Cruel Compendium #49 🙌

I wrote about all the vaping ladies, plus some rocks you'll really want to eat

Dec 20, 2022

My first piece for Cosmopolitan is live! I wrote about picking up a secret vaping habit during the pandemic and finding it surprisingly hard to quit—and the many other women who are going through the same thing:
Shrouded in watermelon-mint smoke: Why so many women are vaping in secret
I wrote an essay for Contently about how to get freelance work when your pipeline runs dry. I experienced a solid couple of months with practically no work at all, and that was scary and stressful, but I feel better prepared for my next inevitable freelance drought.
ICYMI, here’s my annual gift guide/list of coveted gorgeous little things.
The final CSBC podcast episode of season two will come out next week and feature ways to intentionally close out 2022 and welcome 2023. For now, catch up on all the published episodes so far!

On to the links!

I’m reading

My boyfriend, a writer, broke up with me because I’m a writer by Isabel Kaplan

Sally MacNamara Ivey has read and kept 10,000 unpublished personal journals by Lauren Silverman. An emotional look at what happens to all of our words—the record of the normal lives we lived—after we die.

How to create an Emergency Care Guide for others, telling them exactly how you’d like to be cared for during hard times. Check the form out here and make your own copy here. (And ask them to make one for you too!) By Anne Helen Peterson in her newsletter, Culture Study.

Why do I always have to initiate plans? Advice from J.P. Brammer on loneliness, something I’ve been struggling with lately.

Most people are waiting for someone else to break through the quiet. I don’t mind being the one to do it. If I want to talk to someone or see someone, I reach out. If I’m thinking of someone, I try to let them know. Loneliness is all at once a personal affliction and a mutual problem.