If you follow me there is zero chance you’ll be surprised to hear that I woke up the morning after saying I would delete my Instagram thinking, hmm… perhaps I’ve been foiled once again by my indignant impulsiveness. But I am too proud and insecure about being a flake to immediately say haha nevermind (especially after compelling so many of you to subscribe here, which: hello! and thank you!) so the account is deactivated while I figure out what the best way forward is.

The reality is our world has developed in such a way that our participation in it all but requires our “following” in some capacity. I forgot I’d been DMing with a tattoo artist I’d reached out to after seeing her QR code at my local coffee shop. The other night, at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, I walked past the Queens Theatre and for a split second I was like “hell yeah, let’s give them a follow” before remembering I’m supposed to be done with all that. Throughout the day, I think of dumb little thoughts I want to share, questions I want to ask you. Basically the only compliments I can handle are people I follow saying they live for my TikTok drops. I’ve always said (and believed) that what primarily tied me to Instagram was my career, but that’s not really the case.

So I’ve had this question swirling around of what it is that I want, what would be ideal. Immediately missing all these aspects of IG, I started divvying up the things I most loved among other possible avenues. Work updates/random thoughts: Substack? People can reply or comment here. Sharing memes and toks: Well, I’ve never really understood what Discord is, but… maybe that? Community updates: idk, following their newsletters and probably never reading them? More and more cluttered systems, none of which we own, each with their own slew of problems.

My soon-to-be brother-in-law messaged me before I deactivated and said he hoped I wouldn’t actually leave. He’s got his hands in multiple tech/gaming/innovation spaces and he’s been at it for a long time, and though I was at first like 😒😒😒😒 upon hearing that my San Francisco-based brother’s new bf was a tech guy (sorry Brian) he has convinced me there are, in fact, some good ones, who have both sound a moral compass and a clear-eyed understanding of nuance. It keeps me from doomism, and I’m very sloppily sharing portions of our walls of text here because, well, it’s easier than prettying it up via summary.

In a sort of catch-22 these are the questions—is progress from the inside possible? if we can’t halt forward motion, can we at least direct it? is it ultimately worth using flawed, increasingly dangerous, systems to communicate if they’re the most effective systems we have?—I want to bring to friends & followers, but I can’t do that without using one of those systems. It plagues me, and for better or worse (…worse) I have nothing but time to think about it.

Anyway! Here are some good things.

Reading

The Catch by Yrsa Daley-Ward

Yrsa Daley-Ward is, like, a quintuple-threat but her breakthrough into the literary world was her poetry. It’s clear she’s a poet here, in her first novel. The language is scenopoetic (did you know that was a word? I didn’t until Better), otherworldly, exquisite. It’s hard to give a grounded description of The Catch because the book itself is never grounded. It starts with one of the twin protagonists, Clara, spotting her mother—except her mother died when she and her sister, Dempsey, were children and somehow her mother now Is their age. It evolves from there through alternating perspectives of the twins and (maybe…) their mother as they try to solve this existential mystery. At one point, Dempsey meets a mysterious woman who senses Dempsey is dealing with something supernatural. “Of course ghosts are real,” the woman says, and you think maybe she’s among them. Maybe everyone is. I listened to it and actually wish I hadn’t, because from what I’ve seen of page snippets, it seems the physical format informs the story. If you don’t like ambiguous endings, this one probably isn’t for you. Buy it in print/digital or audio.

A Loved One by Aisha Muharrar

I haven’t been this emotionally invested in a book since, I think, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. It follows 30-year-old Julia as she travels from her home base in LA to London to find, and bring back home, some scattered belongings of Gabe—her first boyfriend–turned–best friend who has just died in a tragic accident. There she has to face his recent ex, who likely has the items she’s looking for. Gabe’s first and last loves unwittingly help each other grieve, clashing and connecting along the way, each carrying secrets. The audiobook is just over nine hours long; I finished it in two sittings. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say it’s a perfect book. Buy it in print/digital or audio.

A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst

I’m a sucker for a book that’s described as “nonfiction that reads likes a thriller” and this one—which recounts the 1972 story of Maralyn and Maurice Bailey’s survival on a dinghy and raft in the middle of the ocean for ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN DAYS—more than lives up to the promise. I kept stopping to shout details at Brendan (“THEY CAUGHT SHARKS WITH THEIR HANDS AND ATE THEM!!!!!”) and was generally floored the entire time. But while the disaster is the irresistible hook, the heart of the story is in the couple’s partnership. At every point, through Elmhirst’s light touch and Maralyn’s journal entries, it’s clear that it was their profound love for each other that kept them fighting for their lives. Buy it in print/digital or audio.

Playing

Outer Wilds: This was perhaps the steepest, most infuriating, least intuitive learning curve I’ve ever experienced. It’s a first-person space exploration/mystery-ish game but the mechanics were, for a long time, nearly impossible for me. I’d never seen anyone mention this! Just people gushing about how it changed their lives, best game they’d ever played, etc. etc. It took me approximately a week to figure out how to navigate the ship and land on planets, or to understand that what I thought was my consistently failing was in fact a key component of the game. Everything I looked up was like, “Don’t be afraid to use autopilot!” or “Remember: the fundamental laws of physics apply here” or “Don’t ask too many questions ;) You’re on the right track ;)” and I’m like okay, well, have you considered that maybe I’m a dummy. But now I figured it out and I love it. So, you know. Go for it but at your own risk.

The Curse of the Golden Idol: I’m clearly in a mystery/puzzle place. This is basically a standard deduction point-and-click that starts out pretty straightforward and then gets REAL weird—an often silly story that was as compelling as in any other narrative media, extensive sci-fi world building, great art, and most importantly super challenging mysteries throughout. SO much content (two games + seven side quests) for not a ton of money.

Watching

Listen listen Linda, hear me out: Hulu is, for some reason, at least for me, pushing Mad About You and… it… holds up. It holds up! Richard Kind! Anne Ramsay! Helen Hunt!! It’s 1992 and one episode’s minor plot point is that they’re trying to get out of the apartment before the Pride parade closed the streets, and the only joke made about it—before Helen Hunt’s character was like, “Everyone should have the right to love who they want!”—was that the super straight dude was sad that none of the guys hit on him. It holds up.