Cruel Compendium #72 🌎
Beginner's mindset, power throuples, and going west with the night
Last week I wrote about crossing my own boundaries (and paying for it), and playing into some of the worst stereotypes people perpetrate against freelancers and single women. Enough!
Please submit your questions about art, life, and love so I can answer them in my new advice column, Dear Jilla!
I’m taking a Painting 101 class and loving it! This class is a conscious effort to reclaim my artisthood as well as foster a beginner’s mindset.
Check out the Austin sculpture that’s the inspo — do you know Miffy?
Be sure to click “View entire message” at the end of this email so you can read the whole post in your browser. On to the links!
The parents who regret having children by R.O. Kwon
With Florida and Arizona bans looming, money’s getting tight for abortion travel funders by Shefai Luthra
On asking yourself what kind of artist you want to be by Fariha Róisín
Why make art if you have nothing to say? And why make art if you’re not going to respond to the world around you?
Keeping up with the Laverys by Choire Sicha
I had so many rushes of nostalgia and joy and bewilderment while reading this. These people are some of my oldest parasocial relationships and represent an internet era that is almost truly dead now. It’s sick how much I know about these people’s lives (or, rather, their lives 5-10 years ago)! Ten years of their tweets are stored deep in the grooves of my brain yet I couldn’t do algebra if my life depended on it. But, ah, it was a golden (and twisted) time online while it lasted.
30 by 30 by Lakyn Carlton
I’m thinking a lot about refreshing my closet lately, and Carlton lists 30 items you “should” have in your wardrobe by age 30. It helped show me some basics I’m missing, as well as some basics you’ll never catch me wearing. (I have a serious aversion to the striped shirt.)
Books lately
West With the Night by Beryl Markham — Book 9 of 2024
A lyrical memoir by a British woman born in 1902 and raised in Kenya. She went on to be the first person to fly nonstop from Europe to America and the first woman to fly solo east to west across the Atlantic. Throughout this book she gets attacked by a lion, charged by an elephant, rescues pilots grounded in African deserts, almost crash lands into the ocean in the dead of night, and goes on other adventures.
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff — Book 10
This book made me think about what it means to be alive, and to truly live. It’s a story of survival in the wilderness in the early days of American colonialism. A teen girl runs away from a life of servitude, cruelty, illness, and starvation to find another life — any other life. Along the way, she experiences the extremes of the world, awed by earth’s beauties and beasts, spurred on by her sense of survival and whatever god means to her. The book left me pressing myself to keep making nature a bigger part of my day-to-day life.
Now I want to read an excellent nonfiction book about early colonialism centering the Indigenous experience. What would you suggest?
Bits and bobs about freelance writing.
Rusty Foster of Today in Tabs fame gets the full New York Times treatment!
Looking for excellent writing and journalism? Peruse the 2024 National Magazine Award winners.
The Great Journalism Squeeze: How Sub-Par Pay Rates Hurt Democracy & What Journalists Can Do About It by Abigail Bassett, who writes a weekly newsletter with high-paid writing gigs
”The average journalist salary in the United States is about $57,164... On average, most journalists earned a median of $26.90 per hour in 2022. Most journalists are individual contributors, meaning they are freelance or contract and have to carry their own health insurance, foot the bill for connectivity and equipment needed to do their jobs, and cover any transportation costs they incur, on top of everything else, and those pay rates don't leave a lot of wiggle room.”
Somebody’s dream job: Executive Digital Editor for Cosmo
Get your submission in for the next issue of The Rebis by April 26! The Rebis is a “print publication dedicated to exploring the relationship between tarot and creativity through original art, essays, fiction, and poetry,” and this issue’s theme is The Star.
Causes I care about, and actions you can take to help.
Early voting has begun in Texas! Visit the nonpartisan Texas Elections Hub to get all the info you need.
I’m thinking of all of those celebrating Passover and carrying the grief of this year. Sera Bonds shared her “For the Good Fight Haggadah” which provides “a restorative justice framework, pulls focus on current, global struggles for liberation. From the war in Gaza to LGTBQI rights to how to care for our changing world as we navigate the climate crisis, this Haggadah brings us towards each other while opening our hearts through connectivity and compassion.”
Sign Greenpeace’s petition to urge Biden to champion a Global Plastics Treaty to fight for a plastic-free future before it’s too late.
Donate to help five-year-old Rita Noor and her family evacuate Gaza.
Important reminders of the responsibilities of those witnessing the dispossession and killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, including, most of all: “act, over and over again, every day.”
“The U.S. is helping to fund this violence, at a minimum of US$3.8 billion per year, and an estimated 68 percent of the weapons Israel imports come from the U.S.—many of which are used to kill Palestinians.”
Use this easy form to email Congress to ask your reps to end U.S. arms funds for the Israeli military and demand a permanent ceasefire now. A bill giving billions more in funding has already passed the House and is on its way to the Senate.
I went to the Austin Kite Festival and it was pure joy as far as the eye could see.
📺 I watched:
Monkey Man. An epic Indian action film starring, written by, and directed by Dev Patel, who remains unreasonably hot. Very violent, but visually stunning; feels like you’re in a video game.
RRR. I finally watched this on Netflix, and it was a rollicking ride. These action scenes measure up to the insane stunts from the Mission: Impossible series — I’ve never before seen a minutes-long fight scene fought entirely on piggyback and likely never will again. I tried to do the “Naatu Naatu” dance in my living room and it’s not easy!
The vivid new The Color Purple. The ethereal settings! The songs! Danielle Brooks absolutely deserved her Oscar nomination. And then I watched the incredible original, which remains the most Oscar-nominated film without a single win (#OscarsStillSoWhite). This is your sign to read Alice Walker’s classic again or for the first time.🥱 I’ve seen Chromeo perform twice in the last six weeks and “BTS” is the anthem for the over-30 set.
🪄 I loved Nicole Cardoza’s Black Magic show! Here’s a story about her tour and the legacy of Black magicians.
🌎 Don’t forget that Earth Day is every day and there are so many small ways to take care of our planet and each other daily!
♻️ TED Talks illustrates the inanity of recycling.
👩🏻💻 New Yorkers: this is a map of 250 tried-and-tested remote work spots in NYC from Andy Hirschfeld
🎨 I never knew you could layer like this with markers!
🍷 Use this wine pro’s step-by-step process for choosing a good bottle of wine at the wine store. I learned some good, easy tips that have to be better than my process of picking the prettiest label.
🩺 Bringing back this absolute classic about doctors dealing with “prior authorization” demands from insurance companies.
🤫 Would you annotate your man’s diary?
🪞 What you clicked on most in the last Compendium: What happens to the stay-at-home girlfriend after a breakup?
Support for the week ahead from your higher self.
How can I release control this week?
Page of Cups
Creative opportunities, sensitivity, dreamer
This week, which of the heavy weights you are carrying can you go ahead and set down? (If not forever, at least for now.)
We so often get stuck in our usual ways of doing things because it’s easier, at least in the short term. But aren’t you tired of things being this way?
It’s time to try something new and see if we can change the future. What are you desperately clinging on to, even though you know you can’t control the outcome?
Whatever just popped into your mind, set that down. Feel the lightness. Isn’t that better?
Now let’s dream of a brighter, better future.
What’s one step you can take toward making that dreamy tomorrow a reality, today? How can you lean into your own creativity and imagination to be bold and try something uncharted?
The Laverys! Omg I idolized The Toast, and was on the edge of my seat when Danny burned down those family ties. What a cool example of queering the family unit and doing things your own way.