Bad luck and t-shirt cannons

Wow! Sometimes I have too many thoughts and too much time has passed since the last time I tried to make any sort of coherent update on things, so thinking of where to begin feels impossible. In a note on my phone I have labeled as “newsletter ideas,” it just says “serial monogamy and aligning with my values. Heartbreak. Friend heartbreak.” I mean sure, Josaleigh on November 6th, I bet you had a cohesive idea of what specifically you wanted to write about those things on that day, but here, me of 2025, older, has no idea what the fuck you were going for. Too vague. Next.

Speaking of older and wiser, I’m in the midst of a something that I keep calling a liminal space that started a couple months ago and engulfed my birthday, a trip to England, The Holidays, and Josaleigh’s Fuzzy Little House for (a) Senior Dogs in Surgical Recovery. Made worse by the fact that this web page thinks that “liminal” is not a word and keeps telling me to change it??!?

I think that lots of things can be portals. Big changes to your environments, behaviors, relationships, and routines can launch you like a balled-up 97.1 ZHT 2006 Jingle Ball t-shirt out of a t-shirt cannon into a crowd where each person with their arms outstretched is an entirely different way of being alive you didn’t expect. In continuing whatever that metaphor is, 2024 felt like an entire atmosphere of balled-up t-shirts, zooming to new wearers in all different directions in every imaginable color. 2024 was my first year of life entirely sober since the age of 17. I had three very core relationships change their entire shape. I learned about a new aspect of my physical body in that I was diagnosed with hyper-mobility and my entire relationship to exercise and strength and movement as a coping mechanism had to drastically change to keep myself from being constantly injured and in pain. We all have had to become aware of and irate about new and horrific ways that white supremacist capitalist patriarchy continues to murder our fellow human beings and suck the joy out of the very acts of creation, connection, and care that we require to be alive. It’s been . . . a lot.

In the midst of all of this Big Stuff, in the fall of this last year, I began unluckily also navigating a shit ton of really annoying Little Stuff. In two weeks in November, I had a mouse infestation in my kitchen, a flat tire that turned into needing to replace all four tires, a malfunctioning water heater, a letter from the city warning me of possible led in my water pipes, and my toilet backing up into my bathtub. Now I could be practical about all this and say, “well, yeah. This all makes sense. You’ve been living in this little house for a decade now, and since you got divorced in 2018, you’ve been pretty stubborn about asking for help with things and you’re really not all that handy, so naturally stuff is going to start breaking and backing up and going out on you and it’s just a pretty understandable coincidence that it’s all happening at once.” And I DID say that out loud to myself a lot. While cleaning up the mouse party under my kitchen sink in a mask and rubber gloves with bleach for the third time in a week; while waiting for a Lyft in the lobby of the Les Schwab at 7 AM after a good cry to the very nice mechanic; while on hold with the plumber for the third time in week after the nice receptionist said “wow, really?” when I told her why I was calling again. I was being pretty logical about it and only really stress-cried twice.

But I started to take things a bit more personally and let myself get a little Woo Woo about it all just couple weeks later, when I found myself following a water leak I found just outside my house to the back of the fridge, which appeared to be dripping water into the drywall in the kitchen for who knows how long. Which on its own wouldn’t have been so bad, if it wasn’t right after I had arrived home from the emergency vet that I’d been at for the last 6 hours after my dog went out the dog door the night before perfectly fine into a thick fog, and came back in 30 seconds later unable to use his back leg.

You know that scene in the Hudsucker Proxy where Mr. Mussburger is hanging upside down by his pants and he thinks about declining the “double stitch, she last forever!”? Well, I have thought about that scene a lot because in the middle of all my expensive November stuff, I ended up cancelling my pet insurance because they raised my premium and kept fighting me on everything I submitted. And I fucking said the sentence out loud to myself - “it’s not like he’s going to tear his ACL in the next two months while I catch up on some of these expenses.” Lol. Lmao even. He tore his ACL (CCL in dogs) not three fucking weeks later. The next appointment that was available for a consult with the dog surgeon was on December 10th, the morning of my birthday, and the day before I was leaving on a 10 day trip to England with my dad.

At this point I kept asking who cursed me? What witch did I piss off just a little but not enough to just kill me? Terrified that with my current luck, I was going to get sick before the trip, I hid in my house for the next several days, only to leave for the vet and to get groceries. I was so afraid that my dad and I would run into bad luck on our trip - it was my first time ever leaving the country. My passport’s maiden voyage. My first time playing a show outside of the western United States. But by all accounts I must have appeased the witch prior to our flight taking off, because the trip was an absolute delight. I’ll have to write a whole other newsletter on that bad boy because I’m still soaking it all in.

The absolutely bonkers thing to me today is, is that I’m really seeing the last few months as more of a test than a curse. I am not sure what the test is for or who is administering it, and if I find out I would like a word, but ultimately I think that the results are just for me. To know that I am more capable, due not only of being able to navigate stressful situations, but to adjust quickly to change. I have been making and working towards adjusting quickly to change and stepping outside of my comfort zone over this last year with steadfast dedication. After the last few months of 2024, I’ve never felt more confident in my sobriety, in my sense of self, in my ability to be alone but also recognize the need for help. Any one of these occurrences happening at any given time in the last 10 years would have put me into a bed depression for multiple days or weeks. Instead, at the new age of 33, I have been experiencing true bouts of joy and comfort intermixed through all of these occurrences like I never thought possible. I find moments that feel like something in me knew, that the world was about to get even harder and it was up to me to create a more stable and capable self before it all hit.

As of today, Townes (my 10 year old, 80lb best fucking friend forever) is 5 days post-op from his TPLO surgery. Everything has gone smooth so far, and I hope that continues through his recovery. I have had to wait on his every need, and carry his back end with a sling outside and around the house still. I was not expecting my 2025 to start like this, but it’s honestly been exactly what I needed.

I’m sure Townes and my new credit card bills will disagree, but this forced quiet and exploration of new routine feels like such a gift. Especially coinciding with the holidays and some days off of work. While figuring out what my dog needs to be comfortable, I am able to see the similarities in what we need. Our needs for structure, play, movement, and quiet healing. Our need for stillness and mending while we process what has been happening so abruptly in our worlds. An unarguable need for care and stability, regardless of what trauma or hardship or stress happened in the day. No matter what, you must eat. You must move. You must do your physical therapy. You are not invincible but you are stronger that you think. You must try to make this hard world a little easier on yourself in any way that you are able, and sometimes that means doing things that are hard, heartbreaking, and sometimes acutely painful. You must press pause on the t-shirt cannon bonanza and start trying some of them on.

Happy New Year, my friends. Whatever is out there, we are ready.

Some things I have been listening to and reading and absorbing that have helped:

• Podcast: This Tara Brach talk on “Cultivating a Courageous Heart.” Many of her talks, actually. I like her meditations, too.

• Album: Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life. This was an album my mom listened to religiously when I was a kid, and I’m always surprised how I know every single word still. God it’s so good.

• Book: “Harpo Speaks” by Harpo Marx, a fascinating look at creatives and artists in the early parts of the 1900’s. I’m learning so much just researching every name he drops in this book. He was already my favorite Marx Brother, and I think that’s even more true now. I also love that he was sober his whole life!

  • “A Year in Practice” by Jacqueline Suskin - I love parts of this book a lot. Some of it feels really cheesy, but I get a lot out of it and have been trying to ready it at the beginning of every season. It starts in winter, so I recommend snagging it now!

• Show: I just finished watching Somebody Somewhere on HBO and I cannot recommend this show enough. It’s so subtle and really captures what it’s like to be a person in such a beautiful way.

  • I also just started "Severance” and WOW I fucking love it. I also am obsessed with the opening intro art, which I was so ecstatic to learn has no AI use and is CGI artist Oliver Latta. It gives me hope to see big productions hiring real artists to make real art this way. Especially when you can immediately tell when something is made by human thought and process.