumpet flowers throughout your yard and you’re basically a magnet for whimsy.

3. LISTEN TO: My summer playlist

   Of all the playlists I make, I curate the summer one the most. This is because this is the season where I listen to the most music: on the deck, on a bike, on the beach… there is no shortage of opportunities to be listening to really great tunes!

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Dear Erins,

I let a month slip without a check-in, and I did notice. I wondered about how you were doing; there were a lot of updates last time; a lot of plot lines left up in the ai…

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A Note for You, If You’re Having a Tough Day

My Dear Friend,

What are the hills you’d die on? Historically, we died on hills because it was militarily advantageous. High ground was strategic. Linguistically, we die on hills out of principled sense of self. Becoming is a process of deciding what you care about. The more you care, the more you are.

Since I last wrote to you, I turned 40! Historically, “either 40 or 50” is “over the hill” (a phrase that likely originated in the 1950s, though the etymology is surprisingly tricky to pin down), and I think for me, it is 40. I’ve always felt too old to do things I’m not too old to do, and I’ve already had plenty of birthdays plagued with existential despair. Ten: “I will never be single digits ever again!” Big cry. Eighteen: “I will never be a child ever again!” Big cry. Twenty-one: “I was a child at liquor stores for the past two years, and now I”ll never be one ever again!” Big cry. And all the looking back thinking, “I had no idea how young I was, then” — a thought that I have probably more often than is technically healthy.

Without meaning to, I passed this on: three nights ago, my daughter got into bed and immediately started sobbing saying, “I don’t want to become an old grandmother! I don’t want to be dead!” I wanted to find the four-year-old-appropriate way to say, “Ah, that is a night thought. Night thoughts cannot be trusted.” I went with, “What would it be like to live on a cloud, do you think?” And she responded that the only way to live on one would be if you put tape on it.

That night thoughts are different from day thoughts is a hill I would die on. Understanding the chemical differences in your animal body in darkness is critical to survival.

Winter night thoughts are usually the worst for me. The death spiral can be really real at night. “Everyone dies, and that’s it, and it’s over, and so what’s the point, what is even the POINT, and is life mostly only pain, and people are burning the world, and God seems too tidy, and there could be an asteroid headed to Earth NOW, and my daughter might stop breathing at any moment —” and on and on, until a different part of my brain says, “Sophie, you’re having a night thought. Let’s table it until tomorrow.” For some of us, having a birthday is like having a Night Thought for roughly 48 hours.

This year, I felt weepy day-of, and then had a martini (a drink that I associate with being in one’s forties) and suddenly felt like nothing bad could ever happen and then said to my (sober alcoholic) husband, “Oh my GOD, is this why people drink? I get it.” Which was inappropriate, but hey: it was my birthday. (I wouldn’t die on the hill of, “You can be an asshole on your birthday,” but I know people who would.) The day after my birthday was great. It had come and it had gone. And I wanted to be over the hill.

I’m kidding myself. Five years ago, I asked my friend Jill1 if it was possible to induce a midlife crisis so you could just get it out of the way, and she said no. It happens like perimenopause or puberty or a hurricane. You don’t get to choose.

I grew up in a hilly part of Portland, and there are hills in my memory that are significant. My parents live at the bottom of one, and it trapped us in whenever there was snow or ice. If you live in a snowy, flat place and you feel like What Is The Big Deal About Driving In The Snow, the answer is, Hills. Did you ever ride your bike down a big hill? Or did your dad ever drive really fast down one? Did you ever walk up a hill with a person and experience the specific, hill-triggered intimacy that makes a conversation grow interesting legs? It’s something heartbeat-related, I bet. I have had a lot of serious talks on hills.

Here’s an example. Ten years ago, my husband Luke quit his job at the YMCA and decided he would find another nonprofit job. He got to the interview stages of a lot of jobs, but never beyond. Years passed. He started working at an antique store; a coffee shop. It was not ideal; we were hemorrhaging money. Luke’s dad is a general contractor, and maybe that’s why Luke decided, at some point, that he wanted to become a union electrician. It would be a multi-year apprentice program, and he’d have to drive to the far south side every day. Great, I said. It was better than old coats. (The antique store sold old coats; the coffee shop did not.)

But he didn’t get in. You have to take a test, and they privilege the younger guys, and somehow, Luke, who is brilliant, did not get into the union program. It was a big loss — the older one gets, the less likely one is to get in. The day his rejection letter came in the mail, his eyes got wet and he looked like a little kid. (If only we could have conveyed this little kid-ness to the union deciders, huh?) We decided to take a walk.

The heat was soundtracked with cicadas and lawn mowers, and we walked for miles — up into Evanston, and then west. There is a hill in Evanston called Trash Hill, where I guess they buried a whole bunch of trash and then put some grass on it, and now when it snows, you can sled down the hill. How silly, how wonderful! Whose trash do you think got to be a part of the hill? Whose old coats with holes in them are the infrastructure for someone else’s snow day?

So we went up the hill. We poured sweat. It felt like the right time to talk about what we had not been talking about, which was that we were going to wait until Luke had a steady job before we thought about having a baby. But I was 33, which is two years away from a geriatric pregnancy. If we waited for him to get into an apprenticeship program and complete it, would we have waited too long? I told him that I wasn’t sure how I knew that I knew, because we hadn’t been 100% on having kids at all, but that right then, I knew I wanted to have a baby with him. It was a hill thought. He could stay home with the baby. We could invert the roles. It could work.

At the top of the hill: “So, we are going to try to have a baby.” And I said, “That’s what I want. Is it what you want?” And he said, “It’s what I want.” These kinds of proclamations are easiest from up high. You can look all around and feel like you can see all there is to see, and internal clarity comes along with that, sometimes.

Then we went down the hill. We went to a garage sale on the way home. We ate pizza and played a board game. I took a picture of Luke with his pizza because I thought, “I’ll want to remember the day we decided to have a baby.” But you actually don’t get to decide to have a baby. There’s a lot of propaganda that you can decide things about babies, but it’s not real. The whole process is deeply mystical. (A hill I would absolutely die on — though it wasn’t a hill I knew existed a decade ago.)

We tried to get pregnant and we couldn’t. We used thermometers and calendars and different leg positions and weird herbs, and every month was a new failure. In January, we went on another walk, up another hill, in the woods. Now, ice was everywhere; even the waterfall was quiet with pale blue stillness. As we went up the hill I told Luke that I didn’t want to do IVF or anything like that, and also, that I was tired of trying. He said he was tired, too.

At the top of the hill: “So, we are going to stop trying to have a baby.” And I said, “Well, we could go to the doctor and see if there’s something going on, fertility-wise. Just to see.” And he said, “Yeah, that sounds like a good plan.” And it was sad, but it was OK. Honestly, it was a relief. The internal clarity of being on top of a hill. The winter seems alive when you’re surveying it from above.

That night, I got sick. I thought it was just regular sick; or, if I’m being honest, I thought I was emotionally sick, trying to metabolize hard feelings or trauma or something like that. I did yoga; tried to have a smoothie, but I was too nauseous and threw it up. Luke kept saying I seemed really sick and I told him that no, I was just sad. It was fine and it would pass. At 4 a.m., I hadn’t slept and tried to cry. I was so cold. Winter was horrible, all of a sudden. I asked Luke for hot water, and he brought it to me, but I threw it up. I ruined our beautiful down comforter. “I’ll order us a new comforter,” I said, and tried to look up new comforters online, but my vision blurred. Luke gave me the pale pink thermometer that had come with my fertility kit and it chattered in my mouth. My temperature was 104.9. Luke took me to the hospital.

Mostly what I remember from the hospital is that a nurse who was a man said to me, “Jesus Christ, why on Earth did you wait so long to come in?” And he seemed mad at me. Then later, when he was gone, a nurse who was a woman said to me sort of conspiratorially, “I get it.” How many times had I been told that I was overreacting? Women are told this a lot. And now here I was, not reacting enough.

My appendix had burst. Sepsis had taken root. Emergency surgery was required, but first I was supposed to pee, so they could make sure I was not pregnant. Insult to injury, I thought.

This was not a hill. I did not die.

But speaking of both: after I had surgery, I woke up in a room where visitors were not allowed (for COVID reasons), and when I turned the TV on, there were all these red-faced people, yelling and holding flags, storming Capitol Hill. It was surreal, watching hours of coverage about people who were so sure of their own rightness and they wanted to kill over it; so sure that apparently, that they were willing to die.

I was in the hospital for a week. And two weeks after, as soon as it was physically possible, my daughter was conceived. It took me a long time to realize that I was pregnant because we had stopped trying.

The whole process is mystical. A hill I would die on.

The second half of my thirties was all about this unexpected person who showed up uninvited but not unwelcome, and whose life has felt like one very long year, even though it’s been five. Her becoming has been its own hill — it feels more like a mountain, really, in its dramatic vistas and treacherous crags. A mountain growing off the hill of my own life. A person I would die for.

That’s the thing. Getting older has meant fewer hills to die on, but more people to die for. When I was my daughter’s age, there was no one to die for, and that’s how it should be — though it does make the thought of being a dead grandmother very scary. With each year that passes, though, there are more people I love so much that the space they take up in my heart is greater than the heart itself — mountains on hills, an impossible anomaly. This is the great gift of being human. That you find people who make your own life feel less important. At night, your thoughts turn to how lucky you are to know them; to be awake with them, for however brief a window of time.

Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.

Love,

Sophie

I’ve been brainstorming for weeks about what this birthday post would be about, and there was a point at which I settled on I would pull a bunch of images of “Over The Hill” t-shirts off of eBay and rank them. And that was supposed to be a part of this essay, but the essay took its own turn, and I had no control over it. So here are the t-shirts and my thoughts on them. Each will be rated out of a possible 40, obviously.

Very strong entry out of the gate. This shirt reminds me of 1993 PBS morning programming that would teach you kids to spell or do science projects, or maybe I’m just thinking of Saved By The Bell, which is obviously its own thing. Feels more like a band T-shirt or a shirt for a cool burger restaurant than a shirt about getting older. I’d wear it. 37/40.

Another good one, though this one feels less youthful than the last one, probably because of the corpse-y color palette. The font brings to mind Beevis and Butthead, but the “40” in the background looks like it has been both electrocuted and drowned, which is in keeping with the vibe of, “You are dying soon.” I’d give it to Luke; I think he might wear it. 32/40.

Believe it or not, this shirt is from 1985. Isn’t this kind of shocking? It feels modern to me; of the era where we were all inexplicably into Helvetica. (Or maybe it is explicable; Helvetica is a thoughtfully designed font and it is honestly among my favorites.) The hill on this shirt asks more questions than it answers. Like… it seems like the climb to the top of the life hill is steep, which I guess makes sense, but the peak is not in the middle, and the way down seems to have lots of semi-summits. The more I look at it, the more it does feel accurate to how life actually is. Idk, this one is growing on me. 34/40.

Here’s a shirt that is unafraid to say something, and we have to admire that, in a way. It’s too easy to stay silent on the issue of “what do we mean by this turn-of-phrase?” I also like the accessibility of the clip art details. Those are the pros. Unfortunately, the good outweighs the bad, in the end. “Over the Hill” is definitely not a noun. It says “(OLD)” at the top, which should have been the shirt editor’s first clue that this is an adjective. I guess that hill is a noun, but over and the are not; so not even MOST of the words on the shirt are nouns. The definitions don’t work, either (and none of them are nouns). Each definition should be phrased slightly differently. “The state of warranties not meaning as much,” for example. The antique vase is a waste of a clip art; it should be something that could have conceivably been purchased in the 1940s. “You only show your I.D. when you want a discount” is just a statement, not a definition. The hourglasses are oddly shaped. The colors are clashy, and the font on top feels inappropriately epic considering the content of the shirt. This was apparently a whole brand that made shirts with definitions on them, though I can find little evidence of other shirts with other definitions, so the brand did not become a cult classic. This was a missed opportunity. What a shame. 12/40.

Points for the font work, which to me says, “It is 1994 and I am running a 10K for the local hospital.” There are a lot of shirts with this slogan on them. I don’t get it. Like… is someone out there going, “Oh hey, are you Over the Hill? I have all your albums!”? It’s just not quite landing for me, I’m afraid. 16/40.

This is the oldest “Over the Hill” t-shirt I could find. It is from the 1970s! Isn’t that cool? I like everything about it. I like that there is a gang. I like the sunglasses on the guy. I like that it says “450+” on it, which makes me feel like I will NEVER be over the hill. I like that the word “hill” is a hill. I like the hot muscles on the driver of the bike. 39/40.

This one really makes you think. 30/40.

Another slogan I saw more than 10 times. See, the joke here is that you are so old that you can’t even remember what hill we are talking about. You don’t even seem to know what a hill IS, or what questions you should be asking about it. I appreciate that this shirt is not black, and I find this font very Western. 20/40.

Unlike the dictionary shirt, this definition of “over the hill” makes linguistic sense. I love the stylish three diamonds at the bottom of the shirt. They create a type of symmetry with the purple box at the top. But… the capitalization choices here are not going to work for me. What is this, the title of a book? And EVEN IF IT IS, style guidelines dictate that “is” and “the” and “to” are not capitalized. It’s a nonstarter. 15/40.

While we are on the topic of “things I found on eBay”: for my birthday, Luke went to Taco Bell and got me a ton of Fire Sauce packets, which was a deeply thoughtful and pragmatic gift I have already used 12 times. In trying to find images of all of the hot sauces from Taco Bell throughout all of time, I happened upon this item, which is “taco bell sauce collection every packet and phrase!” It is in four people’s carts. I would like you to guess how much the person is asking for it.

Here is the image of it. Now guess. Get your best guess in your head. I’ll give you a hint and tell you that those ones at the top that seem to have no phrases on them are defect packets, and they’re very valuable. You can buy one of those for a pretty high price point on eBay. And usually they come in, like, little plastic boxes because they are considered so valuable.

OK.

Are you…

thinking of a number?

I didn’t know this about the sauce packets before now, by the way. I had no idea.

Anyway. Thinking of a number?

Get it in your head.

…

….

Big reveal:

CAN YOU EVEN WITH THIS!?!?!? Four people are CONSIDERING IT!

Housekeeping

• If you are thinking it would be nice to give me a 40th birthday present, subscribe to the paid tier of the newsletter for a month! It is $5!

• Sammi and I had this cartoon in The New Yorker last week:

The story behind this one is that I recently read this article by Ellen Cushing about how Sweetgreen became “Millennial Cringe,” and was struck that there was a time when we were trying to be better people. Like, in 2021, you could get SO MUCH GOOD VEGAN FOOD at just THE REGULAR GROCERY. Now people are saying that veganism has failed, which is absolutely bananas (a vegan food, btw), because in 2026, you’ll be hard pressed to find someone who isn’t familiar with the word “vegan” or doesn’t know how to make a meal vegan. In 2002, when I went vegan, no one knew what it was. You couldn’t even find tofu at the regular grocery store in Portland, Oregon — a very vegan-friendly place. Movements go through their own movements, but vegan dining isn’t going anywhere. Except that this girl is eating burgers again, and we understand why.

• This summer, in just a few short days, take a bird watercolor class with me! If the price paint is too high for you, email me; I can give you a scholarship. Classes are 90 minutes on Thursday afternoons, and include a supply list, one on one support, and video recorded course to watch after the fact.

Loose Thoughts

• I bought one of those tennis rackets that electrocutes house flies and it is very good.

• Here is what you had to say about tea:

  • Katje likes Republic of Tea Ginger Peach green tea: “I drink it all winter, maybe slipping in some chocolate mint tea for feeling fancy. My spring jam this year has been Celestial Seasonings Black Cherry Berry. My non-tea drink lately has been Waterloo Blackberry Lemonade (but it’s just sparkling water, no sugar). If my tooth enamel would survive it, I would drink Topo Chico every day... but apparently my teeth turn to chalk at the mere suggestion of this stuff.”

  • Bethann Garramon Merkle: “for tea, the Lake Missoula Tea Company in Missoula, MT has been my go-to for a while. They have a lot of VERY GOOD no-caffiene teas. My faves are the Cape Town Grey and Pachamama chai (strong cardamom), but they also have a lot of great floraly ones. Or, if you have access to Quebec City, there is a sublime, floral herbal blend called Jardin des Rêves from the family shop Les Cafés du Soleil.”

  • Graafnotities recommends the non-tea drink Apfelschorle: “It’s German, but you can make it yourself, by simply adding half a glass of carbonated water to half a glass of apple juice. Half the sweetness, half the bubbles, double the refreshment!”

  • Heather K: “Queen Mary tea in Seattle: Strawberry Pink Peppercorn black tea and it is caffeinated and sweet and a little spicy and i drink it with sugar and milk (it might actually not be that sweet but I would never drink it without sugar so 🤷🏻‍♀️) and it also makes an outstanding iced tea.”

  • Myq: Favorite tea? Kukicha. Or ginger.

  • Kitty leah Julien likes “Alpine Herbs by Lovaré teas”

• I’ve written at length about winter uniforms, but I’m wondering now about summer uniforms. Do you have a good summer uniform you like?

• My sister came to visit for my birthday, and what a gift it is to have a good visitor. No visitor is better than a sister like Alexis. We got to do a WEED GUMMY, and we watched a bunch of Dropout TV together, and it was just a pure delight. Through and through.

• Do you use any fidgets?

• OK also, everyone say their favorite cake.

• I liked and recommend Sheep Detectives.