Islands
Here we know that Christmas will be green and bright / The sun to shine by day and all the stars at night
We went to Hawaii for a month and I thought a lot about the Internet. I’m enlightened now, and by that I mean I have an app on my phone called Moment. Moment tracks how much time I funnel into platforms created by dudes who don’t have anyone’s best interests at heart, who don’t seem to care about much beyond a sense of digital manifest destiny. It wasn’t just Hawaii that inspired this paddle into the shallows of mindfulness: while we lived with Sean’s lovely parents between December and January, I read Trick Mirror and Uncanny Valley, both excellent books that said loud and eloquent some of the things that have rattled around in my head for a long time. Then I had a couple of bad interactions online, observed many, many, many more, and yeah. It drove the point home: social media feels increasingly ugly and rarely the place for nuance. What I get out of it (and I get a lot out of it) can be found without willingly wading into a shitstorm of opinion and misinformation.
And it wasn’t just Hawaii but it also was Hawaii: there’s something about being an ocean away from the familiar (routine, friends, reliable public transportation) and living somewhere wild and lush that makes you think about systems and time and how you spend your days. I say spend, not fill, because time is a gift — ultimately, one of the few gifts we are sometimes able to give ourselves. I promise I’m not wearing white robes, watching night descend on a desert compound. I’m in my compact house in my grid city, which hums not with wind or rain but trains and industry. There are no teal oceans or verdant valleys, just many people and places I love and an energy that for better and worse gets things done. I’m back home and I’m working on changing who and what who gets my minutes, my hours, my days and years. I swear I am not in a cult, only overwhelmed in a way that seems unnecessary and more disturbingly, by design. It’s exhausting. It’s making me think. And get back to real live hangouts, group texts, and Slacks.
WHERE I’M READING SOON
This Thursday! Come join me and some fine writers at Tangelo.
Tuesday, March 24th, let’s get fictional at Read Some Shit.
Miss Spoken will NOT be hosting a storytelling event at the Apple Store on 3/18. Per Apple, "Apple is taking preventative measures to safeguard the health of our customers, employees and partners during this time." Keep an eye out for a new date, and in the meantime come out to Frenemies on 3/25.
WHAT I’M READING
After Culinary and Literary Acclaim, She’s Moving to the Woods
Women “adjust” their careers for family life, and we collectively build the trajectory to match our expectations. Women do, and women should, are tangled at the root.
WHAT ELSE
Good Girls is such a good, fast-burn show about class and desire
I ate Lahaina Fried Soup in Maui and it’s all I want to eat for the rest of my life
…but I’m also trying to eat a lot less meat and dairy. I made this recently and will continue to ride the lentil train, choo-chooooo
“This Is Not Who I Want to Be” by Joanna Sternberg simultaneously cradles and punches my heart
Movies are still great: Teen Spirit was surprisingly good. The Farewell was unsurprisingly good. Good Time was very good and a billion times more stressful than Uncut Gems.
In burying the lede news, I felt Warren and Sanders were both strong candidates. I’ll be voting for Sanders in the primary. To take it back to the thesis of this tiny missive, I’ve been pretty disheartened by the behavior I’ve seen online on a micro (people are dicks!) and macro (is this helping things?) level. Canvassing and direct action and getting involved in local politics seem like a better path than lobbing insults while a candidate neither of you support sweeps states he never visited.