Hello Again

A little debate, some books I've been reading, and then...

I’ve been consuming a lot.

Consuming a lot and outputting very little. I have been Cozy.

I’ve been reading so many books, mostly fiction. I’m up to date on all of my shows. I’m taking online classes in Peer to Peer Support. I’m on my last day of Crisis Text Line training. I worked 16 hour days for most of September and October. I went on a long vacation and took in my friends and new people. I’ve pinned lots of new places on maps and listened to new music. I’m doing plenty of scrolling.

Even when I *finally* opened up Substack to put something out instead of in, I felt my little noggin wander the home page. Let’s see what other people have been posting lately... Let’s see if something inspires what’s next… we can write after, surely.

But sometimes we just have to decide what’s next

And sometimes what’s next just means taking what you have right now and taking the next step.

The next right thing.

__

The cozy part of me has been driving for months now. And I like her. She’s found the perfect overstuffed chair (the one I spend hours trying to find online) and is layered in three blankets, an always perfectly warm cup of tea on the table next to the flashlight she uses when everyone else goes to sleep and she’s at the best part of the story. She’s reading now instead of watching TV and that feels good. So we’ve been letting her drive.

But another part of me has been nudging her lately. She flips the blankets off one of her feet. She replaces her bookmarks with scribbled quotations from the Deprivation Week of the Artists Way. She gently tucks her hair back and whispers “come write” in her ear. Slowly, it’s been working. She looks up sometimes and checks in around her. Today she closed a book she had finished. And she didn’t immediately open another one.

It’s time to make something.

It’s time for an all hands.

The parts of me, all of them, start to make their way to the table.

__

Ambition takes charge, immediately, as usual. Someone rolls their eyes, someone else beams with pride at her.

Alright, where do we start? Couch Stephanie, how depressed are we feeling today? Any other parts want to fight it out?

Uh. Can we not today? Do we have to go straight there. It’s been a couple months…

Don’t we need to post about the election and our feelings about it? Everyone else did.

A resounding, no all around. Maybe one not yet.

Okay, okay, maybe we could do a piece about filling our cup, on our trips with our friends, or on the boundary thing we’ve been implementing that has been really helpful, or the shit that is dating in our mid-30s. OR OR OR maybe we could do a piece on self care, I could even turn it into a worksheet and we could offer coaching to anyone who wants help working through it!

Oh gosh.

Self care? It’s been done. Boring. Do you really have something new to say about that?

Yes, I think so. And even if the words aren’t new, they’re mine and that’s something.

I don’t know if I want to make a worksheet right now.

Do we really think we should be offering coaching? Will people laugh at us?

We need to make the readers CRY people, CRY! WE have to cry! Those are the best ones! Rip my heart out - put it on the internet! Dramatic throws herself onto a fainting couch that she always keeps close by.

It doesn’t have to be so linear. Why don’t we all just write some separate pieces and then put dividers between them all and call it art?

We have been away and not writing too long for something that. A first piece back after a months long absence has to be brilliant or might as well not write it at all.

They’re going to expect more pieces once we start again.

We could write about the things we’re learning in peer to peer support training,

We should write the dream we talked to Blayne about yesterday. The project we’re so lit up about it. Make it fiction until we make it come true.

I might want to keep that to myself right now.

I might want to write it without the pressure this blank URLed page holds - paper would be better.

I need to TALK to COZY Stephanie about what she’s avoiding.

Cozy buries herself deeper into her blanket. Oh god.

It doesn’t matter what we write - we’ll lose subscribers

You shouldn’t care about the subscriber count.

Daggers. Shame.

Remember why we do this, y’all. It’s for us, right? Why did we start?

To help people.

To help ourself and hope that helps people.

So how can we help people today? What do they need? What do we need?

And what will also be brilliant.

Deep and important

Meaningful

Worth writing

Worth reading

Worth pushing to people’s already full inboxes and pinging their phones.

Worth time

Everything

Everything

Nothing

The sentences start to overlap. One part of me reaches for the remote to turn on the next episode of Survivor. Another reaches to shut the lap top. Someone is slinking away from the table. Dramatic Stephanie is storming up the stairs, dragging her fainting couch behind her.

What if… Cozy pokes her head out from the blanket fort that has erected around her… we ease in.

What does easing in look like?

What if I tell them about my books?

Your books?

I’ve read thirty books this year so far.

Thirty? I thought we were at 29.

I finished the thirtieth at 5am last night.

I was wondering why I was so tired.

I couldn’t stop. Sheepish but emerging. I haven’t read more than two in a year since I was in high school probably. I really loved some of them. Maybe we can just do that today.

Skepticism

But warmth

Okay, we can do that today. We can ease in. No one has to cry today. Or make art today.

Thank you.

---

Books

I’ve been using StoryGraph to catalogue my reading. I know most people are on GoodReads and I’m sad to miss the more social aspect of being in a space where more of my friends are, but fuck Jeff Bezos. Join me on StoryGraph, founded and run by Nadia Odunayo. My username is stephpf. Also if you don’t use Libby, the library app, check it out! It has been a big part of the reason I have gotten back into reading.

Here are some of my favorites I’ve read this year, all fiction or memoir-y:

I Have Some Questions For You - For some reason pieces of this book have stuck with me the most. It’s fictional true crime done well.

Build Your House Around My Body - my first foray into “horror” as a genre. I do not do not do not watch scary movies so I assumed I wouldn’t like to read that genre either. I loved this book.

The Space Between Worlds - Sci-fi fantasy about a girl who can travel to different worlds because she is already dead in most of them.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built - A cozy, short read about a tea monk who meets a sentient robot.

Marigold Mind Laundry - A book branded by my friends as a “very Stephanie book”. A woman with magic powers listens to people’s stories and washes their pain away.

Lord of the Butterflies - beautiful poetry by Andrea Gibson.

Group - A memoir about a woman’s journey through Group therapy. Some of the reviews say that her experience was more cult than therapy. Still loved it.

Heaven is a Place on Earth - A non-fiction exploration of communes and utopian experiments mashed with memoir.

Three books I thought would be overrated because of all of the hype, but I absolutely loved:

The Ministry of Time, Margot’s Got Money Problems, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

I’ve been consuming fiction like water (okay that’s not actually accurate because I’m terrible at drinking water. I’ve been consuming fiction like I wish I consumed water. Or I’ve been consuming fiction like I consume chai lattes.)

Here is some of the non-fiction I’m in the middle of. If you want to join me on one of these as an accountability partner I am actually really excited by all of them. Fiction just holds my attention better.

Cultish, The Other Significant Other, Bowling Alone, How Women Made Music, The Art of Community, and Let’s Move the Needle

---

---

Cozy, this was a good idea. I’m proud of you for taking the time to be cozy, for filling your cup with good words, thank you for remembering how much we like to read. I’m grateful to you for driving.

Teen me rolls her eyes, but she feels the warmth too. We allow her her tiny show, her ritual.

The rest of us just feel proud.

I like you. I like the choices you make, the life you create. I like the books you like. I like the thoughts you think while you’re reading them. I like the things you notice. I like what’s important to you. I like the way you talk to people, the way you show up. I like you.

But we ignored that phone call from a friend - and we didn’t go to the market we wanted to go to this weekend -

Yeah, that’s true. I still like you.

I like me.

What a revolution.

What a place to start.