soapbox – Sconnie Molly

“Only boring people get bored” – Betty Draper

Not surprising that my social media break has brought on my first blog post in almost half a year. I apparently have things to say that must be said in some manner of public forum!!

Of course, nothing earth-shattering.

I deleted my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter apps the day of the Uvalde shooting. I haven’t read a word about it since then and plan to keep it that way. Just from several days living in the world since then – overhearing conversations, seeing headlines, etc – I already know more than I wanted to.

When things like this happen (which is weekly? daily?) I struggle between feeling an obligation to bear witness, and the knowledge that constantly doing so is, um, highly detrimental to my mental health. Ignoring it seems like a privilege that many do not have, so I should suck it up and stare unthinkable tragedy in the face every single time, in the name of solidarity. So my train of thought goes. But that doesn’t actually…help anyone. I’m aware of what happened and I know, as everyone with half a brain does, that things need to change but reading every single article and tweet doesn’t accomplish any sort of change. My RTs aren’t doing anything. Bathing myself in the sludgy discourse of this inexorable American hellscape only succeeds in making me sadder, more hopeless, less able to think about anything but the hellscape, less able to be enjoy and be present in my own life.

I’ve always been interested in what goes on in other places. Other cultures, other countries, other families, other communities. I suppose because I found my own too boring. When you’re a kid, nothing’s worse than boring – as a grownup, you have the perspective to see what a blessing boring can be. I had a “boring” childhood – parents happily together, financially stable, loving home, safe community – and I couldn’t be more grateful for it now. But the urge to look and see what’s happening “out there” remains strong.

To take this idea even further – I’ve noticed a pattern I have when catching up with friends. They say “what’s new?” and I usually talk about either V or Ashwin. V is busy with work, Ashwin said a new word, etc. I avoid talking about myself, I think, because I fear I’m boring. Especially at this stage in my life as a stay-at-home mom. I rarely have an interesting personal answer to “what’s new”.

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I am trying to get some part-time work in the near future. I’ve been saying that for awhile. But we found Ashwin a spot at a really great daycare starting at the end of August, and I will need a productive way to spend those days. I have all sorts of feelings about sending him to daycare, of course, but I think those are for another day. He needs to spend more time around other kids and we can only go on so many playdates.

Look at my baby though.

What I’m Reading

Take My Hand, by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. It’s about a young Black woman in 1970s Alabama who has recently begun her nursing career at a family planning clinic serving primarily local low-income Black folks…and you can probably guess where this is going. The RECENT history of forced sterilization in this country is fucking mad.

What I’m Watching

The MIL has introduced me to Korean soap operas on Netflix and we’re currently in the middle of Business Proposal. And yes, it’s absolutely overwhelmingly silly and overdramatic, but turns out that’s just what I need right now. I’m fully invested in Kang Tae-moo and Shin Ha-ri. Man, I wish some Indian soaps would make it to Netflix.

What I’m Looking Forward To:

V is off work this whole week! We were going to do a Detroit road trip but decided against it, so we’re doing a couple days in Chicago. In July we’ll be seeing Hannah Gadsby in Milwaukee, and in August seeing my boyfriend John Mulaney right here in Madison.

What I’m Fuming About:

I’m actively avoiding fuming. Social media break is definitely key here.

~real~ness

Oh, well, hello there. Guess it’s been a minute.

A couple of weeks ago Baraboo was in the news. You probably read about it or at least saw the photo on Twitter – there’s no reason for me to post it again here. Those stupid idiot kids made me so angry and as I was thinking about what I could possibly do to renounce it, I decided to pitch an article about it to a few news outlets. A couple passed, but I ended up placing it with Refinery29 and really couldn’t be happier with how that all went; the editors were super nice and helpful and gave good edits. It was funny because I was literally in the middle of taking an online course through Catapult about how to pitch when the Baraboo story broke, and so before the final meeting I was like “GUYS! I did it! It worked!”

So I’m proud of that. It’s my most “prestigious” byline so far and, forgive the vulgar mention of writerly compensation, paid well. I also registered myself for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in March, which makes me feel even more like a ~real~ writer. I haven’t been to a professional conference in a few years, and it’s sort of weird when you’re doing it all on your own instead of through an employer. It’s in Portland, which is quite convenient. I’m hoping to connect with some #Binders from Twitter (women and nonbinary writers group) and whoever else wants to be my friend. I don’t have enough writer friends.

My parents visited the weekend before Thanksgiving. Not embarrassed to say I’ve never been so happy to see them in my life. It was also my first time “hosting” them, for consecutive days, in my own home – I’d like to think I did an okay job at it. Mom taught me how to make pie – apple and pumpkin – and we feasted on roasted sweet potato salad, popovers, mashed potatoes, and elote corn pudding. V and I had a ball showing them our favorite places – Green Lake, Portage Bay Cafe (that one’s just my fave), Cupcake Royale, Lincoln Park, the lovely Metropolitan Market. Which is really just a super bougie grocery store that has in-fucking-credible fresh chocolate chip cookies.

About 3.5 months into Seattle life, I’ve found a therapist with whom I think I click well enough and who checks my arbitrary demographic boxes (within 20 years of my age, female). We’re going to talk a lot about my ~feelings~ regarding my career and where I’m at right now (am I a ~real~ writer? shouldn’t I have a full-time job? am I just lazy? is this all really just late-stage capitalism’s fault? what is all this guilt I feel?), and the infertility stuff, and my general anxiety/depression that is currently pretty well-managed by medication but is also made easier to bear when I have the ear of a person who has no stake in my life and can just point out the connecting threads that I don’t see on my own.

Speaking of psychiatric help, we’ve put Isis on a small dose of Prozac to hopefully make her stop gnawing off all her tummy and leg fur. It’s going to take awhile to start working, but for some reason it’s already had the effect of her no longer sleeping in our bed at night. I’m totally 100% fine with that. Really. Doesn’t make me the least bit sad or concerned. She’s fine, I’m fine, it’s all very very fine.

What I’m Reading:

Just finished “Children of Blood and Bone” by Tomi Adeyemi and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s YA, so there’s that, and it’s also probably best categorized as fantasy, so it’s definitely not my usual cup of tea. Roxane Gay wrote a good review of it though, and her word is basically enough for me to try just about anything. I loved the world-building. It’s a common enough “kids on a dangerous quest” kind of format, with a lot of magic and some quirky/arguably unnecessary ancillary characters, but the protagonist and her motley crew are fully realized and fun to root for.
This article I wish I’d written on yoga as the new country club in American society. Centered on a white yoga instructor’s bastardization of “namaste” into a jokey pun, it’s the sort of cultural appropriation that seems really innocuous on the surface but has layers of white supremacy and upper-class entitlement underneath. Fave line: “the question should not be ‘How can I do what I want?’ but ‘Why do I think I have a right to what I want?'”

What I’m Watching:

We just got through “Homecoming” on Amazon Prime. It was good – and really nice to see Julia Roberts on the small screen, looking decidedly not glamorous – but I wouldn’t say great. Bobby Cannavale though…is really something.
Saw a bunch of movies over the Thanksgiving holiday week – Ralph Breaks the Internet, Widows, and Creed II. Don’t waste your time on Ralph (even though the previous movie was cute), Viola is straight-up incredible in Widows, and Creed II is pretty much scene-for-scene exactly what you expect it to be but is nonetheless enjoyable.

What I’m Buying:

New category, because I like shopping and I like talking about my purchases. The end of 2018 is upon us (FINALLY?! because, and I know I’m not at all the first to point this out, Black Panther came out this year and there was a whole goddamn Olympics that we’ve completely forgotten about) which means: new planner time. Planners are important to me. Whenever I bust mine out in front of someone when we’ve just made plans, they act so impressed, like I must really have my life together because I write shit down. Nah, friends. I don’t. But it helps. I bought this this li’l beauty (in blossom lilac) and I am super impatient for it to arrive. MochiThings is heaven for anyone who loves planners and notebooks and their accompanying accessories.

And tonight, as I move on to a 10-3 record in the Best Friends Forever fantasy football league, I will leave you with this thought…

Image result for winning fantasy football meme

Soapbox Time

It was January 2016 when I decided, after reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals“, to stop eating meat. I’d read enough about chickens living in cages so small they couldn’t stand, lying in their own shit; about cows being electrocuted and abused for, really, no good reason; about pigs being pumped full of unnecessary growth hormones and antibiotics that are still present in the pork we eat. It was a lot, and while I knew that a life of hardcore animal rights activism was probably not in my future, I also knew that it would cost me very little (and probably benefit me long-term) to simply give up eating meat. That was the concrete action I could take. It wasn’t going to solve the whole massive problem, but I at least wouldn’t feel complicit in it anymore.

I had those same stirrings in my mind the other day when I watched “The True Cost” documentary on Netflix. The film is about the fast fashion industry, and its really wide-reaching environmental/human rights consequences. The director interviews factory workers in Cambodia, Bangladesh, Haiti, and other developing nations, where he’s told about atrocious conditions and salaries that are basically one tiny step above slavery. We see:

devastating footage of the Rana Plaza factory collapse of 2013, where over 1,000 people were killed and around 2,500 injured in the deadliest structural collapse in recorded history (workers had reported cracks in the building in the days before the tragedy, but were forced to go back to work anyway)
segments shot in Kanpur, India where local leather tanneries emit a shit-ton of toxic chemicals and pollutants into the environment, causing it to leak into the Ganges (which is already fucked up) and contaminate pretty much everything from the soil to the area’s drinking water. Not having even a passing competence in the correct scientific terminology, all I can tell you is that the number of children in the region born with birth defects is staggering, not to mention the incidences of cancer and other serious diseases
landfills in Haiti, because the vast majority of donated clothing winds up not sold in thrift stores – it gets shipped overseas to countries where its massive presence depresses the local garment industry

There is just so much here – but none of it is exactly breaking news. Fast fashion creates unbelievable amounts of waste. And just like with the meat industry, that’s something that I’ve probably always known in the back of my mind, but just have never really been willing to address head on. For a lot of people who eat meat, ignorance is bliss – bacon and ribs and fried chicken taste good and if you don’t have to think about what happened before it got to your plate, everything’s golden. Fast fashion is cheap and cute, and we never have any real reason to think any deeper about how it got to our malls or our closets – this shirt is here and it’s $6 so let’s buy one in each color! I’m *super* fucking guilty. I’ve used up and thrown away more Target, Gap, and Old Navy t-shirts than I care to admit. Everyone has.

Related image — *I did not independently verify these stats but they are similar to others I’ve read in fast fashion articles.*

So…do I do what I did with meat? Can I quit fast fashion cold turkey? I can’t think of a good reason not to. I’m not in dire need of any new clothes at the moment; when I do need something new, I will probably have the time and financial resources to make a more ethical purchase. I don’t have to hit up the clothing section every time I go to Target. (And actually in Seattle I hardly go there anymore, because it’s a huge pain in the ass, but that’s a story for another day.) I am hardly a fashion plate; I wear what’s comfortable, reasonably cute/flattering, and affordable. For a lot of my life that has translated to 2/$12 Target tops and 5/$25 Victoria’s Secret undies, but I don’t know if I can continue doing that.

I’m not deluding myself. I know that a) my solo commitment won’t really change anything in the global marketplace, and b) I probably won’t always be able to find “ethical” alternatives to something I need, and c) fashion is hardly the only highly unethical and environmentally-damaging industry – hello cars, electronics, jewelry, plastics, etc etc etc. I’ll do *yet another* vegetarianism parallel – I don’t eat meat, but I haven’t gone full vegan, meaning I still consume dairy and eggs, despite knowing full well the shitty ways those cows and chickens are often treated before we get our milk and omelettes. I’m not perfect. I haven’t figured out how to live a 100% ethical life because it’s essentially impossible unless you’re going to go live in a commune where you make all your own clothes, grow your own food, never use transportation other than a bike or a canoe, yadda yadda yadda. So please don’t get too annoyed at my preaching. I’m not judging anyone else’s choices – this is just how I feel, knowing what I know.

“The True Cost” is pretty short on solutions (consumer capitalism basically has to end, is more or less the message), but there are lots of fair trade companies out there: Pact Apparel, Everlane, People Tree, Passion Lilie – I just ordered a cute ikat-print sweater from there today. It’s definitely more expensive and there’s no way around that – I guess my strategy is going to be a) just buy less in the first place because I already have a ton of clothes, b) adjust my mindset regarding how much a certain item should cost (although I just don’t see myself forking over $200 for a top), c) hunt for those sales like any good American.

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