How to Have Fun in the Apocalypse Suggestions 51-100
Mood: "Oof, kid, you're in for quite a ride. Buckle up and try to enjoy it."
Dear Friends,
Yesterday was my 34th birthday and today marks one year since starting this Substack. Having readers is an enormous privilege. Having paying subscribers is some kind of unthinkable dream. The best birthday present I could possibly think of. I thank you all deeply.
When I started this project, I hadn’t written in over two years mostly because I felt I had nothing valuable to say. My first post was a list. I posted only half the list out of fear that I wouldn’t have anything to say the next month, or maybe the month after that. I never sent out the second half of the list. I’m ready to let it go—the fear I’ll run out of things to say, the second half of the list. It’s here today below: How to Have Fun in the Apocalypse Suggestions 51-100.
In this last year, the apocalypse has gotten remarkably more worse than even my catastrophizing brain expected. 38,000 Palestinians dead at the hands of my own people. Trump on the verge of re-election. Climate catastrophe accelerating everywhere. And in about three weeks, I will push a little human out of my vagina.
My decision to have a child was not a radical act of hope. It is more like a contingency plan. Someone is going to have to fetch me water when I am old and there is no water. And who knows if we’ll have social security or if I’ll be able to save for retirement. After expressing this to someone, they asked me, “So, you wanna have a kid so you can impose yourself on it?” Basically yes. That is literally why people had kids for millennia. I am half-joking; I have always wanted kids. But only half joking.
Here’s how I currently feel about bringing a person into this world:
Once in college, while home for spring break in 2009 I ate mushrooms with my sister in the morning at the beach. The plan was to trip all day, come down, and catch my red-eye back to school in NYC that night. Bad plan. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the mushrooms took 7 hours to kick in and by the time I had to leave for the airport, I was fully tripping. My mom’s boyfriend drove me to the train. As I got out of the car, he said, “Oof, kid, well you’re in for quite a ride, I think.” He laughed and looked at me sympathetically. “Buckle up and try to enjoy it.”
The world feels more like a bad trip than ever. And it becomes increasingly clear to me that life is a lot like having to take the blue line to O’Hare Airport where you try to check in for your flight but realize actually you missed it because what you thought was the take off time was actually the landing time and you feel very stressed but a gate agent takes pity on you and gets you on a another flight and you tell her you love her and then wait in line to go through security where you panic because maybe you accidentally left weed in some pocket and are about to get arrested forever and then go sit at a gate with violent fluorescent lighting and a loud, relentless PA where you run into two boys who bullied you in grade school who are bizarrely eager to chitchat and then escape them only to go sit in a crowded metal tube breathing other people’s farts for hours and then wait for and sit on a very slow bus to get to the 1 train on which a man with red eyes stares at you and then get off at your stop that smells like pee and then walk in worn out thrift store flats with your broken, wobbly suitcase in the rain to your apartment. And that’s if you’re lucky.
Last year, I introduced the first half of this list with this paragraph:
This is a list of things I want to do or remember to keep doing. It is a list of ways I am working on pulling my own head out of my own ass and ways we can assist each other in the lifelong project of un-assing our head locations. By this I mean: stopping selfing so much, getting better at seeing, coming alive to the world in all of its beauty and horror, doing what we can when we can to help. As my grampa said to me on the phone yesterday and many times before: "It's all improv theater. The question is asked of you and you respond with yes and then make your step over and over to each new question." Here are some ideas for practicing "yes."
I stand by that. But bringing a baby into the equation has me in a less romantic mood. “Oof, Kid, you’re in for quite a ride. Buckle up and try to enjoy it,” feels right to me. So here are 50 more ways I suggest you try to enjoy it:
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