In September, I wait
Some climate anxiety, some updates, the usual links!
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Every September is the same. I wait, for what feels like forever, for cold weather to finally appear. I remember decades ago when it would start to get cold in September and stay that way. I remember having to wear a big heavy winter coat over my Halloween costume in October. Global warming disturbs me. Climate change makes me weep.
I’m a fun time because I have climate anxiety and all kinds of other anxiety, too.
I get viscerally upset with the local meteorologists who present the forecast with glee when we have unseasonably warm temps. I get quietly enraged with small talk about how “great” it is to have 80 degree (26 C) days in autumn (I know it’s not quite autumn, but these conversations will happen, I’m sure). Maybe it’s the neurodivergence, but I have a very very difficult time with things that aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Thus, I have a very very difficult time with life.
In other, non-climate anxiety news: I have officially finished my book. I turned it into my editor on Sunday and it feels very weird. I will need to do some further edits, but that’s it. I can’t wait to market the shit out of my book. I haven’t really celebrated, because it feels weird that this thing I’ve been working on and incubating since 2015 is actually complete. I’m not quite sure what to do with myself. Good thing I’ve also been working on a book of poems that I plan to self publish! Switching up from memoir/autotheory to poetry is going to take me a beat, so I’m giving myself a brief respite. The book of poems, Lift Me Out of the Wound, will come out next year, but no set date at this point.
I’m excited about the prospect of new writing projects!
Here is a brief snippet from the introduction of The Guerrilla Feminist: A Search For Belonging Online & Offline:
I have never craved danger, because I have lived too many lives of it. I’ve witnessed and experienced violence online and offline and told repeatedly, “It’s not a big deal.” I’m chronically hypervigilant from various traumas, and the internet does not assuage this. Being online is messy, beautiful, and loud with too many heartbeats. It won’t get us free, but it’s a helpful tool for many of us to continue to exist in a world that doesn’t care if we live or die.
And:
This is a love letter to all of us who have found (and still find) belonging in online spaces. For those of us who cozied up to medical Reddit threads that made us breathe a sigh of relief, felt believed when we joined a private Facebook group about feminism that acted as a digital consciousness-raising group, and settled into the unsettling stories of #MeToo on Instagram and Twitter because we saw ourselves in them. We are here online and off. We can find these spaces online and off. We belong to ourselves and each other. All I’ve ever wanted in my life were friends, co-conspirators, love. I have this in some ways, and in others I’m still searching, longing.
As a human with multiple marginalized identities, I have struggled to find and feel belonging because of disabilities, illnesses, trauma, and online abuse. This is a book about a life of ambivalence, hypervigilance and a never ending search for belonging and love. I hope you’ll find a sense of community in these pages.
Anyway, The Guerrilla Feminist: A Search For Belonging Online & Offline will be published in early 2025. I hope you’ll get a copy (to buy or ask your local library to carry it!)
There’s Never Been a Better Time to Pick Up a Book About Media Literacy - Danika Ellis
US Militarism Is a Leading Cause of the Climate Catastrophe - Marjorie Cohn
Gentrifying beyond borders: How Americans displace locals abroad - Ingrid Cruz
When Threats of Violence Come to University Libraries - Ellen O'Connell Whittet
The banality of white male rage, again -
The activist-academic Silvia Federici has never muted her message to get ahead. What’s the cost of refusing to sell out? - Kelli Korducki
This song <3
Congratulations, what an accomplishment! I can't wait to read your book.
congrats on finishing your book!! huge!