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This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends! Before I get into this week’s recommended resources, I have a couple of housekeeping items.

First, lest you think I’m completely bananas, I want to share that I definitely haven’t been getting out of bed at 6:15a every day and baking. I’m lucky if I’m out of bed by 7a lately because I am tired deep in my soul and also, bed is nice. And that’s okay! I liked getting up early but my body wants what it wants so I’m trying to go with the flow.

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Hi friends! Something I’m celebrating this week is that I managed to cook acorn squash. Nicole and I had tried years ago and it was so incredibly difficult to cut that we gave up and yelled, “Never again!” Well, flash-forward six years and here I am, trying again. I looked up some how-to videos and it seems as though the tricks are to go slowly, use a sawing motion, and be patient. Aside from, of course, using a long-bladed and very sharp knife. I was shocked at how well it went when I wasn’t trying to rush it. It got me asking myself about what else I may have given up on years ago that I may want to try again. Knitting and crochet come to mind. We’ll see! Anyway, this week I’m actually going to talk about something else.

One of my favorite things to do is to take a thing (a tool, a framework, a kitchen utensil, etc.) that is meant for a particular use and figure out other uses for it and use it in a different way. I did this the other day when I was talking to my therapist and I did exactly this and I want to share it with you in case you find it helpful.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends, happy October! As I always say, it’s the time of year when I can do my “normal” shopping i.e., buying Halloween decor that stays up in our apartment year-round. Soon we’ll be making the switch from iced tea to hot tea in the afternoons and we can use the oven more without worrying that the whole apartment will become sweltering. I’m the opposite of many people in that cooler weather and shorter days make me feel more alive, more energized, and more like myself. My mood is also often influenced by what I’m reading and I’m reading two books I’m really into right now: Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life by Alice Wong and Rust in the Root by Justina Ireland.

It’s a resource week so let’s get to it!

This is a paid subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Please do not forward this email. I appreciate your support and respect for my work!

Hi friends! Today I want to talk about what I will refer to as “Perfection in the Progressive Olympics.” There are people who try to do the absolute most. I know because I have been one of them.

I buy my coffee from a local, Black woman-owned brand (Kahawa 1893) that gets their beans from Black women farmers in various African countries (it’s delicious and I highly recommend it). I try to buy books in person at my local independent queer-owned bookshop (Spectator Books) or at the oldest independent Black bookstore in the U.S. (Marcus Books). I try to buy clothing from brands that make their clothes in the U.S. and have ethical practices and bonus if the company is woman-owned. We try to drive as little as possible. We use reusable cotton pads instead of disposable ones. I don’t remember the last time I read a book by a cisgender white man (a graphic novel, maybe?). I am the chair of the DEIBJA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, Justice and Access) committee for the international professional organization for my day job. In my day job I help fundraise for huge amounts of money to fund things like finding cures for cancer and training more Black teachers for K-12 schools. We buy most of our produce from the farmer’s market. We donate money to abortion funds and local community programs. We buy what we can from brick & mortars so as to not add to the amount of packaging and mailers that go into the trash or recycling. And so forth, and so on.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends! Today is a resource week and there is a lot going on. I got my Covid-19 bivalent booster last week. I’ll get my flu shot soon. I hope that you are as well. Jackson, Mississippi is having a water crisis. Puerto Rico has been devastated by another hurricane. Iranian woman are burning their hijabs and cutting their hair in protest of the murder of Mahsa Amini, who was murdered by “morality police” for wearing her hijab incorrectly. Flooding in Pakistan has taken 1,300 lives and displaced over 33 million people.

So today’s resources are going to be a small round-up of ways to help. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty helpless so it helps to be able to focus my efforts when I can.

This is a paid subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Please do not forward this email. I appreciate your support and respect for my work!

Hi friends! Before I dig into today’s issue, I want to give a little bonus advice up front. Some backstory: I’ve mentioned before that I have started making various bean dishes every Sunday and that I post the process to my Instagram stories. Folks who watch my stories are very aware of “Sunday Bean Day.” It is not sponsored. It is not fancy. I just like to post content of what I’m cooking as a nice, little, low-stakes interruption to the onslaught of ads and memes. About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I skipped Sunday Bean Day and someone messaged me that they didn’t know if I was going to make beans that day but I inspired them to take the time and make their own pot of beans. I cannot adequately express how happy this made me. For someone to reach out and say that I have inspired them to do something that forced them to be present and to slow down has just had me on cloud nine for weeks now.

It was also a good reminder to myself that I’m going to share here: tell people you appreciate them. Tell them that they inspire you. Tell them you like their outfit. Tell them you like their art or their music or their book. Thank them. I once heard it said that not complimenting someone when you want to or not thanking someone when you are thankful is like having a beautifully-wrapped gift for them and never giving it to them.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends! It’s the time of year when I get my serotonin by going to stores and dancing around in the autumn/Halloween sections. Halloween has consistently been my favorite holiday all my life and autumn meant back to school and I fucked LOVED school so I have 40+ years of solid loyalty to this time of year. We actually have Halloween decorations and spooky shit up year-round in our apartment. My wife says, “Creepy wife, creepy life.”

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends! This week is an essay issue that I have decided to make public (i.e., free!). Normally these every-other-week posts are behind the paywall but I have the urge to make today’s post available to everyone.

In my day job I have signed up to be a mentor through an organization-wide program and recently I’ve been meeting with many potential mentees. During one of these meetings last week I was asked, “How do you solve burnout?” I don’t think they expected my answer.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends! I feel like I have 10,000 things going on but I wonder if my feeling scattered is also related to scrolling through the internet more than I’d like. I signed up to be a mentor at my day job so over the past two weeks I’ve had seven “informational interviews” with possible mentees. On All the Books! this week I talked about two historical romances, a sci-fi mystery thriller, and a book on Hoodoo. I’m currently reading a queer gothic fantasy based on Elizabeth Báthory titled House of Hunger. We went to the Freedom Farmers Market and bought a Black Tiger watermelon, the much less expensive $10 version of the up-to-$6,000 Densuke watermelons in Japan. Yes, $6K (but more commonly maybe around $250). And I continue to cook a large bean dish every Sunday that takes anywhere from 3-5 hours and you can follow along each week in my Instagram stories.

That’s about all the updates I have for this week so let’s get to the resources!

This is a paid subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Please do not forward this email (but you can totally share a link to the newsletter https://www.theinfophile.com/). I appreciate your support and respect for my work!

Hi friends! I am the type of person who will readily speak up on behalf of others but still struggles with advocating for myself. I know I am not alone and that there are many, many folks who are like me. If a server came to our table (back when we would eat in restaurants) and asked how my food was I would immediately say, “Good!” even if it wasn’t. If a cashier at Trader Joe’s asks if I found everything I needed I would say, “Yep!” even if I didn’t. The lies would come so easily because I was terrified of making someone uncomfortable on my behalf. I was the personification of the phrase, “If not, no worries!”

In 2020 there was a big cultural reckoning, as we know. The time for letting things slide was over. The time for marginalized folks doing unpaid labor and education was over. The time for being passive was over. It was probably in 2020 when I started taking my first big step, which doesn’t seem big but had become big because it was something I’d let slide for 40 years from strangers to coworkers to family members.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends! As I write this it is Wednesday evening and by the time this hits your inbox on Friday (for most), I will have had the first day of a two-day in-person work retreat. This is the first time I’ve been around so many people for such a length of time. Nicole and I decided to invest in Flo Masks after reading this review via Violet Blue. It seals really well on me and I am able to get the low-bridge one to work with my glasses.

So, I’ll be looking like Bane from The Dark Knight Rises and sitting apart from people and generally being weird but feeling safe and I’ve come to terms with sometimes I just gotta be the weird one for my own safety/health/sanity. Thankfully the folks I work with are deeply understanding and also committed to not spreading Covid so masks for all!

This is a paid subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Please do not forward this email (but you can totally share a link to the newsletter https://www.theinfophile.com/). I appreciate your support and respect for my work!

Hi friends! As I mentioned last week, I am still waking up ridiculously early and it still feels weird but I’m rolling with it. “The only constant in life is change” etc. etc. I had told my therapist I have more hours in my day now and that I am trying to not fill it with productivity. As always, she said I could use it to rest (lol) but also, I could use that time for things that bring me joy. “You could bake!” she mentioned and I laughed at the idea of baking a whole-ass cake at 6am. It is so incredibly absurd and just thinking of it makes me giggle incessantly. I am a person that will do things for a laugh as well as doing things that will give me a great story to tell. It is only a matter of time before I bake a cake before the first rays of sunlight hit our window.

I think about joy a lot. I’ve mentioned before that we have a banner in our apartment that says, “Joy is an act of resistance.” At the same time, I noticed that I have been avoiding things that bring me joy, especially since the pandemic started but sometimes before then as well. I tend to come at it from two directions.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends! Over the past two weeks I have made an unexpected change in my life. Historically, mornings have been very, very hard for me for various reasons whether it be poor mental health or having a shitty sleep or allergies or asthma or anxiety keeping me up at night etc. I often wake up on my own in the first half of the 6 o’clock hour and then I go back to sleep for a little bit. Somehow that next hour of sleep is incredibly deep. I drift off into another dimension, forget my name, become incorporeal, whatever. I’m lost to the world during that time. Then when I try to get up for real it is so incredibly difficult. I manage to eventually drag myself out of bed but it feels like my synapses don’t fire fully until hours later.

On July 18th I had to get up at 6:15a to do a thing and I was shocked that it felt fine to get up that early. I felt fully awake and aware. So I decided to experiment with listening to my body and waking up the first time I actually awaken in the 6 o’clock hour. I am very angry to report that it’s been totally doable and I feel great and I am so mad. I don’t know why I’m so mad. I think I’ve just always been opposed to the idea of being a “morning person” and yet here I am, waking up, in the morning. Identity changes in your 40s is a struggle.

Doing this every day has basically given me a whole day’s worth of extra hours. I am fighting very hard against the demons telling me that I need to fill this time with productivity, building an empire, grinding, and so forth. At the same time, sitting around and scrolling Twitter at 6:45am is fucking awful. Literally nothing good comes from scrolling Twitter at that hour. So I’m working on figuring out what my newfound “day” will look like.

This is a paid subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Please do not forward this email (but you can totally share a link to the newsletter https://www.theinfophile.com/). I appreciate your support and respect for my work!

Hi friends! Today I want to talk about a recurring theme in my life because I find that if I tweet about it or talk about it to friends it tends to resonate more than I imagine. The theme is: avoidance! Avoidance of what? Literally anything that I imagine would cause me a modicum of anxiety or discomfort or that might be “hard” or “stressful” or “unfun.”

Whatever thing I’m avoiding at the moment starts to become even more scary the longer I avoid it. I start to build it up in my head. It becomes this terrifying kaiju that I’m not only avoiding but beginning to think that I couldn’t even conquer if I tried. Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes the magical thinking creeps in. Like, maybe something will magically fix itself or no longer be an issue if I just avoid it.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends! The past couple of weeks I have been doing some of the things that have been on my to-do list for far too long and it feels really good. They are definitely things I have been avoiding, like buying a new mattress and doing some student loan paperwork. It also meant sitting down and looking at what subscriptions we have that we aren’t using and I can end. Honestly, I don’t need HBO until season 2 of Our Flag Means Death is available. I’ve been trying to cook a large bean dish on Sundays which means we have dinner for Sunday - Wednesday ready. I love not having to make decisions. This week’s beans involve pesto so I dusted off the recipe my family has used for decades and it’s brought a lot of joy.

Hi friends! The new platform isn’t quite sending out previews of premium content yet; therefore, I’m sending out this preview issue to unpaid subscribers. Reminder that this newsletter has a pay-what-you-want option and with a paid subscription you can access issues like the one below and all the archives.

In today’s newsletter I talk about what has helped me stop spiraling out of control lately while the U.S. is on a high-speed train through each of Dante Alighieri’s nine circles of Hell. I promise, it's not what you expect. You can read it here: Volume 3, Issue 14: On Keeping Grounded.

As always, you can shop any books I’ve mentioned in this newsletter at my affiliate shop, The Infophile’s Bookshop, and support independent bookstores. If you want to send me some snail mail, you can find me at P.O. Box 21481, Oakland, CA 94620-1481. If you are a paid subscriber and would like for me to send you some happy mail, feel free to give me your address. You can find me elsewhere on the internet as well as some of my top resource round-ups on my linktree.

This is a paid subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Please do not forward this email. I appreciate your support and respect for my work!

Hi friends. If you’re reading this then you have made it through the first half of 2022 and I do not say this lightly. Many, many people did not. We have suffered so many losses this year. People. Rights. Hope. The past couple of weeks have definitely seen me spiraling and this video makes me feel really seen:

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends. It’s resource week and there have been so many incredibly unhelpful and flat-out harmful pieces of advice posted on the internet since the Roe v. Wade decision on Friday that I want to share the really good responses to some of these things in hopes that it can help someone reading this.

Reminder that I already have an abortion rights resource round-up in a previous public issue of this newsletter: Volume 3, Resources 9: Abortion Rights Resource List

Hi friends! The new platform was supposed to send out some previews of the last couple essay-ish issues and it did not; therefore, I’m sending out this bonus preview issue to unpaid subscribers. Reminder that this newsletter has a pay-what-you-want option and with a paid subscription you can access issues like the ones below and all the archives.

Let’s work backward!

In today’s newsletter I talk about despair and how it seems to be a common thread with many people I have in my life. I also make an 80’s pop culture reference that will definitely remind some of you of a particular childhood trauma-lama-ding-dong. You can read it here: Volume 3, Issue 13: On Despair and Hope.

This is a paid subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Please do not forward this email. I appreciate your support and respect for my work!

Hi friends! Quick reminder that this newsletter has a pay-what-you-want option and with a paid subscription you can access issues like this one and all the archives.

A lot of the conversations I’ve been having lately seem to be circling around the same two feelings: despair and hopelessness. The hits keep on coming. Trauma is piled onto trauma with no room for healing. So many of us are going to therapy but therapists are human and have limitations and in the face of <all this> it’s like slapping Band-Aids over bullet holes. There is no end in sight to this pandemic and yes, history tells us pandemics always end one way or another but that way may involve killing as many people as possible and it may also take over a decade.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends! It’s resource week and today’s newsletter is going to be a short one because I need to pay more attention to myself. I’ve been giving a lot lately in many areas of my life and I think I just need to sit and watch cartoons more. I will totally take recommendations for cartoon series to watch! I’m safe-wording out of Last Airbender, Steven Universe, and Adventure Time. We’ve already watched all of She-Ra when it came out, we’re in the midst of Bob’s Burgers, I’ve watched a lot of My Little Pony, and I am legit obsessed with The Owl House. Last night we started to watch Sailor Moon. Nicole has never seen it and it’s been decades since I’ve watched them.

I don’t know about y’all, but so many people I know are getting Covid. It does’t surprise me because there’s still a pandemic and I keep up to date from Violet Blue’s weekly Pandemic Roundup (available for free on her Patreon, but if you can afford to pay her you should).

This is a paid subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Please do not forward this email. I appreciate your support and respect for my work!

Hi friends! Quick reminder that this newsletter has a pay-what-you-want option and with a paid subscription you can access issues like this one and all the archives.

I have never desired to look different than I do except for when I see someone with pale skin covered in colorful tattoos. For decades I believed that color tattoos on skin as brown as mine were impossible. I believed this because I was told this by tattoo artists. I was told that color tattoos wouldn’t show up or that my skin color would make them look “muddy.” And I believed it because they were professionals and I trusted that they knew more about tattooing than I did.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends, happy Pride month! We were cat sitting recently and honestly, that little furball was the only thing that has been keeping me from a complete meltdown. She was mad we were leaving one day so she went to pout in her little cardboard taco truck. Me too, kitty. Me too.

This is a paid subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Please do not forward this email. I appreciate your support and respect for my work!

Hi friends.

On March 12, 2020 I was told by my job to begin working from home because of the pandemic. It was safer for me to be at home, you see.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends. The white-supremacy-fueled mass shooting in Buffalo happened days after I wrote my last newsletter, “Volume 3, Issue 10: What to do When the World is on Fire.” I hate that I know that issue will be eternally relevant. If you are not Black I cannot begin to tell you how much strength and energy it has taken your Black coworkers to show up to work this week, even more so if you have been in meetings with us where we are doing our damnedest to be intellectually present. Honestly, not just this week but this week especially. I have no resources for this. My therapist is a Black woman and during my session this week I swear we just stared at each other giving each other a wide range of “looks” because what can possibly be said?

Hi friends! The new platform does not yet allow me to send a preview of issues to non-paid subscribers so consider this your preview.

This week I talk about what I do when I’m overwhelmed by the unending outrage I feel at <gestures broadly> and find myself struggling to figure out how I can possibly do enough to matter.

You can upgrade and find today’s newsletter here: Volume 3, Issue 10: What to Do When the World is On Fire

This is a paid subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Please do not forward this email. I appreciate your support and respect for my work!

Hello friends. There is an overwhelming amount of difficult and terrible things happening in the world right now. It’s likely that you, like me, are feeling flung about like a pinball, slamming into one chunk of global or nationwide terror, and then another, and then another. With each bang against one of these bumpers of awful I, too, become incandescent with rage and sadness and heartbreak and disappointment (but never surprise because if someone is surprised then they haven’t been listening to and trusting the most marginalized).

My outrage is a wildfire. My anger could power a carnival’s worth of rides. As my friend’s Brazilian mother would say, “I’m so mad, I could bite myself.” And my anger isn’t pointed at a single thing because a bitch can multitask. I promise I can be angry about everything at once as well as absolutely gutted by it all. I am fatigued by the amount that I care, by the sheer amount of feelings happening all at once and all the time. Any single one of the things going on right now is devastating, whether it be pandemic, anti-trans legislation, police violence, taking away our abortion rights, the list goes on. They are happening all at once. They are not like one of my grandmother’s wuxia films, where our hero gets attacked by only one person at a time, though there is an entire gang waiting to take them down. Our current reality is, in the most cosmic of ways, an unfair fight.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends. What a week! This week is a resource week and I am sure you can guess what all the resources will be about. I know that if you are a subscriber to this newsletter you are likely a smart and empathetic person but I’m going to say something on the off-chance that it is new information to you:

Hi friends! The new platform does not yet allow me to send a preview of issues to non-paid subscribers so consider this your preview!

This week includes:

• How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing by KC Davis came out this week

• I’m learning a new song on ukulele

• And an essay about “the hard way” not necessarily being the best way

You can upgrade and find today’s newsletter here: Volume 3, Issue 9: The Hard Way Isn't Necessarily the Best Way

This is a paid subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Please do not forward this email. I appreciate your support and respect for my work!

Hi friends! A couple weeks ago I mentioned How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing by KC Davis and it came out this week so I wanted to link it again. It is such a useful book and I actually talked about it on this week’s All the Books! If you want to hear more about it. I’m sure I’ll share it with more detail as a resource here in a future issue.

Also a couple weeks ago I wrote about doing nothing and taking time to rest and I’ve been trying, I promise. I took a couple days off work and had a lot of down time. But I admit I get antsy and I am shit at doing nothing. It would not surprise you to know that I was The Worst™ at naps when I was a kid and I’m still not great at them as an adult. So, I’ve made a bit of a compromise with myself in that if I do find myself needing to do something, then it’ll be something that doesn’t fall under “productivity.” This has resulted in me getting back to teaching myself the ukulele. I have been using the Yousician app and I have been plucking away at exercises and found myself getting bored. I reminded myself that it is okay to not follow my weird, arbitrary rules for doing things and I decided that along with the exercises in the app I will also teach myself a song and that has refreshed my interest immensely.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends! I’m happy to report that it seems like I’m now fully migrated to Buttondown and you can access this newsletter online as usual at theinfophile.com. That being said, don’t forget to check your spam for this newsletter and mark it as NOT spam!

This is supposed to be subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice but today it's free!

Hi friends! Some housekeeping: I have quit Substack and moved to Buttondown! This should have been a smooth transition on your end and you can find my newsletter at https://buttondown.email/theinfophile until I get my custom domain linked. Warning that the archive links might not be working right now until that gets rectified. Check your spam folder and make sure this email gets routed to your inbox.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends! Thank you for the overwhelmingly kind responses and birthday wishes to last week’s newsletter, “On Not Needing to Struggle Alone.” I’m definitely back in the snail mail groove and I’m still totally accepting addresses via this form if you want snail mail. Apparently auto-fill doesn’t give me your whole address, so double-check when you fill it out.

Also, in the near future I will begin working on finding a different platform to house this newsletter because Substack promotes hate and misinformation. I’ve known this for a while but as per my last newsletter, I have not had the spell slots to dig in to make the move. Now that I have some breathing room, this is at the top of my list. If anyone has any recommendations for platforms that 1) make the move from Substack simple and 2) allow me to keep my subscribers, please let me know! I would love it to be as seamless as possible so as not to disrupt your experience; however, if it needs to be disrupted a bit so that I can get off this hell site, then I’m sure we will all manage.

This is a subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Please do not forward this email. I appreciate your support and respect for my work!

Hi friends! Today, April 1st, is my birthday. The older you get it can seem that there are fewer things to celebrate so I have a very tight grip on my enjoyment of my birthday. I always at the very least take the day off from work. One of my besties got me a pizza steel and I am looking forward to perfecting my pizza-making at some point soon.

Reminder that I’m still totally accepting addresses via this form if you want snail mail. Apparently auto-fill doesn’t give me your whole address, so double-check when you fill it out.

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends! Happy Spring! Next Friday, April 1st, is my birthday. If you want to celebrate, check out last year’s post. Also, I’m still totally accepting addresses via this form if you want snail mail. Apparently auto-fill doesn’t give me your whole address, so double-check when you fill it out.

I’ll be keeping more of my personal updates in the subscriber-only newsletter issues, like last week’s newsletter. If you want access, you can subscribe via the button below. I have a lot of exciting things going on and can’t wait to share with you next week!

This is a subscriber-only issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Please do not forward this email. I appreciate your support and respect for my work!

Hi friends. This week was the anniversary of the Atlanta shootings. I want to re-share the Resource Round-up Against Anti-Asian Violence that I wrote at the time. Also this week, a man attacked a 67-year-old Asian woman and hit her over 125 times. My mother is an Asian American woman in her 60s. I am terrified every day of something happening to her or my aunt. I’ve been doing a lot of check-ins with friends this week as well and thank you to those who have reached out to check in on me.

Some housekeeping! Last week I mentioned opening up the snail mail form to paid subscribers only; however, I need to be honest with myself: I have way too much stationery and I need to ramp up my mail output. So, snail mail for subscribers at any level (paid or free)! Can’t promise when, can’t promise what, but I promise you’ll get something. You can give me your info here. Folks outside of the U.S. are totally welcome!

This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!

Hi friends! Daylight Saving Time starts this weekend so don’t forget to Spring forward an hour if you are in a place that acknowledges the time change.

It’s a resource week but before I get into that, I have an announcement! When I began this newsletter over two years ago, I intended to eventually put my more thoughtful, essay-type issues behind a paywall. The time has finally come for that (it’s actually way past time). The resource issues will remain free, because I am a librarian and access to resources, and information is very important to me. Besides, the resources shared every other week are not by me and I’m not going to charge to share something that is available for free (though I send tips to most every creator I share).

Hi friends! I’m reaching out to you outside of the confines of Fridays because I have some news and a possible action item for you.

I have made the decision to put my more thoughtful, essay-style posts behind a paywall as I originally intended to do when I started this newsletter over two years ago. I could not have made this terrifying decision nor could I have ever had the resources to keep this ambitious little newsletter going without your support. I am deeply thankful for your willingness to pay me for my work and to acknowledge the value of my writing in ways that you can.

Moving forward, to make Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice more accessible, I have lowered the subscription price.

Hi friends! Before I get into this week’s essay, I want to share these links with ways to support Ukraine:

• Global Citizen

• The Washington Post

• NPR

Last weekend Nicole and I did a lot of soul care or as I like to say, we did a lot of things that filled our cups rather than emptied them. Friday we took the day off and went to the San Francisco Botanical Gardens to marvel at the magnolias in bloom. We went to the Lamy store and got Nicole her first fountain pen. We ate Japanese curry and went to the library so Nicole could get her own San Francisco library card instead of sharing mine. We went to Valencia St. and poked around in shops that we would never buy anything at but they’re fun to look at.

Saturday we went to the Oakland Museum for the final weekend of Mothership: Voyage into Afrofuturism. It was beautiful and inspiring and after walking through the exhibit twice I was overwhelmed to the point of where I had to leave before bursting into tears because my cup was overflowing. They commissioned a curated playlist for the exhibit which is about 14 hours of music and you can hear it here. This playlist carried us through the rest of the weekend.

Hello friends. To quote my therapist this week, “I wish I had something lovely and poignant to say but things are just shitty right now.” I often talk to my therapist about how humans don’t have the capacity to process the constant deluge of horrors and violence we witness online and in life every day. We also talk about how to strike a balance between protecting ourselves from this by compartmentalizing while also being able to stay present, informed, and involved.

If we ever find an answer, you all will be the first to hear it from me.

This week is a resource week. I want to first share this Vogue article, “What is Happening in Ukraine, and How to Help.”

Hi friends! For today’s issue I have an essay for you and I’ll get to that in a bit but first there is a new resource I want to share sooner than later. Mark Cuban (billionaire, Shark Tank guy) offers Cost Plus Drugs, a website where you can get prescriptions for fairly cheap. This article from abc10 KXTV goes into details and yes, Cost Plus Drugs is a legitimate site. All the medications offered are tablets or capsules and they are all generic. There is an option for birth control and many more for psychiatric medication, a few forms of Estradiol (estrogen), diabetes medications, tons of high blood pressure options, and much more. It requires users to have their doctors send a prescription to the site and medications are offered at a 15% markup and a $3 fee for pharmacy labor and the cost of shipping.

I’ve already added a link to my list of Affordable Prescriptions Resources which is always available through a quick link on my homepage.

Before I get to the essay, I also wanted to share a photo of the pink marshmallows covered in edible glitter that we made last weekend for Valentine’s Day. I’ll probably be making more in the near future. Maybe this weekend, even. I’m obsessed.

Hi friends! Wow. I don’t know about you but full transparency: I am burned out. I am completely fried. I am crispy and my brain is ashes. I am amazed I’m getting anything done at all. If you’re feeling this way too, I see you and I hear you. I have no idea what to do about it. I mean, I have some ideas from this book, which I might need to give another reread, but also, I’m not going to self-care or long-weekend or therapy my way out of capitalism and white supremacy.

What I’ve pinpointed for myself lately, too, is that I think a lot of my burnout is not only the sheer amount of things I’ve been doing but also I’m finally run down by the sameness of it all. Nicole asked me what I wanted for dinner the other evening and I almost burst into tears, whining, “But we just ate dinner LAST night!” I know I’m craving novelty, and the other day we took a break from work in the middle of the day and went to Marcus Books and I was in a great mood for the rest of the day. We’re taking another day off soon, which isn’t a weekend or holiday, so we’re working on some ideas of what to do. They don’t have to be extravagant things. I think we’re going to try an ice cream shop in SF that I’ve had my eyes on, and maybe go to a store that sells fountain pens (which we also have not been to).

All this to say that even those of us who seem really on top of things are having a rough time and if you identify with this, just know you are not alone.

It’s a resource week! I’ll get to it after this photo of some of my favorite socks (a gift from one of my cousins):

Hi friends! I know this week is a longform-essay-week but I have some things I want to share before I get to that and believe me, I will get to that.

First, it’s Black History Month and I want to share 28 Days of Black History by Anti-Racism Daily. 28 Days of Black History is a streamlined way to get short emails (~5-minute reads) daily in your inbox for the month of February. The amount of content during this month can be overwhelming, which is why it is also important that this content is created and shared and learned year-round and not just shoved into the shortest month. 28 Days of Black History is a useful way to access information that doesn’t stress me out by the sheer volume of information.

Second, Nia Patterson is the Black, queer creator behind Self-Love Toolchest, a shop that makes some products I really love such as this sticker that says, “Hello I’m doing my best.” She just launched a Kickstarter for POSITIVE SNARK: An Affirmation Deck for Sarcastic Realists. I don’t know Nia personally, but I think they’re pretty rad and I love their work and so I definitely supported her and this Kickstarter. I also thought it was something that some of you may be interested in as well, so I wanted to share it here!

Finally, I’m going to be on a panel for a Stabbycon Roundtable! Stabbycon is an online con for r/Fantasy (the subreddit for the fantasy and speculative genres) and the Roundtable is basically a reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything). If none of these words make sense to you, it’s basically like I will be in an online forum answering questions but it’s all through text, no video. Specifically, I will be on Feb 6th, 12pm EST | 5pm GMT - Where We Talk About Books Online talking about podcasting about books! You can find all the info here. Stabbycon started on Monday 1/31 and runs through 2/11 and it’s free!

Hi friends! It is the two-year anniversary of this sassy little newsletter! Thank you, as always, for joining me on this ride. I am nowhere near out of steam nor ideas, but I am trying to think about what’s next for my writing. I’m still having that “new year newness” that has me optimistic. Usually that doesn’t wear off for me until after Lunar New Year. I don’t celebrate Lunar New Year, but growing up in the Bay Area with family near Chinatown in SF has always made Lunar New Year a constant in my periphery. Happy Lunar New Year to those of you who celebrate! By the way, I refer to it as Lunar New Year because there are multiple cultures that celebrate it, not just folks who are Chinese. If you didn’t know, now you do!

As I’ve mentioned, one of our goals this year is to take more days off so last Friday, we took the day off and saw the Patrick Kelly exhibit at the de Young museum in San Francisco. It was amazing and incredibly inspiring. I didn’t know that it would be what my heart needed, yet it was. It’s showing through April 24, 2022 so if you’re in the Bay Area I highly recommend seeing it.

It's a resource week this week so let’s get to it!

Hi friends! I have been extra-overwhelmed this week and last. It is not necessarily because of bad things, I just have a lot on my plate and I’m still trying to strike a balance between doing things that fill my cup (long walks with my wife) and getting things done that I need to do (read books for the podcast, research things for this newsletter). I know that I could alleviate some stress by, say, listening to an audiobook on our walks but then I wouldn’t be as present as I have been and it’s the being present that has been just as important as getting outside and moving around.

Something I think about a lot, and even more the past couple of weeks, is, “This thing needs to be done / I want this thing to be done but do I have to be the one to do it.” There is some stuff that, yes, I need to do. I can’t have someone read books for me, or write this newsletter for me, or walk for me, etc. My therapist challenged me to think about some things I would typically do and think about 1) does the thing actually need to be done or am I just making more homework and busyness for myself, 2) do I actually need to be the one to do the thing, and 3) if not, can I hand it off to my wife or a coworker or another appropriate person depending on the thing.

Nicole had shared this short Twitter thread with me, as we both have student debt and work in the public sector:

Hi friends! Two weeks in and somehow this is already one of the longest years that has ever existed. Nicole and I have been taking frequent walks and it’s done wonders for my mental health. Of course, I am rarely serious so walking around with me results in stopping to make things like this video:

theinfophile

A post shared by Patricia Elzie-Tuttle (@theinfophile)

Anyway, it’s the first resource of the year and I realize that I have been doing an absolute shit job at sharing resources on particular subjects. Let me back up a bit. I used to be on training staff for San Francisco Sex Information (SFSI). SFSI was founded in 1972 and did a couple of things. First, we had a switchboard where people could call in (or email) their questions about human sexuality and get unbiased, non-judgmental, science-based responses. Second, we had a ~60 hour training over the course of 4 weekends where we would train our sex educators for the switchboard. The ~60 hours of human sexuality training was more than what was required in medical school so we would have a wide range of folks taking our training, including medical professionals and psychologists. Yes, I used to teach doctors about sex. It was quite the experience and I met some of my closest friends doing that work.

While absorbing all the info about human sexuality was important, the most invaluable takeaways were first, the communication skills we taught because hey, this all can be really sensitive, fraught, and taboo to talk about and second, the research skills which were taught to you by actual librarians. HAHA I’m super biased because one of my besties and I were the librarians who gave that lecture when I was part of staff (she did it well before I joined staff as well).

Hi friends! Happy 2022! I’m happy that you’re here with me. Before I forget (again), I wanted to share the Book Riot 2022 Reading Log that I had promised.

One of our first adventures this year was making marshmallows from scratch. We used the recipe from America’s Test Kitchen but you can see the recipe for free on The Frugal Girl’s website. Being a librarian, of course this made me wonder, “Are recipes protected by copyright?” and I found this article from the Copyright Alliance so now you know the answer as well.

It was exciting to do and they taste amazing and surprisingly, we had pretty much all the ingredients already and definitely all the equipment we needed.

Hi friends! I know I said it before, but I’ll say it again: Thank you for being here. I appreciate you all so damn much. We have made it through the year and yes if all you did was survive then that is enough. I don’t say this flippantly. There are so many people who did not survive this year, our second year of the Covid-19 pandemic. So many of us lost loved ones and capitalism is killing people so yeah, surviving is getting to be a harder thing to do for countless numbers of folks. Surviving is already hard for most people! And now it’s harder. So again, I say, I appreciate you and I’m glad you’re here.

Further down today’s issue I’m going to share some of my goals / resolutions / habits / intentions / vibes for 2022. I want to make it very fucking clear: You don’t have to do any of this shit. If setting intentions is not for you, then don’t do it. You are not less-than for not doing it and people who set intentions are not better than anyone else. If your only intention is to exist, then that is enough. This little video below puts it really well and succinctly:

itslennnie

A post shared by lennnie (@itslennnie)

For me, I crave direction, structure, and control. We are on a tiny wet rock hurling through space and as individuals most of us are in control of so very little when it comes down to it. Setting intentions etc. is my way of staving off existential crises. I’ll make my silly little lists and check off my silly little boxes and make our silly little bed to avoid just dropping everything and howling into the darkness. Though, I may schedule some howling time as well. We’ll see.

Hi friends! This year I’ve hit a personal record for number of books read. My goal was 120 books and I definitely surpassed that. I still have a full-time day job that doesn’t involve reading books but my side gig with Book Riot is what has me reading so much. This year may have also been my most diverse reading year as well. Book Riot has a reading tracker that gives some fun stats for the books you’ve read. The 2022 tracker hasn’t been released yet but I’ll be sure to share it when it has been.

If you want to diversify your reading and  don’t know where to start or if you want a bit of a roadmap, there are reading challenges to help lead the way. Of course, I’m partial to Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge but I found this 2022 Master List of Year-Long Reading Challenges that you might be interested in checking out as well. Make sure to look at the comments for even more links.

Best Books I Read That Were Published in 2021

Hi friends! Holy shit, we’re almost through 2021 and I am SO PROUD OF US for making it this far.

This year was a rollercoaster of emotions for so many of us. There has been so much loss already from Covid-19 deaths to the ending of relationships due to people choosing white supremacy over love. Add to that the excitement of vaccines then the utter disappointment to learn that people you know are anti-science and the variants, the endless variants.

A lot of folks got a master class in boundary work this year. I found it particularly fascinating because when I was a part of the kink and sex education communities, explicit communication was 98% of what we did. We would communicate what we need to feel safe and supported in ways that I never really encountered outside the communities. Things like safewords and STI testing are ways to be intimate while informing partners about boundaries, consent, and risk. They’re a way for people to say, “This is what I need to feel safe” and an opportunity for others to say, “I’m willing to do this thing to help you feel safe.”