Doing Just Fine

May 2025

Dear Reader,

The card pull for this month is chamomile, representing inner peace. Since the last time I wrote, I’ve crocheted two pairs of socks. To have made socks after only crocheting scarves with wandering edges in the distant past…I’m impressed with myself and sitting with that joy for as long as I can.

I noticed the strangest thing recenty — that maybe I have started to feel okay? Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I noticed that I was feeling okay. Maybe even better than just okay? I noticed the uncanniness of it one day, not a special day, just a regular day going about my chores and tasks. The feeling was more a not-feeling… that dampener of grief and fear clinging to the edges of my psyche. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker before bed. Maybe the pandemic has made this certain kind of chaos familiar. Maybe it’s all the internal work I’ve done (still knowing I have so much more to do). I wouldn’t go as far to say it’s inner peace, but it’s something.

This is not to say I’m not worried or disappointed or weary of the future. I’m all of that and more. But my body is no longer in state of panic, and I’ll take that any day for as long or short as it lasts. I think my feeling okay has more to do with the actions people are taking (#teslatakedown is a huge mood lifter). It has to do with the nuanced and clear sighted essays I’ve been reading. It’s the coordination and the thoughtfulness and the care I see extended. And because of this around me, I know I’ve placed myself in more nurturing circles and have more grounded and constructive sources of news.

And dear reader, I did let myself order as many books as I wanted through April and I probably have enough reading to keep me busy for a few months. I’m still trying to read more than I have time and do more than I ought to, but it feels alright today. (I’m writing on a day I took off from work so maybe that’s part of my cheer.)

As my region swings too fast into the heat of summer and with all that is to come, reading and crocheting at home seems quite nice. I hope you’re waving to your neighbors on your walks around the block and stocking up where you can.

Keep safe & with love,

Thao

Book recs:

​Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber​

A great historic missive that helped me understand some anthropologic ideas I had couldn’t quite understand, plus money is debt?

​Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons​

Hilarious. Just hilarious. I needed light reading through a stressful week and this was perfect. Stella Gibbons is an icon and one of my new role models.

​Laura Aguilar​

I finally let myself purchase a catalog of her work, which had to be shipped from the UK. That movement of a book from one country to another back but to a different state. It's a comfort to me that books can extend our reach long past our death.

​404 Media​

Not a book but their reportage keeps me aware of surveillance and data privacy issues that I like to know about. They also have a really superb science round up on the weekends just to give everyone an educational breather and that’s nice too!

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