Ugh I’m sorry to hear about your book and the AI training, Erin! I’ve been following this situation loosely via the Authors Guild posts, but your post is encouraging me to dig in further. And -- the daycare situation. 🤦🏼♀️ Sending all the good thoughts your way.
I’ve been thinking about these sorts of things a lot lately, and you put it so well. Thank you. I’m sorry for that landslide of precarious situations all at once - it’s become normative BUT ALSO it’s individually heavy.
God is there, maybe, but he's too busy flooding NY right now to deal with the greedy, exploitative, climate-crisis -ignoring, deplorable capitalists..... just sayin'.
Great essay. It led me to subscribe. The feeling of precarity and its pernicious effects are underrated. It isn't captured in any economic statistic. Did the pandemic and the extraordinary and necessary expansion of the safety net, now mostly removed, end up increasing precarity? Is the world more cruel today than it was 20 years ago? The essay made me ask these questions.
I note that I appear to be the only man who has commented! I'm a parent, but of three adult children. We have one grandson. Happy to join this community and perhaps sometimes contribute a different perspective.
Sending peace and love to all my comrades in the undisclosed-number-of-episodes phase. I hope someday our kids will marvel at how we lovingly shepherded them into adulthood with nary a social safety net to call upon. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes of mothers who first raise their young then turn their energy to the care of Mother Earth. I will follow her path, but mine will also involve building social safety nets.
I think the reason your writing resonates with your readers (or at least me) is that it’s real. Your solutions work while stumbling through life in a messy, hard world. There’s enough online content that’s cleansed, all uncontentiously squeaky clean. Anyone not feeling “Weltschmerz” right now is likely not in need of a Substack about simple matters. And who that would be I can’t imagine. As for the stresses you’re facing. And I felt a twinge of reminder of each and every thing you were hit with that day. You’re right. Big cities are bastions of commerce - economic principals apply: people are so plentiful their value is diminished and community can’t easily exist where a web of connections doesn’t tie people together.
I hope you never shy away from sharing the realities of this world. Numbing and naivety serve no one, but particularly doesn’t serve mothers. It makes us feel like failures in our own worlds when really the deck is stacked so high against us. Keep sharing your stories, I love reading them even more on the not picture perfect days. We can share humanity a bit.
This article made me a subscriber (just now!). You put into words the injustice all around us and that we quietly carry. (I also love your “lighter” work, but this spoke to me.)
God, that last paragraph resonates so deeply. Here for the simple and deeply complex. Thank you for bringing it all. Also, thank god for Bluey providing space for rage to manifest into community conversation. Bless those Australians.
OMG the only reason I pay a subscription is for the rage articles! They are so good. Much respect for walking the line of fun crafts, low waste/low cost parenting tools and a full realistic perspective on humanity and the world we all reside in. Literally everything is political! Hope daycare resumes ASAP.
Agreed! I don't live in NYC or have kids, but I've come back to your blog for years because you write so compellingly about the ways that aesthetics without politics are meaningless. Sending strength and solidarity to you and your family...
Ugh I’m sorry to hear about your book and the AI training, Erin! I’ve been following this situation loosely via the Authors Guild posts, but your post is encouraging me to dig in further. And -- the daycare situation. 🤦🏼♀️ Sending all the good thoughts your way.
I’ve been thinking about these sorts of things a lot lately, and you put it so well. Thank you. I’m sorry for that landslide of precarious situations all at once - it’s become normative BUT ALSO it’s individually heavy.
God is there, maybe, but he's too busy flooding NY right now to deal with the greedy, exploitative, climate-crisis -ignoring, deplorable capitalists..... just sayin'.
Great essay. It led me to subscribe. The feeling of precarity and its pernicious effects are underrated. It isn't captured in any economic statistic. Did the pandemic and the extraordinary and necessary expansion of the safety net, now mostly removed, end up increasing precarity? Is the world more cruel today than it was 20 years ago? The essay made me ask these questions.
I note that I appear to be the only man who has commented! I'm a parent, but of three adult children. We have one grandson. Happy to join this community and perhaps sometimes contribute a different perspective.
robertsdavidn.substack.com/about (free)
Sending peace and love to all my comrades in the undisclosed-number-of-episodes phase. I hope someday our kids will marvel at how we lovingly shepherded them into adulthood with nary a social safety net to call upon. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes of mothers who first raise their young then turn their energy to the care of Mother Earth. I will follow her path, but mine will also involve building social safety nets.
I think the reason your writing resonates with your readers (or at least me) is that it’s real. Your solutions work while stumbling through life in a messy, hard world. There’s enough online content that’s cleansed, all uncontentiously squeaky clean. Anyone not feeling “Weltschmerz” right now is likely not in need of a Substack about simple matters. And who that would be I can’t imagine. As for the stresses you’re facing. And I felt a twinge of reminder of each and every thing you were hit with that day. You’re right. Big cities are bastions of commerce - economic principals apply: people are so plentiful their value is diminished and community can’t easily exist where a web of connections doesn’t tie people together.
Read this--saw the flooding in Brooklyn in the NYT...I think you should prepare for the Locusts now🤦🏼♀️😳
I hope you never shy away from sharing the realities of this world. Numbing and naivety serve no one, but particularly doesn’t serve mothers. It makes us feel like failures in our own worlds when really the deck is stacked so high against us. Keep sharing your stories, I love reading them even more on the not picture perfect days. We can share humanity a bit.
Solidarity forever!!
This article made me a subscriber (just now!). You put into words the injustice all around us and that we quietly carry. (I also love your “lighter” work, but this spoke to me.)
God, that last paragraph resonates so deeply. Here for the simple and deeply complex. Thank you for bringing it all. Also, thank god for Bluey providing space for rage to manifest into community conversation. Bless those Australians.
I agree with other comments Erin. It's important to show the tough with the good because no life is constantly 'simple' and easy. Keep on keeping on.
OMG the only reason I pay a subscription is for the rage articles! They are so good. Much respect for walking the line of fun crafts, low waste/low cost parenting tools and a full realistic perspective on humanity and the world we all reside in. Literally everything is political! Hope daycare resumes ASAP.
Sending thoughts of support and love. All of those things are big, and traumatic, and you have a right to feel rage, fear, disappointment, etc.
Today you expressed many of the feelings that
I have about the inequity in this world. However, I I am not a writer and I count on writers like you to get my thoughts out.
I wish that I could throw you a life raft right now, but I know you will find your own. Thanks for your every thing and that you do for your readers.
Agreed! I don't live in NYC or have kids, but I've come back to your blog for years because you write so compellingly about the ways that aesthetics without politics are meaningless. Sending strength and solidarity to you and your family...