Organizing Chaos

Tornadoes, a new semester, book revisions, and everything else.

Hey there! Just a head’s up that on Friday membership prices will be shifting. Monthly prices are currenntly $6, while a yearly membership is $39, which breaks down to $3.25 a month. Currently, the founding member plan is $80 a year, which breaks down to $6.66 (oops) a month.

New membership prices will switch to $8 a month and $56 a year (which comes out to $4.66 a month, still lower than the current monthly membership price) on this Friday, January 12th. Founding memberships will remain the same, and I’m currently working on perks for my founding members (right now you get a letter from me, but I’d like to create continuous offerings).

Why the switch? Well, I’ll have more tangible offerings for paying subscribers, which you can read about below. If you want to join in or simply support this newsletter at the current price, make sure to become a paying supporter before the change.

If you want to join in or simply support this newsletter at the current price, make sure to become a paying supporter before the change. Your paid subscriptions keep me afloat, quite literally.

In today’s newsletter you’ll find writing about weather, films, and systems of organization. Please click through and open the newsletter fully, as it will be cut off if you try to read it in your email inbox.

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Yesterday we had tornadoes here in the Florida panhandle.

The warnings came in on Monday afternoon: a dangerous squall line marching from Alaska all the way up through the gulf, bringing rain, hail, and tornadoes.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest is a privilege when it comes to the weather— strong storms are (or used to be) rare. I remember two or three big weather events from my childhood, one of them a snowstorm. Now Seattle gets snowstorms nearly every year, along with heat domes and months of choking warm air during fire season. Because of my history as a wildland firefighter, I do know quite a bit about weather, but it was only in the past year that I learned about the “dirty side” of hurricanes. If a hurricane passes through and you’re on its right side, that’s better than being on its left, because the winds on its right are accelerating its force, while winds drag on the left, and are therefore slower.

We were on the dirty side of the squall line yesterday. Monday night I couldn’t sleep. By mid-morning Tuesday my phone was screaming with tornado warnings.

I put Edna in her carrier and sought refuge in my small bathroom, closing the door and watching the weather report on my phone. Would the warning be extended? Where was the tornado? Southwest of us a trailer park had been demolished only fifteen minutes ago, but the weather people couldn’t find the system. When it looked like the warning was going to expire, I took Edna out of her carrier. She was very, very unhappy with the whole situation.

poor Edna was terrified, and you can tell by how dilated her pupils are. Don’t worry, she recovered quickly.

Before the storm fully came through, the clouds were racing through the sky and the tree branches above my little cottage were wildly swaying.

Because school began this week, I had a ton of work to do, but I let myself off the hook yesterday and watched some movies.

First I watched Saltburn, which I thought was just okay. I loved all the acting performances, set design, and photography, but the narrative didn’t do it for me. After that, I watched Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up. I’ve written about Reichardt before, specifically her film Old Gold, a favorite of mine since before I even considered directors at all.

I loved Showing Up. Like most of Reichardt’s films, it’s quiet and subtle and deeply intricate, lingering on moments that many auteurs pass over, directing the viewer’s eye towards deceptively mundane moments, rich with intimacy.

Michelle Williams, who has been cast in several Reichardt films (my fave is Wendy and Lucy), is stunning. She melts into her character; a forty-something ceramicist simply trying to find the time to create art and convince her landlord that hot water isn’t a luxury. There’s a pigeon with a broken wing, a fucked-up family, hints at potential future success, and at the center of it all is Lizzy, a flawed woman with a penchant for prairie skirts and an incredible talent and dedication for and to her work. I related to her and felt for her, and it also made me miss Portland.

As you may know, I am committing to quitting streaming services this year, but after watching the films yesterday I wondered if I can somehow find some balance here, so I’m going to be thinking about that. I have cancelled all of my streaming services except Criterion and Mubi; (both are more focused on classic and art films). Part of this is financial (these services are pricey) and the other part is because it doesn’t feel good for me to binge-watch. I have a long history with it, which I wrote about here:

I’m thinking about how I want to navigate things. I’ll write about it soon.

I also read

Virginia Sole-Smith

’s piece about screen time and diet culture, and her framing intrigues me. For me, food and television were very intertwined. They still are. The impact is primarily negative. But intuitive eating \helped me with my eating disorder; can a similar approach help me with awareness regarding screen time. I know Virginia was writing about kids, but…as a kid who had no limits for TV watching, and as an adult who is reparenting myself, this is rich territory, and it deserves nuance. I deserve nuance.

Check out Virginia’s post below.

Are We Diet-y About Screen Time?

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I have a lot on my plate this semester.

I always have a lot on my plate. We have so much on our collective plates that it’s spilling over and cluttering the whole table and maybe flooding the house and definitely flooding the world. What a mess!

For the first time, I’ve committed myself to several organizational systems so I can stay consistent with my newsletters, classes, teaching, self-care, and especially so I can finish my revision soon. These systems are absolutely high-level self-care for me.

I set goals for my newsletters this year in the hopes that I can create more financial stability for myself and more of a community for my readers (thanks

Sarah Fay

for the great workshop on that). I set goals for myself in all other aspects of my life. Not lofty goals, but small, tiny, broken-down doable goals. Those big abstract goals have always led to failure and shame, in my experience.

One system I’m using is the Getting it Done system, created by David Allen. The thing about systems is that you have to create systems to maintain the systems, so I’ve done that, and it’s part of my “self-care” day, because it feels more like self-care and less like work. (thanks to my friend Chloe for sharing her methods). The first thing one does with GID is the brain dump, where you write down everything you can think of that needs doing.

This is of course an ongoing process that never ends. I’ve created a container in my phone for spontaneously recording whatever comes up.

Allen called these tasks “open loops,” and his methodology is actually quite similar to what Johann Hari writes about in his book Stolen Focus. The open loops distract us and complicate our lives, because our brains have to hold onto them.

Write them down, get them out, and let them go, is what Allen says. This frees up our minds so that we can remain more present.

His system has a lot of steps and is quite complicated. I don’t fully adhere, but I have my own ways. First, I take the brain dump and sit down with it. Then I do everything that takes three minutes or less, right then. Those things get done. If something’s a project, I break it into smaller pieces and schedule it out. If something can be done in under two hours, I schedule it. And then I don’t have to think about those loops anymore. They’re closed. They’re on my calendar.

I use Todoist and Google Calendar (they can be integrated, which is great), and I also use an app called “Structured.” This app lets me plan out each day in time increments, sends me reminders, and is also visually interesting. It’s not a typical calendar, and I can see how far in to any activity I am, how much time I have left, etcetera. I receive little haptics on my apple watch. The watch means I don’t have to pick up my phone.

So, this is where I’m at today. With a big brain dump and a lot of work to do, and sans hurricanes, thank goodness. Tonight I have my poetry workshop. Tomorrow I am going to a pottery class— this is something I’ve wanted to do for YEARS, so I’m really excited. My pottery class is the kind of self-care I really need in the midst of revisions and my PhD obligations. Tomorrow I am also working on my book revisions, my highest priority at the moment.

How are you all faring? I hope well. I hope okay. I hope wonderfully. If not well or okay or wonderfully, then simply faring. Staying afloat or wading through the muck. I’d love to hear about it, wherever you are, in the comments.

I will be sending out schedules for writing exercises and get togethers by this weekend. <3

With love, A