#18 Holding Out for the January 29 New Year

But there are two things I'm implementing now. Also: stage magic, a different take on accumulating personal wealth, and something for the girls of Altadena.

⭕️ I Don’t Even Know How to Title This but it is worth your attention.¹

⭕️ Your Phone is Why You Don’t Feel Sexy “The proliferation of devices surrounding us at all times may help us ‘get in touch’ with other people, sure, but they impeded our ability to get in touch with ourselves. A ‘touch’ screen would indeed seem to promise something tactile and real, but they leave us cold, tepid, and listless. Something is deeply wrong when we sext the same way we order a sandwich.”²

⭕️ The Case Against Budget Culture

Anne Helen Petersen

&

Dana Miranda

challenging the norms of capital accumulation.³

⭕️ Altadena Girls Fire Recovery Started by an 8th grader who goes to school in the neighborhood to organize the collection and distribution of new clothes, personal items, beauty and hair care — things that will make them feel like themselves again — for girls who lost everything.⁴

Two Resolutions (for the month)

I just re-read a post I wrote about this time last year, and it made me feel a little better about the sleepy, slow start to the year I’ve been experiencing. It’s a combination of things: emerging from the cocoon of the holiday week(s), the constant gray drizzle outside, feeling like I’m still regaining full functioning after getting Norovirus at the end of the month, and, of course, the approaching inauguration, ongoing wars, the wildfires in California, all of it.

I’ve been too fatigued to be productive in the mornings and have struggled to keep my usual routine (and writing) going. I’ve struggled to make it through the day at work, and am toast by the time I get home. I’ve taken so many naps (and near naps) this weekend.

And it turns out I was feeling much the same last year, with slightly different situational details. There’s a comfort in knowing these things are cyclical, that they’ll move on, eventually.

I’ve spent much of the past three weeks in this spot on the couch. Clara has too.

While I haven’t made any resolutions or set any big goals, I’m slowly reflecting and thinking about what I’d like to focus on this year. And I have two things I felt motivated to implement this month: