I had a really relaxing break? With minimal stress, excluding select instances that turned out to be minor? Usually I don’t do valley-girl inflected statements, but this is unironic because THIS ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS TO ME ;____________; Truly! During undergrad, I worked or had to focus on some kind of research project year after year, and families usually just dysfunctionally family it up during the holiday, so 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃 Instead, I got to sleep infinitely better, not cook ever, not pay to do my laundry, be around my family and not combust (except that time I went to Ikea with my boyfriend and Mom and she embarrassed the fuck outta of me ;___;;;), eat good food with friends! Upgrade my phone, and  now my whole iTunes library finally fits ☺️☺️☺️

I also had the best nachos of the year, and they were vegan! The restaurant I was blessed to receive them at substitutes dairy cheese with cashew “cheese.” Cashews? I know it sounds suspect, but I swear by it: cashew cheese sauce is a fantastic substitute for regular nacho cheese, which I say as the King of Homemade Nacho Cheese Sauce. As long as you can put good filler in the nachos and use your spices, it tastes fantastic! Perhaps vegan food gets a bad rap because white people have trademarked veganism, and they still refuse to use spices in their cabinet drawers

I made a strategic plan for 2K17, filled with ambitions, goals, and plan pathways along career, health, and personal lines. I think I’ve spoken about this on social media, but there is a strange irony in how folks are either apathetic or terrified out of their minds right now. Additionally, I feel like the world is accelerating faster than it actually is, via social media outlets reinforcing that feeling. I do believe in being well-informed, and I’m an obsessed information nerd; but it got super draining with time to read Sarah K or Paul Krugman’s tweets. Of course, the world is terrible and the coming admin (minus 11 days and counting) will induce some incredible suffering; no buts about it. Something does have to give, though. Will I feel better knowing everyday how bad things are going to get, even though I’m a historian and my background in US history already tells me I know what is coming, just with some tech updates? Or, do I just live my life, wanting and trying to hope for the best, but still expecting the worst? Furthermore, do I do the later and just prioritize my well-being and those of the folks I love?1 

Duh, the second one. Stress kills, I don’t want to be stressed out, and I need some good buffers that affirm my humanity while i’m working on my doctorate degree. And I already know what those things are + I left some of it by the wayside years ago because I thought I needed to be a “serious person…” which was actually some bs about how scholars become scholars and is some white supremacist trash tbh. So I will pick back up web-coding, re-teach myself Adobe Suite and drawing, learn new code languages, among other things (I see knitting, zine-making, and food crafts in my future). My domestic sphere needs to be my refuge from the world. It’s a brave thing to do!

Speaking of refuges, I think 2K17 will be the year that I do sever my ties with big social media. I think I’ve given up on the idea that I just delete them outright (lbr nobody wants to read e-mails anymore), but using them as small branches that re-route back here. I do believe we are being robbed and scammed out of our online lives, which are transformed into cash cows without compensation.2 Of course, I’ve written about this numerous times, but I’ve also realized that the importance of carving out a personal space online is the fact that all of those websites are a ticking timebomb: like Livejournal, they will also die. Interestingly enough, they may enact it themselves, by not taking care of their tr*ll problem. Anyway, that’s that. Point: let’s save ourselves lol.

#miscellaneous stuff: podcasts & footnotes & fandom
☁ Yuri!!! on Ice is perhaps the best anime of the 2010s. Watch it.
☁  Listen to dadfeelings: the episodes on Vegeta and Professor Utonium killed me.

☁ 1. Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Ezra Klein show ↩
☁ 2. Melissa Gira Grant‘s episode on Woodland Feelings expands a lot more on my social media net takeover feelings ↩

byeeeeeeeeeeeee for now 💖💖💖