Yup, It's Still Winter
How is everyone hanging in there?
That’s probably a loaded question. It’s so hard to know how to act in times like these, when horrible things are happening so quickly it’s hard to keep up, when things are so scary, and when it seems like there’s so little each of us, individually, can do.
I wanted to share with you a resource that’s been helping me a lot. It’s called 5Calls — I use the app but the website works just as well if you’re not into the whole app thing. 5Calls gives you a list of issues that you might want to call your reps about, updated daily, along with your reps’ phone numbers and (most importantly for me) scripts you can use if, like me, your social anxiety makes it difficult for you to formulate coherent sentences on the phone. The idea is that in just 5 minutes a day, you can make 5 calls to your representatives — and calling your reps happens to be one of the most important things you can do in times such as these, so it’s a big bang for your buck, so to speak.
In an effort to preserve my mental health, I’ve been stepping away from screens more often lately. I’ve been doing puzzles (both jigsaw and crossword), watching the most recent season of So You Think You Can Dance, and reading a ton. I recently finished Absolution, the surprise new book in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series. It’s a bizarre, heady, absorbing book that I just completely sunk into. If you haven’t read any of the Area X books yet, start with the first one, Annihilation—and thank me later.
In short fiction, I thoroughly enjoyed two stories about ghosts published in early 2025. “They Bought a House” by Osahon Ize-Iyamu is about hauntings, and the lack of hauntings, and which is more frightening. “The Path She Sings” by Vanessa Fogg uses gorgeous, gutting prose in its uncanny depiction of grief and love in a world where death might not mean the end.
I also had some stories come out in the beginning of the year. I’ll list them here in ascending order of righteous resistance:
“Echo Syndrome”, published in Small Wonders, is a flash piece about feeling like you’re losing yourself, little by little, in the onslaught of
“Written on the Subway Walls” came out in The Sunday Morning Transport, a publication I adore. This is the most Rochester, NY story I’ve ever written: it’s both a love letter to my adopted hometown and a story about the importance of community, resistance, and hope in the face of systemic oppression.
Lastly, “The Colonists,” which came out in Trollbreath Magazine in December, is now free to read. Come for the sexy fungus, stay for the anticolonialist rage.
If you’re not currently subscribed to my newsletter, feel free to do so! I promise not to spam your inbox. I used to promise cat photos in these newsletters but Buttondown recently changed their tiers so that I have to upgrade to a paid plan in order to include attachments. Which I will, once I get over 100 subscribers — and I’m close! So if you’d like to see my cat Loki looking incredibly cute chilling out in his cat sling, subscribe and share.
Be well and be strong, everyone,
Jen