Life Lately.

 The summer has been hurtling past me, as it always seems to do in adulthood. It's especially weird in Texas since the days are so hot that going outside means risking my entire body becoming drenched in sweat, so unless I'm wearing clothing that will be forgiving of that and/or have plans to go swimming, I tend to stay inside.

Regardless, I've carved out some time to do delightful things with people I care about like see the summer musical at Zilker Park (it was Legally Blonde this year, and it was fantastic) and finally watch the bats fly out from under the Congress Ave bridge at dusk (incredible experience, 10/10 would recommend). 

Possibly my favorite part of August though (at least the one that I can't seem to stop bringing up every time I talk to anybody) is reading a new favorite book. Listen, I realize that NOBODY is shocked that I would want to talk about books. I'm in 6.5 book clubs, so I definitely talk about books during those, which means I'm doing that one or two evenings of any given week. But outside of my book clubs I actually think I don't talk about books all that much considering the sheer volume of books and audiobooks I go through. Sure, there are a handful of people that I know also like to read and I'll pass along a book rec if it's something I think they'll like. But I average about three books a week (and I truly like most of them!) and I'm definitely not telling most people about books that often! So I want a little bit of credit here for reigning in the impulse to gush about books all the time. 

BUT. 

Last week I listened to the audiobook of Rainbow Rowell's new book, Slow Dance, and I absolutely adored it. I have been completely unable to reign in my impulse to tell everyone I talk to about it. I wanted to take my time and savor the first read (I was pretty sure before I even started that I'd want to do re-reads down the road, like I do for all of Rainbow Rowell's books) because you only get ONE first read of a new book! I worked really hard to take breaks from the audiobook, to savor scenes that I loved, to pause and rewind if I found that I'd missed a little bit by getting distracted. 

It took me four days (pretty long for an audiobook I was REALLY enjoying) and by the time I got to the end I was so completely invested in the world of Shilo and Cary that I couldn't even imagine starting a different book and I just rolled it back to the beginning and started the whole thing again. In all the audiobooks I've listened to I have never felt compelled to do that before! I don't think I've ever immediately restarted a physical book after finishing it either. I definitely do rereads of favorites, but I usually wait upwards of a year before undertaking a reread. It only took me slightly over 24 hours to listen through the second time. And then I went out the next day and bought a physical copy because I wanted to be able to do close readings of the specific scenes I liked (it's really difficult to find specific scenes in audiobooks) and also because I was down to the last few hours of my library audiobook loan.

Slow Dance is Rainbow Rowell's first adult novel published since Landline about a decade ago. Landline has been one of my favorite books since I first listened to it back in 2016 and I've been listening to it every year at Christmastime for the past several years (I don't really consider it a Christmas book, but it is technically set over Christmas and I use that as an excuse to revisit annually). I haven't yet decided if I like Slow Dance even more than Landline...it feels too soon to tell. But what I do know is that it has been a very long time since I read something that made me feel like I was just EXPLODING with love for it at the end, and that is exactly how I felt about Slow Dance. I posted on instagram about it, I stopped by the library to personally recommend it to any and all of my librarian friends who might be working (I found two, but I think I convinced them both to put it on hold!) and I've been passing along the rec to basically everyone I see in person all week. That's a lot more than I usually do; a lot more than I've done for any of the other 105 books I've finished so far this year!

33.

 I skipped a couple weeks here, just because life has been very busy. I actually did have things to write about both weeks, but didn't carve out the time to process and write them all out. 

But yesterday I turned 33. It's kind of wild and kind of scary and also kind of mundane at the same time. I threw myself a big Last Supper themed birthday party last weekend which was a blast but also made it feel like I'd already had my birthday so the actual day was pretty low key. I didn't really end up making any plans for it, and mostly spent the day alone, doing things that I enjoy and taking a much needed rest. The weeks leading up to my party were filled with planning, prepping, baking, and all sorts of work getting ready to host a 13 person dinner.

In my time alone, though, I kept thinking about the ways that my life is different at 33 than I ever thought it would be and the ways it is different than the lives my parents had at this age. In many ways my life is full and rich and everything I want it to be. I get to spend my free time doing exactly what I want. I spend time on crafts, reading books and attending entirely too many book clubs, I hang out at the springfed pool regularly in the summers here and get to sleep in on the weekends. Very little beyond my own whims and fancies dictates how I spend my free time and I love that. But there are other things about my life that still don't feel realized. There are still parts of "being an adult" that feel beyond my capabilities and I'm not really sure why because I look around me and see other people navigating similar situations with seeming ease. 

I was talking with a friend recently about how interesting I find the word "bravery" because it is so extremely up to interpretation. My mother has told me that she thinks I'm brave, and many other people have said the same over the years. I also willingly admit that what I might be is stupid; I am perfectly willing to go for a walk alone at night, which is something I know scares many people, especially many women. I think mostly I've been lucky enough to never be personally traumatised by any terrible outcomes from my brave/stupid decisions because surely if I'd ever been attacked or something equally untoward I would be far less willing to risk my bodily safety on the regular. But as it is, nothing has ever really gone wrong for me and I refuse to let the possibility of something bad happening someday determine how I live my life. But like I said, I don't think that's brave...probably just stupid. And I don't feel brave. I don't think most people feel brave. Which brings me back to my original point on this topic, which is that we assess bravery on a deeply personal level. We see others as brave when they are able to do things that seem scary or intimidating to us regardless of how those people feel about the things they are doing. One of my mother's examples for my bravery was moving across the country alone a couple of times. And for my mom, who has lived in Maine for her whole life, I can see how that would come across as bravery. But it didn't feel like something that required bravery of me; it just felt like the next right step in my life each time I did it. And yes, uprooting my life multiple times has been challenging, but not in a way that felt insurmountable. There are plenty of mundane things that feel completely beyond my comfort level and I avoid those things. There are things that are a breeze to others that fill me with existential dread to the point where I just never deal with them. And I think everybody has things that feel completely beyond their capacity. We've all got boundaries for things that are scary or too hard or too tedious and we all have things that feel routine and easily achievable. The specifics are just different for each person, yet we perceive the ability to face our insurmountable challenges as bravery in others. Which makes sense! I just find it really interesting. 

One of the things I decided while I spent time alone reflecting on my birthday is that this year I want to start tackling more of the obstacles that have felt overwhelming to me. Getting things done that feel scary or hard and that I've simply avoided because of that. It feels like time to face those demons. Maybe that's just because it's fully spring here and I'm slowly emerging from my troll-like winter state. Maybe 33 is the year I finally turn into a real adult? I guess we'll see.

Checks and balances, motherfuckers!

This week I have been listening to the audiobook "We Were Eight Years In Power" by Ta-Nehisi Coates and it's had me thinking extensively about the systemic injustice cooked into the very foundation of America. Very little of it was new information, but it was freshly upsetting to hear about the different racial inequities that have been very intentionally orchestrated at all levels of government, from municipal to state to national levels. 

I listened on my drive to work one morning I thought about how the three branches of government were created to limit absolute power. I think I literally said aloud "Checks! And! Balances! Motherfuckers!" because I was feeling really spicy about the fact that despite the good intentions of this system, our government it pretty warped 250 years down the line. Because while we theoretically have checks and balances between branches of government to cover creation of laws, execution of laws, and evaluation of laws, what we really have is a ruling class of very wealthy people who are generally not interested in protecting the masses. I do think many elected officials are doing their best. But I don't think the majority of them care deeply about much more than appeasing the electorate enough to retain their status and power. And it's just really fucked up.

I was also thinking a lot about a tiktok video I saw many months ago where someone was reminding the viewers that it's OKAY to scrutinize the politicians who represent you, even when they belong to the party that you identify with. It is okay to hold them accountable for the decisions they make on behalf of their constituents while in office. And in fact as part of the public who has elected and employed them to represent us, it is actually our job to hold them accountable because if we don't nobody is. Again, as it turns out the checks and balances thing is deeply questionable at best.

So I was thinking about how fucked up it is that our government can just decide to send billions of our dollars to the Middle East to fund a genocide and there's essentially nothing we can do to stop them. Like, that's kind of insane? That we're just being held hostage in complicity on this one with our own money and by the people we have chosen to give power to. And it's not like this is the first time this has happened; there's so many instances from the Vietnam war, to various US-backed coups and governmental ploys in Latin America and the Middle East throughout what can reasonably considered recent history (I'm not sure where the line gets drawn on recent history, and arguably very little of American history would be disqualified, but within the lifetime of people currently alive feels pretty recent, ya know?). 

I don't have much else to add here. I guess this is more of a rant than anything productive or insightful. But it's what has been roiling around in my brain all week and I am reminded anew of the centuries of disenfranchisement that Black people in America have endured, of the myriad hurdles the white majority have placed on a group of people who have never had a reasonable chance to get ahead or honestly to draw even with their oppressors.