|
|
The other day I did one of the most stupidly nerveracking things in the world and went to the DMV. This is a normal activity that my brain has decided is as dangerous as being near hungry, unsecured wildlife, and I had to take a Xanax the night before to be able to sleep and one morning of in order to handle going through the appointments (S! Plural! Multiple!) without experiencing complete and total mental collapse, which is stupid and embarrassing, but for which I am grateful anyway. I used to have to rawdog these experiences and it would be so stressful to me that I would be sick to my stomach. Not because I have any issue with these kind of bureaucratic processes — I think these kind of machinations are what the state should actually be doing versus alternating between killing its citizens domestically and sending them into pointless and evil wars to die — and not because I don’t like people or can’t handle small talk — I love single serving exchanges! I love to talk about the weather! I love to be an easygoing and compliant customer! — but because I have a gene-deep fear of anyone with any kind of authority over me — Yes! That includes the rude woman at the DMV intake counter! — and a well-honed fear of Fucking Something Up despite carefully and repeatedly making sure I had everything I needed.
Despite all of my dread and anxiety, both my license appointment and the vehicle registration went fine! I made two different DMV employees laugh and no one got mad at me for fumbling my papers or wearing a mask or having shaky hands. I got sweaty and uncomfortable and my license picture is an all time bad one — Have you seen a partially melted stick of butter with a mullet? Well the good people of the Minnesota Department of Safety sure have! — but the whole experience was fine. I won’t necessarily learn anything useful from this — Okay so what it went okay this one time! That means nothing about next time! — but it was nice to like, go through a bureaucratic process — one I believe in wholeheartedly! I think drivers should be licensed! And vehicles insured and registered! I think it’s good that these are part of the concept of public safety in Minnesota! — and have it work out fine, to make the appointment and have what I was supposed to and get it all done in basically about an hour. Did I feel bad for the people waiting the 3-4 hours to get served without an appointment? I did! But i also know that those agencies are perpetually underfunded and understaffed and they can’t serve the public perfectly from an empty cup, but they were all trying, even the rude, wrong gatekeeping front desk person was trying to make sure we were doing the right thing even though the thing she was telling us to do was not actually that.
Anyway, the actual point of all of this is that one of the services this particularly agency also offers — right there at the walk-up window next to the camera that took my melted butter photo — is marriage and while I finished paying the fifty bucks for my driver license, Tom Petty’s “Freefallin'” playing at a pleasant volume in the background, a couple next to me stood there and got married. After the ceremony was done all of us who were in hearing range cheered and clapped and the couple looked bashful and happy, standing there with their paperwork and their parents and it was both a little absurd — I had just listened to two guys in their late teens/early 20s have a detailed conversation about Minnesota sports while waiting to have my number called while Crystal was standing elsewhere listening to a man say that he was surprised there weren’t more mass shootings at DMVs — and also genuinely wonderful because life happens everywhere all the time when you’re expecting it and when you’re not and I really don’t know what else could be more magical.
ETA: I wrote this at the end of December and I edited and scheduled it on January 5th and then an agent of the federal government shot and killed a woman very nearby for daring to care about her neighbors being harassed and abducted. She wasn’t the first and I’m not naive enough to believe she’ll be the last.
I don’t have anything astute to say, I’m not sure that there is anything astute to be said about it, but I believe the people are stronger. I believe community is stronger. I believe we are capable of better things and I believe those better things are possible. I wish so many people didn’t have to suffer in the meantime. I wish the federal government wasn’t test driving military occupation.
If you’re able, please donate to MIRAC and food pantries that serve the Twin Cities area.
*: AI can pry the (poorly and regularly incorrectly used) em-dashes from my ass. They were mine first. Get fucked.
Everyone on the internet has been making these fun little graphics of their favorite things in 2025 and I was like, “Oh, fun!” and tried to do my own but between the horror that we’ve all accepted into our lives at the intersection of I-Guess-I-Have-to-Use-Canva and fuck-Adobe-I’m-not-paying-for-it-monthly and also feeling insanely fidgety and overstimulated I went, “Ah, fuck this,” and tapped out. Then I saw twelve people I think are actually kind of annoying do it, so also felt righteous in deciding to tap out. And then I was like, what the fuck am I doing, why don’t I just do this the way I used to? Words! That’s what I’m about! Thank god!
I watched a lot more stuff than I have in recent years in 2025 and I liked a lot of it, even though not all that much was super new to me. I liked the first episode of The Pitt but haven’t watched anymore because I don’t want to see All That while I’m eating which is when we’re usually watching something. We watched the first season of The Peacemaker which I was really shocked to enjoy as much as I did. We’ve watched five of six episodes of Heated Rivalry, which I’ve already mentioned enjoying. I liked the new Superman (enough to re-watch about half of it on cable when I ran into it at my parents’) and loved Biosphere and What’s Up, Doc? and felt very fondly toward the entire trilogy when I finally watched Lord of the Rings.
I read a decent amount — sixty books, seventeen of which were DNFs — and I really liked to flat out loved Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere (the only book of hers I’ve read, likely to be the last because her plots don’t usually interest me) and Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea and Natalie Sue’s I Hope This Finds You Well and Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles and Kate Folk’s Sky Daddy and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry, the last of which I listened to as an audiobook because I finally taught myself how to listen to them this year! Which also meant I was able to listen to and love the Beastie Boys Boook and to also reread both Heated Rivalry (for the third time) and A Deadly Education (for the second) which is particularly lovely because I’m not very good (or generally interested) in rereading things!
I did NOT listen to very much music this year which really pains me. I did make another year of monthly mixtapes (Every month since January 2020! Even amidst all the everything!) and so heard some new stuff in the process and I listened to a lot of the Beastie Boys as and after I read the book, which I do highly recommend, but the only albums I think I listened to in full more than once or twice were Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal, Dev Lemons’ Surface Tension, and Dinosaur Pile-Up’s I’ve Felt Better, which I listened to a lot a lot.
As I have probably already detailed more than enough 2025 was one of the most stressful years of my life, but so far it’s also had the biggest payoff. I’ve never just picked up my life and moved to a new place on nothing but my own volition before and it was really, really hard and tiring and stressful and I had the worst indigestion of my life for basically six months, but I also got to realize how lucky I am to be able to do it at all and now I get to live in probably the second most beautiful place I’ve ever been (I’m sorry, nothing is ever beating California) where I keep meeting nice people and there are interesting things to do and I get to keep doing a job that I like and feel fulfilled doing.
  
In 2026 I want to keep taking care of myself and connect with more people and the world around me. I want to go to a museum a month! And go out in public! And see live music! And maybe even go outdoors where there are bugs and creatures and plants and water! I want to write! I want to partake of many wonderful things other people have created! I want to keep donating money and helping out where I can and in the grand tradition of picking a word of the year, I want to outlast. I want to outlast all my bad thoughts and ill health, mental and otherwise, I want to outlast the people who wish I were dead, I want to outlast my own suffering. I want to outlast my short attention span and my bad attitude. I want to stick it out!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
I hope your 2026 is full of hope and positive change and comfort and joy and laughter. I hope you have your needs met and exceeded. I hope you find ways to share your wonderful self with other people and to make things. I know you’re a good one and we need you around.
Since we moved, Crystal has become obsessed with a Japanese stationery store nearby-ish and in turn has gotten me hooked on the Uni-Ball One gel pen in both the .38 and the .5 because it is a smooth, quick-drying, and easy writing delight as all pens should be tbqh.
We have also gotten hooked on Tous Les Jours because their iced tiramisu latte is bomb and also who can resist cases full of very beautiful fresh pastries? I love the strawberry croissant because I am basic and fine with that and also anything that has a sausage in it because they are making hot dog experiences I had never previously considered. Oh and the milk cream/cream cheese bread/danish type thing. And their milk bread loaf. Cloud cake also great… I actually don’t think we’ve had anything we haven’t liked except the egg tarts but that’s because I am not that much of an egg person and Crystal thinks she is, but actually isn’t.
I just re-read (well, listened and boy did I think that narrator was goofy) Heated Rivalry because I have been having a hard time reading in general and Spotify offered it up to me at the start of November (probably because I was listening to a lesbian hockey book that I ended up DNFing boo) and it was nice to revisit the story again because it is very soothing and very charming. I had kind of forgotten that the show was coming out, which we are now also watching and mostly enjoying (I would enjoy it much more if I never had to see/hear anyone else talk about it, but what can you do!!) and as I made acquaintance with Rachel Reid waybackwhen (She told me I should write a book!) I am absolutely thrilled for her so will continue to overlook the most annoying people in the world and their opinions.
Also I cut all my hair off! I have been experiencing insane emotional distress around my hair for like, I don’t know, five or six years at this point that I am sure is connected to all kinds of things, but I also developed an insane… not fear, but aversion to getting a professional haircut, so it’s mostly amounted to Crystal hacking off between four and ten inches of my ponytail every six to twelve months and calling it good, but as soon as we moved, I knew I needed to just suck it up and cut it and I went in and I did it even though I was freaking out and it was totally fine (Thank you, Hope!) and I got a pretty cute cut that even looks fine when I don’t style it and I am sleeping better because my hair isn’t driving me crazy and I don’t have a headache from pulling it back and I cannot believe that I lived with it for so long for no real reason. Feel free to take this as your sign to do something you’ve been putting off! Your life will probably get better!
Alright, I think that’s it! This month we donated to Anti-War Committee MN and to help our friend Tabby get back on the road, which, if you happen to have some extra cash and donate, I would appreciate with my whole heart! As always, please let me know if you have a charity you’d like to share: ashrocketship [at] gmail.
I hope your holidays are as busy as you want and as bright as you can manage. I know it’s rough out there, but I believe in us and if you need to take a break from believing for a bit, I’ll save your spot. ♥
Recently we went back to the city in which we lived previous to this new one and while sitting in the office at my job eating lunch with my dog and my coworker, the delivery guy came in. I held the dog up closer to him so he would know he was contained and the guy reached out while looking to make sure it was okay and Bruno sniffed and licked his hand while my coworker signed for the package and we all said goodbye and have a nice day and what have you. And then the delivery guy came back, maybe a minute later, back through the chill between his truck and our office and said, “Does your dog like treats?” and I said, “Of course,” and I held him up again so that he could take a chunk of treat from this guy. It had obviously been torn to be more siza appropriate and Bruno took it with the polite gentleness we have tried to train into him and I said thank you so much and the delivery guy left again and I was so struck by how sweet it was that I teared up. To take that extra time out of your day — in a job where any sign of what corporate deems inefficiency is punished — to be kind to my tiny little dog. To come all the way back. To carry treats because you see dogs on your route. I believe that kindness is inherent to humanity in many ways, but to make it action takes effort. What a lovely thing to witness.
Other good stuff:
– Smelling woodsmoke/campfire outside my living room windows on a chilly night because Minnesotans love their firepits
– The sound of a distant plane passing overhead
– Driving to one of the less developed areas around the cities on a Friday night and seeing lines of planes in every direction either preparing to land or taking off to parts unknown
– The absolutely unreal show of fall color we got for our first couple weeks
Okay! Not a bad month, I must admit! I donated to a local teen health clinic and RAINN. As always, please let me know if you have a charity you’d like to share: ashrocketship [at] gmail.
I really liked Margo’s Got Money Troubles. I thought the stylistic conceit of the POV shifts were clever and that it was funny!
I also liked Biosphere a lot! Sensitive! Smart! Funny! Took a goofy scifi premise and did some unusual stuff with it!
I’m obsessed with the NYT game Pips because I find it satisfyingly challenging (or infuriating depending on the day) but I can’t really recommend it because the NYT is a platform for evil. I don’t have a subscription and I don’t pay for the games and I block ads on the site, but I still feel a little gross using it at all and I shan’t wish that on you.
This month we donated to NPR and The Khartoum Kitchen to help feed people in Sudan. As always, please let me know if you have a charity you’d like to share: ashrocketship [at] gmail.
I don’t have a lot more to say this month because — fingers crossed! — as this posts I will be moving into a new house in a new city after being tortured by the efforts to do so for basically all of 2025. Hopefully I’ll have some cool shit to share in November!
|
|
