Consumption Diaries No. 9
A June consumed
June! One of my favorite months! I’m writing most of this newsletter from the humid Turks and Caicos airport, an appropriately chaotic place for a chaotic-feeling substack where the only thing I’m consistently posting is monthly uninspired roundups.
This past month I’ve not only gone on vacation twice but also one of them was this stupidly privileged trip to a fancy resort. I was celebrating 10 years with my partner (and crucially, 10 years of two incomes and no kids), which is luck in itself. 10 years ago — hell, even five years ago — I rolled my eyes, full of envy, at people on fancy vacations as I scrolled through Instagram, and now I’m the annoying bitch.
I love life’s small joys, its pleasant mundanity: the quiet moments of calm, like morning coffee and the birds in the tree outside my bedroom window that tease my cat relentlessly, or the feeling of logging off after work and doing nothing, or impromptu happy hours with friends. The ugly side of life helps me appreciate the small joys more, but the very good things like vacations do too. High highs and low lows.
Recently I had the pleasure of joining my friend Cameron in a conversation she published on her substack
, which is one of my favorites and I urge you to subscribe! It was really fun, and there I talked a little bit about my particular flavor of mental illness and how despite my mixed feelings on diagnosis itself, the reality is that it requires of my life stability and routine, active work away from the high highs and low lows that my brain settles into without ample room to exist in the middle. In my search for health, it’s been the small joys and the pleasant mundanity that provide respite (that, and a daily mood stabilizer).I couldn’t have appreciated any of that in my early 20s and was filled with rage whenever anyone older tried to convince me of such. I didn’t understand the difference between toxic positivity and finding the kind of gratitude that works for you, keeps you from wanting to die.
I’m grossly oversimplifying things, but at 31, when I take a deep breath and enjoy the freedom of doing nothing on vacations I never thought I’d be taking, I feel a shift toward equilibrium, however minor, however brief. I’m not necessarily happier now. I feel the weight of life and the lightness of privilege even more. But even still, it’s different.
I guess when I say I feel old, I mean that many days I feel content with where the passage of time has brought me. I wish my 21-year-old self would have believed someone telling her all of that.
Okay, enough cheesy earnestness, pocket your secondhand embarrassment and move onto the roundup.
Books
Phenotypes by Paulo Scott — this was a buddy read with my dear Shanice (@shanthereader), whose thoughts I always value but even more so after Phenotypes. It was truly a challenging read, and I feel like I need to read it a second time to fully grasp its importance. The author says a lot about colorism in Brazil, and the translator’s note here was really interesting. I feel like the translator is often more of a silent assistant than on this occasion. Overall though, it’s one of those books that I’ll always appreciate despite not loving it myself.
The Guest by Emma Cline — Emma Cline is a great writer and The Guest is the unreliable narrator lit fic of my dreams. It is a critique without critique in a quiet kind of way, which doesn’t really make sense so I’ll just direct you to my goodreads review. I read this as a copy from NetGalley.
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of Their Lost World by Steve Brusatte — thanks to everyone for humoring my dinosaur phase, but even if you thought I was weird for it you should read this book! It was so interesting and accessible, though naturally I mention none of this in my insta review and instead go on a rant about the earth and climate change.
Nineteen Claws and a Blackbird: Stories by Agustina Bazterrica — I thought some of these short stories were incredible, and others fell flat for me. This tends to be my overall experience with short story collections, so maybe don’t take my word for it. The ones that stuck with me were equal parts horrifying and unexpected, which is what I loved about Bazterrica’s Tender is the Flesh, but the misses for me kind of felt like …the kind of short stories you had to write in school. That is really mean and probably unfair, but I suppose the kinder way of saying that is that I found a few to be underbaked. I posted a goodreads review of this as well.
TV shows
Jewish Matchmaking — the point of every modern dating show is that most men are just kind of trash, and this is no exception.
Xo, Kitty — So cute! So silly! It’s definitely designed for the specific intersection of Netflix rom-com lovers and K drama fans, which I count myself amongst. Speaking of, I’ve watched a few episodes of k dramas lately buggy nothing has really stuck. If you have any recommendations, please please please.
Love Island — ‘tis the season.
Movies
Contact — watched this in a hotel room while waiting to go out to a club, and Jodie foster in space as religious propaganda is not a great vibe for that.
My Neighbors the Yamadas — my commitment to watching all the Studio Ghibli movies has really flagged, probably because I saved the ones I wanted to watch least for last. Rookie mistake! This one isn’t visually very appealing (to me) but captures the mundanity of family life so well.
Blazing Saddles — my next movie challenge is getting through all the ones I’m embarrassed to admit I haven’t seen or people say “what?!” to when I tell them I haven’t. I’ll never get through them all, but Blazing Saddles was a great place to start. This movie would NOT get made today, and I certainly cringed at some parts, but I laughed as often. Mel Brooks is Mel Brooks.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb — technically on my DC movie challenge list (why do I keep doing this to myself), but up for debate on how much this counts as actually taking place in DC. Either way, excellent movie.
Arrival — also excellent. I missed this when it came out because there were a lot of space movies at the time. This one is definitely my favorite, but I do think they could have cut some scenes of Amy Adams panicking or walking to make room for a better explanation! I’m curious if the Ted Chiang book the movie is based on does any further explaining or if it’s just meant to be open-ended.
Pulp Fiction — one of the movies everyone said WHAT?! to when I admitted to never having seen it. It’s objectively good, but 1. Tarantino’s scene where he just says the n word a lot made me want to die and 2. I thought this movie was going to be mostly about Mia Wallace, so imagine my disappointment!
Ex Machina — the last time I saw this was when it came out in 2014. It was unnerving at the time, but with even more understanding of AI it’s downright scary. But also just ridiculous and over-the-top in a way that only an A24 movie can make charming.
The Tale of Princess Kaguya — I love that Studio Ghibli movies have so many strong-willed girls as protagonists. This one was no exception, and it actually surprised me because I was fairly skeptical after Yamadas.
Bought
Worst Case Scenario card game — my family had fun screaming at each other over this game where you have to rank shitty scenarios from very bad to worst. It’s peak Steph — catastrophizing and then planning for it in detail! I’ll never let my mom live down the fact that she said “run out of oxygen while scuba diving at 50 feet deep” was the least-worst (hi mom, love you). If anyone else thinks that’s not so bad, read about the bends and watch 47 Meters Down! (incredibly, this was just before the submersible accident)
Madewell tailored crop tank — idk, it’s just a stupid tank top, but I’m obsessed with it right now and am debating buying it in multiple colors while it’s on sale. It’s a thick and sturdy material and it’s cropped-ish but in a millennial way and not a gen z way, if that makes sense.
I’m still getting comments about the Beis mini weekender bag, and rightfully so! My bright ass citron color is still available, as are some other fun seasonal colors + the more sensible ones. The mini weekender is plenty spacious — plus, it fits snugly under an airplane seat and I don’t think the full-sized weekender would, if that’s important to you. I’ve taken it on six flights, two train trips, and a road trip in the last month-ish and it’s surprisingly not really dirty yet.
I hope everyone has exactly the kind of July they need. Find me on instagram, goodreads, storygraph, or letterboxd, if you somehow want to keep up with my obsessive tracking habits in real-time.
