I'M NEARLY 30

Hi angels!

It is the new year and tomorrow is my birthday which leads me to announce the two big mottos for this year:

1. The perfect age for a woman is 30

2. You can do so much in 30 minutes

This past weekend, Elena (who’s birthday is also tomorrow) and I got our belly buttons re-pierced and journaled about what we want our 2026 to look like. I kept coming back to this idea that I want to do a better job of tackling big projects realistically by taking them one step at a time. I.e. not always spending 9 uninterrupted hours at the studio and getting dehydrated.

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever received was from a workshop I took in 2018 with Chicago comedy legend Michael McCarthy. I had no idea who he was at the time (I was 22, only did bad improv, and was always hungover). He told us all that “if you want to be a writer, you have to write every day. Every day.” And then he shared his writing routine:

• Week 1: Monday - Saturday, wake up, brush your teeth, make your coffee, and write for 15 minutes every day. Take a break Sunday.

• Week 2: Monday - Saturday, wake up, brush your teeth, make your coffee, and write for 30 minutes every day. Take a break Sunday.

• Week 3: Monday - Saturday, wake up, brush your teeth, make your coffee, and write for 45 minutes + read for 30 minutes every day. Take a break Sunday. Repeat for the rest of your life.

This routine is wildly simple, but it fr changed my life. I started writing every day after this workshop and within two years years I got my first big essay published, wrote a piece for McSweeney’s, and got a full time writing job at Morning Brew. It’s shocking just how much you can get done in 30 minutes.

Here are some other big themes for this year…

Make way too many plans and only follow through on some of them. I was too realistic this year and stuck with wayyyy too many projects just because I said I would. To avoid overpromising, I am going to start journaling my delusional ideas and then only I will know that I didn’t write a 300-page nonfiction book on Disney Channel Original Movies.

You can make it. I instituted this rule last year when I learned to sew that every time I liked an item of clothing I would not buy it and instead spend hours researching patterns/YouTube tutorials on how to make it myself. I, of course, rarely followed through and I have a Pinterest board full of DIY projects. HOWEVER, tricking myself like this saves me so much money and every once in awhile I flip an old jacket or make a cool patchwork hoodie like this.

Drink soda. Especially at bars and restaurants. A diet coke with a meal hits way harder than a beer ever could.

Organize and stop asking people what you can do. After every horrible and tragic event, there is an influx of “what you can do” videos on my feed. They are great! Amazing! But at the end of the day, you have to organize. You have to leave your apartment and document a boring meeting, pack whistles, or spend an hour delivering groceries. You will rarely find these opportunities googling “how can I defeat fascism” or “how to resist ICE” because be so fucking forreal why would these things be on google dot com. And the good news is a lot of these networks and organizations already exist, they just aren’t packaged in a gorgeous instagrammable way. So take a shower, leave your home, and go sit awkwardly in a warehouse a few times a month and help unload frozen turkeys. You will meet people and you will find more ways to show up for your community. But you literally just have to make the conscious decisions to leave your house.

Re-piercing. Obviously.

A theater review: Softie

Projects I love named Softee/Softie are now 2/2. I saw Timothy Felton’s new solo show Softie at Lincoln Lodge in December and I was worried that because it was 9 degrees out and I had gotten engaged two days before, I would be bringing an insane vibe into the show. Luckily, Felton is a master at accepting and managing audience vibes.

It sounds boring to compliment his performance logistics, but his crowd control was so impressive. I always tense up when someone does crowd work at a more traditional stand-up venue. I've been burned so many times by a drunk woman loudly eating Red Hot Ranch. But Felton bravely invites the audience to participate almost immediately upon arrival (no one is forced to play along though and he gives audience members plenty of comfortable outs) and still manages to have fun with talkative participants. 

Softie weaves between themes of parenthood and relationships (new and old) with some glorious clowning bits recognizably directed and devised by Dean Evans. If I wasn’t laughing, I was smiling so hard I’m surprised my face didn’t stay like that.

My only wish is that I could experience this show with a larger group. There were about 15 or 20 people in the audience and it felt intimate and lovely to laugh at Felton’s high school pictures in the tiny theater. But I know the show’s earnest connections would hit so much harder in a slightly larger room for freaks like me who don’t want to participate, but love to lurk.

Good news for freaks, because after a run at the Vancouver Fringe where it won both the Spirit Of The Fringe AND the Artistic Risk award, Softie will have its first official Chicago run February 6, 7, 13, and 14 at The Neo-Futurist Theater. The show starts at 7pm and only costs a mere $15.

I feel in my bones that Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to see this show.

Ticket link here :)

What I’m loving rn

• Derek Begrudgingly presents Cinematic Choreo! <3 Kari’s first official class is live honey! This is going to be a regular dance class where Kari teaches some moves from her favorite movies. This class's movie is the iconic Napoleon Dynamite. We’ve been dreaming about this class forever! Reserve your spot here.

• Reno’s Gay Rodeo is back

• And Brigid’s lesbian horses are going to be in LA on Thursday (I’ve seen this show six hundred times and I still love it)

• Want to buy the vacant lot next door? It might take awhile

• I got engageddddddddddddd. Idk if you saw me slip that in the review, but I cannot recommend getting engaged enough. You should really propose to your girlfriend.

• If you’re looking for a ring, (or any other cool jewelry) check out my favorite little vintage jeweler Gold Hatpin in Oak Park.

• New Strapped 🔥🔥🔥

Next issue: grant applications! They are so much work!!! My god!

Thanks for reading and, as always, don’t tell me about any typos unless they are really bad.