Closing 2025: Resolutions Edition

Hi darlings,

Welcome to 2026!

It's time to continue reflecting on the past year to set some intentions for the next.  First, let's recap the goals I set for 2025 and assess my success in accomplishing them:

1. Do sustainable, consistent, values-congruent things with my free time.

I think I did a pretty good job of accomplishing this goal, although that required making some adjustments and compromises I'm still having feelings about.  I continued to build local community, read (including one of the most gorgeous books I've read in a while), write, take photos and (FINALLY) print books of my photos, bake and cook, and care for plants and animals (inside and outside my home), each of which have brought me a lot of joy and satisfaction.  I would really like to get back into a routine of taking walks in my beautiful neighborhood, which would necessitate using the occasional free mornings I have for that purpose.  I also *still* miss my sweet little VR minigolf game and have not figured out how to fit that back into my life.

I got more involved with an additional recovery program and joined a small working group within that program, and I started a group chat for parents of young children who are in my original program.  I've kept doing readings, listening to recovery-focused podcasts, and going to meetings.  I also completed a healing-focused somatic and breathwork seminar that was really intense and helpful.  I'm still tentative about building more 1-on-1 relationships within those programs, but I'm also trying to respect my own process and not rush myself.

I participated in activism and mutual aid-related work throughout most of 2025, but by the last few months of the year I found that activism specifically was simply not compatible with the realities of my life as a parent with young children.  It became more and more impossible to attend regular meetings, even by Zoom, as they perfectly overlap with bedtime for my kids--a transition that is very much all-hands-on-deck and can't sustainably be done without both parents.  It's frustrating and demoralizing finding yet another aspect of life in America in which there is fundamentally not space made for parents.  It is especially anxiety-inducing that this is yet another place where it feels like I have no choice but to sit on the sidelines and hope that there's still work I can contribute in a few years when parenting isn't so full on.  

I feel extremely conflicted about my decision to scale back my participation in activist work, while also acknowledging that even characterizing it as a decision isn't totally accurate or fair to me.  Ideally these spaces would be accessible for everyone who wants to contribute, and they simply aren't for parents.  I'm hoping there are still ways for me to keep my hand in the game, so to speak, and it does look like that's possible if I can accept taking a much smaller role than I want to.  I'm hoping I can come to some degree of peace with that and also not have to totally forfeit this facet of myself for now.

2. Watch at least 30 movies, and write at least 15 posts.

I succeeded, just barely, in exceeding my 2025 movie-watching goal before the end of the year, thanks in no small part to some delightfully terrible Christmas movies I squeezed in as I was packing for my family for the holidays.  As you can see, I fell quite short of my writing goal, going so far as to skip writing in September entirely.  While I'm frustrated about that, the reality of my struggle to meet even these scaled-down goals has also helped soften my perfectionism about writing and accept that, while the totality of my life is really demanding right now, I'm doing the best I can.

Now, to propose goals for this year.  

Minor note: I don't mean to over-utilize the word "consistently" in the following resolutions, but it's important to me to prioritize endeavors I can pursue in a sustainable way rather than goals that have a specific accomplishment or outcome at the end.

1. Consistently engage in creativity.

I'm going to define "creativity" broadly while also using this resolution to hone in on some of the most rewarding leisure time I've had in the past year.  For the purposes of this resolution, creativity can mean things like writing, working on photography, decorating or redesigning a space, and coming up with fun activities to do with my family, but it can also mean the more generative aspect of creativity that is manifested in things like baking and caring for plants and animals.

2. Consistently care for myself physically and emotionally.

I'm proud of my continued engagement in a variety of emotional healing and recovery processes, and I see the cumulative benefit of those commitments year after year.  I'm also proud of breaking through whatever barrier(s) inhibited my ability to more actively care for myself physically, and that as a result I've been taking more personal responsibility not just for scheduling and transporting myself to medical, dental, and massage appointments, but also to doing physical therapy and exercising in my own time.  In 2026, I want to continue caring for myself in this holistic manner.

3. Consistently participate in anti-hunger and community-focused work and activism.

Of all of the horrific political incidents in the past year, one that was so repugnant that I struggle to comprehensively articulate how disturbed, upset, disgusted, and enraged I was as a result was the government's cutting of funding for SNAP benefits.  I want to consistently work to ensure people in my community aren't hungry.  Thankfully, I've found that there are several avenues for engaging in this kind of work that are more feasible for the stage of life I'm in.

4. Watch at least 30 movies and write at least one post per month.

I'm happy to say that I've already watched 9 movies this year, which under other circumstances might lead me to consider increasing this year's movie-watching goal.  But recent years have made it very clear that the mental, emotional, and practical space I have to watch movies tends to fluctuate a LOT over the course of the year, and I'd much rather keep my expectations of myself on this front gentle, realistic, and reasonable than set a goal I may not meet because I briefly felt cocky and overly ambitious.

All that aside, I'm excited for the movies of the future year, and I'm also excited for the time I'll spend writing about them.

I hope this new year is beautiful and so much better than any of us might be expecting.  Whatever happens, thankfully we're walking through it together.

{Heart}

Snap Judgment: "Jurassic World Rebirth"

Hey everyone,

This year, I've been feeling particularly nostalgic for the summer blockbusters that helped stoke my love of movies when I was younger, especially "Twister" (1996), "Independence Day" (1996), and of course, "Jurassic Park" (1993).  So theoretically at least, it's terribly convenient that a new entry into the aforementioned dinosaur movie franchise came out this year.

Let's revisit our old Snap Judgment format for another round of dinos, this time with "Jurassic World Rebirth" (2025)!

Snap judgment: my alternate title for this post was: "Jurassic World Rebirth": Equal Parts Dumb and Fun.  And I genuinely stand by that assessment.  

Does this newest chapter in the franchise get anywhere near the majesty of the first movie?  Absolutely tf not.  But after burning my hand multiple times on the hot stoves/steaming piles of the previous few Jurassic Worlds (each of which inspired their own Snap Judgments), I've finally learned to slip on an oven mitt.  And by "slip on an over mitt", I mean lower my expectations and prepare to schadenfreude-ly enjoy the stupidity.  With that mindset, "Jurassic World Rebirth" is honestly not that bad!

So let's get to it!

• This movie has completely miscalibrated the survivability of its world.

We continue the franchise-honored tradition of dinosaurs chompin on kids in vehicles--this time an inflatable raft.  And not only does the kid survive, but so does the inflatable raft.

This is the same franchise that demonstrated a T. rex's power by showing what it could do to a Jeep thusly:

But an inflatable raft... is fine.  I cannot stress this enough: An inflatable raft.  You know, basically a glorified balloon?  Miraculously/improbably withstands T-rex bites.  And also the kid is fine.

Also Mahershala Ali survives the mutant T. rex by ........... ????????

Genuinely, the sequence is as follows:

Mahershala Ali: (heroically luring mutant T. rex away to save his friends)

Mutant T. rex: (is lured)

Mahershala Ali: (having successfully lured mutant T. rex, faces his foe, laughing maniacally in the face of death)

Mahershala Ali's friends, seeing Mahershala Ali's flare go out: (escaping but sad, because obviously)

(.....Unclear events transpire.....)

Mahershala Ali: Jk I'm fine lol.  Also I have extra flares.  Come get me this island sucks.

Look, I'm genuinely glad this movie at least didn't lapse into the trope of killing off all its Black characters, as the first movie did with Samuel L. Jackson.

RIP Mr. Arnold :'(

But also, all it takes to blow up what is surely a billion-dollar scientific endeavor is... a Snickers wrapper?

• This science is.... hilarious.

So the premise of this movie is that our ragtag group of pals must journey to the island where only the most janky of the dinosaurs exist because samples from those dinosaurs could be the missing link in revolutionary medication for heart disease.  

The logic is as follows: You need samples from the three biggest dinosaurs because (gestures randomly) their hearts are the biggest (jazz hands!!).  And also they have to be alive when you get the samples (chef's kiss).

• The heroic plot twist is.... nonsensical.

For unclear reasons, responsibility for deciding whether to dramatically enrich one evil pharmaceutical company or ensuring the samples lives have been lost collecting are used to benefit all humankind is left not to the paleontologist who might at least have a sense of the science behind how these samples might be helpful, but instead to the mercenary-for-hire.  

Her response? "Give it to everyone."

And that's great, and unsurprising given the general moral compass of this franchise.  But also, literally what does that mean??  Like... what?  Like give what, exactly?  Like, everyone gets a lil drop of dinosaur blood/egg sac contents?  You know this isn't code you can make open source, right??

• The same tired- and lazy-ass character development.

In "Jurassic World Rebirth", we get to witness a repeat of the Bryce Dallas Howard cold-blooded (lol) money-hungry business lady turned totally unconvincing environmentalist character arc, but this time instead she's Scarlett Johansson's cold-blooded mercenary lady who does illegal stuff for bad corporations turned totally unconvincing humanitarian.

Again:

At least Scarlett Johansson is dressed semi-appropriately for the task.

And then we have the Delgado family, which includes a father who has taken his two daughters on a trans-oceanic voyage on a sailboat he built.  And also his daughter's boyfriend.  

I have a message for Mr. Delgado: 

I'm so sorry.  You're in the middle of the *ocean*, presently in the middle of the most isolated part of the planet for a human being, and you're only just now hammering out the shifts for steering your boat and your youngest child is just now learning how to tie knots?  And you've done this kind of trip before?  Sir.  Sir.  What in God's name are you doing.

• Stop trying to tell me people don't know dinosaurs are cool.

I will never get past the compulsive premise in these past few Jurassic Worlds (Jurassics World?) that dinosaurs have become boring.  Anyone who has ever been to the Museum of Natural History can attest that the dinosaur section isn't exactly under-attended--and that's just to see their *bones*.  

The idea that people don't care about dinosaurs is both so unacceptably stupid and unbelievable on its face, and it also undermines the magic and awe that made the first film so unforgettable.  "Jurassic Park" gave us all a chance to imagine the overwhelming thrill of actually getting to see real, live dinosaurs--animals that have fascinated human beings for centuries.  It is simply inconceivable that people could get to a point where they tire of seeing the real, breathing thing.

Relatedly: I don't need a mutant T. rex (and I refuse to call it a D. rex).  No one needs that.  I will die on the hill that regular degular Tyrannosaurus Rexes and intelligent raptors are more than scary enough.

All this said, I am honestly happy I saw this movie in theaters.  It was so ridiculous and poorly conceived, but it was still a fun little adventure with ultimately kind of low stakes because you know these movies kind of pull their punches and in any event the characters barely exist as embodied, believable people.  If you're having some of that dinostalgia that I do, I think this one is worth seeing.  I gave it a 3.

{Heart}

TYSG: Resolution Compliance Edition

Hey darlings,

It's been almost exactly 5 years since I last wrote a Terrible Year Survival Guide post.  While in my personal world I wouldn't count this year as a Terrible Year, it certainly and unarguably is catastrophically terrible on a national and international governance level.  Yet so far, to a greater extent than I would have guessed, I've been doing okay--and oftentimes, better than okay.  And I think that's in large part to my high degree of compliance with my resolutions for 2025.

So in case it's somehow helpful to either borrow some ideas directly from me or for jump-starting your own process of identifying what would help you bolster yourself during this horrendous time, please allow me to share the things I've been doing, including some small but impactful changes I've made, to do sustainable, consistent, values-congruent things with my free time and thereby keep myself feeling whole, well, and happy.

Photography stuff: I've finally been working to translate my years-old backlog of vacation photos into printed photo books.  Making any degree of forward motion in this area is so satisfying.  That progress has been made easy by both past-me sorting through the hundreds/thousands of photos I took on each trip to winnow them down to like 300-400 that I can cram them all into a photo book, and also by the pretty-streamlined-once-you-get-the-hang-of-it photo book builder I use on Snapfish. Not only is it gratifying to at long last have a physical photo album of the trip Husband and I took Iceland almost 10 years ago, but it's also a joy to revisit those memories.

Making local friends + Reading: A bunch of parents in my neighborhood and I started a book club last summer, and it's been meeting about monthly ever since.  We alternate between parenting books and fiction, and spend the vast majority of our meet-ups chatting before we eventually talk at least a tiny bit about the book.  I felt particularly edified by my suggestion to read Casey McQuiston's Red, White, and Royal Blue, because it led to a great conversation about our communal ambivalence yet enjoyment of light fiction written primarily for women.  Book club also introduced me to Kaveh Akbar's Martyr!, which is one of the best books I've read in the past few years.  It's been so pleasant to look forward to our meetings, to have an additional nudge to read, and to finally be making friends who live nearby and are at a similar stage of life.

Taking care of plants and animals: I planted flower bulbs and potatoes in the past month or so and am so excited to see them growing.  I've also been so grateful for my now years-long daily habit of filling my backyard bird feeder and putting out food scraps for backyard birds and foxes.  It's such an extra little jolt of joy to see so much wildlife in our back yard.  I've also finally figured out how not to kill succulents (the metaphor of my history of killing them via overwatering does not escape me), and my growing succulent collection is on a shelf in my kitchen so I can enjoy it all the time.  They're so cute!  And then I of course also love caring for the abundance of inside animals in my house. <3

Staying connected to long-distance friends: Husband and I have gotten into a weekly routine of getting carry-out from the only decent Mexican food place I've identified in our area, and the drive is just long enough that it creates a perfect opportunity for catching up with friends and family.  Plus I get a burrito out of it.  And speaking of Mexican food, a month ago my best friend and I took a long weekend trip in Mexico together to celebrate both of us having milestone birthdays, which is the first time we've traveled just the two of us since 2009.  While that delay between trips is completely atrocious, the trip itself was amazing!  We swam with sea turtles!!!

Recovery: I've recently made some major breakthroughs in my recovery work, and I feel ever more aware of the cumulative benefits of sustained recovery work in my life.  If there's any one thing I can give credit for my overall sense of well-being, it's this.  Plus the pandemic (not entirely) ending really helps.

Activism: I've been consistently engaged in activism with two major causes that matter to me as well as regular direct mutual aid.  It is so meaningful, powerful, and grounding to be involved in collaborative efforts in support of causes that deeply matter to me.  The only way that's been possible is because of the willingness of the groups I'm involved in to meet by Zoom or in a hybrid format and to schedule most of their recurring meetings in the evenings (and also the availability of shifts to do mutual aid that fit into my work schedule).  The fact that I can join meetings while finishing up kid bedtime if needed is such a game-changer that allows me to still participate and feel engaged.  I'm so grateful this work has been accessible and feasible for me, because I genuinely think I would be losing my mind if it wasn't.

Shame Games: This is my lovingly pejorative moniker for the completely silly and low-skill games I've been playing on my phone instead of doing ANYTHING on social media.  I cringe a little bit extra playing them because, while the first game was an excellent suggestion from a friend for how to cope with the terror of the new administration, all subsequent games are a direct consequence of me succumbing to the ads embedded in that first game.  But here's the thing: we all need some amount of tune-out time to self-regulate, and spending mine playing my adorable little cat game or my Tetris knock-off game or my pretend tidying-up game is actually pleasurable and gives me a little bit of an albeit misplaced sense of efficacy, which Facebook and Instagram absolutely literally never did.  My life is genuinely better with social media fully out of it and my dumb little shame games in it.

Enjoying my home: I've had little breaks between sessions recently when I've just like... sat in my living room, or on my house's deck, or in our sunroom, and it is so calming and fulfilling.  I am so grateful for our house--we chose the perfect home for us, and it's so nice to be able to really soak that in.

Watching movies: In no small part because of the weekend childcare we've had for the past several months, I'm not only very much on track for my 30 movies a year goal, but I've also seen several in actual real live movie theaters.  What a dream!  It truly feels like the height of luxury to see a movie alone on a weekend afternoon, let alone to eat nachos while I do it.  

A notch even above that--and this is where the profound psychological gift of weekend childcare really kicks in--is the indulgence of seeing a movie that might not be perfectly suited to my taste--something that might be great but not for me, or simply fine.  After all, you know we love a fine movie here, and we honor that they very much have their place.

Don't get me wrong--a lot of the movies I've seen in theaters have been so good!  But seriously, to be able let go of the perfectionistic, scarcity-mindset-based enjoyment maximalizing pressure that is a consequence of inconsistent or nonexistent not-only-covering-working-hours childcare is that I can just see a movie because seeing movies is fun, knowing that if this one sucks I can just see a different one next week and the week after that if I choose to.  It's such a gift.

And with that: I hope you're well and happy and whole.  If you're not, I hope these ideas are helpful to you, or that they help you to find your own ways of restoring yourself to greater wellbeing.  You deserve it, and you need it, especially during such a dark time.  After all, as we know:

Thanks for reading, friends.

{Heart}

Closing 2024: Resolutions Edition

Hi team,

2024 was a lot.

I don't know where to begin in trying to distill down everything this past year held.  Which probably means this is a valuable opportunity to take some time just to reflect on its events.

Personally, there was so much good in this year, including a lot of growth.  It is such an awe-inspiring delight to see my kids grow and for their personalities to emerge more and more.  I'm so proud of how our family is evolving, and I'm so grateful for the partnership I have with my husband.  My work, as always, is really rewarding.  Since our youngest child finally enrolled in daycare midway through the year, I've re-expanded my hours at work in a way that still feels sustainable, in part because I got to feel what it's like to do less than the maximum I'm capable of professionally for some time.  Our family got to take an absolutely incredible trip abroad, and I got to travel to see some of my favorite people.  It's been a really rich, fruitful year.

Globally, it's hard to feel anything other than heaviness.  I've been wrestling with this dichotomy between the micro and macro levels of my life, and I still don't really know how to hold it all at the same time, how to make sense of how one very different little world is nestled within the other.

This seems like as good an opening as any to look back at the resolutions I made for 2024, and to set goals for the new year.  My resolutions last year were:

1. Prioritize the things that make savoring life possible.

2. Watch at least 30 movies.

1. Prioritize the things that make savoring life possible.

My two-part version of what might be the most cringily-worded resolution I've ever made was to a) stay committed to recovery and self-care stuff, and b) prioritize my hobbies.  In all honesty, for the first half of the year, this was pretty much impossible.  Lack of childcare is just a crushingly immovable barrier for these kinds of endeavors, and unfortunately it took months longer than expected for a place to become available for our second child at the daycare our first child attends.

Once that was in place, it definitely made a lot of day-to-day life and work stuff easier, but it still wasn't enough for there to be space for any "bonus" stuff.  Recognizing that reality is what finally pushed me to find and commit to having a babysitter come for a few hours every weekend, long after a neighbor with young children recommended doing so.  Having guilt-free free time--self-determination time that doesn't come at the cost of my partner doing double duty for the duration--has made a huge difference in my overall mental health and the range of things I'm able to do on a semi-regular basis.  It's been such a life-changing gift.

And so, in the past 6 months or so, I've actually made significant progress toward this goal.  I've gone to see movies, met up with friends, started attending a book club with other parents in our neighborhood, read for fun, had quality time with Husband, and had some more time for writing.  I've also finally taken meaningful steps in deepening my recovery work and committed to doing that regularly, which feels so good.  There are still additional steps I want to take in that domain, but it's a huge relief, honestly, to finally start breaking through the emotional log jam that was stymieing my progress.

While I knew I desperately needed to fulfill this resolution when I made it, I wasn't confident I would actually be able to.  I'm so grateful to be able to say that I really did succeed with this resolution.  My life feels measurably brighter because of it--there have been many days when I've noticed that my ambient emotional state is just content, happy.  

Recently I've been recognizing that so much of that is a consequence of discipline; quiet, consistent, reasonably flexible yet generally unwavering commitment to doing what needs to be done, over and over.  Just as this is why there are flowers and wildlife to watch in my backyard, it's why I feel emotionally healthier now than I did just a few years ago.  It's why my kids are growing in all sorts of beautiful ways and my marriage is strong.  I'm just so genuinely grateful to feel the benefit of this routine, committed labor, and to know that that felt benefit is proof of not only my ability to improve my own life but also my interconnectedness with the greater world.

2. Watch at least 30 movies.

I'm pretty chagrined to say I *just* barely hit this target.  I saw some great movies this year, but I definitely did not have the stamina or time to watch one every week.  I'm glad I had the self-attunement and reality contact needed to set a movie-watching goal that was actually achievable, because I would have felt so crappy if I'd insisted on the usual 52 movies resolution and either fell way short or stressed myself out over something so ultimately arbitrary.  I do hope I'll be able to reinstate the one-movie-a-week goal at some point in the next few years, but I don't think that's going to happen soon.

I also didn't write nearly as much as I'd hoped.  In a way, the dramatic shift from writing the most posts I'd ever written in 2023 to the least in 2024 stings way more than the reduced number of movies I watched.  I never even finished writing the 2024 round-up post!  Even as I plan to retain the same movie-watching goal for the new year, I hope to write more in 2025.

So let's talk about goals for this year.

My resolutions for 2025 are:

1. Do sustainable, consistent, values-congruent things with my free time.

This includes doing things I enjoy, like building local friendships, connecting with long-distance friends, reading, writing, doing photography stuff, baking and cooking, taking walks, taking care of plants and animals, decorating our home, and I really do want to start playing VR again because I miss my cute minigolf game!  It also includes doing self-care and recovery work, including reading, attending meetings, meeting with other people involved in recovery, and hopefully beefing up my recovery work through further connecting with other people also involved in recovery.

Finally, I also want to take my own advice by participating in regular activism centered on the things I care most about using a collaborative approach and, where possible, continuing to engage in mutual aid.

Taken altogether, I know fulfilling this resolution will actively contribute to my overall wellbeing.

2. Watch at least 30 movies, and write at least 15 posts.

I think I would feel really good about meeting this resolution, which based on how this year went seems reasonable yet still like a bit of a reach.  Writing about movies is so grounding and enjoyable for me--I love being able to think deeply about what I've watched and share what I liked about them.  Doing even a little bit more of that would mean a lot to me.

And with that, as my oldest child busts into my office to blast me with my hair dryer (who knows why writing regularly is such a challenge??), I will sign off.

Happy New Year, dear friends.

{Heart}

A Brief Reprieve from Movies for Other Parts of Life

Hey team,

I'm going be quick today in the interest of ensuring I write something this month.

This past month has not involved a lot of movie-watching, but that's okay.  Instead, we've been traveling to see people and places that matter a lot to us, and taking time to recover from travel in between.

Probably unsurprisingly, getting out of the house for any extended amount of time with two children is a pretty heavy lift.  It helps that making that effort has been worth it--it's meant we can see people we love, enjoy places we love, eat food we love, and do things we love.  We've enjoyed beautiful light on beaches with gentle waves and easy days with extended family.

We also finally, finally got to return to one of the cities we previously lived in and still deeply love for the first time since before our First Child was born.  We started with a big family celebration for a loved one's birthday.  We then took the kids to a legendary museum where they got to see all sorts of animals (including dinosaur bones!!) and shiny rocks, then to the luscious, grand park at the city's center, and then out to yet another beach, all while enjoying the company of some beloved friends.

It's such a relief to finally bring these people and places back into our lives, and to finally begin to introduce our kids to the world more fully.  Yes, it's effortful to pack up our car and make the shlep, but I'm just so grateful that we finally can do that.  We've been waiting for so long.

It's also so thrilling that First Child is at an age where he really can engage with and understand these experiences more deeply than he could when he was littler.  It makes my heart feel so happy that he's talking about our trips and the people we shared them with days or weeks later, because he's capable of forming memories and thoughts of his own about those things more than he could before.  

I'm so excited for the experiences ahead of us as we return to these places and relationships over and over again from now onward.  After being so heartbroken that we couldn't do these things and see these people as a family because of the pandemic, perhaps we're at long last stepping into an era where they're actually, recurrently, possible.

I'm glad to share little snippets of these experiences, and I'm so grateful that I can look forward to sharing more in the not-distant future.

{Heart}

PS: It has not remotely escaped my attention that, within a few days of publishing my post about "Stutz" (2022), news broke of allegations of emotional abuse by Jonah Hill against one of his previous romantic partners.  I'm hoping to write a coherent part two to my original post that processes that news shortly.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! 2022 Edition

Hi team,

I hope you all had a nice holiday last week with enjoyable food and company!

It's time to reflect on the things for which I'm particularly thankful this year.

They are:

• My healthy, loving, sweet animals.
• The abundance and generosity of plants, flowers, birds, squirrels, chipmunks, foxes, deer, and all the living things I can see and enjoy from the windows of my home.
• My home, where I feel peaceful, grounded, content, and safe.
• Finally some degree of relaxation of our pandemic precautions due to multiple vaccines and boosters as well as the relief granted by the passage of time, which has made it possible to:
• See more of our friends and family.
• Travel to celebrate loved ones' weddings.
• Revisit some of our favorite places in our beloved City, with admittedly still a lot to reconnect with, someday.
• Finally enroll our Child in a sweet, cosy, welcoming, positive daycare where he can play with "the other babies."
• Podcasts that deepen my connection to my political identity, simultaneously helping me feel more informed, interested in the outside world, and connected to a community of like-minded people, especially because of the people in my life who also enjoy these podcasts.
• Finally some more time to read for leisure.
• Finally getting to go apple picking again, including taking my Child for the first (and second) time.
• Multiple outlets for support, growth, and recovery.
• Learning more and more what my boundaries are and actually learning how to set and maintain them.
• My clients and the reciprocal, life-enhancing benefits of my work.
• Opportunities to revisit one of our favorite beaches and our community pool, as well as to discover a new delightful beach where we can peddle around on Flintstone-like multi-seater bikes and watch dolphins swim, as well as already having concrete plans to return to our favorite beach next spring.

• Not to mention: Plans, multiple times postponed, to travel abroad this summer that may just actually happen this summer.
• Not to mention: Feeling hope and excitement for the next year instead of despair and dread.
• My Husband and his patience, thoughtfulness, support, creativity, hard work, and love.
• Sharing ever more of the world with my Child, including more music, stories, people, and places.
• My Child's hungry brain, sweet, joyful, and loving temperament, inventive spirit, and wonderful sense of humor, as well as absolutely every single aspect of my Child's existence and being.
• As my Child grows and becomes more of a kid than a baby, getting to introduce and deepen our practices around holidays and family traditions.
• The births of several beloved and eagerly anticipated babies, as well as a few beloved and eagerly anticipated babies to come in the new year.

And, as always:

• Anyone who reads this blog.

I hope you have this many and more things that have made you feel happy and whole this year, and even more ahead.

{Heart}

Antiracist Accountability: #DiversifyYourFeed Quadrux x Supporting Black-Owned Bookstores Redux

Hello friends,

All of a sudden, I am at a happy stage of writing antiracist accountability posts that they now not only require multiple installments to track positive developments, but the subjects of various accountability posts also continue to commingle!  This is fun in a way I did not anticipate!

Without further ado:

You will remember that I highlighted Mamadou Ndiaye (aka @mndiaye_97) and his excellent animal facts content as one of the (many) reasons that TikTok, when its algorithm is well-trained, is a source of seemingly endless delights.

In April 2021, Ndiaye's content was then featured on @pbsnature's account, which seemed like a very promising sign he was moving up in visibility.

Exciting update as of this month:

He wrote a book!!

It is entitled "100 Animals That Can F*cking End You", and it is available for pre-order now!

...Which brings me to the delightful mash-up of today's post, because this is an excellent opportunity to pre-order this assuredly entertaining and informative book, support an excellent Black content creator and educator, AND support Black-owned bookstores!

An very easy way to do that: Victoria Alexander is an anti-racist equity and justice educator based out of University of Maryland who also has great content on TikTok, including this video explaining a great, easy-to-use resource for purchasing books from people of color-, queer-, and women-owned bookstores instead of relying on Amazon.  She also provides several curated booklists on various antiracist topics.

If you want to use that book-buying resource pre-order Ndiaye's book AND benefit Loyalty Bookstore, one of the Black- (and Queer-) owned bookstores featured in my previous post about buying from Black-owned bookstores, you can use their bookshop.org link by clicking here!  (You can also buy through Ms. Alexander's personal link here, which will give her a small commission and is therefore a nice way to compensate her for her immensely important work!)

Enjoy!  And congratulations Mamadou!!!

{Heart}

Year in Review: What Even Was That Year? Edition

 Hi team,

I meant to use this time to write this year's Movie Round-Up post, but then I realized that I've gotten into a somewhat consistent routine of writing posts to summarize the recently-closed (or about-to-be-closed) year.  I'm going to take a crack at that instead.

To write such a post for 2020 piqued my interest as a unique challenge, given the year's lack of usual mile markers.  In past years, I've noted vacations, marriages, births and adoptions, graduations, trips to museums, and participation in demonstrations, all of which didn't really happen in my life in the last year.  The major events that did occur in the lives of people I love happened from afar, which is not to diminish the very important fact that some of those things did happen--despite the oppressive drear of 2020, pivotal moments like engagements, births, home purchases, moves, and marriages still took place.  Seemingly impossibly, everyone's lives did not actually come to a complete, screeching halt in that most arduous and trying of years.

As I have in other years, I used the pictures I've taken throughout 2020 to guide my recollections.  Unlike in previous years, there is a striking consistency in the contents of my photos from the last 12 months: they almost exclusively center my child, documenting tiny yet personally profound changes in their appearance, abilities, and interactions with the world around them.  This emphasizes just how much this year has revolved around him, to my joy and honestly to my salvation, when so much else about the world could have easily induced nothing but despair.

And then, in more closely reviewing my documentation of the year, a more complex picture emerges: We started the year with a seemingly endless parade of visits from family and friends who traveled from all over the country to meet our child and to offer their love and help as Husband and I were still negotiating the transition into parenthood.  At the time, I appreciated how precious the opportunity was to introduce our child to the people we love while he was still so little.  Of course, I couldn't have possibly fully appreciated just how precious and heartbreakingly fleeting that window of time ultimately was--I thought we just needed to do our best to exploit the relative freedom of my maternity leave.  When the world shut down two weeks into my return to work, it became clear that circumstances reaching far beyond the considerations of our little corner of the world were going to determine just how long we'd have to wait to present our child to the world again.

Those first few months were utterly crushing.  The isolation, uncertainty, surreality, fear, and deep sense of longing for our loved ones seemed intolerable.  I felt so grateful that, if I had to do my best to survive a plague pent up in my house, I got to do it with Husband, our child, and our small herd of creatures.  Focusing on our child and the small details of our home-become-bunker offered some comfort through an intensive, naturally-occurring mindfulness boot camp I on some level knew I wanted, although certainly not on those dire terms.  Later, talking small forays into our surrounding community on walks and drives mercifully broadened our initially tiny perimeter.

But at heart, human beings are pack animals.  We inherently, desperately need each other to be well and whole.  In late March, I started writing and posting daily conversation-starter questions in an attempt to cut through the bleakness of most social media content and still connect, even if just to hear people's opinions on fonts, foods, and John Mayer.

Then, in the summer, a reprieve: we figured out how to pull off a visit from a family member in above-and-beyond consultation with all the (admittedly confusing and at times lackluster) governmental guidance on how to do such a thing.  That was a critical turning point.  Since that first visit, several have followed--often with long tracts between them, often with a lot of stress, negotiation, and excruciatingly careful planning to make them possible, sometimes with last-minute delays or cancelations--all desperately needed and welcomed when they came to fruition.  

All things considered, we've seen more of our loved ones than seemed even remotely possible in the early days of the pandemic.  I so often have compared what has been possible in the last year with what would have been if things were different, and the grief I feel at all those lost moments of togetherness is overwhelming.  Looking at the year in photos is helpful--in retrospect, the year doesn't seem quite as empty and alone as it so often felt.

In recent posts, I've noted that it feels wholly indecent to give 2020 credit for anything good.  I still say a bitter good riddance to such a pain and suffering-filled year.  But it would be dishonest of me if I didn't acknowledge that I suspect, in the future, there will be an aspect of this year that I'll miss: the single-minded focus on now, on my family, and on all the people I love, on drinking in every precious moment we get together and intentionally, ruthlessly moving heaven and earth to make those moments possible.  When the world comes back, it simply will be harder to achieve that anymore.  I hope we all still can.

{Heart}

Snap Judgment: "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"

Oh hello,

So Husband and I saw "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" (2018) this weekend.  To continue the tradition established with "Jurassic World" (2015), I feel I have no choice but to write a follow-up Snap Judgment.

SO MANY DINOSAURS it's GOT to be great, right??
.......Right???????

Spoiler alert: my alternate title for this post was, simply, "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" is Terrible.  Feel free to continue reading to learn five bullet-pointed reasons this sentiment is unassailably true!

• Seemingly impossibly, an even less-inspired script than the last one.

In my review of "Jurassic World," I noted that the script was kind of excruciatingly bad.  Every line felt stilted and inauthentic, and every attempt at a zing-y one-liner rang pitifully hollow.  This is, I would argue, an impassable barrier to success for an entry in a movie franchise that was established by "Jurassic Park" (1993), whose whip-smart and infinitely quotable script is peppered throughout with jokes that offer a skillful, wry counterpoint to an otherwise bracing and thrilling adventure.

Well, somehow, "Fallen Kingdom" pulled off what is possibly an even worse script than "Jurassic World," because it didn't even seem to try.  There was a moment or two that threatened to produce a tiny smile, but these were generally sight gags.  None of the dialogue had any life to it whatsoever.

• Rampant necrophilic throw-backing.

There are too many allusions to the original "Jurassic Park" to count, and every single one made me want to angrily shout, "STOP DESECRATING A MOVIE I LOVE."  A selected list:

• Not one, but two T-Rex spin-and-roars.

You know the move.  It's the dinosaur equivalent of Blue Steel.

• Tapping raptor toe-claws.
• Not one, but two moments of child-escaping-being-eaten-by-dinosaur-by-slamming-door-shut-on-tiny-enclosed-space-just-in-time.  (Although of course I have a hard time believing that an old wooden dumbwaiter door would withstand "Fallen Kingdom's" version of the wOrlD's MosT tErRifyInG diNoSaUr, but whatever.)
• Raptors figuring out how to open doors.
• Someone possibly being squished under a car.
• Emotive moment in which a dinosaur fan/expert sees a Brachiosaurus for the first time.  (This might top the list of the most HOW DARE YOU-IEST moments of this stupid, stupid movie.)

What "Fallen Kingdom" seems to fundamentally misunderstand is that imitation of a great movie does not inherently confer that greatness to this film.  To the profound contrary, in this case it simply mercilessly drives home how lackluster "Fallen Kingdom" is, because it reminds you of how great its predecessor was.

• Clothes really do make the woman, evidently.

One of the many irritating aspects of "Jurassic World" was its bizarrely non-existent character development for Bryce Dallas Howard's Claire--except through her costuming.  Well, the profoundly irritating trend continues, to a point that is honestly so confusing I was left wondering, "But seriously, who is this person??"

Before: Spotless Ice Queen!

After: Totally Not That!

See, NOW Claire is wearing military green.  She is letting us know, solely through color choice and with absolutely no explanation, that she isn't a prissy soulless corporate lady anymore; NOW she's an animal rights-loving doe-eyed bleeding heart environmentalist.  Now she's SO committed you guys to saving endangered animals (and by "endangered animals" I mean "ravenous deadly resurrected crimes against nature").

So how committed is she?

She is SO committed that, unlike LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE who has ever survived a dinosaur-driven debacle in the Jurassic universe, she is totally down to go back to the island that houses the creatures that ate her assistant (TWICE) while also killing and maiming countless others.  Everyone else who was invited back was like, "Hey that was actually a bit traumatic so no thanks," but she was like, "I have a ponytail now, so I can do anything!!"

Scriptwriters Please Note: This is NOT how you write a convincing female character.  Next time, please try giving her thoughts that she sometimes says out loud and that actually make sense in the context of her life experience.

• Utterly stupid plot twists.

I'm not wanting to get too excessively spoiler-y, so I'll just give some examples:

• Dinosaurs with racing stripes.  You can tell this one is EXTRA scary, because its stripe is yellow!
• Clarifying question: Is cyanide gas even a thing?  If so, why have it just out and about in catastrophically large quantities?
• IS she your granddaughter?  Well IS SHE??
• STOP RUINING BD WONG.

• Literally no substantive resemblance to the original.

See, I'm upset about "Jurassic World" and "Fallen Kingdom" because "Jurassic Park" is truly a special movie.  I assert that not simply because I fought my parents to see it when I was a scant few years shy of its PG-13 rating, not because my perspective is skewed by seeing it for the first time with the eyes of a child.  As you know, I watched the move again relatively recently, and it still holds a formidable amount of power.  My beef with Steven Spielberg is solidly on hold when it comes to "Jurassic Park," because it is just a damn fine movie.  

What "Jurassic World" and "Fallen Kingdom" are lacking is not just a snappy script.  It's not just missing John Williams' beautiful, compelling score, although good God it sure hurts not to have it.  It's also that there is no spirit of scientific study and discovery, lived through scientists who have studied these creatures across millennia and toiled to answer unanswerable questions.  

It's also the lack of pacing, not having any idea when to hold back on the reveal of a terrifying row of teeth or literally gut-wrenching claw or a volcanic eruption and when to hit the gas pedal in the Jeep.  

Fundamentally, these movies are missing the ability to elicit the full range of emotions that "Jurassic Park" created: the visceral dread, throat-tightening fear, and most importantly, the wonder and awe.  Given the opportunity, who wouldn't take the chance to glimpse a real dinosaur?

This brings us to the problem with any sequels to "Jurassic Park," I suspect: Dinosaurs can't become boring.  If you're trying to improve upon the scary-factor of a freaking Tyrannosaurus Rex, you have simply missed the boat on this premise.  If you're not letting us access the era-that-never-was joy and thrill of seeing a towering herbivore for the first time or caring for a sick Triceratops, you don't get the point.  

If that original spirit was somehow retained in the movies that have followed, I would not be able to complain about them nearly as stridently.  Because those movies would at least be trying to honor the film-making excellence of "Jurassic Park."  But instead, they just want to cash in on the fact that dinosaur-loving suckers like me will buy a movie ticket just on the off-chance they can genuinely relive seeing that first Brachiosaur.

Shocking no one, I gave "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" a 1.

{Heart} 

2017 Movie Round-Up!!

Hello!!

It's the most magical time of the year: time for the annual movie round-up!!

This is a particularly happy occasion because:

a) I am pleased with myself for writing this post before the end of January, because one of my resolutions for 2018 is to write at least a teeny bit more often than last year, and

b) because I watched extra movies last year and that makes me happy!

Without further ado: 

The PsychoCinematic Year in Movies

2017 Edition

1. There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane (5)

2. Arrival (5)

3. Asperger's Are Us (3.5)

4. Wishful Drinking (4)

5. Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart (4.5)

6. Hidden Figures (4.5)

7. I Am Not Your Negro (5)

8. Glory Daze: The Life and Times of Michael Alig (4)

9. My Friend Rockefeller (3.5)

10. Get Out (5)

11. Kedi (5)

12. Personal Shopper (4)

13. Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (4)

14. The Innocents (5)

15. Frantz (2)

16. I Called Him Morgan (5)

17. Under the Shadow (4)

18. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 (4)

19. Casting Jon-Benet (3.5)

20. Alien: Covenant (2)

21. Wonder Woman (4)

22. My Cousin Rachel (4)

23. The Lego Batman Movie (4)

24. Mommy Dead and Dearest (4.5)

25. The Big Sick (4.5)

26. Looper (5)

27. The Beguiled (2)

28. The Girl with All the Gifts (4)

29. The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography (4)

30. Step (5)

31. Dunkirk (3)

32. Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George's Creators (4.5)

33. Wind River (3.5)

34. Paris is Burning (5)

35. Ingrid Goes West (4)

36. Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race and America (5)

37. Masterminds (1.5)

38. Rough Night (3)

39. The Little Hours (2.5)

40. Battle of the Sexes (4)

41. Lucky (3.5)

42. It (4.5)

43. The Blackcoat's Daughter (4)

44. Blade Runner 2049 (4)

45. I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (4)

46. Thor Ragnarok (3)

47. One of Us (4)

48. The Look of Silence (5)

49. Oklahoma City (4.5)

50. Loving Vincent (4)

51. Lady Bird (5)

52. Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (4)

53. The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin (2)

54. The Disaster Artist (5)*

55. The Shape of Water (4)

56. 32 Pills: My Sister's Suicide (4)

57. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (5)

That's right: 5 whole extra movies!!

One nice pattern over the course of 2017 is that I kept up a pretty consistent pace in my movie-watching throughout.  I was further enabled in my movie consumption by finally putting into place some quality-of-life-enhancing limits on work, which had the desired effect of giving me more time to do things that matter to me and more space to feel in balance.  Yay!!

So let's start off by taking a look at the sub-optimal movies I saw in 2017:

For having a lot of potential to be interesting 

but ultimately being about a self-pitying murderer/coward rich guy, which: NOPE:

Frantz (2016)

For creating the cringeyest flute scene imaginable:

Alien: Covenant (2017)

For drowning in toxic masculinity and also 

for completely erasing the existence of enslaved men and women in the context of the Civil War 

and instead centering on the plight of white women making dumb decisions??, 

or more succinctly: For super problematic white feminism:

The Beguiled (2017)

For being the kind of film about which my most glowing praise includes 

"It is a movie that exists," and "It is short":

Masterminds (2016)

For blunt force boringness:

The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin (2014)

In some ways I'm oddly disappointed to have so few entries in this category this year.  It can be entertaining to hate on movies that were particularly bad.  On the other hand, it feels kind of ridiculous to be unhappy I was fortunate enough to see many movies I really enjoyed.  Obviously this is in most ways the best outcome in reflecting on a year of viewership.

This year, I'm inclined to make my choice based on the egregiousness of the not-greatness.  This year's choice for worst movie had a great cast.  Its director previously created a movie I enjoyed (and that has a pretty solid, atmospheric soundtrack).  And it exists in ignorance of the question, "Can we seriously please work on our intersectional allyship and not make white people the center of everything especially when it's really inappropriate??"

The worst movie I saw in 2017 was therefore:

And next!

Compared to the number of not-so-great movies, I had the exact opposite problem in 2017: SO MANY GOOD MOVIES.

NO.

TOO MANY GOOD MOVIES.

It actually is really exciting to have this level of challenge in choosing the best movie of the year!  The best-rated movies I watched in 2017 were:

There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane (2011)

Arrival (2016)

Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart (2014)

Hidden Figures (2016)

I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

Get Out (2017)

Kedi (2016)

The Innocents (2016)

I Called Him Morgan (2016)

Mommy Dead and Dearest (2017)

The Big Sick (2017)

Looper (2012)

Step (2017)

Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George's Creators (2017)

Paris is Burning (1990)

Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race and America (2016)

It (2017)

The Look of Silence (2014)

Oklahoma City (2017)

Lady Bird (2017)

The Disaster Artist (2017)*

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

In looking at this list, one pattern that emerges is the incidence of true-crime related documentaries like "There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane," "Mommy Dead and Dearest," "Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart," "Oklahoma City," and "I Called Him Morgan" (although this last film is much broader than to only focus on the death of legendary jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan).  "The Look of Silence" is a particularly impactful entry in this sub-category of the year's great movies, as through the lens of one man's brave confrontations of the perpetrators of his brother's brutal murder, the film's sweeping scope encompasses the Indonesian genocide of the 1960s.

There are also entries that testify to inspiring lady badassery.  "The Innocents" tells the chilling and complex true story of a convent of Polish nuns who were sexually assaulted by Russian soldiers and the French woman doctor who came to their aid.  The latest "Star Wars" is a testament to the compelling power of a young woman jedi surrounded by a diverse cast packed with commanding women and people of color.  "Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George's Creators" tells the surprising story of the couple who created Curious George, including their harrowing escape from Nazi-invaded Paris by bicycle, and Margret Rey's formidable dedication to keeping her husband's legacy alive (it also happens to feature work by two awesome friends of mine).  "Hidden Figures" uplifts the brilliance, resilience, and self-determination of the Black women who made major NASA missions possible.

* This list unfortunately includes an entry that is now clearly problematic due to the involvement of James Franco, who has been accused of sexual misconduct.  I learned of these allegations after seeing "The Disaster Artist."  It really sucks when great projects are tarnished by the unacceptable and avoidable exploitive misbehavior of the people involved.  It of course sucks way more that this behavior impacts their colleagues and can destroy the careers of people who deserved to work unexploited.  The good news: there are so many other movies to see and voices to be heard and we as audience members and ticket-buyers can make ever more informed choices.

And here is where I've gotten stuck over and over again in making my decision.  I think I'm ready to make my choice, but first I want to highlight some very close competitors:

"Step" is a deeply compelling, heart-gripping documentary about young women in Baltimore brought together through their high school's step team.  As the first graduating class at their all-girls charter school, the pressure is on for each portrayed team member to make it into college despite the significant barriers presented by poverty.  It is a beautiful and clear-eyed portrait of the city of Baltimore as well as the young people boldly fighting to make better lives for themselves.

You may already know my feelings about "Kedi."  Honesty time: I cried just watching the trailer for this movie.  I am perhaps too invested in cats.  I was already so moved by the gorgeous footage of street cats in Istanbul that I had no idea what a deeper and soul-soothing gift this film would be because of the testimonials of the custodians of the portrayed animals.  It is such a beautiful portrayal of compassionate, care-taking masculinity and therefore a film this world desperately needs.

My favorite movie of 2017, however, is a film I deeply wish every American would see.  It gives an incisive overview of the history and current state of race relations in America and is therefore an excellent and critical primer for anyone wishing to understand better the ongoing legacy and impact of racism in this nation.  It is not an easy film, but it is a necessary film.

My favorite movie of 2017 is:

Looking forward to another year of great movies with you, friends.

{Heart}

PS: Here's one of my favorite clips of James Baldwin from "I Am Not Your Negro."  It's a great concise argument to have in your back pocket (or handy on your cell phone) for any time someone tries to say racism doesn't exist in America.