Once, on a first date, I casually mentioned that I tend to like fictional villain characters the best (...it was in context, I promise. We were having a conversation about books or movies or something. I did not just blurt out, “ANYWAY, I’M REALLY INTO THE NE’ER-DO-WELLS!” I mean…it would not be completely off-brand if I did. But I didn’t. This time).

I Hope You’re Ready For My Big-Bad-Feminist-Werewolf Era!

 Just Kidding. I Literally Do Not Care If You Are Ready

<<Presses Play>>

if there is no door then i dream of a door

holding my own hand while asleep. 

I was late to the game in discovering, This Is How You Lose the Time War. Sometimes, when a book comes out that I think looks absolutely brilliant, I put it on my “to-be-read-list”, but it will stay there until I have the necessary brain space to process something brilliant. I don't want to read it just to check it off the list. I want to read it to enjoy it, to savor it, to give it the attention it deserves. I want to relish a story, not rush a narrative. And so, at the beginning of 2024, I decided the brain space had become available and I decided that I was going to choose the audiobook format.

Are you stressed out? Are you anxious? Are you soothed by the thought of organization and just want to zone out? Well that makes two of us, and I’m here to help with the ASMR equivalent of reading articles.

I think about the tortured artist a lot.

The idea of turning pain into art.

Taking sorrows, ugly feelings,

moulding them like dirty, wet clay

’til they form a shape that means something. 

Many of you felt seen in my article on being an outsider in one’s own family. So I’d like to expand more on topics of abusive dynamics this month.

I started watching Lena Dunham’s Girls on HBO for the first time after moving into my apartment two years ago. I unpacked boxes and held my new, fuzzy kitten, her skin still smelling of humane society, and loosely paid attention to what I guess I deemed as a less glamorous Sex and the City.

“Why do we fall?”

The question circles

my brain

as I attempt to bring

my father’s legacy

to justice.

A man full of endlessness comes home,

puts his coin purse on the table

drops loquats in a ceramic bowl.

He props his sword

—clean, still sheathed—

against the table.

When fear consumes me

As you drive your foot

Down on the gas,

The fumes

Burning my nose

As the trees blur past me,

As someone with ADHD and a penchant for burnout, I am intimately familiar with the dreaded reading slump. I love reading. There is nothing better than having my whole heart and mind consumed by a rich storyworld – rivalled only by the satisfaction of finishing said story. And yet…

I still slump. I slump hard. But, after many years of slump experience, I understand the barriers that stop me from reading consistently. It really comes down to: Accessibility, Time Management, Accountability and Engagement.