Did I Order A New Pair Of Yoga Pants After Swearing I'd Only Buy Real Pants When I Got The Vaccine? Heck Yea I Did, I'll Be Comfy At Home Until I Get That Booster, Thank You Very Much.
Dearests! It’s the second to last Monday of August 2021 and I am ready to drink some coffee and stare down my terrifying inbox. LET’S GO.
Interwebs, ahoy!
If you read one thing this week, let it be Sara Benincasa’s These Were Our Years: A dispatch from the summer of 2021, but maybe do so before you put your mascara on. It’s charming and haunting and… just read it: “To be sad and frightened and weary is the right response. People are dying. People are in pain. I can do some of the helpful things, the good habits, the healthy behaviors, and I must do them, but sometimes the bad feelings will come in.”
I hate the American healthcare system with all of my broken-legged being, but maybe market forces can drive vaccinations? All I can think of is how many more bankruptcies there will be: The Cost Of Being Unvaccinated Just Went Up — Most Insurers Are Passing Costs Back To Patients As Covid Hospitalizations Soar (Forbes)
Because this is me right now: The Quiet Rage of the Responsible (The New York Times)
(BTW, none of the following will be new to regular players, so please don’t judge this n00b) Over the past six months, I’ve been participating in a weekly role-playing game with a few of my dear friends. I never played games like D&D growing up, but have been having so much fun getting over my self-imposed censorship (“this is a stupid idea, don’t say it out loud” or “that’s not clever enough, no one will want to do it” or “how the heck am I supposed to know what this NPC’s name should be (frantically googles cool-sounding names)” and nerding out every Sunday night. Musing on how stories are constructed en masse is nothing radical for those who’ve played their entire adult life, but for me I’ve enjoyed watching the challenges and joys of facilitating multi-way improv with a random dice mechanic across a group of A-type late 30-somethings. Friend of the Missive Aaron, the excellent GM who invited me to play in my first campaign earlier this year, passed on this Reddit post ‘Are You Sure?’ about the intricacies of how to guide players without hampering creativity and… I think it’s actually a good management advice, in general? Adding it to my repertoire.
And finally, this is the most random story and it made me smile but also realize that there are a few of you Friends of the Missive who weren’t born when this website was made, and I feel real old now: Dole-Kemp '96 campaign website finally disappears (Boing Boing)
Go drink some water, take five minutes to meditate, and be kind to yourself, ok? You’ve got this!
xoxo Amy