Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. Brown paper packages tied up with strings.
🎶Please tell me more of your fa-vor-ite thiiiiiiiings. 🎶
I need some good news y’all.
Earlier this week my aunt shared a beautiful story about her friend whose family is thriving now that they’re not encumbered with work commutes and SAT prep classes and all the stresses of daily life.
My heart exploded.
My brain is aware that many of us are having different experiences of quarantine, but the availability heuristic is real and my current purview is bleak. Which is why:
I WANNA HEAR YOUR GOOD NEWS.
I have three friends who are having their best years in business. YES, I SAID YEARS and it’s freaking May. Twitter implemented a WFH forever policy. Mark Warner is doing awesome stuff for the gig economy thanks to his Future of Work advisor who is too humble to let me brag about her so I’m going to hide my brag deep in this email (THANK YOU CAROLINA).
Here are a few of my favorite things as a result of this GD pandemic:
- Roxane Gay created this care package for you. ON DROPBOX ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
- Jessie J signing on Instagram. Specifically, her off-the-cuff rendition of I Will Survive is enough to make me take back every negative thing I’ve ever said about social media.
- Kirk Franklin’s Mother’s Day music video (Leslie Jones said he won Mother’s Day and I agree)
- SNL at Home’s digital short “Let Kids Drink.” Literally. Dead.
- The Markup is already having an impact on big tech
- Lin’s back on Twitter
And obviously, the queen and king of pop releasing Stuck With U was. yeah. ALL THE FEELS.
I think sometimes we confuse “bad news” with being more in touch with reality. As if feeling and being negative somehow grounds us. The point of “reality” is that it’s real, which doesn’t mean bad or good – it means The Truth. And the truth is that there is a lot of beauty in this world. Even and especially in the midst of a GD pandemic.
Seeing the beauty doesn’t mean diminishing the bad. It means holding space for both.
So let’s do that.
Here’s Jessie J singing happy birthday without her lips.
We need to laugh, dammit.
Stay safe out there,
Margo
