january inputs + outputs

Every year, I remind myself that we’re so brave to live through January and February. This January and February are already proving formidable. The last ten days alone feel like at least two months. Between the horrific violence enacted on civilians and the death of a colleague and friend, I have been bouncing between “ok, I see my next step forward” and “holy shit there’s no point in doing anything.”

Some concrete recommendations:

1. Delete instagram from your phone (you can still see it on desktop)

2. Sign up for an ICE watch training

3. Leave your home even though it’s cold and dark out.

4. Cook a food that your people have made for thousands of years. There’s something healing about connecting with the ancestors on a multisensory level like that.

5. Listen to the radio. The real radio. If you don’t have access to a radio, use the TuneIn app to listen to a live radio station where you live, or in a place you love. It helps to hear people’s voices in real time. During the early days of the pandemic, I listened to Seattle’s station, KEXP, every morning for weeks and I swear it was one of my only tethers to real life.

Things I Made

1. A lot of silly little drawings. I’m telling myself “one bad drawing every day.” Some days I do more than one, and some days they aren’t that bad.

   

2. Many thousands of words and also this great binder that houses my current working draft.

   

3. A triangle scarf from red yarn I impulse-bought.

   

4. Three half-finished embroideries, which I will finish at some point.

Things I’m Digesting

1. Come On Feel the Illinoise, Sufjan Stevens - I put this on as I drove home during a cold, dark night and I felt comforted by the way the childlike joy mixed with grief into something yellow colored and mild.

2. I had a long moment with this Frank Wimberley painting called Turquoise at the Georgia Museum of Art. The texture and color did something to me physically, and I stared at that black spot in the center for a long time.

   

3. Toni at Random by Dana A. Williams - I loved getting to see what Toni Morrison-as-editor was like. She was ruthless in her confidence and her competence and it’s exciting to get to peek at the process of so many books she edited.

4. Middlemarch, George Eliot - I’ve been reading this slowly throughout the winter and accompanying it with Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch because I love a companion read.

5. This video from Bliss Foster about brain rot and intellectual/creative rigor.

6. The Pitt season 1 - yes, finally.

Things I Bought

Grand total for 2026: 2 pieces of clothing (1 new, 1 secondhand)

1. A UGA sweatshirt in Athens with cute stripey cuffs.

   

2. A secondhand Pleats Please top that I plan to wear to a special event next month and also probably every day for the rest of my life (hasn’t arrived yet).