Hello Darling Ones,

I write to you today for two reasons.

First, because I now refer to the recrudescence as “The Stroke Strikes Back.”

This is hilarious to me because I have not ever in all my years seen a Star Wars movie. Not any of them, and by last count there were eleventy hundred of them.

I have no interest or desire to see them. I didn’t when I was a kid and I don’t now. I get the gist of the story and all the references simply by being alive in the time of Star Wars. Same goes for Harry Potter. The Godfather. Indiana Jones. Anything to do with Hobbits (though I did have to read The Hobbit in 8th grade, and I’m still mad).

When I was a kid I had a sort of Bechdel Test before there was a Bechdel Test. If a TV show or movie didn’t have a bunch of kids or women in it, I had no interest. It’s why I hated StarTrek (the only thing on TV Sunday afternoons in the pre-cable days) and had no interest in Star Wars. It’s also why my sisters and I watched “Legend of Billie Jean” and “Grease 2” on repeat as kids.

Anyway, “The Stroke Strikes Back” is a terrible movie. Avoid at all costs.

I’ve been working on rebuilding my online portfolio (my site fell victim to a spam injection hack) and it is bumming me out. I worked so hard to build up my freelance business and it feels like it’s all gone down the drain. I opened by 1099s yesterday in reparation for doing my taxes and it was no good.

My stroke cost me $21,000+ and my taxable income for 2023 is a little over half go that.

The second reason I’m writing is because it’s Leap Day!

In the 24-year history of I Will Dare, I’ve written eight times on Leap Day. That seems like a lot because this is only the sixth Leap Day since I Will Dare’s inception, but six of them were on February 29, 2004 back before we had social media for our tiniest inane thoughts. And the last Leap Day I wrote was in 2012, when apparently the misogyny was bringing me down. So I guess that’s been happening for awhile now.

Happy Leap Day, Darling Ones. Don’t let Strokes or The Misogyny bring you down.

Love,
Jodi