it has been EXACTLY a year to the day since i last sent one of these out. i reread last year's missive and it's interesting and also unsurprising how much and how little has changed, except for the part where i have gotten much better at catching the once-an-hour train home.

i had fourteen different ideas about what i was going to say in this email and who knows what's actually going to come out. here we go.

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📚 i don't know how it can be true that i got even worse at reading this year, but it is. this email might have been a lengthy essay on exactly what that means and why i think it happened and what i'm doing about it, but instead i'll just say that i barely managed to read enough to do my day-job, i don't feel great about it, and also on a certain level i can't care that much? in related news the DRM removal plug-in i use for my e-galley managing app completely stopped working no matter how many times i reinstalled it, so i'm also completely changing up the way i read for 2022. i started in on my new pseudo-system and so far, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ who the fuck knows. stay tuned or whatever.

in the meantime here are the books (in a handy list on Bookshop) i REALLY wanted to read in 2022 that i somehow did not. they're still on the list! i believe it will happen! some day! 

Even Though I Knew The End by CL Polk
Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang
Godslayers by Zoe Hana Mikuta
Heartbreaker by Sarah MacLean
Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo
The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older
A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Sweep of Stars by Maurice Broaddus
The White Mosque by Sofia Samatar
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi

and right now i'm reading three things: 
At Midnight, edited by Dahlia Adler, which is a fairytale retellings anthology, OBVIOUSLY I LOVE IT
Thorn by Intisar Khanani, this is my bedtime book, also a fairytale retelling, is there a theme here, there might be
Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey, wow this book, i am only in the first chapter and it is not like anything else i've read?

🏃🏽 i started running again this year for a lot of reasons that i won't talk about and one that i will, which is that i really fucking missed it even though being mid-run is almost always the worst. i've discovered that 5K is the ABSOLUTE max my back will allow me without registering some very strong protests and compelling reasons to run less, but i did a 5K race and lived to tell about it and haven't done any long-lasting harm (that i can tell) and honestly y'all, i owe it all to Peloton's walk-run classes, they are legit. i have used that app almost every day for most of 2022 and i regret nothing. shout-outs to Dr. Chelsea Jackson Roberts and Aditi Shah for yoga, Matty Magiacamo for anything/everything, and Kirsten Ferguson for having the best banter. 

i have also started going regularly to a climbing wall gym and i LOVE IT SO MUCH. my body also likes it -- something about the combination of stretching and strengthening at the same time is really working for the chronic pain in my back and hands/arms/neck/shoulders. whatever it is, i will take it. (i also can now get on a ladder without hyperventilating, which is a real win!)

🐣 obviously Twitter is an absolute trash-fire right now. i barely used it as it was. regardless, i made Hive Social (jennirl) and Mastodon (@jennIRL@mastodon.social) accounts and so far i'm loving the feel of Hive and i am really confused by everything i'm seeing about writers of color getting told to CW their profiles and/or getting blocked on Mastodon? what? is happening? it's a solid mess. i am definitely eating the schadenfreude popcorn about Elon Musk, but i also think it's worth acknowledging that lots of people's careers LITRULLY depend on Twitter at this point and it's going to be hard to shift that reality as everyone in publishing disperses into various other silos. if that's you, it fucking sucks and i'm sorry. anyway follow me on Tumblr, it's my favorite hellsite of all the hellsites.

🧨 planning anything for 2023 feels like a fool's errand, so instead here's the part where i tell you i'm making a list of things to do around the house (we've lived here for two years and i think i'm finally ready to paint some walls) and books to read ... at some point ... and in the meantime enjoying my current TV rotation which includes: Dragon Prince S4 (dang, Claudia!!!!), Abbott Elementary, Survivor, The Great British Bake-Off, old seasons of Master Chef, the newest season of Mythic Quest, and someday Severance and Sex Education and The Wheel of Time will be back and there will be great rejoicing. 

👋 the end