Real Life Update, and a book rec

So, after my vacation I hunkered down - I was having a rough time getting up the energy to reach out to people. I fell out of posting here, I fell out of being involved in much of anything, and while I was still in contact with close friends on some small discords and text threads, I didn't quite realize how very out of the loop I was. Unless something was a scheduled in advance and recurring, I didn't do it. I was in Bare Minimum Mode.

Some of that seems to have lifted a bit - I realized around the same time that a number of other people in my life were also talking about having struggles - that hitting/passing the six-month crisis mark was has been rough for a lot of people. Reading this thread by Dr. Aisha Ahmad kind of put things into focus: "I *always* hit a wall 6 months into a tough assignment in a disaster zone. The desire to "get away" or "make it stop" is intense."  (It's a good and hopeful thread, I promise, give it a read.)

Anyhoo, I have started to pull out of it, I think. Work still seems a little pointless, but I knocked a few things off my to-do list that have been lingering there like zombies for a while, so that's motivating me to do more on that front. 

I read Naomi Novik's A DEADLY EDUCATION over last weekend, and that was kind of the thing that really kicked me out of my funk.  Partially because I follow a podcast called Be The Serpent, and they did a whole episode talking about magical schools with Novik as a guest star, so I got to listen to the author talk about what had got her excited about it. I might to a larger post about it on its own - strong recommend, some caveats, and reading other reviews that have made me think about elements that I didn't catch the first time.

But one thing I really liked as, in the last third of the book, the main character realizes she can move out of a position of being an outsider and afraid and evaluating the people around her as a potential threats, to trusting some select people to be worth keeping, as people who will have her back.  And that felt like a mindset that I really, really recognized from high school and is often my default stage when I'm low on energy - thinking of people as a potential source of demands rather than actual friends. It's shit, and I'm glad to be a bit further out of it. 

Actually, just some recs - videos, stickers, stuff

Some things I have found interesting and helpful in my recent Hunkered Down phase:

- Maggie Mae Fish's video essay, Cats and the Weird Mind of TS Eliot, which is an really interesting look at TS Eliot as a person, his politics, and how his world view influenced his writing. A lot of the excepts from his writing here made me think about Cats the Musical in new ways, and while I still haven't seen the Tom Hooper film (and maybe never will), this seems like an entertaining and funny short examination of Eliot as a person. 

-Three related things:

• Naomi Novik's new YA novel,  A Deadly Education, which I really enjoyed and thought was had some really interesting worldbuilding. I have been reading Novik's published work for years and I have also really liked her fanfic under her pen name Astolat. 
• the accompanying episode of the Be the Serpent podcast, Ep 71: Back to School, about magical schools (note: No spoilers for A Deadly Education, some discussion of JK Rowling's transphobic shittiness in the Hogwarts part),  - which is a in-depth and loving discussion of magical schools in literature and fic and how they function and the tropes around them. I really enjoyed Novik's thoughts on Harry Potter's wizarding world as wish-fulfillment writing for a single mom who wanted to give their child the experience of being able to buy anything they wanted. 
• For the commentary, I wanted to include this one-star GoodReads review of A Deadly Education which talks about some issues with the depiction of the multicultural elements of the school (Some spoilers for early elements of the book but nothing major). I think the notes in this review are accurate - the one passage about the minor demons that infest dreadlocks is WILDLY tonedeaf and completely out of left field, AND, I also didn't notice it when I was reading. Some of the other elements mentioned in this review are more open to interpretation and I'm a fan of this author, so I read them more charitably, but I don't think there's any denying that they are part of the book and might be dealbreakers.

-The Granada Sherlock Holmes Series - All on youtube, shhhh This was a re-watch for me, but there's something very calming just now about re-watching stories that I know will end with justice. 

-Bande Washi Tape Stickers - Goldfish - These are just really damned cute. Since I'm doing a lot of Important Covid Time Journaling TM, I have been really enjoying just adding some stickers to upcoming pages of my notebook in advance of hitting those pages. I also have this brand of stickers with tulips, assorted garden and dandelion flowers. It's making me happy and chill.