I usually create ten prints per week of these images; I’m taking a break until 2022. Weekly prints will return soon!
A note for you, if you’re having a bad day.
Hello Friend,
There’s no way around it: the capital-H Holidays are charged with expectations. No matter what you’re doing (or not doing) this year, the existence of expectations around Particular Days is difficult to avoid, and it’s a lot. Here are a few expectations you might have, regardless of whether you’re fully conscious of them:
Spend quality time with the people you love.
Give presents to everyone you love that are as-good-as or better-than the presents that they give to you.
Receive presents that remind you that you are valued and thought-about in your absence.
Get through gatherings your family-of-origin without major conflicts or a resurgence of old, childhood trauma.
Eat great food and feel satisfied by it.
Enjoy a Holiday tradition. (Like watching a movie, lighting candles, making cookies, trimming a tree, singing a song, etc.)
Capitalize on time off with friends or chosen family.
Take care of your health by sleeping, eating well, not exposing yourself to others (Hi, Covid), and going on walks.
Not have any expectations at all.
Indeed, expecting to not have any expectations at all is itself an expectation, and you may have experienced what it’s like when that paradoxical expectation is dashed. You go to meet up with someone or do something and you realize that you’re disappointed with how it went; you feel a little empty and sad about the encounter (or lack of encounter). Then you’re mad at yourself for feeling disappointed or sad, because didn’t you PROMISE yourself that this year you weren’t going to let yourself expect anything? And then there your subconscious went expecting something anyway, without your consent? What is WRONG with you that you can’t just expect to not expect anything!?!
And honestly, all of the things on this list have the potential to backfire — and more often than not do — when the Holidays come in winter, where there’s not much light, and everything is cold, and we’re subtly cued to constantly be existentially reflecting on the passing of another calendar year. Add heightened expectation to that and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
So here are a few things you can tell yourself when you realize that you’re feeling gloomy, despondent, disappointed, emptied, miserable, and joyless in the midst “The Most Wonderful Time of The Year.” I’ll write them in mantra-format, because that’s most helpful to me, but feel free to remix them however you want. Be your own emotional DJ.
“I’m feeling disappointed. That’s OK and normal, and this feeling won’t last forever. I don’t have to change it. I don’t have to perform any other emotions. I am allowed to feel the grief of this moment.” (Feel free to use the bathroom as an escape, as Joe Pera suggests.)
“There’s been a conflict. That’s OK and normal. It’s OK for me to disengage from this conflict until I feel safer or better — and that can be in March, or summer, or never. I am not responsible for fixing anything right now."
“Just because I didn’t end up [insert a task, like mailing presents or baking cookies, etc.] doesn’t mean I don’t love the people in my life, and it doesn’t mean they don’t know I love them. I am worthy of their love even without having to give them tangible proof."
“I got sick. That’s a major bummer. But it’s not because I tried to get sick or wanted to get sick or threw caution to the wind. It’s not my fault that I am sick. Being healthy is not a moral position."
“I ate / drank / watched TV / smoked more than I wanted to. It was an adaptive, self-soothing behavior, and while its long-term effects don’t make me feel great, it makes sense that I used it as a tool this season. I was doing what I needed to do to survive when survival was especially difficult. Tomorrow is a new day. I’m moving forward.”
“The Holidays are over and I didn’t do all the things I meant to do. But did anyone?! Social media, where I’m getting my evidence, presents a skewed version of reality. It’s not actually possible to have a perfect holiday. I’m not alone."
Best of luck in these darkest of days. Next time I write to you, there will be more sun.
Love,
Sophie
Add this to your to-do list.
Give yourself a massage. There are few ways to do this. You might get some nice-smelling lotion and massage your own palms or the soles of your feet. You can reach back and give yourself a neck massage. Use a tennis ball against a wall to massage your own back. Try tapping along your temples and jaw bones with your fingers.
Offer a mini-massage to someone else. It is very special to offer to wash someone’s feet.
A drawing.
Enjoy this colorful cat, from the archives.
Also, years ago I wrote this (satirical) quiz about WHAT MADE FOR TV CHRISTMAS MOVIE ARE YOU. It remains very relevant today. Some screenshots:
Click to read the whole thing.
What’s on my mind this week.
(This will be about new parenthood. Skip it if you don’t want to read about new parenthood.)
T is almost seven weeks old, and she is fussy. One thing I learned about pregnancy and parenthood is that if you Google anything, you’ll find evidence that it’s A Thing. For example, last night I Googled “6 week baby fussy” and came up with a slew of articles about how T is going through a normal growth spurt and it’s very normal that she’s fussy; OR she has colic; OR she is dying. But I’m pretty sure I’d get the same result if I had Googled “2 week baby fussy” or “3 year old baby fussy” or “36-and-a-half week baby fussy.” It’s a funny idea to me that there might be some week of existence that no babies are fussy. Like, what if every single baby at 14 weeks was universally unfussy? And if you Googled “14 week baby fussy” Google would turn up no results, or only websites that said, “No babies are fussy at 14 weeks. You may be dealing with a wombat and not a baby.” For me, it has been absolutely true what they say about every single day being different; like a video game that barrels forth whether or not you beat the level. And as soon as you DO beat the level (baby massage UNLOCKED!), a NEW level that seems totally out of your depth is just hurled at you. You don’t even get to push Save and get a snack. You have to go on to the next thing, often without sleeping, and if you fail, PEOPLE CAN DIE. I think every day about how my mother had do this for me, and she didn’t even have an iPhone. (This may have been to her benefit, because as I’ve written before, Googling is a terrible thing to do as it relates to pregnancy, birth, and parenting.) Also, I never ever ever believed that there would ever be a time that I would be so happy to look at someone else’s poop. But T’s poop is the highlight of my life.
Extras.
This is a controversial stance, but I realized this week that peanut butter cookies are my favorite kind of cookie. This recipe was great. (Here are some vegan peanut butter chips you can buy online, or make your own! And Bob’s Red Mill egg replacer is best for cookies, if you’re veganizing. )
Luke started watching these Epicurious ingredient swap videos, and I agree that they’re pretty relaxing.
“The Sex Lives of College Girls” started a little clunkily for me, but I ended up loving so much about it. It surprised me and also made me feel happy. Also, Bethany told me (and this may be obvious to you) that that girl is Timothée Chalamet’s sister?!
Sorry not sorry: “Single All The Way”’positively slapped and if you weren’t sure that Jennifer Coolidge was a national treasure, this will see the deal.
A new tanager was discovered by Argentinian scientists in Peru!
I think I’m in love with everything about the artist Zoe Si.
By the way, the solstice has passed. This is a great opportunity to celebrate every day for the next six months, because it only gets brighter.
The annual New Yorker cartoons and puzzles issue came out this week. This is a really important artifact to me; when it came out two years ago, I got in the bath and read it cover to cover. I fell in love with everything about it, and I got this kind of deep-in-my-bones feeling that I should pay attention. Before I got out of the bath, I decided that I wanted to be a cartoonist. I spent the next year working toward that idea, and now I introduce myself as a cartoonist without blinking. It’s not just that my career has take a sharp turn towards cartoons (although that too), but I also have learned about so many other artists who have shaped the cultural landscape around cartooning over the past century and who are still doing it tot day. This whole world has opened up to me and it is funny and weird and cool and beautiful and I wouldn’t know about any of it without that issue of the New Yorker. Also, this may sound cheesy, but listen to your bones. They know stuff.