🐟Lil Treasures #129: Believe In Yourself and a Chaotic House Piranha
We're talking Andre DeShields and writing hacks
Happy Friday! I’m on vacation this week but I did save some good treasures and tweets for you, because I love you.
Hope you have the best weekend! Leave some good treasures for me in the comments so I can indulge upon my return.
Without further adieu, here are this week’s treasures!
🎭 Currently obsessed with everything about the musical Hadestown, and even more obsessed with this video of Andre DeShields singing Believe in Yourself (an original from from the Wiz) to close a show this past week. A freaking delight.
📰 As a writer, I appreciate good journalism and have a soft spot for local newspapers. The New Yorker put out an article earlier this week about the Uvalde-Leader News and their account of the day of the shooting at Robb Elementary. Please take a minute to read it if you get the chance.
✍🏾My friend Stephanie is an excellent writer and editor over at Baker Books. She is the realest, and has a weekly newsletter catered specifically to writers called SLANT LETTER. I recommend it to anyone who may dabble in the writing process! Here’s a preview of her most recent newsletter on the topic of the rituals of resistance:
Resistance is the pushback we experience to our creative lives, whether through the frustration of interruptions, the burn of rejections, the paralysis of writer’s block or self-doubt, the shame of procrastination or unmet (unrealistic) expectations. To create is to give shape to something new, but resistance is the counterforce we are met with when we try.
It’s terribly disempowering to be pushed and feel you have no resources to push back. But this is what the creative process makes of us, if we let it, we become people who show up to the work, and push back to resistance.
The good news for all of us is that we get better at pushing back through practice.
If you are looking for a terrific resource to help you grow as a writer, I highly suggest following Stephanie. To subscribe to THE SLANT, click here!
🍰 This video is me every single night.
💗 Tressie McMillam Cotton wrote this article for the New York Times about the societal issue of selective caring, in light of so many larger and difficult issues that have been looming in our current lives. It’s a tough but important read.
Let’s do the Tweets!
Hoping your summers have kicked off to a great start! Can’t wait to come back from vacay and take in all of your beautiful comments like a warm, virtual hug. Cheers to you the weekend!
🐟Lil Treasures #129: Believe In Yourself and a Chaotic House Piranha
Hello everyone! I have been in a strange space this week. I go from being motivated to angsty to sad all in the space of about 5 minutes. The weather here has been gorgeous, however, and I am so thankful for that. I am also thankful that I can send in my absentee ballot.
Treasures:
-We are getting an outdoor sofa and I'm ridiculously excited about it. I'm already dreaming about how I want to add in some plants and other decorations. We live in the Midwest, so wind and weather are a factor in decorating but I'm up for recommendations!
-Reading has been a grounding experience for me this year. My current reads are The Lazy Genius Kitchen by Kendra Adachi, This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley, and In the Sanctuary of Women by Jan L. Richardson.
-Elizabeth Holmes' IG stories about the Queen's Jubilee were exactly what my exhausted heart needed.
-Walking and biking for the Trevor Project has been a motivation to get outside and I feel so much better after being out.
Have the best weekend available to you, everyone! Thanks for being a safe space to land.
The Tressie McMillam Cotton link doesn't work.
As for Treasures:
- I CUT MY HAIR! chopped it officially shorter than it's been since I was a baby. Originally I was going to shave it all off (for mourning/starting over reasons) but I got into my hair stylist & realized I need to keep some hair in reserves just in case June brings something horrible again & I need to go shorter as a giant FU to a universe that so often feels like it doesn't care. So it's a cute pixie I'm still trying to figure out which products work well with. But the joy of not having the length is magic.
- My husband complimented me on making dinner out of nothing. We're still trying to get our mortgage application completed so money is kinda tighter than either of us loves, but I have a weird sense of accomplishment (and grief - they are intertwined a lot these days) over how being 'long time poor' equipped me to be frugal.
Turds:
- I'm behind at work. A lot. And I can't stop stressing over it. Which makes things take longer than anticipated because I'm expending energy trying to not retraumatize my nervous system but also accomplish things.
- I'm not talking to either of my parents right now. Chaos in the family has meant for my own sanity I had to step away in order to not perpetuate/endorse dysfunction and I wish it could be different.