On this week’s episode of Bad on Paper, I declared that December is going to be my best month of 2023. If you didn’t listen, the episode was a fun one, all about our best everything of 2023 – best days, best meals, best concerts, best movies, and so much more. Best month was one of the prompts, too, but I found myself struggling to pick one. So much of this year has felt like trying to move forward amidst change and hitting a wall, or slamming against it full speed. Sometimes the wall was work or anxiety, other times it was loss and grief. It’s not that every month was bad, or that the good stuff didn’t come, too. Of course it did. And I’ve had tough years before this one, too. But this was the first year in a long time when I felt unsteady through it all.
You know that feeling when you do pilates for the first time, or try to stand on a surfboard or a skateboard and your body is like — what the fuck are you trying to do to me? Your abs are like, “Wait, wait, wait… this isn’t what we do. You can’t just throw us into this blindly. We need time.” Everything is shaky and wobbly and unless you keep at it and keep practicing, those muscles never really adapt to the new movements at all. You never really get the hang of it. You feel wobbly forever. That’s what this year felt like to me. Wobbly. Every time I kept thinking that I’d toughened up, I just hadn’t. I still felt off balance. And, you know, I didn’t like that feeling very much.
There are a lot of reasons for that feeling, I think, and I’m going to talk through some of those in this week’s mini pod for paid subscribers (and about why I’m feeling so much better these days!), if you want to tune in over there in a day or two. In the meantime, though, I will simply say that I feel really good right now. December feels good right now. I am about to take real time off for the first time all year, no real book deadlines in sight for the first time in forever. I am writing something that I can’t stop thinking about and can’t stop working on. I get to share SUCH A BAD INFLUENCE with you all so soon. We finally, finally, finally were able to put the green paint I’ve loved for so long in the room we’ve been prepping for more than a month. I’m happy. And that’s a very good thing.
So now, for more happy things. Here are three glimmers from the past week. Tell me yours in the comments.
The Hudson Valley at the holidays.
Everyone warned me that this part of the world tends to shut down around the holidays. When we moved here at the end of January last year, we were too overwhelmed to really process that many restaurants were closed until spring, or that everything was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and often Wednesdays, too. Having said that, I expected our first December here to be very low key. Not much going on. Boy, was I wrong. There are vintage pop-ups! Author readings! And my god, the Christmas festivals. Last Saturday, I spent the entire morning and afternoon writing while Jake starting painting the library. It was dark out by the time I finished and I didn’t quite feel like getting dressed, but we rallied and went to Winter Walk in Hudson. There were carolers, food trucks, Christmas decorations galore, adorable dogs. I bought a cool clutch from a store that had a wine station and a jazz band. We walked in galleries. Ate some Mexican food. It was all very Hallmark Channel, and it made me feel so lucky to live here. The HV is kind of an odd place in a lot of ways, but there is truly so much art and creativity and fun here, and it’s part of the reason we wanted to move here. Our town’s town (we live in a tiny town that is 5 minutes away from another tiny town, but while ours consists of exactly one restaurant and a post office, our town’s town has pizza, coffee, bars, restaurants, a forthcoming bookstore… a booming metropolis, so I claim it as my town, too) is having its own holiday festival this weekend and I can’t wait.
Crying with strangers.
I am not a crier, and I also am. Let me explain. I cry a lot alone. I cry when I am angry. I cry if I am frustrated. I cry at music and movies. But around strangers? Even around close friends? Not my jam. Am I perhaps afraid of being vulnerable and feeling exposed around people I don’t fully trust? Sure, but that’s a topic for another day. My point is that for me to be moved to tears in front of a stranger is very rare. In Hudson over the weekend, someone (to be more specific, they were one of the carolers, which makes it even more Hallmark Channel-y, doesn’t it?) came up to me and said they enjoyed following me and lots of other incredibly kind things that I’ll never forget. The gist of it was that they wanted to tell me that I had made some kind of an impact in their life by sharing my own experiences online. I feel kind of weird to share that, like I’m trying to toot my own horn, but my point is that it was a moment I’ll never forget. I cried! We hugged! We said goodbye and Jake and I kept walking around, and the next morning I sat on my couch drinking coffee (and listening to this song, since I guess we’re really diving in here) and thinking about the moment.
This world is so weird. The internet is so weird. But I felt such comfort and joy (the Christmas reference was unintentional but I’m leaving it) thinking about it. I was so wildly grateful that that person came up to me and shared that with me. I told them it made my year, and it was the honest truth. Not because I was flattered, though I was, but because it was this moment of pure human connection. And it sounds weird, but I just know that I’ll get old one day (if I’m lucky) and think about this moment with this stranger, remember the Christmas songs playing in the background, the smell of kettle corn wafting through the air, me walking away feeling a little less alone. And I’ll feel thankful for it, and for all of you, and for this weird little life I’ve made.
Writing & walking & writing & walking & writing & walking.
If we’re just going to be real for a moment, and why shouldn’t we be, we’ve made it this far — I don’t like how I look this year. I just don’t. I’ve gained weight in a year where it’s seemed like everyone is losing weight. This isn’t a commentary on anything anyone else is doing to do that, but just a statement of fact. I’ve struggled with this year in general and I’ve struggled with that in particular. I’ve been so wobbly and unsteady that I’ve found it difficult to find a consistent workout routine, and that’s only made me feel worse. The irony there isn’t lost on me — chicken and the egg and all that. My mind has been very loud all year long with all the ways I need to do better, and how I look has been close to the top of that list more often I’d like to admit. On the plus side, that’s forced me to think more about beauty standards in a way I haven’t in a long time. But it’s also just been one more thing that has felt like a battle. So let me tell you what’s been helping that lately. Writing and walking and writing and walking. And then doing it again.
The book I’m working on now and SUCH A BAD INFLUENCE both touch on cultural beauty standards and body image (I mean, did you expect anything else from me?), and I’ve certainly found working those themes into stories incredibly therapeutic. But really, it’s the habit and routine of writing that has brought me so much healing. I think it did earlier in the year, when so much felt chaotic and hard, and I think it’s doing the same thing now, too. Writing feels like turning off every bad part of my brain and turning on every good part. So, I’ve been writing in the morning, all morning. I let my phone die or sit in the other room untouched. I ignore every email. And then I go walk. Just two miles, nothing fancy, and certainly nothing that is going to change how I look anytime soon. It’s not about that. It’s cold on these walks, and often gloomy, but I get to visit the same six cows every time I do (I am still learning there names, but so far I know we have: Hank, Forrest, and Daisy). I walk and I think about writing or life or nothing and I get back home and I think: There I am. There I am again. Everything is exactly the same as when I left, but it all feels better. And I think that’s really what I want, more than I want to be skinny, even though it’s harder than ever to not want that right now, I think (or at least it feels that way to me). I want to be able to come back to myself again and again, to remember who I am, and to remember that that has nothing to do with how I look. And writing and walking seems to give me that.
Before I sat down to write this newsletter, I was probably doing exactly what you expect: Listening to Bo Burnham’s “White Woman’s Instagram” on full blast in my living room, singing and dancing around with Winnie for no reason at all other than I remembered the song and it sounded like a good idea to listen. Ok, so maybe you didn’t expect it, I was kidding. Anyway, it was just this stupid blip of a moment, but I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror while I was dancing and I thought yup, there I am. And that’s what kind of inspired all of this.
So there you have it, folks. There are some glimmers for you. And you know, I think maybe the thing I love about them all the most is not the moments themselves, but the fact that they felt special to me. I’d want to be friends with the person who cries with strangers during a Christmas festival and dances around to weird parody songs on Tuesday afternoons and would gladly live in a Stars Hollow-esque Christmas village year-round and feels passionately about specific shades of green paint and sometimes feels like shit about her body, but mostly just tries to be honest about it. That person sounds great to me. And that person is me. It’s simple and obvious, of course, but also kind of great. It’s a tiny thing that’s not so tiny at all.
A portion of December’s subscriber proceeds will go toward Save the Children to support its work in providing essential services and support to children affected by violence in Israel and Gaza.
"I’ve gained weight in a year where it’s seemed like everyone is losing weight." THIS! I feel like a lot of the slow inching of anti-diet / body positive / weigh neutral mentality I've built myself over the last few years has really taken a hit this year based on all the shit in all the news and on instagram and with celebs and my neighbors and everyone and their uncle using medicines off-label to shrink their bodies yadda yadda yadda.
Just chiming in to say I feel you, I treasure your work and your vulnerability and your beauty, and you are a light amidst the hellscape that is sometimes the internet!
I love this. I want to be friends with her (you!) too! Here’s to the best month yet ✨