This week I started couch to 5k. It’s felt so good to get out in whatever scraps of sunshine we’ve had here in Liverpool, to run with Gus in the park, in the grass, getting my brand new running shoes muddy. I hadn’t bought any clothes or accessories so far this year until I broke the seal last week with those shoes (Filas, on sale for 25 pounds). Soon afterward I bought more sneakers, for some reason: a ridiculous pair of colorful, chunky, pattern-clashing ones that Lynette convinced me to go back to the charity shop for (8 pounds). It felt nice to blow a little money on something frivolous. Nicer even still to be able to.
I just finished doing my taxes, which sucked, per usual. I recently learned the US is one of very few countries that requires virtually all expats to file taxes every year, forever, and they make it intentionally difficult and annoying and expensive to do so. I had to ask my aunt to put TurboTax’s charges on her credit card, because it refused to accept non-US payment methods. (I fucking hate paying for TurboTax, but I wasn’t eligible for what little free tax filing software exists in the US.) We expats also have to physically print our taxes out and mail them to the IRS, along with a physical check. Every year. While also paying taxes to the places we live and work now. >:(((((
Whenever I get cranky and stressed about money in this long transitional moment of my life, it brings me great comfort to remember that I can almost always still afford the semi-regular special little treat, like a breakfast sandwich from Sayer’s, the closest I’ve come to a true, American-style breakfast sandwich: two sausages, eggs, and a lot of cheese (this is key) on an English muffin. (They don’t call them English muffins here; they’re just muffins.) Sayer’s is one of Lynette and my favorite options on Too Good to Go, the app where you pay a few quid to pick up grocery store and restaurants’ leftover stock at the end of the day. It’s so exciting to have no idea what you’re going to get, then to dump your bag out onto the dining room table. With 3 pounds’ worth of sandwiches and pastries and cute little tarts spreading out before us, we feel rich as kings.
On a global scale, and even just on a British scale, Lynette and I are living like the wealthy few. We can afford to pay all our bills. We don’t only have food in the fridge, but frequently there’s fun little drinks and snacks in there that we pick up for each other to try. We can afford to put the heat on for a couple delicious hours whenever it gets chilly (which will hopefully be less often as we get into spring and summer, but of course I know where I moved; I am not holding my breath). Life can sometimes feel frustrating, and scary, and precarious. But we are extraordinarily lucky and fabulously wealthy in all the ways that matter.
Lynette’s Comment Corner
When, years ago, we thought I was going to immigrate to New York, I started researching the city, and I followed Youtuber Cash Jordan (yes, that’s his real name), who’s an estate agent (realtor, my American cousins). Daily he’d post videos of apartments across the city, telling us the rent, size, utilities and neighbourhood facts. I became obsessed. I commented and fangirled my way into getting a response from him, which made my month!!! (swoon).
Cash is from Sweden, his wife is Japanese, and they have two small children. In the time I’ve been following him, his views have increased ten-fold, and he’s morphed into a small independent news channel. The things that are happening in New York City are shocking. Not just the rent costs, which are mind boggling, but the whole safe state immigration policy that the Mayor has completely messed up, the budget cuts to services, proposed congestion charges—how the hell are low and medium income families coping? If we had chosen to live in America, I fear we’d had to relocate to another state by now, as we simply couldn’t afford it.
They say to talk about money is crass, but these days it’s unavoidable as so many people are feeling the pinch. Cost of living crisis, innit?
LIke Shazza with her running, I’ve joined the gym and am back to lifting in order to get a over 50-but-not-too-bad summer body. I recently fell down our stairs for the third time in 5 months, but luckily it didn’t hurt too much; I wasn’t even bruised. These stairs are too small for my European size 43 feet (that’s 11 in US women’s).
Honey, you’ve got to start being more careful on the stairs!!!!!
I’m back. If you hadn’t noticed, I’m late with this newsletter. I’m sorry. It’s been tough for me, I’ll admit, to will myself lately into believing that I have anything worthwhile to say.
I’ve written plenty about how weird and bad I feel about my job as a freelance chronicler of my own life, thoughts, and beliefs. I’ve written about when your self-worth is tied to your work. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of the increasingly unclear boundaries between writer/artist and influencer. I don’t have a beat anymore, really, but in this newsletter and elsewhere I’ve generally focused on topics related to the internet and identity, as well as class and queerness—which has inevitably involved my own identity and class and queerness. And yet, more and more often lately, I feel compelled to heed Jemima Kirke’s infamous and quickly iconic advice, which she addressed specifically to self-described “unconfident young women”: “I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much.”
I’m tired of thinking about myself so much.
In that spirit, I’m going to share some of the best things I’ve been reading lately to get me out of my own head and to engage with the world around me.
I also want to implore you to give to one to the many verified campaigns to get families out of Gaza as a part of Project Olive Branch, and/or share them with your networks. Whenever I’ve opened up TikTok or Twitter for weeks now I see another new family attempting to go viral, begging for their lives. It’s catastrophic. We are their only hope.
Link Roundup
‘Come out, you animals’: how the massacre at al-Shifa Hospital happened, by Tereq S. Hajjaj, for Mondoweiss — one of the most horrifying things I’ve read about the genocide in Gaza.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the massacre at al-Shifa was one of the largest in Palestinian history, estimating that at least 1,500 people had been killed, injured, or reported missing, “with women and children making up half of the casualties.”* The organization also confirms that at least 22 patients were shot while in their hospital beds, while the number of displaced persons sheltering at the hospital who were forced to evacuate southward was estimated to include 25,000 people. Moreover, 1,200 housing units in the vicinity of al-Shifa were destroyed.
Despite the army’s claims about the al-Shifa operation’s strategic and military importance and the number of alleged Hamas and PIJ members it had arrested and killed, it obfuscated the real intended purpose of the operation, which was to destroy the health system in northern Gaza and worsen the already disastrous humanitarian conditions. The entire compound is now unfit for use. Even the morgue, containing countless bodies of the slain, was burned down.Israel’s “operation” at al-Shifa was, indeed, a success, and that success was to put Gaza’s largest hospital out of service and hasten social collapse in the north.
Michelle Tea on Bearing Witness, for her Substack
Diagnosing Resistance: What Aaron Bushnell’s death says about power, protest, and pathology, by Hannah Zeavin for Bookforum
We can trace excited delirium’s antecedents to 1851, in Dr. Samuel Cartwright’s address to the Louisiana Medical Association, where he coined “drapetomania,” “an uncontrollable and insane impulsion to wander” he associated with those running from slavery. Cartwright contended that there was no such thing as a formerly enslaved person—only one who was unreasonable enough to flee the institution; for Cartwright, Black freedom was mental illness.
It’s Not What the World Needs Right Now, by Norman Wilson, for the Baffler
This is an incredible ride of an essay about being a contemporary artist in absurd times.
Club Med, Dispatches from the Adderall Epidemic, a compilation of essays for PioneerWorks
There are many times when I suspect my brain would work better on low-grade speed; this collection made me reconsider.
How To Be Enough: Our obsession with self-improvement is making us miserable, by Allie Volpe, edited by my friend Alanna.
One of the reasons we, as humans, constantly strive for more is due to “the hedonic treadmill, or hedonic adaptation,” which means “we have an incredible capacity to acclimate to both positive and negative life events.”
Whenever I start feeling low self-indulgently bad about myself, I remember a few months ago when our living room window’s view was mostly brick wall, when moving to Liverpool into our house was going to solve (most of, or at least some of) my problems. But wherever you go, there you are. To get off the hedonic treadmill, according to Volpe’s research, we have to set goals based on what we truly want in life, vs what we think other people value, “moving away from feeling like we are at a deficit,” and—you probably guessed it—expressing gratitude. Maybe sounds corny or woo-woo, but science backs it all. I really have come to believe that feeling truly and deeply thankful for my life on a regular basis is key to improving my resilience during increasingly tough times. My life is precious; your life is precious; all lives are precious.
Til next time,
SK