Taking Personal Days Is The Ultimate Flex For Mental Health, So Book Them.
Dearests! I’m taking a mental/physical health day off of work to get some appointments taken care of, so I let myself sleep in until 5:45 am (gasp!), turned off my Outlook/Teams/Slack notifications and hope to go sit and read these long reads in a park once I get through everything. And consider this the sign you need to book that PTO, schedule that check-up, go do five minutes of meditation, do anything that helps remind you you are a person that deserves care and attention. Man, this newsletter has taken a hippie self-care bent as of late, but dammit, I think we need it y’all.
LONGREADS!
Dan Sinker, Parents Are Not Okay (The Atlantic) - To all of you with tiny humans in your households, I may not know what you’re going through right now, but my god, I’m thinking of the horrible and hard choices you’re making right now.
Anne Helen Petersen, From Burnout to Radicalization (Culture Study) - And if you’re wondering why this newsletter has become more of a self-reminder to take care of myself, Petersen’s piece reminded me that we’re not alone in our hunger for change, for SOMETHING to make all of this easier. I may not be a parent, but I know I’ve become much more, um, opinionated in these last couple of years, which I didn’t know was possible (see: healthcare, taxing billionaires, taxing companies, enforcing carbon caps, TAKING YOUR DAMNED PTO to the very last day, societal rejection of disinformation mongers).
Josef Adalian, Inside the Jeopardy! Host-Hunting Meltdown (Vulture) - I haven’t read past the second graf yet, but I cannot wait to do so: “While Schadenfreude rivals greed and vanity as one of Tinseltown’s key energy sources… there is no pleasure being derived from watching Alex Trebek’s legacy trashed in real time by the sleaziest host-replacement process since Jay Leno conspired with NBC to screw over Conan O’Brien.”
Susan Dominus, He Was the ‘Perfect Villain’ for Voting Conspiracists (New York Times) - It’s easy to get wrapped up in the reality TV-addictive nature of politics right now, but when you zoom in on the individuals swept up in the repercussions of extremely online, the grim reality of our current political smacks you in the face.
Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny, Clamoring for ivermectin, some turn to a pro-Trump telemedicine website (NBC News) - Speaking of broken systems, I’m going to go curl up in fetal position in my couch cushion fort, KTHXBAI.
You rock. You will get through this. Be kind to yourself.
xoxo Amy