the slow and unyielding march of time episode 36
my job is distributed, meaning people i work with live all over the country. this isn’t the first time i’ve had a distributed job, but this is the first time i’ve joined a workplace during a global pandemic, which means i’ve never met most of them. it’s very odd to spend your days with a group of people on a screen, and to have never inhabited the same space as them. sometimes i imagine trying to explain to ten-year-old davida what my life is like, and she would be so confused. (and maybe horrified? we were supposed to be a writer!)
but then! a couple of weeks ago, i traveled to DC on the amtrak to meet everyone! login.gov had an “in real life” (IRL) for us fed employees. (we work with a lot of contractors who weren’t included.) in general, while i was excited to finally meet people and get a better sense of their vibe, i wasn’t really sure what i wanted to get out of the trip.
the two days of meetings were very exhausting — my introverted self went to bed early every night, and still barely had enough energy to make it through the facilitated sessions. it was exciting and strange to meet all these folks at once, and learn about how they exist in space. i always wonder what people make of me when they meet me for the first time. one of them organized a sunrise bike ride of the memorials that was really great. i also got to go on a tour of the west wing and executive building, and the library of congress. it feels sort of insane to see the oval office.
i started to understand emotionally that i work for the government, and that i work in service for the public. i’ve known this intellectually, of course — i had to make a government resume! i had to get a background check! — but being in DC, getting to know my coworkers, eavesdropping on strangers conversations about what they do every day to serve the public, really made it click for me.
the monday after i got back was Yom Kippur, the jewish fasting day of atonement. as part of my day, i wrote some a list of my blessings from the last year, as well as my “sins.” (things i want to improve on) cheesily enough, one of my blessings was “fixed my job.” i feel really lucky that i have somehow stumbled upon employment that not only i like and feels meaningful, but also where i am treated with respect and dignity and also i have employment protections. i am so blessed. (also with health and family and friends, and such! my job is not that important to me, but i am glad that i get to do one that mostly feels good.)
anyway in case you’re wondering what the number one sin i wrote down is, it’s “talked a LOT of shit.”
debris
the west wing is decorated with these giant blue vases that nixon got during his trip to china, which means i probably catalogued photographs of him getting them as a gift when i volunteered at the nixon presidential library. (i catalogued all the digitized china photos!)
i immediately got a cold after Yom Kippur. i think fasting after a very tiring week of travel is probably not the healthiest for one’s body
i also went on vacation for two weeks! i went to tofino, BC, where i got to go kayaking and took a surfing lesson. then to fort flagler, WA, where i sat around and read a bunch! i didn’t use a computer for two solid weeks. it was amazing. highly recommend
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my plants are doing really well! it feels really rewarding to keep plants lush and healthy and green. i’ve literally never been able to do it before lol.
what i’ve been reading
okay good lord i thought i had written a post that talked about some of these, but i guess it felt too daunting so i just put it off for a long time and then didn’t? i think usually i go from most recent to oldest, but i am going to try to do some light grouping here to make it less overwhelming.
ok here goes!!!!
Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak and Promises Stronger Than Darkness by Charlie Jane Anders are books two and three in a pretty decent sci-fi series. a thing that i really enjoyed about this series is how much the characters struggled with/resisted easy, militant answers in the faces of things that they didn’t understand, and how they stayed true to their weird art selves, even when it meant they may not survive.
Big Swiss by Jen Beagin and Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey were both books in a new genre i’ve noticed that i’d describe as “women making increasingly unhinged, harmful decisions rather than going to therapy.” i asked paul if he had also noticed this trend, and he told me “this is a market correction after decades of novels about men who need to go to therapy making unhinged decisions.” THE TRUE FEMINISM. i liked really good, actually better — it made me very anxious but it felt very realistic wheras big swiss was kind of bonkers.
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld ALSO stressed me out from start to finish, initially because i thought it was going to be a prep-school murder book and i was waiting for the murder to happen and THEN it was stressful because it is such an accurate and familiar portrayal of adolesence. i cringed so hard so many times!!!
after i read those stressful books, i decided i wanted something with a cat protagonist, so i took three “cat detective” books out from the library. The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern, and The Cat Who Turned On and Off by Lilian Jackson Braun. i’m sorry to tell you that the cat is NOT the detective, and that it is casually racist/sexist in a provincial 1980s kind of way, and harkened back to a time when small local newspapers had an unlimited budget and could afford two art reporters on the same beat. could use more cat and less detective bt that said, they were not stressful at all.
The Laughter by Sonora Jha and Yellowface by R. F. Kuang are not very similar, but they reminded me of each other because they both have a white protagonist who thinks they’re a pretty good, progressive type of person, or who can put on a good show, but who reveal their own unconscious racism and/or sexism throughout the novels. yellowface was so stressful that i thought i might have to go back and read another cat detective novel to chill out.
instead of the cat detective, though, i turned to Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld, which was much less stressful than prep! actually i loved this. rather than reading cat detectives i need to read romance novels. the stakes are high (LOVE) and there’s always conflict getting to the end, but you can generally count on a happy ever after (HEA) and i really need that sometimes.
for my YA bookclub, i read Once There Was by Kiyash Monsef, which was a book about a veterenarian for mythical and fantastic creatures. it was quite good, but there were some parts that were quite difficult to read since plucky’s loss still feels fresh. (i know that will eventually change, which feels sad, but necessary.) we also read The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, which is a dystopic future in which the dominant culture has decided to start hunting Indigenous people for their marrow. it is dark and upsetting, but also dreamy and very good. well worth a read!
for my banned book bookclub, i read Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez which was SO good and so sad. i had to keep putting it down because i was pretty sure i knew where it was going and it was nowhere happy.
Pageboy: A Memoir by Elliot Page was really interesting. this kind of book feels like a good balm/counter to the shitty media and political attacks on trans people over the past few years.
i wanted to really like The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton and Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart but neither of them really held up to what felt like exciting premises. (also girl waits with gun, which i learned at the end is based on a true story, was very pro-cop, which is not my wheelhouse)
speaking of cops, The Likeness by Tana French, a volume in the dublin murder squad books that i somehow neglected to read, was creepy and suspenseful and like all of french’s books, a twisty mystery that’s also heartbreakingly sad. Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway was a really fun little sci-fi noir.
whew we are getting close folks!
i realized that the library was about to snatch back Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R. F. Kuang, and the hold list was very long. so i read this 800 page book in 48ish hours. it’s very different from yellowface, but a really stunning anti-colonial book about the power of language and translation, and the power and limits of friendship and resistence.
FINALLY the library is trying to snatch away When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe so i am speed reading it even though i am shouting FUCK YOU at basically every other page in this book. it’s a very readable, extremely well researched book about the harm that mckinsey consulting has wreaked upon our country and the world. mckinsey was involved in: making insurance bad, “supercharging” opiate sales while also consulting with the FDA, getting teens hooked on vaping, and siphoning money from the taxpayer illegally. THEIR RECOMMENDATIONS WERE REJECTED BY ICE FOR BEING INHUMANE. man. i am so mad. capitalism might not be good, folks!
at some point also i started and abandoned American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic by Victoria Johnson. it had an interesting premise/research but also like .. david hosack enslaved people, and that’s mentioned in one paragraph and never touched again. the author really was not willing to interrogate the ways in which these “great men” were actually pretty shitty! no thanks!
ok, twenty-one books, that’s really nuts. i, uh, have been neglecting things like “exercise” and “socializing” quite a bit, but man, the end of summer gets tough, huh? i hope you are all enjoying cooler weather and sleeping well and chasing the sun when it comes out. i love you all! i mean it!
<3 davida
ps!
i recently got a long email from someone on this newsletter, and it was really, really nice to hear from them! no pressure, but i would love to hear from any of you if you wanted to respond. if you just reply to the email, then it magically somehow finds its way to my email!