I've been swimming and watching my little show about firefighters

and cleaning snow off my car

I just turned 49. I still feel 44, because I plateau-ed emotionally and creatively at the start of the pandemic. (If you didn’t I don’t really trust you.) When I tell friends that I feel this way they say: but you’ve published four books since 2020. Who cares though! The great endless season of ennui persists, does it not? It’s February.

I like to talk about books and television. Because I write books and television. I am writing a few scripts right now, as one must. And a book about The Gilmore Girls. And a Secret Project. And a movie that will never be made but I must keep writing it or I’ll jump into a river of regret.

One must, as a TV writer, never speak ill of the TV shows others produce, which is an unspoken social rule of Hollywood that I didn’t know until my fourth writer’s room and that I cannot help but disobey constantly. When I started my first TV job at Degrassi eleven years ago I had no idea what the rules were. I broke SO MANY because I didn’t know what was going on. And now the TV industry is experiencing the Worst Times. If the Canadian TV Industry was a craft services table it would contain only stale bagels and off brand yogurt warming in a bowl of melted ice. Which means anyone who actually has work right now is a lucky bastard. I’ve not been that lucky.

But I have a lot of opinions. And jokes. And observations. So why not start a substack? It’s a ‘zine, basically, right? And I used to make those when I was cherubic and hopeful about the world and my rent was $109 dollars a month.

I’ve been going on first dates lately, which is an encounter where one must sound interesting, and I am not feeling very interesting because there’s a snowbank outside my front window and all I want to do is watch a procedural with 89 seasons about firefighters in Chicago while looking at rich people on Raya I’d never go out with.

My other winter hobby is swimming at my local community pool. I’ve started making small talk with older ladies in the dressing room. I love that at 49 I am often among the youngest trying to gracefully pull off my sweatpants without falling over or drawing attention to myself. I am not a good swimmer. I’m slow. I daydream. I just figured out, at month 3, what I should actually be doing with my legs.

To distract myself from the world ending I’ve been trying to write one line reviews of Oscar contenders:

Babygirl is a movie about a straight woman who takes 19 years to have the conversation about likes/dislikes queer people have on the second date.

This is just a short introduction post to say hello and in a nod to one of the best TV shows to ever exist, ask that you Please Like Me and consider subscribing.

Current Reads:

Private Citizens by Tony Tulathimutte

Mood Swings by Frankie Barnet

Current watch: Chicago Fire, even though they killed off the lesbian character and about to start Clean Slate

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