Monday Miscellany: Full of laughter and beans

Notes from January 13 - 19

Jan 20, 2025

Today, goodness. How do I even start? I’m thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr. and his legacy, and how uncomfortable and disrespectful it feels for this particular American presidential inauguration to take place today. And how daunting the future feels!

But also, we’re still here, and there are good things to be thankful for. After a string of overcast days, the sun is out where I am, there’s a cat purring on my lap, and I have books and movies I’m excited to tell you about. I drank half-caf coffee this morning and it made me feel wild and unstoppable; currently, silliness is resistance, silliness is resistance is repeating in my head like a mantra.

We shan’t let the bastards grind us down. Let’s get into it, friends.

Currently reading

In the book-cataloging app I use (BookBuddy+), you can sort your unread books by when you acquired them. The oldest ones on my list are from March 24, 2009¹, and then there are thirty-five or so with no date, including Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham; so I’m not sure exactly how long this one has been waiting for me to get around to it,² but I finally did! It kinda felt like required reading for a devoted Gilmore Girls fan,³ you know??

Plot-wise, this is a novel about Franny Banks, an aspiring actor in her twenties who moved to New York almost three years ago and is now approaching the deadline she set for herself to prove she could “make it.” We follow her as she buckles down in acting class, goes to auditions, hatches vague plans to better herself, and works as a waiter to pay her rent while she tries to land a proper part in something.

The story is set in 1995, so there’s a lot of writing in planners, going to agencies in person, and rushing home to check the answering machine for important messages, all of which I found delightfully refreshing. Franny is a lovable character who is easy to root for, and I had fun living in her world for these few hundred pages.

Next, following my unintentional pattern so far this year of alternating between fiction and non-fiction, I picked up To Shake the Sleeping Self by Jedidiah Jenkins. Having read and loved two of his later books, Like Streams to the Ocean and Mother, Nature, I was excited to go back and check out his debut. This one, subtitled “A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life With No Regret,” covers a bike trip he took in 2013-2014, when he had just turned thirty and was trying to Figure His Shit Out.™

It was solidly okay! He and I are just a few years apart in age, so I think if I had read this in my early thirties when it came out, it might have been a little more relevant and relatable. At this point in time, though, it feels pretty dated. We’re along for the ride as he sorts through his Christian upbringing trying to figure out his spirituality, as he thinks about patriarchy and encounters ideas of white privilege for the first time—all topics that, in the year of our lord 2025, seem… obvious? Or at the very least, no longer groundbreaking. And having experienced his more recent writing first, I definitely read this earlier work as a step backward.

Still, dude can write. Certain passages and turns of phrase did really grab me:

I have learned this for certain: If discontent is your disease, travel is medicine. (1)

There is a weird paradox in trying to live a meaningful life, one that you will talk about and tell about. There is the present experience of the living, but also the separate eye, watching from above, already seeing the living from the outside. (56)

I didn’t know what I was holding on to. I had wrapped my life in the fear of messing up. Of disappointing God, which really meant disappointing my mom and friends. I was finding that so much of my life had been about avoiding the feeling of being in trouble. (211)

I looked, and my eyes were happy. (292)

And the scenery Jenkins describes along his journey is beautiful! This book made me long for a return to Chile, where I studied abroad in 2008. But until I can travel back there, I guess I’ll have to scratch the South America itch with a rewatch of The Motorcycle Diaries…

¹ Twilight and New Moon by Stephenie Meyer, bought on Amazon for like $5 each. Embarrassing. I hadn’t heard of the series until my randomly-assigned roommate at AmeriCorps VISTA training recommended it to me, at which point I bought the first two books and read them but never got any farther. All four are now on my shelf and someday I want to start from the beginning and go through the whole thing as a cultural time capsule. Maybe I’ll write a post about it.

² The paperback was published in 2014, so I’m guessing I found it at my local used bookstore in 2015 or 2016, maybe? Local friends, it had an Edward McKay’s sticker on it, which points to pre-2017 (can you believe it’s been that long since they dropped the “Edward”?) Anyway, I digress.

³ For the non-Stars Hollow residents among us: Lauren Graham is the actor who played Lorelai Gilmore.

Added to my to-read list this week

Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life by Maggie Smith: Writing help and creative inspiration from a super talented poet (Goldenrod), essayist (Keep Moving), and memoirist (You Could Make This Place Beautiful) whose other work is already at the top of my list? Yes please. This one doesn’t come out until April, but I just got my hands on an early copy and you can trust that I’ll be reporting back as soon as I read it.
You Didn’t Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip by Kelsey McKinney: It’s a book about gossip from the host of the Normal Gossip podcast! This one showed up in Anne Bogel’s spring book preview and immediately jumped out at me because in a previous lifetime, I wrote a master’s thesis all about gossip. My work was focused on the novels of Jane Austen, Frances Burney, and Eliza Haywood, but I am so curious to find out what McKinney has to say about it in a present-day context. Out February 11.

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Currently watching

My Old Ass came up this week during a conversation with a friend about magic mushrooms—she told me about a scene toward the beginning where the young main character eats some with her friends and ends up hallucinating an interaction with her older self. The day after we talked, I was reading To Shake the Sleeping Self and, surprise, shrooms again, this time Jedidiah Jenkins hunting for them in a mountaintop cattle field in South America with a hostel owner and some farmer buddies. So it just felt right to watch My Old Ass that evening and bring things full circle.

I had seen the trailer a while back and thought it looked fun, a coming-of-age comedy with some queer teen messiness and a few tender moments. But man, it really knocked me on my ass. I started welling up at an emotional revelation toward the end, and then all of a sudden the credits were rolling and I was full-on weeping.

Without spoiling anything about the plot, I will just say that I was right in expecting end-of-summer about-to-leave-for-college shenanigans and the heightened emotions that come with young adults growing up. What I wasn’t ready for was the depth of the “don’t take this moment for granted” theme. There’s silliness, but there’s also profound sadness. I am prone to nostalgia and ”I will never get this time in life back” and “am I appreciating it enough?” feelings, so it probably hit me a little harder than it would hit most people (I’ve seen a couple of reviews calling it corny or overdone), but wow. Do recommend, just… make sure you have tissues ready.

I’m bookending this next section with cats, for reasons

And another thing

The inauguration is happening as I’m writing this, and I am ignoring it so hard. Instead, I’ve been thinking about a survival plan for the next four years. Here’s what I have so far:

See and hear the cheetoh as little as humanly possible, as his face and voice are instantly triggering. Take the advice of Rebecca Schinsky and Amanda Nelson and only read news about what has happened or is currently happening. Dwelling on hypotheticals or speculation will only contribute to feelings of crippling doom.
Renew my personal commitment to climate justice activism—read nonfiction on the subject, make changes in my life to further reduce my own environmental impact, be informed about existing and potential legislation that affects the climate, and make my opinions well known to my representatives and senators.
Care for myself—take deep breaths, go running, use the good bubble bath, drink enough water, laugh with my friends, keep playing and learning, and get plenty of sleep.
Care for others—initiate gatherings, participate in productive and fulfilling conversations, give money to mutual aid funds and organizations doing good work, and check in frequently with loved ones.
KEEP MAKING ART.

How are you feeling, friends? Do you have strategies for moving forward?