good morning, enjoy some unsolicited quarantine advice: you might want to try reading a novel. over the last couple months ive found that longform fiction has been one of the only things to reliably quell my anxiety...

i spend a lot of time online, taking in short bursts of information, clicking open 400 tabs at a time -- it's so rare for me to sit down and take in a single narrative for an extended chunk of time. my brain feels like it's buzzing and unfocused, i feel constantly anxious...

but when i picked up a novel for the first time during self-isolation, it was wild just how QUICK that buzz went away. like a chapter in, i could hear my own voice inner voice again, i started getting *IDEAS*, i actually WROTE poetry for the first time since this all started...

but it's not just the longform narrative thing. there's also something about how fiction specifically (as opposed to even a non-fiction book) operates on its own internal logic, a novel contains its own truths, there is no "other side"...

no one popping into say "this aint it chief" or "delete this" or "ok karen" or whatever dumb meme people think is funny, no bad faith arguments, no worrying abt reading the wrong thing/getting the wrong information - when you're reading a novel, everything you need is in there.

also the fear that you don't know enough to understand the situation/topic is absent when you're reading a novel - it's a window into an experience, and thought, and emotion. there IS no correct answer or proper research to be done.

anyway, not to get all "don't forget to drink a glass of water!!!" on you i just adored reading novels for a long long time and then kind of stopped... and it's so good to know they're still there, they still feel good and fulfilling in an entirely unique way. it's reassuring.

ahhhh just ONE MORE THING... reading a novel doesn't mean you're 'escaping' or 'hiding away'. you gain insight & empathy & humanity to be able to experience life through someone else's eyes - and a LACK of empathy is arguably the biggest roadblock to improving the world we're in.

(and yes, that "one more thing" was intended to be read in the style of columbo)