hu cares | prayer for relief

WHEREFORE, Jane prays for judgment and seeks relief against The Horrors as follows:

1. The powerful wield their power for good, and face consequences when they do not;

2. The world not only make room for but protect those that speak quietly or have no voice at all;

3. That Jane figure out all that stuff in the Serenity Prayer;

4. That the public make an effort to understand what is really happening rather than accepting the comforts of confirmation bias;

5. That people realize that a free press is essential to democracy, and that while it is valid to critique coverage, no one outlet is going to get it right every time and those mistakes are not necessarily evidence of a grand conspiracy (“everything is a conspiracy if you don’t know how anything works”);

6. That we log the fuck off whenever we can, and:

   1. Continue living, if for no other reason than out of spite;

   2. Hold and show up for one another, both literally and through “can I complain for a sec” texts;

   3. Find one (1) way to make a difference in the world, no matter how small;

   4. Dance;

   5. Stare at the wall, look at the sky, snuggle a pet;

   6. Make art;

   7. Do goofy stuff just because you can, because goofiness reminds you of your agency, and because we need joy to continue.

Special shoutout to Taco Bell Quarterly for this skeet (are we really calling them that?)

I’ve started some version of this post a half-dozen times in the last two weeks, and it’s never quite felt right, because there’s too much to say and yet it all feels deeply boring and unoriginal. This weekend a friend and I met up to talk about an essay in which a critic argues that consciousness is inherently sad, and one of the 10 reasons he gives is that having a truly original thought — and therefore, genius — is rare. Sure, fine, but is the point of thinking really genius? I value resonance so much more than originality. I read to feel seen, to know I am not alone, so it follows that I must also write in hopes others feel seen by my words. It is a great mystery why men are so obsessed with the idea of a singular genius when the real magic lies in the joy of iteration, collaboration. But what do I know?

Things that feel like metaphors but I’m too exhausted to figure out what they are metaphors for

• On inauguration day I went to the transfer station and I watched 50,000 pounds of garbage be shoveled into a hole in the ground to be compacted.

• It keeps snowing at night (weird for the PNW), so we wake up to a gorgeous winter wonderland — but by mid-morning it’s either all melted away, leaving me feeling gaslit that it snowed at all, or it turns into icy sludge.

• Because of the snow, garbage collection on Wednesday was cancelled, so all the Wednesday customers were told instead to put out their trash on Thursday, and that all other customers would have their pick-up delayed by a day. But on Thursday, it was cancelled again and customers were told to just put out double the amount of trash next week at no cost. I am a Friday person. What should I do?

Unsolicited recommendations

• Brushing your hair with a stiff comb and/or standing on a spiky massage ball. Feel the stress leave your shoulders. Maybe your back will even crack.

• Blood oranges.

• Josh Santana’s jazz covers of the best three pop records of 2024: Chappell’s Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess, Charli’s brat, and Sabrina’s Short ‘n’ Sweet. Perfect music to accompany email-answering.

• Getting matching sweatshirts with your dog and wearing them at home 24/7. (This was actually a surprise from my partner, who is a genius.)

• Moving all your chats to Signal, just in case.

• Putting your phone in a box and walking away from it for hours.

• Taking a deep breath.

Coming up

• I’ll be at SXSW in March for this panel reviewing the state of psychedelics, where apparently we’ll be “opinionated”? Fun. Looking forward to discussing with some of the sharpest minds in the field.

• Save the date! Why am I doing this? Because I can. (Also, see 6g from above.) Full route here.