💰 Gimme $2/mo if you’re enjoying this. 💰

This week’s question comes to us from Jim Christensen:

How do you get through cold, wet, dreary days?

Last week was pretty great. It was Thanksgiving weekend, which is historically the beginning of human hibernation. At least on my particular half of the planet—which as we all know—but because it is 2025 I feel like it’s important to say in print—is round. The Northern half of the planet—again, round—tilts away from the sun so that the Southern half can have its moment of warmth. Which means it gets colder, and the days get shorter, and—depending on where in the Northern half you live—some form of wetness starts falling from the sky. The scientific term for this is dreary. Shit gets dreary. For some of us dreary begets a state of less activity, which for some of us also begets depression. Which is awesome. (It’s not awesome.)

Let me also take the time to admit that I am a total baby about the weather. Because even though I was raised in Philadelphia, where we spent the winter wearing thermal underwear, snow was sometimes measured in feet, and spring was welcomed by the smell of winter dogshit thawing along everyone’s sidewalk, I’ve now lived in California long enough that when I say that it was very cold last week I mean that it was in the low 50s. I can now function at full capacity only within a narrow ten degree band between 60 and 70 degrees. Anything outside that band is either too cold or too hot. In fact, last Wednesday I woke up shivering, turned on the heat and wrapped myself in a blanket because it felt like the end of days and then I checked the weather to find out it was 54º. Jesus wept, in a light sweater.

In our defense, our houses are drafty and tend not to have central heat. Just a giant brown space heater, installed in the 30s, and jutting out of that thing in our Victorian living room that maybe used to be a fireplace. Also, we are technically in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which is great in the summer, but not so great in the winter. So while the temperature might not reflect it, it’s a cold that gets in your bones and tends to linger in there.

Anyway, last week was cold. For us. My truth is my truth.

Thanksgiving aside (because it was a whole thing in and of itself) I spent the majority of the long weekend, sitting in our library reading. I turned the little heater on, put on some nice calming music, and sat there reading for hours. Erika joined me for a lot of it, and we just sealed ourselves off from the world, which is currently not just cold, but awful. Turns out reading is a great way to deal with cold, wet, dreary days.

When I was a kid, my dad would hang plastic sheeting over the windows in the living room. The kind of sheeting you heat up with a hair dryer to get it nice and taut. He’d hang the same kind of sheeting across the doorway to the living room as well, but without the hair dryer. Then he’d turn off the heaters in the rest of the house. (I think I’ve written about this before.) My parents couldn’t afford to heat the whole house in the winter. (And by whole house I mean a rowhome in the Olney neighborhood.) Our options for staying warm were either to be in the living room, in the kitchen with the oven on, or in bed fully clothed under the covers. Which is the option I usually took, because it also granted me solitude. And safety. Safety was at a higher premium than heat growing up. So I’d get in bed and read.

And at the risk of falling into the old cliché of reading providing an escape from everything going on around me as a kid, there’s a reason why it’s a cliché. Reading did exactly that. And the escape that reading provides is anything but allegorical, it is real. As a kid, reading provided me with the lessons parents were supposed to impart. Reading provided me with escape options. Goals. Heist plans. Reading provided me with proof that other ways of living were possible. Reading provided me with proof that people could love each other. Reading provided me with proof that other people had risen from far worse circumstances than me, which is a really important lesson to a kid who only knows the circumstances they’re growing up in. Reading gave me the triangulation I needed to realize where I fit into humanity which was basically “this sucks, but there’s a way out and you can do it.”

I read books for the same reason people buy guns—to feel safe at home.

Our apartment has a library. It’s a room in the center of the house. And there are bookshelves along all four walls. And those bookshelves overflow with books. The room is obviously a fort. With all four walls fortified by the safety of books. Thick enough to muffle outside sounds. Thick enough to keep the room warm. Thick enough to throw at intruders. Thick enough to serve as a barrier from what’s cold, what’s wet, and what’s dreary. A library as a safe room. (It’s not lost on me that I’ve created an insulating layer against the cold, much as my father did when we were kids. I’m pointing this out for myself before my therapist does.)

Every book is an escape hatch to transport me to a place that’s safer, but even more importantly—every book is a recipe book for making our current place safer. Every book is filled with lessons both allegorical and practical that we can apply to our own life in the here and now. Sometimes they jump out at you, sometimes they plant a seed that takes a little bit to germinate and it hits you a bit later. And that’s ok.

I have never regretted a minute I spent reading.

My friend Annalee Newitz, who’s an amazing writer, likes to say that they don’t write dystopias or utopias. They write topias. Because every place is both, in some amounts. And that rings true. Because even in our current hellscape, which most of us would describe as dystopian, there are moments and places where we create little pockets of something close to utopian. Places that feel safe. Places where we go, not to hide, but to reload. Places where we go to plot, to learn, to explore possibilities. Places that help us get through the cold, wet, dreary days.

There is a reason fascists ban books and not guns. Guns are a tool for one thing, books are tools for everything.

I am lucky to have a place where I can go to get past the cold, wet, dreary days. So many people don’t. And that number climbs every day, as our topia tips in the wrong direction. We all deserve to have a place like that. And I am happy that I’ve been able to fill that place with books that make me feel safer and have within them the clues needed to tip things in a better direction. We all deserve to feel safe like that. And I am happy that I’m able to take the time, when I need it, to sit and learn, and stew, and plot. And we all deserve time for that, too. Most of all, I am happy that this room has two chairs, so that as winter—both real and allegorical—washes over us, I am reminded that the second chair is there because love is real.

I read it in books.

🖐️ Got a question you need a long run-on answer to? Ask it!

📣 There’s one last Presenting w/Confidence workshop left this year. December 11 & 12. Sign up, learn some stuff, meet some nice people, say hello to their pets.

🎅 The 2025 Sock of Shit was a great success and they’re all sold out, however we still have BOOKS! OMG BOOKS! And we will sign them! And they’ll make great gifts!

🧺 We also have Gilly pins back in stock and they make amazing stocking stuffers.

🍉 We all need places where we feel safe. Please donate what you can to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.

🏳️‍⚧️ We all need homes where we are loved. Please donate to Trans Lifeline.