Oh, Darling Ones,

The August Malaise has got me in its clutches. Bad.

I thought with all the neurological news, I might escape. Maybe, perhaps learning of the baby aneurysm in my brain would put my anxiety in overdrive and I’d be kept occupied by my fantasies of my imminent death.

Nope. The Lexapro is doing its job and I’m being uncharacteristically rational about it. Even Tuesday’s impending sleep study isn’t getting my anxiety too hopped up. I’m curious why I gotta be there at 7 p.m. when I usually don’t even climb into bed until midnight. That should be fun.

Instead of worrying about calamity, I’ve just been restless and bored like virtually every other August of my entire life. Sick of summer and summer food and air conditioning, all I want is everything and nothing.

Recognizing the Malaise and trying to ride it out is being seen as growth in these parts.

In attempt to soothe my restlessness I’ve:

• Spent an entire days listening to The Pointer Sisters
• Read one chapter in three books and quit because
• Watched every TV appearance by Cass Elliot (I recently finished a biography of her)

This last one led me to enter episodes of “The Midnight Special” on YouTube. Since I was only paying half-attention to the TV, I got pumped when I heard it say the next episode was going to be hosted by Seals & Crofts.

Imagine my disappointment when I started to pay attention and realized Seals & Crofts had zero to do with Sid & Marty Krofft.

This is why I ended up watching the first episode of “The Bugaloos.”

Now I understand why I am the way I am. I’m a little Benita Bizarre (weird old lady obsessed with music living in a jukebox or as Wikipedia describes her, “A jealous, untalented, unattractive, old crone”) and a little Bugaloo (also loving music, refusing to sell out and trying to me helpful and full of joy). This show is probably responsible for the whole GenX ethos. Seriously, just go read the episode synopses.

This show, that I loved when I was a little kid, pretty much predicted how my life would turn out. Neat, innit?

Restlessly yours,
Jodi

P.S. I finally found a book to capture my attention. It’s called Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott. I’m only 1/3 in, but it’s super good thus far.

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Hello Darling Ones,

It’s a little after 5 p.m. as I type and I’m so hungry I’m considering eating dinner. This is 2-3 hours earlier than I usually eat dinner. I’m denying myself sustenance because it’s too early to eat and I’ve got two weeks before I can start being an early bird kind of eater.

That’s mostly a joke. I’m denying myself because I want to type some things about turning fifty, also I don’t feel like making dinner right now, and right now the breeze is wafting in exact right way to bring the smell of lilacs into my living room.

So fifty is growing ever closer. I’ve entered the final fortnight of my forties, and it’s starting to hit me some kind of way.

I’ve never really been one to lie about my age. However, I did spend the entire year I was 29 telling people who asked I was 30 because I didn’t want to deal with the bullshit. I know women are supposed to be ashamed of aging and lie about how old they are, but I’ve never been ashamed of aging. I can either age or I can die. I’ll take aging, thank you very much.

For the first part of my life people thought I was much older than I was because of my height. This was never a blessing and always a curse. I got handed much more responsibility than I was emotionally equipped to handle because I was a 5’10” ten year old.

When the Sister Club threw a surprise party for my parents’ 30th anniversary in 2003 we put together a slide show. At one point, while going through all the photos, Sister #3 pointed at a picture and asked, “who’s the blonde babe?”
“Me,” I said. “I was nine.”

I’m not entirely sure when the switch flipped from looking older than my actual age to looking younger. Maybe in my 30s? I know for a few years in like 2003-2005 I would tell people I was 37 (so old, so so so so very old, positively ancient) and enjoy their shocked reactions because I didn’t look 37. What does that even mean?

Then I turned 37 in 2009 and it wasn’t funny anymore. People still think I’m way younger than I am, mostly because I’m not that wrinkly. Much like Black, fat doesn’t really crack either. When people say, “wow, you don’t look 49.” I shout back, “THAT’S BECAUSE I’M FAT.”

Or sometimes I just say, “I’m really immature for my age.”

What I want to say is “What does my age look like? I’m curious. I really don’t know. I’m not just being a dick.”

I’m really fun to have conversations with.

This weekend, SNL did a bit about adult grey pigtails. At first I thought rude, I’m being personally attacked. The more I watched it the more I thought, “oh, these are young people imagining what quirky old people are like.”

From the Indigo Girls & Bonnie Raitt background music to the Cranberries shirt to the actual adult grey pigtails, this is me.

Is this what Millenials think aging GenXers are like? That our hair goes grey and then we become weird retro hippies who look like they should be teaching pottery classes at some sort of artist collective in Madison, Wisconsin in 1994. As far as I can tell, that’s not what’s happening.

I’m not entirely sure what’s happening, but I got two weeks to figure it out.

Soon to be a woman of a certain age, I think,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

A few weeks ago on a Zoom with one of my clients, she looked into the camera, sighed heavily, and said, “Who knew the apocalypse would take so long?”

Her thought was so brilliant and spot on that I shared it with everyone I knew. When I told BFK, she said, “I was promised a flash of white light and then nothing.”

At the time I laughed. Nuclear war was hilarious a month ago. Today, not so much. Today every Cold War-related childhood anxiety has flared up inside of me. I keep thinking of that day in third grade when Kari Christ, with her blonde pigtails wrapped in pink ribbons turned in her desk and said, “If Ronald Reagan is elected we’re all going to die.” If I had known it would take forty-plus years I wouldn’t have lost so much sleep in the 80s.

I was so anxious about nuclear war that my usually lackadaisical at best, neglectful at worst parents decided that I could not watch “The Day After” even though every other person alive on the planet was. In retrospect I’m surprised they paid enough attention to me to recognize I was not okay and actually put in a modicum of effort to protect me.

Everything is a lot right now and I wish there was someone or some way to put in a modicum of effort to protect me from thirty years of anxiety crashing back into my brain like the Kool-Aid man.

Nobody ever taught us how to handle a multi-year pandemic in a nation teetering on fascism where voting rights are rapidly eroding, actual war is being waged on the other side of the earth, Texas is gearing up for genocide on trans and nonbinary children, and Florida is making it illegal to talk about homosexuality.

That list doesn’t even touch on the book banning, the rampant racism, the murderous cops, and the billionaires raking in the cash while prices on everything rise and people can’t survive on working 40 hours a week. And that’s just the external factors. This doesn’t even begin to address the personal demons and emergencies and emotional labor it takes to be a human on a good day.

What are we supposed to do during all this? Everything is pointless. I’m experiencing a strange sense of urgency to be productive, to carry on as if we aren’t living through an apocalypse. Do the work. Make the donuts. Despite the feeling of urgency, I’m stagnant. I think about the work, without actually doing it. I eat the donuts, but do not make them. This is a metaphor, I have never made donuts.

It’s easy to frown at the social media comedians as they joke through the 873rd unprecedented time we’ve had since March 2020. But what else are we supposed to do? I can sit and wring my hands and worry if I’m getting an ulcer, and that is somehow better than cracking jokes on Twitter?

All these things are happening and continue to happen and my daily life is unchanged. My routine remains the same: get up, exercise, coffee and Spanish, work or something like it, read, nap, eat dinner, stare at the tv, two melatonin and furious masturbation in the hope that sleep will come unimpeded and uninterrupted.

I spend all day and all night with a constant, quiet chant running through the back of my mind, “what does this mean? what does this mean? what does this mean?”

The sad part is with every recitation the this changes. What does my life mean? What does this chaos mean? What does my unchanged routine in the midst of chaos mean?

I don’t fucking know. Living in 2022 is hard, man.

Everything is a lot all the time and I don’t know what to do.

Anxiously yours,
Jodi

The post Being a Human in 2022 When Everything is A Lot All the Time appeared first on I Will Dare.

Dear Darling Ones,

I have just finished reading Sally Rooney’s new novel Beautiful World, Where Are You, and wow does she know how to write a book. She’s an Irish writer who crafts these novels where not a lot happens. When you try to describe them they sound utterly boring, and yet when you finish reading them your brain is mush, your heart hurts a little, and you feel a little dazed like, what in the hell just happened.

Rooney writes quiet books about people who have vast inner-turmoil and mostly mundane lives and shitty boyfriends and interesting sex. It’s the quietness of her books that makes me realize how much I expect all art I consume to have capital B-big capital D-drama. Where is the assault, the affair, the death, the cheating, the scam, the betrayal. I expect it to arrive in the very next scene or sentence.

What else can there be worth reading if not Big Drama? As you may remember, I was recently castigated for not bringing enough drama. Yes, I am bitter. It’s as though I didn’t spend the last year cutting a vein and sharing so many dark corners for an entire god damn year. Fuck that.

Rooney’s book was a nice reminder that things can be dramatic and feel dramatic without all the drama, and that there’s a lot of beauty in the mundane.

Take today, for instance. Until I got all hopped up and angry about that shitty comment from August, I was having the most lovely day.

• I woke up late. I folded and put away laundry while listening to my imaginary boyfriend Rob Harvilla’s podcast.
• I had donuts for breakfast.
• I made bold statements on Twitter about “Misery” by Soul Asylum being the most GenX song of all songs and then I argued about how right I am. Seriously, go listen to the song & watch the video. The factory making Misery CDs? COME ON! This song is GenX in musical form.
• I tossed together a sausage & white bean soup and put it in the crockpot.
• I ate chocolate chip cookies and drank coffee while listening to my Spotify new releases playlist, and then promptly pre-ordered the Adia Victoria record.
• I wrote the start of this list in my planner so I would remember it next time I have a bad day.
• I had a meeting with a new client where we discussed people we had in common and I got to say about my (twice) former boss Mark, “He’s a smart, kind, and creative man.”
• I laid on the couch sniffing the slowly cooking soup and finishing the Sally Rooney book.
• Later I will east soup and watch Nirvana Unplugged to honor the 30th Anniversary of “Nevermind” and I will think fondly of the 90s and a young man named Tony.
• And even later still I will start reading the biography of my imaginary boyfriend John Cougar Mellencamp.

It’s been a lovely day, Darling Ones, and these days are the hardest to share. There was nothing spectacular. Nothing dramatic. No heartbreak or falling in love. It was just a day absent of angst and loneliness where my own company was enough and I took care of myself in the best ways possible.

Thank you for listening to it,
Jodi

The post Take Today, For Instance appeared first on I Will Dare.

Buckle up, Darling Ones,

Did you know tomorrow was Singles’ Day? I did not. I only learned of this because I read the subject line of a marketing email trying to sell me stickers.

The phrase “Singles’ Day” caught my eye and I was all, this better have something to do with the mediocre Cameron Crowe film and not be some kind of bullshit, made-up shopping holiday.

Guess what?

It is a Chinese holiday that started out as a cool celebration of being a single person and has since morphed into the largest shopping day on the planet. Pbbbbttt.

It was not a ploy by the sticker company to get me to buy stickers that say things like “Half Angel. Half Tart.” or “My Heart Could Use Some Glasses.” Frankly, this feels like a missed money-making opportunity by the sticker company. I mean, “Singles” was supposed to be a GenX-defining movie and who loves stickers more than GenX? We’re the generation who turned stickers into a market. Whomst amongst us did not buy a sticker book out of a Scholastic Book order sometime between 1981-1985? Who doesn’t have a very favorite scratch n sniff sent that they can still remember when they close their eyes?

Nobody, that’s whomst.

Come on! I’m not even a big fan of the movie “Singles.” The whole movie is kind of a jumbled mess, and you need only look at the soundtrack to see that. I mean, I love the soundtrack, but those Paul Westerberg songs do not fit with the overall grunginess. Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Motherlovebone, and then some nerdy dude from Minnesota jumps in there with a pop song. WHAT? I get it Mr. Crowe, I love Westerberg too but he does not fit here. He’s a fart in the elevator.

The same can be said for the movie’s plot. It just doesn’t make sense. And its biggest problem is the waste of Matt Dillon. Of all the Matt Dillons “Singles” Matt Dillon is like the second-worst. “Crash” Matt Dillion is the worst one because that movie is trash. “Grace of My Heart” Matt Dillon is the best with Dally Winston Matt Dillon a close second.

So basically here are my complaints about Singles’ Day.

1. I don’t need another bullshit made-up holiday to buy sadness stuff to fill up the hole in my life where a partner might be. I mean I already have my birthday and Spinster Aunts’ Day, what more do I need?
2. Although. . . when America does eventually appropriate this holiday I should be the official mascot. And as the mascot I would like them to create a special “6’5″ Spinster Goddess of Minnesota” deck of Old Maid cards. Get on this, capitalism. I’m just tossing out great ideas for free here.
3. It keeps making me think of how the youths on TikTok say they’re “single as a Pringle,” which is the dumbest because Pringles are very widely known for being snuggle buddies with their Pringle partners in that can. Pringles are not even close to single. Pringles were designed to spoon. Fucking, youths.
4. “Singles,” the movie is dumb.
5. I’m single and grieving the end of a relationship which is making me stupid lonely on top of my pandemic lonely. However, I am not so lonely that I kept Tinder. I deleted that shit because, well, that’s a letter for another time.
6. Nobody has designed cute stickers featuring the lyrics from “Dyslexic Heart.”

I just play at making passes,
Jodi

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