Dearest Reader,

Every morning, my cat, Hecate, and I engage in what can only be called aggressive petting.

I whip out a brush that sprays mist (who would’ve ever thought a cat would ASK for this?), and she basically shouts at me the entire time she runs to and leaps upon the topmost shelf of her kitty condo.

Whereupon she spends the next three minutes flopping about like a blissful walrus, chattering constantly, arrrrrrrching into the brush strokes and bonking the device so vigorously she ought to be concussed.

These minutes are among the best minutes I spend in a day.

Totally present.

Suspended in time.

Surrounded by love.

I used to think hustle culture held the key to everything I wanted. Now I know that what I want is more moments like this.

This topic has been on my mind a lot lately as I enter my S l o w era. There's a lot of unlearning to be done around the idea that pushing ourselves to do more, be more, have more is maybe not the secret to success after all. You can expect to see more thoughts on the topic of toxic productivity and slow living in the near future.

But for today, let's just say the best decision I ever made to draw a boundary between my mental health and all that indoctrination that convinced me I needed to hustle harder, was getting the fahk off social media.

The time is now, y'all. We're taking our lives back. We're telling the broligarchs we don't approve.

Stop listening to my staged conversations about dog food, Zuck--I don't have a dog--that I'm staging so I can PROVE you're listening to my conversations!

Aaaagh, how have we normalized this?!

If you're feeling itchy about taking the leap, I wrote this post for you:

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​Break Up With Social Media, But Make it Sexy​

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February is National Cherry Month Cherry trees come to life in February. This means you still have a few more days to celebrate nature with a Tart Cherry Mule Mocktail that doubles as a spell for love--and packs in the health bennies, too. It doesn't even need the bells and whistles, though; it's damn delicious all on its own. I'll have what she's having

This book is blowing my mind 🤯 And it's definitely to blame for many of my forthcoming thoughts on toxic productivity. One of the choice nuggets: "One of the sneakier problems with treating time solely as something to be optimized is that we start to feel pressure to use our leisure time productively, too." 🤯🤯🤯 Oliver Burkeman has obviously been peeking in my window. I MUST read this!