I’m thinking a lot about India lately, for obvious reasons. Here are a bunch of ways you can contribute to COVID relief there. Please consider it. And yeah, I can’t help but be slightly skeptical of whether or not my money will reach who it’s intended to reach, but I had to do something and I’m okay with that gamble.
Despite the baby- and pandemic-shaped challenges in my life, I’ve been getting kind of annoyed with myself for not making a better go of freelance writing. Even though writing itself generally comes easily to me, the rest of it doesn’t – the actual business of how to get those writing gigs. There has to be a lot of self-motivation and like any independent businessperson, no one’s telling you what you need to do and you have to figure it out as you go. Some people thrive on that! I guess I’m just better at being a follow-the-directions type of person. I can do whatever you tell me to do. Just don’t ask me to make the rules up myself. I’ll write the shit out of the article/essay/whatever it is. I’ve got a “voice”, I can do research, I will make it sing. Give me the topic and I’ll go nuts. It’s just getting the topic that I really struggle with. I’m working on not dismissing every idea I get as too dumb, too niche, or too small. Anyone who’s spent 10 minutes on the internet can attest to the fact that people can and will get paid to write just about any damn thing.
I feel incredibly, incredibly lucky to have thus far escaped the pandemic without losing any loved ones. As I wrote on Facebook recently, a year ago I genuinely believed we were all – or at least, like, 75% of us – were going to die. I mean that absolutely literally, I was fully expecting an apocalyptic situation. It’s not like any of us have lived through a pandemic before, so we had no template to know what to expect – all there was to do was listen to media reports of varying levels of hysteria and stew in your own existential dread. I’m not saying the threat was overblown – not at ALL – just that I’m unspeakably relieved to be in a place now, about 14 months after it all began, where I and virtually all of my loved ones are vaccinated and reasonably safe. And we made it here all in spite of the idiots along the way who refused to mask, refused to believe the science, refused to take this in any way seriously – mostly just to own the libs. These “pro-lifers”. Seriously – fuck them.
There’s a lot of debate now about how much we should be opening up and what safety measures are still necessary and what exactly is safe for vaccinated people to do. Whenever there is that much confusion, I basically just try to tune out the noise and listen to my dad. Dr. Dan is the king of rational, reasonable, and calm; I highly recommend him.
Ashwin is 15 months now. He loves “walking” with us holding his hands. Thankfully, gone are the days of the 25 minute naps – he now just goes down once a day and often for around 2 hours. This is fucking magical. Honestly, I usually use that time to sleep as well, which I feel slightly guilty about considering all of the other MoRe PrOdUcTiVe things I could be doing. Sleeping through the night is still a crapshoot, so we’re trying to train him to fall back asleep on his own when he wakes up at 2am, which often means letting him cry it out for 15 minutes until we relent and go in. Our poor neighbors.
What I’m Reading:
I’m a couple chapters into “American Spy” by Lauren Wilkinson, but most nights when I fall into bed all I want to do is play a few rounds of Tetris before passing out, so I’m not making a ton of progress.
What I’m Watching:
Prestige TV is about the only thing the pandemic has been good for, right? We recently binged and loved Ted Lasso. I want to watch Rutherford Falls but we don’t have Peacock. (Seriously ENOUGH with all the different streaming services, YOU’RE JUST RECREATING FUCKING CABLE) Right now we’re into Mare of Easttown, which is pretty grim, but also really really good and Kate Winslet is Kate Winslet.
What I’m Seething About:
Whatever it is Aaron Rodgers thinks he’s doing. I am extremely emotionally invested in Aaron Rodgers as a person and as a Packer so this has been a rather traumatic week for me!! Sports, such a nasty business.
Vaccine apartheid, which appears to be on its way out (if press releases are to be believed, lolololol) but which should never have happened in the first place, OBVIOUSLY, because Western lives aren’t worth more than any others!!
Sconnie Molly 