Geraldine DeRuiter's Blog

It is March. I am standing in my kitchen in my PJs, eating Christmas candy that I purchased from the Goodwill.

To be clear, it was not my intention to be eating yuletide-themed confections on the precipice of spring, like Miss Havisham, but for snacks. It’s just that sometimes in life we find ourselves in places we never expected. A police holding cell. Tottering on the brink of totalitarianism. Florida.

When I purchased the candy – before Christmas, I might add, as I proudly hitch up the burlap sack I am wearing as trousers – only some of it was from the Goodwill. I am telling you this because I want you to think I am holding it together. That I am not just randomly opening up bags on the shelves at the thrift store and shoving the contents into my mouth, hoping that it’s edible and not filled with asbestos or Funyons. This is preferable to the truth, which is that every time I read the news, or catch a glimmer of a headline, it feels like baboons screaming inside my head.

My intention, in the decades ago that was December, was to review the candy before Christmas. But the days piled on, and Christmas – the first one without my aunt, around whom the holiday always revolved – shattered my heart. I lugged the candy down with me to California, so determined was I to eat it and write about it, but then the day came and went. I figured I would put up a post a few days after Christmas – wouldn’t that be hilarious?

Anyway, now it’s March.

(Before anyone judges me: I’ve checked the expiration date for all of the candy involved, and it is still months away. So I feel as though even the manufacturers accounted for this behavior, reasoning that at least five percent of people who buy their product are gremlins.)

Some of you are probably wondering: Why now? Don’t I have better things to do? Is attempting to write nuanced and insightful food humor at this juncture the equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on a sinking Titanic? Is this the literary/culinary equivalent of Nero fiddling while Rome burned?

Those are very important questions, probably.

 

Gingerbread Marshmallow Peeps. These smell delicious. I am not being sarcastic. I realize why you would think that based on, well, *gestures to my entire career* but they smell delicious, and they taste pretty good. I don’t know what alchemy is involved to create this, because Peeps are not food. Which means they’ll probably soon count as a vegetable for elementary school lunches. School lunches that are not free, for some fucking reason.

If you like cinnamon marshmallows, these are pretty good, even though they look like they’ve been dropped in sand.

Marshmallow Candy Cane Peeps. If you are looking for a mint marshmallow, then this is the Peep for you! A slight product development hitch, as the peppermint speckles on white bird-shaped marshmallows make them look like white peace doves splattered blood. Which I’m sure isn’t a portent of anything.

 

 

Christmas-Tree Shaped Peeps. Okay, I’m not gonna lie. At this point, it feels like maybe the product development team at Peeps is just phoning things in, because these are marshmallows that are vaguely tree shaped (they are not, I should note, tree flavored). Which is funny, because the notion of a Christmas tree actually comes from Pagan tradition, and based on most assessments, Jesus would have been born in the Spring. His birthday was likely shifted to the winter to co-opt the Pagan celebration of the Winter Solstice.

Oh, also, he didn’t exist, and if he did, he wasn’t white.

 

 

Peppermint Crunch Junior mints. These boast “a sweet outer crunch” like a York-peppermint patty but with a partial exoskeleton. The picture on the front makes it look like they have contracted a case of measles. The Junior Mints themselves also look like they’ve contracted a case of measles. By the way, have you seen that measles are back? Like, for real? And the new United States Secretary of Health and Human Services literally doesn’t think vaccines work even though he got every single fucking Covid vaccine and keeps getting them, like what the actual fuck, if you are going to be a useless science-denying piece of shit who’s responsible for the death of what will likely be millions of people at least have the decency take your own garbage advice.I forgot what I was saying.Oh, yeah. Junior mints.Have you ever dropped a piece of candy in dirt and then you pick it up and eat it while screaming “Five second rule!” even though it’s been more than five seconds and that’s not how germ theory works? And the piece of candy is weirdly crunchy but  you can’t complain because you’ve done this to yourself? That’s these.

 

 

Gingerbread flavored Red Vines. These serve no purpose, are wholly repellant, and they look vaguely like they’re made of human skin. They’re basically the JD Vance of candy. You might be into these if you’re into chewy gingerbread and your parents didn’t love you. If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if T.J. Maxx labeled their entire fall candle section as edible (which I’m sure will happen as soon since the FDA has been replaced with a YouTuber whose legal name is IShitOnURMOMzz) this is it.

Palmer Double Crisp Coal. I want to salute the good people at Palmer candies for saying, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if you could eat band-aids?” In addition to their gumi-aids (which is the actual name of a very real product that you should not buy) and bubble gum cigarettes (also real, also don’t), they make something called double crisp coal, which, thanks to their diligent legal team, cannot be labeled as chocolate. That’s because the legal definition of chocolate in the United States means that it has to contain cocoa butter (which is just another example of pesky oppressive consumer protection measures dictating that food labels have to mean something.)

The texture is dryer and more saccharine than chocolate, and if you were a kid in the late 70s or early 80s, running feral and blissfully unaware that the failed re-election of Jimmy Carter was going to put us all on a 45-year path to doom, this will hit all the right nostalgic notes. They’re not good, they’re barely edible, really, but they’re a reminder of a simpler time when we had the good sense to know that Russia’s leadership was trying to destroy us.

 

 

Jelly Belly Christmas Jewel Mix. I read some insider-leaked history about how Reagan didn’t actually enjoy jelly beans, but an enterprising campaign consultant suggested that he start eating them at the start of his political career, so people wouldn’t catch on to the fact that he was a hateful ghoulish piece of shit. The joke’s on us because apparently being a hateful ghoulish piece of shit is now a precursor to higher office. Anyway, Jelly Belly’s Christmas Jewel mix boasts three different flavors: Jewel Very Cherry, Jewel Green Apple, and Jewel Cream Soda. The bag smells like cough medicine and the beans look like they’ve been painted with nail polish. The Jelly Belly factory supposedly has a mosaic jelly bean portrait of both Ron and Nancy, who both notably didn’t give a shit about the AIDS crisis because it disproportionately killed gay men, including their close friend Rock Hudson.

The best flavor in the Christmas Jewel mix is Green Apple.

 

 

Jelly Belly Candy Cane Flavored Jelly Beans. These jelly beans are excessively minty, look vaguely like they’re growing mold spores, and taste slightly like floor cleaner. Speaking of floor cleaner, did you know that Lysol put out a series of ads in the 20th Century subtly recommending that women use their product as a form of birth control? This was because oral contraceptives were illegal (they stayed that way until 1965 for married couples and 1972 for single people) – so they advised women to douche with Lysol. The product (which was much more noxious in its early days than its current iteration) is toxic to human sperm, but it’s also toxic to humans, and a number of people died from Lysol poisoning. And also from, you know, lack of access to oral contraception. This will be useful information to anyone who’s skimmed the 65% of Project 2025 they haven’t yet completed.

 

 

Christmas Tree Snickers. These differ slightly from the original log shaped confection. They are flatter, have more surface area, and the caramel and nougat are softer in texture (personally, I found this to all be a downgrade vs. the bar). This is largely owing to a shape that is more arrowhead than Christmas tree. Speaking of arrowheads, did you ever notice that the National Park Service logo is an arrowhead? Apparently it’s meant to symbolize “the natural, wildlife, water, geologic, historic, and cultural resources protected by the National Park Service.” Anyway, apparently Elon Musk, who was elected to *checks notes* fucking nothing at all, while the Trump administration is planning on like, logging Yellowstone, selling most of the parks, and ending the only thing other than money that America still has going for it… or something.

Post Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles Cereal Flavored Candy Canes. What I find truly critically important about this product is that according to the package, The Flintstones celebrate Christmas. This means that Jesus predated, or existed simultaneously with, the dinosaurs. (Which, according to the Young Earth Creationist Museum, is exactly what happened. Because fuck science!) The Cocoa Pebbles variety of the candy cane tastes like a crunchy Tootsie Roll, a sort of weird abomination that should not be and yet you can’t look away (a bit like the end of The Substance). The Fruity Pebbles iteration actually tastes EXACTLY like Fruity Pebbles, which … congratulations, I guess? It feels like AI-generated art: no one wants it, no one needs it, I really don’t want to think about the environmental costs of making it, but I guess someone did it anyway.

Anyway, I think it’s time to throw out this candy. All of it. What’s that? It’s not expired yet? Whatever. It’s going in the trash.

The post It’s March. Here’s My Review of Some Christmas Candy I Found At the Goodwill. appeared first on The Everywhereist.

Despite my numerous protestations, several letters to the editor, and one shockingly well-funded Kickstarter, Thanksgiving is somehow upon us again. If you are anything like me (clinically depressed and awesome), you are wondering how we ended up here again. In my case, I assume it’s punishment for the time I said Vince Vaughn was “kind of bangable” in the early 2000s.

For the record, I don’t hate the holidays (though societally, we have entire airplane hangar of shit to unpack around Thanksgiving). I don’t even hate cooking for the holidays. But I hate the way that gender roles around cooking and hosting become more entrenched sometime around November 10th, and don’t let up until mid-January, or, for some people, ever.

In 2022, I wrote about how it’s okay to buy pumpkin pie (it is! If you want to! It’s an incredibly easy shortcut and honestly there has never been a homemade pumpkin pie that is demonstrably better than a store bought pumpkin pie, THIS IS FACT) and while a lot of people agreed with me, a small mob of folks armed themselves with dessert forks and brûlée torches and called for my head on a platter.

One culinary celebrity snapped, “Making it from the scratch is the point,” and in doing so, missed mine entirely. I wasn’t saying that he couldn’t make a damn pie. I was saying that in a world where the task of cooking and feeding our families falls disproportionately to women, and this disparity becomes even worse during the holidays IT IS OKAY TO MAYBE GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO BUY A FUCKING PIE BECAUSE SOME OF US ARE BURNT OUT. Among American heterosexual couples, women do more meal prep, cooking, and cleaning than their male counterparts – something that holds true whether or not they have children. Worldwide, women cook twice as much as men do (with the exception of … Italy? Huh.). Praising store bought pie isn’t an indictment of those who make it from scratch. It’s just cutting some of us some fucking slack when we need it.

Last year I threw even more cinnamon on the fire and made a clear pumpkin pie as an allegory for the invisible labor women do around the holidays. 2 million Instagram views later, a handful of people were so filled with the spirit of the season they told me I needed to kill myself.

This year marks my first holiday season without my aunt. She died in February, in an act of mortality for which I have not yet forgiven her. Among the many things she taught me (including “Make sure to leave at least one survivor so they can tell the others what they saw here today”) is that there is joy in being an extremely selfish cook. Women are constantly expected to feed their families — either directly from their own tits or from their thankless efforts in the kitchen. It is exhausting and back-breaking and painful and even if it’s rewarding it’s still work and yet we’re told all of these very difficult things are a gift and an honor.

In light of that, I see my aunt’s particular brand of cooking for the revolutionary act it was.

To be clear: she was an aggressively hospitable host, feeding people via a mix of coercion, guilt, and brute force. I’ve never seen anyone look more personally affronted by the phrase “We’ve already eaten.” She would gladly cook for you, but it was invariably whatever she loved eating.

My aunt wanted things done a particular way: hers, and no one else’s. Because her way was better than yours. Her way was the best way. And if you disagreed with her, you were wrong. She was quick to inform you of this. Often several times a day.

She would slice up jalapenos and chili peppers and keep them in a jar under oil, the entire concoction so spicy that you simply needed to drizzle a few drops a little over your food to burn off a layer of your tongue. (If I were to go spelunking in the recesses of her fridge, I am certain I would find jars of them, still. Her cooking outlasted her, which I suppose isn’t surprising). She preferred pecorino on pasta, so that’s what she had in the house (never parmigiano). Her garlic bread was blackened with a thick layer of pepper on the top because “otherwise it doesn’t taste like anything.” Her banana bread was dry and crumbly, the texture and color of stale cornbread, palatable only with a thick layer of butter on top and a cup of her milky tea. Her apple pie had entire studs of cloves nestled inside (as a child I would often fish one out of my mouth, an unpleasant little discovery that in no way stopped me from eating more pie).

The important thing was this: she liked things this way, and the gods and Julia Child could not sway her otherwise. Cooking was never a chore for her, was never something she resented, because at the heart of it, she was always doing something for herself. She was her own personal chef, her own short-order cook. She fed me ten thousand times and I don’t think she ever asked me what I wanted to eat. It was just “You want some pasta?” or “Shall we make some gnocchi?”

She wasn’t going to relinquish the power of deciding what she was going to make, not even to those she loved. This is counter to so many things that I’d seen and read. As women, it wasn’t enough for us to simply cook for others – there needed to be something self-sacrificial involved as well. We had to be denying ourselves something, because a woman who enjoyed her own cooking, who catered to her own tastes was just … unseemly. There had to be a dose of martyrdom thrown in. Leave out the spices we enjoy, omit additions we loved, soften the sharp flavors of both a dish and ourselves.

What we don’t talk about is that if a dish is palatable to everyone, it is inherently a little bland.

And so while my aunt was happy to cook for others, she did not cook for others’ tastes. She was making her food, the way she wanted it (she just happened to make enough to share). When she was too ill to prepare food, she would dictate how something needed to be prepared from her cushioned chair in the dining room, a culinary grand dame. On occasion, I was the recipient of her orders. In those instances, I would shout back, “Zi, I’m doing it my way.”

This would leave her in a sort of stunned silence. For a woman with such a formidable palate, you’d think she would have been less affronted by a taste of her own medicine. But I was simply doing exactly what she had taught me to do. I was transforming that kitchen – a setting of confounding contradiction, our near-exclusive domain and where we were expected to spend so many uncredited hours – into a place of pure, unadulterated, glorious selfishness.

This holiday season, I recommend that you do the same.

If you are compelled to cook, take your own tastes into account. Make dishes you love, the way you love them. So many of us have been taught that to put ourselves first, or at least on par with everyone else, is to be selfish. And that’s wrong, but even if wasn’t – so fucking what? Let’s be selfish. Let’s cater to ourselves. Because when I reflect on the many lessons my aunt taught me, one that stands out is this: that when we talk about cooking for our loved ones, we should have been including ourselves in that equation.

The post This Holiday Season, Be A Selfish Cook. appeared first on The Everywhereist.

Hello. Hi. It’s me. Hey. Howya doing?

Yeah, ME, TOO. (Sobs turn into maniacal laughing.) (Slowly transforms into The Joker.)

It was a tough year before this past Tuesday, to be honest. If someone had asked me, I would have easily marked it one of the most difficult ones of my personal and professional life.

My aunt died earlier this year. Her death was shocking in that particular way of those who have spent decades cheating their mortality. In her constant illness she seemed somehow interminable. Her husband, my uncle, often joked that she’d outlive us all.

Instead we buried her in early March.

This woman, who yelled at her neighbors when they tried to tell her homosexuality was a sin, who watched Fox News because she “wanted to know what her enemies were thinking,” was a wisp when she died.

“She’d wrung every ounce of life out of her body,” my cousin had said. It had nothing left to give. And so, stubbornly fighting death every step of the way, she went.

I still love her so much. That’s the part that gets me. She’s gone, and I love her, and it just keeps piling up in my chest, like that episode of I Love Lucy at the chocolate factory, until it finally overflows, and I find myself in the middle of someplace extremely public and inconvenient, sobbing under fluorescent lights. (A naked display of grief and devotion that, honestly, she would have loved.)

By the end of the month, Rand’s father would be gone as well, so suddenly that I find myself terrified anyone could go at any moment. My father-in-law died on Easter Sunday.

“He might come back,” Rand jokes. “There’s a precedent for Jews doing that.”

In the middle of all of this, my mother broke her back, my book came out, and The New York Times decapitated me. (No, really.) This was the image they used, alongside my author picture, which they seem to have modeled it after:

The author of the piece (a woman and a fellow blogger, apparently, which feels like a particular kind of betrayal) called me “loud and irrational”, criticized my reasons for not having children, and questioned why Rand loved me. (What this has to do with the quality of my writing, I am still unclear.)

In the summer, I went to Toronto for an author event, and met up with my friend Sarah. She’d had her own hell of a year, and we commiserated over dumplings. She has been, by her own admission, in something she described as “cockroach mode.”

“Just trying to survive,” she explained, “by whatever means possible.”

To be unkillable. Like the noble trash lobster.

The first time Trump was elected, my father was gravely ill. He died not long after, and I spent the next few weeks, months, hell, maybe it was several years (who, really, was counting, aside from Rand?) staring at my computer and doing … nothing. I just remember staring at the void of Twitter and cannot recall a single other thing I did. I know that other things happened. Life chugged on, in ways big and small. My youngest nephew was born during those strange, sad years; a chaotic cannonball of a human who jettisons himself off of furniture and straight into your heart. I met people who would become some of my closest friends. Also, I probably showered at least twice. Mostly, I was just trying to get through it.

But the beauty was there, even when I couldn’t see it. It’s so pervasive, so stubborn. Even after the biggest catastrophes, the sun still rises. We just don’t notice right away, because we are too tired to lift our heads.

Now Trump is going to be President again, something which is so absurd it would be laughable if it wasn’t so awful. An actual rapist whose own Chief of Staff warned that he lionized Hitler. A man who hates women, and people with disabilities, and the LGBTQIA+ community, and People of Color, who has no respect for the rule of law, and who is about to be the most powerful man on the planet. It is truly a terrifying thing.

In the wake of all of that, and in anticipation of what is to come, it is okay to be tired and terrified and utterly ruined right now. If you need to go back to bed with an entire deep dish pizza, I will not judge you.

I simply have one request of all of you: survive.

It is time to be in cockroach mode. To keep going, by whatever means possible. When someone tries to stamp you out, avoid them with a swiftness and a scurry that will haunt their dreams. They think your existence is a scourge? Then the best way to spite them is to keep existing. People will tell you “You just need to get through four more years.” This is laughable, and incorrect. Fascism doesn’t last four years. But also: cockroaches have existed for 300 million years. They do not put a time limit on how long they need to survive, nor should you. If asked, the answer should be “As long as possible” and “Up to two weeks without my head.”

For some of us, survival may be easier. If you fall into that privileged group, consider using your energy to remind others that they are precious, and beautiful, and so, so loved. That if they left the earth, grief would drown those of us left scurrying across the wreckage without them.

Stay whole. Protect yourself, however you can. I do not care what you do. If you need to avoid the news and live in a cave, have at it. Be selfish. Be angry. Buy yourself things. Stop shaving. Eat a doughnut on the toilet. Scream in to the void. Stay hydrated. Take up yoga. Give up yoga. Watch videos of animals who are up for adoption. Go adopt all of those animals. I cannot say what it will take you get through. I don’t even know what it will take to get me through. But I know that you being here, you, whole and beautiful and alive and angry, helps. Get up everyday, feed yourself, tenderly care for the vessel that carries the inexplicable combination of biology and magic that makes you you. You do not need to be happy about it, but if you can find happiness in this absolute shit timeline, fucking revel in it.

This is no small task. It is an enormous thing to stay alive when your very government is actively trying to kill you. There will be days when you will feel like it is an impossible thing. When so much will be out of your control. It will feel insurmountable. We live in a world where simply being a different race, or being trans or queer or having a non-viable pregnancy means you could die. For a lot of people, surviving in this timeline is becoming increasingly difficult.

Truthfully, not everyone will.

In light of all of this, you are completely entitled to scream “FUCK EVERYTHING,” to throw your hands up in sheer exasperation because how the fuck are we here again, but worse. The person I love most in the world just told me he’s done with hope. You can’t be mired in grief unless you loved in the first place. This is the price we’re all paying. It absolutely sucks. Get angry. Be miserable. Roam around under a dumpster. Disappear into the floorboards when someone turns on a light. Maybe try Pilates.

I’m fairly certain cockroaches have seen some shit in the 300 megaanna they’ve existed. And they keep going, as interminable as time. They’ve outlasted kingdoms and empires. They will witness the heat death of the universe (now scheduled for sometime next spring). My request is a selfish one, and I guess that’s what I’m doing to get by: telling you how badly I need you here, with me. That I need you to survive, by any means possible because I would be so, so fucking lost without you. That you make the world better by your presence. That your mere existence is an act of defiance. That you, my sweet beautiful, broken-hearted weirdo, are a goddamn triumph.

It is time, my loves, to be in cockroach mode.

The post It is Time For Our Cockroach Era appeared first on The Everywhereist.

 

★★★

Idea Has Potential.

I don’t hate the idea of this book. It feels like the author (full disclosure: it me) doesn’t really have a clear idea of it, and instead of writing the book they keep getting distracted and reading about dysfunctional relationships on reddit. I keep calling it a “book proposal” even though it mostly consists of a bunch of post-its and random sentences scribbled on the back of Rite-Aid receipts, but it’s not … bad? It feels way better than the author’s other previous DNF post-it-note book ideas.

 

★★★½

A Vast Improvement!

I started writing on my computer?! (This makes the “proposal” as I insist on calling it, much easier to read). I had previously said that I “didn’t want to do that” because it was “too intimidating” which is a certifiably bonkers thing for a writer to say. You shouldn’t be afraid of the thing you need to do your job. It’s sort of like a sailor being afraid of the sea, except that’s too poetic, and the sea is terrifying. It’s more like a chef being afraid of spoons, or Thomas Kinkade being afraid of adorable cottages.

★★½

Goes Off Topic Very Easily

Okay, I thought this proposal was going somewhere but I spent the last three hours reading about Thomas Kinkade and it was a journey. Apparently a lot was happening behind those candlelit curtains. SPOILERS (about Thomas Kinkade) AHEAD…

.

.

.

Okay, Thomas Kinkade died about a decade ago, and he and his wife were separated at the time, and he was with his girlfriend of a year and a half when he died of an accidental overdose. His girlfriend then produced two disputed wills that claimed he was leaving her $10 million, refused to leave the house, and threatened to release private family photos and documents some of which supposedly included proprietary information about how he created his paintings. It was all eventually apparently settled and OMG I really need to be working.

 

★

JUST A BAG OF LITERARY BARF

I suck. Seriously. What am I even doing? Who would want to read this? Who do I think I am? The Thomas Kinkade of food writing? HA HA HA I WISH.

 

★★★★★★★★★★

GREATEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN (I JUST NEED TO WRITE IT)

My book sold at auction which means that I am a genius and it is a very good book even though I haven’t even written it yet and it’s just a proposal and a bunch of post-it notes and some Rite-Aid receipts, it does not matter and I should start writing it immediately and it’s going to take me THREE MONTHS, TOPS, and it’s going to win a Pulitzer and maybe a Nobel Prize for literature and OMG I need to get started on my acceptance speeches, really that’s what I should be working on because the book will take me two seconds to write on account of all my geniusness!!! THIS IS SO GREAT, CAN’T WAIT FOR THE SEQUEL WHICH I WILL ALSO WRITE IN LIKE TEN WEEKS.

 

(Posted ten minutes later …)

★½

I SUK

They made a mistake buying my book.

 

★★★

It’s All Gonna Be Okay

Just had a talk with my editor and I feel … okay? A little overwhelmed, like at the start of a new school year when you sign up for a class and you’re pretty sure you’re in over your head but it turns out to be okay. That’s where I am. I can do this. This book is going to be okay. I’m gonna start writing it tomorrow.

 

(Posted less than 24 hours later …)

⅛★

It’s a Garbage Pile of Words.

I’m going to go live in the woods. 

 

Switching to Poo Emoji Instead of Stars

Apparently “living in the woods” is not an option when you have “contractual obligations that are tied to deliverables which must be received by a certain date” blah blah blah blah blah *long sustained fart noise* so I guess I have to write this book which is a steaming pile of .

I’m just gonna start transcribing these post-its.

 

★★

Huh

These post-its aren’t that bad.

 

★★¾

Barely Started, But Book Tittle Keeps Changing

Okay so I finished the first chapter and it’s not my best work but maybe it’s okay? Note: Editor has requested I stop mailing her files titled CrapSTRAVAGANZApart1.doc.

 

★ 

Incomprehensible Plot; Unlikeable Main Character

THIS STORY MAKES NO SENSE. A protagonist is supposed to be happy when she gets what she wants. But instead she’s all mopey and whiney and, “I hate this and I hate my job and I’m sad when I’m not doing it and I’m pulling my hair and I don’t know what I am without this and this is the life that I dreamed of and I love it and I hate it,” I CANNOT STAND HER.

 

★★ ★★½

Parts of This Are Actually Beautiful.

I just wrote an essay and I don’t hate it and now my heart feels like it’s full of bees.

 

The following reviews have been removed due to content being similar/duplicates of already published reviews:

I Am a Raging Ball of Worthless Talent

This Book is Not As Terrible As I Thought

Why Does Anyone Love Me? 

I Deserve An Oscar or a Pulitzer or Maybe a Nobel Prize (Peace or Literature, I’m not Picky)

 

★★★¾ or maybe ★★★★ or who knows, maybe even ★★★★½

This is Definitely a Book.

It is a book. And it’s … it’s good, damn it. But more importantly, it’s done, and that’s better than good. Because it doesn’t matter how great a book is if it never makes it out of your head. Anyway, this one did, and it’s kind of an amazing thing, and the author (SPOILER: that’s me, I’m the author!) should maybe be proud of herself even if saying that makes her skin feel like it’s made of ants. And she’s going to tell you to pre-order it, which also makes her feel uncomfortable, but here we are.

The post Goodreads Reviews I Left for Myself While Writing My Book appeared first on The Everywhereist.

People keep reminding me it is January. I consider this an act of aggression. I keep writing “October” on all my checks. I also keep writing 1997. I also keep writing checks? What the hell is even going on with January, anyway? How can a January ever possibly feel normal? The year just started; the opening credits for it are still rolling, people are still looking for their seats. And yet here we are, already mid-way through the first month of the year, 1/24th of the way into 2024. All of us collectively trying to ignore the fact that Januarys are really just a leftover of the year that preceded it. There are extremely important dates therein (MLK Day, Inauguration Day, Insurrection Day, Everyone Being Mad at Taylor Swift for Showing Her Face in a Sacred Men’s Space Day(s)), and some of us just aren’t in the right mindset to give them their due. We’re too dehydrated and too tired. We are wading through a calendarial hangover, the remnants of 2023 we never really addressed. We shouldn’t have to start a new year until mid-February. Or, let’s be honest: June.

In Seattle, Januarys are a bleak thing – the sun sets at roughly 4pm, the sky is heavy and if you stand on tip-toe you can reach the bottom of the clouds. The earth is forever wet. The weather forecast is invariably 33 degrees and raining. Everywhere around me I hear people talking about how they are embarking on a Dry January – giving up alcohol for the month, shifting to mocktails and sparkling water under some guise of starting anew and taking better care of themselves. Of being “healthy.” I’m guessing, anyway. I’ve never asked people why they decide to stop drinking for a month. It’s none of my business. It’s none of anyone’s business. But unfailingly, no matter why they chose to give it up, everyone comes to the same epiphany, just in time for the Epiphany: this was a terrible idea. Because January is a time of year that would drive anyone to drink.

But Dry January, for me, is just another month.

I don’t drink coffee, either. Here I am with a matcha latte in NYC.

I do not drink. Not really, anyway. This is not out of some pious resolve. I am not a beacon of health or morals or self-restraint. Any dietary ethical high-ground I could lay claim to washed away years ago, on a tide of Mountain of Dew. There are a thousands reasons why I don’t drink. A few bad experiences, a tolerance so low I can’t finish a single cocktail, a tendency towards feeling dizzy and nauseated even when my blood alcohol level is zero. And, to be blunt: I just don’t enjoy it that much. I don’t mind a sip or two of wine, a watered down cocktail prepared by someone who understands that I can’t handle more than half a shot over the course of an evening. But when people talk about needing a drink? I suddenly become a pillar of restraint. I’ve driven carload after carload of people home after holiday parties, New Year’s bashes, birthdays. Of painfully clear mind, I’ve awkwardly stood by while people made drunken confessions to me and dissolved into hot messes. I’ve discretely sipped my club soda and wondered if I was unfun. As everyone giddily ordered brunch mimosas and bloody marys, as the zeitgeist switched to gendered jokes about “rosé all day” and how it was “beer o’clock”, I wondered if there was something fundamentally wrong with me. If I was physiologically programmed to be the stick-in-the-mud. Biology had made me everyone’s Designated Driver; it was a role that was appreciated, but not one anyone wanted.

To be a woman of a certain age who doesn’t consume alcohol is to invite all sorts of intrusive questions about your life and your body. People would comment, in states of alarm or smugness (like they were the only person who had noticed) that I wasn’t drinking. I would tell them that liquor angered my blood, that I only drank if it was absinthe in 19th century Paris, that an unfortunate deal I made with a pixie prevented me from consuming alcohol. They would roll their eyes and give me a knowing wink, then would loudly theorize how far along I was.

More tea.

To have your body and life choices suddenly scrutinized because of what you are imbibing is a horrible thing.

The questions have slowed over the years, and now have stopped altogether.  There are times when it’s been painful.  There are times when it’s been angering. Always, it’s been intrusive. At times like these, I think of a family member who answers inappropriate questions with a single, biting retort: Why do you want to know? I am in my early 40s. People no longer assume that my teetotaling is hiding some secret pregnancy. It took longer than I would have liked, but in the end, I was always vindicated. I am not sober because I am pregnant; I am sober because I want to be.

We live in a world where people assume that drinking is a given; to deviate from it is an abnormality. There has to be a reason for not drinking. Curiosity is instantly stoked. People can’t leave well enough alone. I used to find ways around this. Rather than refuse a wine glass at a restaurant, I’d ask for just a small sip – it seemed my like my constitution was just too delicate to handle more than that. I shouldn’t have felt any pressure but it is there – this perpetual feeling that my choices are a silent judgement of everyone else. That things would be better if I could just loosen up and have a drink. And on those rare occasions when I did drink (because, though not often, I sometimes do), people were either scandalized or oddly triumphant. We have to live in a world where it’s all or nothing. Where you either giving up drinking entirely – for your life, or for a month, or you drink. There’s no “sip or two” option here.

I had to go way back to find a picture of me drinking (I think this was from deep pandemic times.). I did not finish this glass.

It is easy for a non-drinker to hide under the cover of a Dry January. It also makes me wonder what, exactly, I’m hiding from. Let us put aside addiction and alcoholism (that’s another discussion, one that deserves a more informed touch than mine). Why are we more tolerant of someone’s choice to cut out drinking when it’s done in the name of health, or if it’s a temporary abstinence, rather than because they don’t really like alcohol all that much? No one gets shit for skipping out on drinking for a month. But string those months together in a line, and suddenly you’re in some weird grown-up version of an afterschool special about peer pressure and drinking.

It’s gotten better with time. You get older; you surround yourself with people who understand. “I don’t drink” is met with the same respect as any other restriction. A friend doesn’t eat beef. Another keeps kosher. Another has a list of allergies so extensive we all keep a running tab of them. A friend mixes me a drink – no alcohol, or very little – and pours it into a high-stemmed glass when I arrive at his home.

“If you don’t like it,” he says, “I can make you something else.”

You marry someone who makes you concoctions (I hate the word mocktail, because it immediately defines the drink in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is) – ones he knows you would like. They taste like lavender and citrus, because these are your favorite things.

May you all be this loved.

Your life isn’t missing anything.

And in that grey, damp, hangovery month that never really gets its due, the same words leave your mouth, again and again.

“This? No, it’s non-alcoholic … I guess I am doing a Dry January. And a probably a Dry February and March after that … Ha, god, no, I hope not. I just never do … Believe me, willpower has nothing to do with it. Why, do you need a ride home?”

The post A Dry January, All Year Long. appeared first on The Everywhereist.

It’s the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and as holidays bear down upon us, I find myself repeating the same refrain again and again: You do not need to make pumpkin pie from scratch. You do not need to make anything from scratch. You do not need to recreate a family recipe passed down for generations. Your dead relatives won’t notice. They’re dead.

You can phone it all in while you quietly drink a cocktail. The “cocktail” can just be vodka served in a plastic mug shaped like a turkey.

I want people to know this. We all need to be reminded that the time that we spend in our kitchens should be a choice.

It should be. It isn’t always.

Among heterosexual couples, women are much more likely than their male partners to do the majority of the cooking and meal prep (a fact that holds true whether or not a couple has children). Women are more likely to do the majority of the cleaning as well – a trend that is exacerbated by holidays, when hosting and cooking duties are increased. And we’re more likely to feel anxiety about a home that doesn’t look perfect, because we blame ourselves for it. We were taught home economics, which is only part of the equation. We should have been taught home socialism. About the unfair division of home labor, how so much of that work we’d do would be invisible.

And so, either poetically or out of spite (perhaps both) I have made a clear pumpkin pie.

Some of you are probably staring at the photo above and trying to decipher what, exactly, is going on (this is similar to the confusion you will feel after you turn forty and young people mention celebrities they like). Some of you may simply be making strange whirring noises, and that’s okay, too. I did all of those things, and I am the one who summoned this demon pie in the first place.

There is a pie here, I swear.

To make a clear pumpkin pie, you need highly concentrated pumpkin pie extract, and a complete disregard for the sanctity of dessert. I possess both. The former was courtesy of my friend Scott:

The latter, I procured myself.

Should you have an overwhelming desire to know what it is like to eat an entire pumpkin spice Yankee candle, or if you’ve ever just dreamed of going over the river and through the woods to fellate a gingerbread man, feel free to sample the extract straight from the bottle. Otherwise, heed the multiple warnings (on both the label and the website) to refrain from this temptation.

There are a few recipes online for clear pumpkin pies, and I used them as a rough guideline for how to proceed. A clear pie is usually made with a flavored gelatin filling, poured into a blind-baked pie crust. Instructions say that you can use a storebought crust, and I am here to tell you that you absolutely can take that shortcut. There is no shame in this.

Still, I did not take this shortcut.

The last time I suggested a similar timesaver – that storebought pumpkin pie is just fine – I was told I was a lazy piece of garbage, and that I didn’t deserve a family if I was unwilling to feed them properly. This time around, a culinary luminary told me that “fine” was synonymous with “meh.”

And so I make my crust from scratch, plagued by the belief that I am a bad wife, and a bad person if I don’t. Because the lesson instilled in me early on was that if you cut a culinary corner, you are cheating your family. That they deserve the very best, and that means standing in the kitchen from roughly mid November to whenever the next insurrection is, whether you want to be there or not.

Wariness is an appropriate response.

The mechanics of blind baking – baking a pie crust shell with nothing in it – is a tricky thing. The crust is inclined to shrink. You see your efforts grow smaller before your eyes. If you affix the crimped edge too firmly to the pie plate’s rim, tension will cause the crust to split as it contracts. The important takeaway is that I made it from scratch, and I am still a bad wife. It is good that we never had children, because they’d have been arsonists.

This is the true meaning of Christmas.

The problem with any invisible labor is that, by its very nature, it is unseen. We take it for granted. You only really pay attention when things go wrong – when the milk runs out, when the dishes are piled up, when the grass needs cutting. When everything falls into place no one notices.

But the pressure remains – and it falls disproportionately on women: to prepare beautiful food (from scratch!), to also be absurdly thin, to host people in our homes which are immaculate but also somehow inviting. To have children and a career (and if you don’t have one of those, to be stared at, for a very long time, with a mixture of pity and judgement because you are supposed to have it all and also not be exhausted and if you are exhausted perhaps you should try this $80 eye cream?) All of this creates a low-level anxiety that maybe we all just suck, all of the time, we will never stop sucking. We do all of these things in our attempts to feel better, to feel like we are good enough.

And yet so many of our efforts are unseen.

I love to bake. But when it becomes an obligation, the joy can leech out of it. And when I try to relieve others of this pressure – when I tell them that they are enough, and that Costco makes a banging pumpkin pie (#notapaidendorsement) I am met with derision. We will always feel like we need to do more. We will always think that we are not enough. If you love to cook, do it. But this holiday, if you need to, if it all too much for you, please: let fine be enough.

Because sometimes you can do everything you are supposed to do. You can even make the pie from scratch. And, still, no one will see it.

The post Invisible Pie Labor. appeared first on The Everywhereist.

Look, look, here’s the thing:

I have watched the footage of Taylor Swift running towards Travis Kelce and hugging him a bazillion times now, and if you are a person who is alive and has a internet connection, or even a person who doesn’t have an internet connection, even if you are just a dead racoon, you’ve also seen it, because this video transcends cyberspacetime and the mortal coil. This video is very important, and people (and dead raccoons) care about it a great deal. I, a person who knows exactly one and a half Taylor Swift songs (“Shake it Off” and another one about … I want to say revenge?) have watched it approximately 8,000 times. Among people I follow on various socially media sites, it has been analyzed more than the Zapruder footage.

“LET US JUST ENJOY THIS,” someone screamed at me, and I get it. I am not so old that I do not remember caring about the romances of people I will never meet. It feels lovely and wholesome, and a reprieve from a terrible world where polar bears are spontaneously catching on fire because the arctic is like 8000 degrees. At the same time, others have yelled at me (I get yelled at a lot), “LEAVE THEM ALONE,” and to just give them space which is hard to do when everyone is reposting the video from a thousands different angles so we can determine who hugged first. The Taylor/Travis romance is a pop culture eclipse, something we are unable to ignore but are not allowed to stare directly at.

And perhaps, maybe …

… maybe it’s all a bit much?

DON’T GET ME WRONG IT IS VERY NICE (IF CONVENIENT FROM A PR PERSPECTIVE), SHE SEEMS HAPPY, I AM GLAD THAT SHE IS HAPPY, PUT DOWN THAT FLAME-THROWER.

I am just saying that … maybe a beautiful celebrity finding love shouldn’t actually be that big of a deal? I feel like we should not be so over-the-top amazed that a guy isn’t afraid to be with a powerful woman who is very successful and has way more money and influence than him. It’s not an act of bravery for a man to date the most famous pop star in the world, who is also very pretty. I do not think it is a giant sacrifice on his behalf. Pete Davidson does it all the time. He seems very happy.

And my god, can you imagine the genders were reversed? If Travis Kelce were a woman, and not a dude who looks like he’s perpetually cosplaying as Paul Bunyan, the level of bullshit he would be getting right now? The intentions of any woman in his position would immediately be called into question. She would be called an opportunist and a gold digger, a social climber who was just doing it for the publicity. She certainly would not be hailed as a gift to feminism for daring to *checks notes* date someone successful.

Don’t get me wrong  – he seems like a perfectly nice guy (I want her to be happy! The video is very cute! STOP YELLING!). But also, I just sort of think this is how people are supposed to act when they like one another? I literally run to my husband when I bump into him while walking in our neighborhood and we have been together since Taylor Swift was in elementary school. Everyone seems to be losing their minds because Kelce told people to get vaxed and he’s not ashamed of his partner, but isn’t that like, just two of a very long list of things you are supposed to do and be? Is this where the bar is for cishet men these days? Because if so, I think we all need to expect a little more. I am not a pop star, and I am at least 60% swamp creature, but my husband wakes up every single morning – literally every single one – and tells me how gorgeous I am. He makes me dinner almost every night. He gets overcome with pride at my career successes. And I realize that he’s like, in the 99% percentile of husbands and a total outlier in the world of how men are taught to behave but he fucking shouldn’t be.

I think maybe it’s okay if women ask for a little more from life and from love, and I realize that sounds absolutely bonkers that I’m sitting here saying that in regards to Taylor Swift, but here we are. It is not asking too much and it is not unusual to be loved and adored by not just your fans but also one person who knows you very, very well. It’s okay to want equal pay and clothing with functional pockets and to be loved back.

The response that my husband receives – for being doting, for being kind, for cooking for me  – is to have his masculinity ridiculed, to be referred to by homophobic slurs by people who refuse to use real photos in their profile pics. These comments do not bother him, but they stress an important correlation in the minds of certain groups: that to appreciate one’s wife or girlfriend loudly and unabashedly, to do part (or many) of the household tasks that so often fall to women – is to be in direct conflict with heterosexual masculinity.

The argument, of course, is that Kelce has much more to lose, and the stakes are much higher. Dating Taylor Swift is not the same as dating a mere mortal. But the criticism Kelce has received is very much the same as any man would get for dating a woman who outearns him, is similar to the language any guy would get for being vocally supportive and loving towards his spouse. From the murkier waters of the internet, with one user X/Twitter called him “a beta male”, while others speculated about his absence of male genitalia. Let us briefly put aside that no one worth talking to has ever used used the phrase “alpha male” or “beta male” with a straight face, or the inherent transphobia in that latter statement. Let us evaluate this situation as follows: Travis Kelce is brave, we are saying, for dating Swift, because he will suffer criticism from idiots.

He is brave for going against existing antiquated patriarchal standards. He’s brave for enjoying the company of a successful superstar. But maybe that isn’t bravery. Perhaps it’s just normal. And we all need to start regarding it as such.

The post Why we need to stop regarding Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s romance as something remarkable appeared first on The Everywhereist.

While conducting an archeological dig of my office, unearthing crumbling notebooks that contained the early drafts of all the books I have written, and all the books I intended to write but somehow did not, I found a box of old photos. They were from a summer I’d spent in Europe when I was 20 years old, heartbroken and an utter mess, a pile of emotion barely held together by the straps of her crocheted halter top. It was 2001, my grandparents had just died, and I’d gotten dumped by my boyfriend. Over the phone. Four days before my grandfather’s funeral. (It is a story I relay in my first book, which you should read because it’s somehow sort of … funny?)

I made the sudden and financially irresponsible decision to skip town, buying a round trip ticket to Rome through London, to spend the summer with my aunt and uncle and cousins. I figured this would offer me the change I needed: a new venue in which to cry. It probably wasn’t the best of ideas, in retrospect. But what I remember, distinctly, throughout that entire trip, was not liking myself very much. (It did not help that I’d tried to mend my heart with a summer fling with some Italian guy who kept telling me about the other girl he wanted to hook up with. In my defense, he wooed me by saying things like, “Oh, your hips are really big, huh?” and “I’m kissing you so you stop talking.” I was making great decisions!)

I’d always thought I had an okay body image. Which, I’m beginning to realize, by today’s standards, just means that I usually don’t hate myself or how I look in the mirror. This does not make me worthy of praise. I shouldn’t get a prize for liking myself 51% of the time. But I realize how rare it is, especially looking back at those moments in Italy, where I felt, for one of the first times in my life, truly awful about myself. The way it permeated all through me. That somehow being unlovable meant I wasn’t pretty, and vice-versa.

This didn’t stop me from taking a thousand photos (it was Europe, I was young, how could I not?). It was the days before digital cameras, which meant that every memory I recorded onto film was a mystery. You paid to have images developed, not knowing what the outcome would be, not knowing if you would hate every single one. I had more than a dozen rolls of film from that summer. When I finally got them developed, I remember thinking that I didn’t really look very pretty in any of them.

In a twist that will surprise no one: I look at them now, and am stunned by how beautiful I am.

My mother told me this would happen. That the years bring a sort of clarity that you don’t have at the time. When I was a kid, I remember going through photos of her from her teens. I thought she was so beautiful. She laughed and told me she thought she was ugly. This was incomprehensible to me. Now, I get it. We do not see ourselves clearly. Your whole existence is a Magic Eye poster where you’re too close to see the dinosaur riding a skateboard. It’s just pixels.

Also, I … thought I was fat?

I THOUGHT I WAS FAT.

I …

With my uncle. I was focused on how sad I was to lose my grandparents. I didn’t think about how sad he might have been to have lost his parents. Seems like we should have talked about that.

I don’t actually know how to even broach that one. Now in my forties, and a firm 25 pounds heavier than the girl in the photos (which is probably for the best, I mean, dear god, she needed to eat), I find that entire line of thinking amusing, to say the least. Fat. I thought I was fat and ugly.

And … honestly?

What if I had been? What if I had been (sarcastically horrified gasp) fat? What fucking difference would it have made? Explain to me how fatness could have made me less loveable. I was still funny. I was smart as hell, and could run circles around people in two languages. I was still snarky and clever and fun. You can see it in the photos. I mean, look:

Would being fat or ugly have been the end of the world? I couldn’t have wrapped my head around this concept at 20. It’s still tough to grasp it now, at 43. That it doesn’t matter if you feel fat or if you are fat or if you’re an ancient sea witch that’s living among humans, because no one should care and anyone who does isn’t worth your time.

I remember this next photo most clearly of all. We were on the shores of Lake Balaton, in Hungary, and it was hazy and hot and someone – I think my cousin – snapped this from the shore. I remember being briefly horrified, but I decided to smile and wave to the camera anyway. And when it came out, I was relieved that you couldn’t see me clearly, because just my silhouette was bad enough.

Now, looking back, I’m sad you can’t see me more clearly in this photo. And I’m sad I couldn’t see myself more clearly at the time. I mean, good lord. Look at her. Look at me.

There are days when I do not feel good about myself. I feel ugly and old. The people yelling at me from the fringes of the internet occasionally manage to break through the protective walls I’ve set up and really, truly get to me. At times like these, I look in the mirror, and I try to see myself with the clarity of someone looking back, decades from now. I am so, so young and beautiful, and I have so little grey in my hair. I still have all my teeth. I still have my mom. Look at me:

I am beautiful. And loved. My life is wonderful. And honestly more than I could have hoped for as an insecure 20-year-old who dreamed of becoming a writer, who so desperately wanted someone to love her for who she was. And it is okay to say these things. It really is. We are allowed to love ourselves and our lives. What else are we supposed to do with our limited time here? The clock is counting down. The last twenty two years passed by in a blink. Listen to me: enjoy every minute. Do not spend time hating yourself.

And when this forced perspective does not work, and I still feel ugly and unlovable, I just remind myself: I’ve been wrong before.

The post Hindsight is the Best Filter appeared first on The Everywhereist.

You might have heard by now (from me, and the way I keep talking about it all the time, on this site, and also on social media, and in real life) THAT I HAVE A NEW BOOK COMING OUT. (Not apologizing for the all caps. I’m excited.) And if you haven’t already pre-ordered, please consider doing so OMG DO IT NOW. Pre-orders are critical to a book’s success. They count towards the first week of sales, which means that they are the strongest chance an author has to make it onto a bestseller list. And if that happens, more people hear about the book, which means more sales, which creates its own momentum. (Also, I would freak the out for the rest of my life?)

For a book like mine (weird, niche, written by a non-famous regular person who poops sitting down), THIS IS HUGE AND IMPORTANT. Plus, like, not to guilt trip you but also as an extreme guilt trip measure: I don’t monetize this site any other way and I never have. There are no ads. There’s no content hidden behind a paywall. I’m not asking you to buy bowls in the shape of my mouth. I just really want you to read the book I wrote, so I can continue funding weird fuckery on this site like trying every single flavor of Mountain Dew I can get my hands on.

BUT ALSO. If you don’t want to wait until March 12th to get my book, you can sign up for the Goodreads giveaway, and enter to win an early advance copy of the book. It’s totally free to enter but the contest ends THIS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10th. (Unfortunately, it’s U.S. only. TAKE THAT, CANADA! ENJOY YOUR FREE HEALTHCARE!)

Should you still buy a copy of my book if you enter the contest? Yes. Absolutely. But if you enter the contest and win you will have many copies of my book, which is important in case you want to reread my book. (Shhh, my logic is sound.)

Anyway. Again, here’s the link for the Goodreads Giveaway.

Here’s where you can buy my book and help turn it into a bestseller.

Here’s a photo of me right after I sent the final draft to my editor:

Thanks, friends! And don’t forget you have until Friday to enter! BUT YOU HAVE FOUR MONTHS TO PRE-ORDER THE BOOK, WHICH YOU SHOULD ABSOLUTELY DO. Please and thank you. Mwah mwah mwah.

The post Enter The Goodreads Giveaway and Win an Advance Copy of My Book appeared first on The Everywhereist.

I am old enough to remember when the Internet was a largely useless place for most people. My college dormmates would sit patiently, waiting hours for image files to download in large ribboned chunks, in hopes of something salacious appearing. If the image was mislabeled, they could find that they’d waited a good twenty minutes for what they thought was a bikini pic of Kathy Ireland but turned out to be a photo of Macho Man Randy Savage. It was like the whole worldwide web was a bit of a silly prank, a place where we spent small swathes of time, where we used PINE to check our email every three days or so.

Over the years, it spread like a creeping ivy. A few innocuous vines at first, and then it was everywhere, so ubiquitous and suffocating that no part of our lives was untouched. Recently, my friend’s kitchen faucet stopped working because it was trying to unsuccessfully connect to his WI-Fi. Rand and I almost missed a connecting flight a few months back because neither of our phones were working. Several of my light switches don’t work, because I can’t figure out how to make them talk to my phone.

I don’t want to be on the internet all the time, and yet we’ve created a world where it’s almost impossible to not be.

We’re constantly inundated with content – videos and hacks and recipes and ads and articles, all in an endless stream. Everyone expressing an opinion loudly, creating posts that they hope will go viral and newsletters that we all sign up for. It is vast and infinite and there is no fucking end or beginning. We simply scroll forever. It is nearly impossible to go online without seeing hate speech and images of violence, of dead bodies, grainy video footage of someone actually being murdered, all of it appearing without our consent. What started as a fun place for us to geek out has become an 8mm snuff film.

 

 

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We yell at one another, which feels horrible, but it’s a horrible that we control and it’s easy. (And of course, some people just rank high on the Dark Triad test and enjoy saying terrible things – I assume they’re having a fucking blast.) It is virtually impossible to express any opinion where someone won’t tell you that you are a piece of shit. Algorithms reward rage and anger and vitriolic engagement and horror. It is very important to be extremely angry, to express it loudly, to make sure others know as well. The internet has incentivized this, livelihoods are tied to it. There is an inherent hypocrisy in of all of this – much like Capitalism, the Internet subsumes all critiques of itself. I cannot rage about how shitty things are online without raging about it online. I want you to read this post. I would like you to sign up for my newsletter. You should also buy my books. To be a working writer with any semblance of a soul is to be a hypocrite.

Congratulations Internet, you win.

I recently posted that we didn’t all need to be political commentators. That it was okay to sit back and acknowledge that perhaps some situations were complex and sad and not everyone needed to weigh in with their hot take. I was yelled at and admonished by people on both sides of an ideological divide, called both an antisemite and a Zionist, told to shut the fuck up and that my silence made me complicit. I suppose that was a pyrrhic victory, or perhaps more aptly, there is no winning. This is the dynamic we’ve created: engagement requires an emotional and mental cost, opens us up to a litany of abuses. But to disengage – or even to change the subject – is either impossible, or makes you subject to those same abuses.

There are days when I am sick of all of it. Not because I don’t care about the dead or because I am not horrified every day by what we do to this earth and to one another, but precisely because my heart is so goddamn broken that I don’t have the energy to be called a cunt who deserves to die on top of all of that.

I can’t believe I need to say this, but: You do not need to shout into the social media void to prove your fealty to a belief or a cause. You do not need to stare at horrific images or read awful stories if it becomes too much. Looking away from gruesomeness is not disrespectful to the dead. It does not mean you are less true to your beliefs. Knowing your limits does not make you a weak person.

I’ve found that the most meaningful action I’ve taken in these horrid times has been to reach out to my friends, to text them or talk to them in person and see how they are, to let them know I love them. The statements “I don’t know” and “I don’t understand” and “I’m thinking of you” have seen a lot of play these days. It has mattered far more than a pithy Facebook update, or a post, or a flag overlaid on my profile picture. Demanding that more people add to the noise – pressuring them to post about issues when they might be better off listening – is a horrible, horrible model, one that just fuels the hate engine that so much of the Internet has become.

The world – both online and off, can be an awful place, and it is okay to do what you can to bear it all. To put down your phone and go for a walk. To reach out to a friend. To share a silly meme. If you are able to look away, even for a second, online or off, I would tell you to enjoy that luxury and that privilege. Because that is the one reality of all this ugliness: none of it is going anywhere.

 

(Header image is a shout-out to the Panflute Flowchart.)

The post Sometimes It Is Okay to Not Talk About the Awful Things. appeared first on The Everywhereist.