Contents for this week:

I will be putting in an order for stickers soon. Each design will get a limited run of 50 or so. I’m still figuring out how interested parties can request a sticker, please advise.

This week the eventful news is that I have my own website now. It’s not much, just a way to host a newsletter. I originally planned on just making a giant gmail BCC list, but those max out at 500 and in just a couple of days I realized it probably won’t take as long as I’d originally thought to get there. As of this writing the mailing list is at 345! Also it got tough manually entering every email address and keeping track of them. With a website now you can do it without worrying if I write it in wrong. If you’re reading this via the newsletter email that means you’re extra cool and if you needed a tiny boost to get through today I hope it helps to know that.

If you’re reading this on substack or patreon, I also think you’re cool. I’m happy if people read what I write anywhere. The reason for a website and newsletter is that it has become increasingly difficult to try to keep up with platform owners making decisions that feel arbitrary. As I’ve learned on Tik Tok and now Instagram, a shift in the algorithm or monetizing strategy can

Here’s an example of what that looks like, from Lyz at Men Yell At Me in her essay about why she’s leaving Substack:

Last week I posted about this, too, and I don’t want to be a broken record about it (I prefer my records to be Mint, Near-Mint, or Very Good+), but that’s the general summary of why I have decided to start posting on a third (3rd) platform. The hope, sincerely, is that this will be the last time I need to do something like this because this will be my platform with only one overlord; one with severe ADHD and little visual aplomb. Newsletters will come out on Wednesdays, and I hope to have a guest post on every one of them. I’m hoping that this one has one, but I have a firm policy that I will not give guests deadlines, so if something comes in, it comes in. Eventually the hope is to build up a backlog and simply never, ever run out.

If you would like to contribute, email me at [email protected]. Guest posts should be a couple pages long at most and related to the kinds of things I post about on my social media platforms. Other than that I’m open! Art, poetry, photography, essays, recipes. What have you got.

I’m also going to create a zine. I’ll make an actual physical paper document and scan it and upload it. Someday I hope to send out a copy to human mailboxes, but that will depend on the buy-in from folks like you. Not a financial buy-in, but just enthusiasm and engagement with the digital version. If you want to monetarily support the zine (especially towards a future of a photocopied and mailed version), consider subscribing to Patreon at any of the paid tiers or sending a little tip to radrefugeefund on Venmo.

Hopefully this is the last I talk about it. If you’re reading this on a different platform than my website/newsletter, you can again sign up for the mailing list here. Some of you may be getting three separate emails at this point from me, which I understand to be annoying. I have to live with myself and I know how too much of me can wear on someone. I’m perfectly OK if you cancel your subscription to one of the other platforms to make room, or if you want me to keep my numbers (they sort of matter for things like book proposals), go ahead and change your email settings.

Here’s a breakdown of what will be happening on each platform to help you decide what’s best for you:

Housekeeping out of the way, let’s talk Sundays. I’ve lamented as of late that I haven’t had the kind of lazy quiet days I initially envisioned for this project since fall started because of football. This was especially salient this week because after a blissful sleep-in morning I found myself angrily cleaning the kitchen while listening on the radio to the Raiders completely disintegrate for one half of one game. And against the Chiefs. It’s not very swifty of me to say this but I hate them so bad.

It was such a poor experience that I swore off the whole sport for the rest of the day. And guess what? I had a lovely Sunday.

We’re having that rare October in that it actually feels like October should. There’s a cool nip in the morning, warm afternoons perfect for long walks, and chilly nights. I spent much of Saturday reading by our fake fireplace while records played and found that to be so pleasing that I repeated it on Sunday. There was tea. Cats snoozed. I made Tikka Masala one day and Kristin made pizza the next. If I weren’t recovering from a lousy cold, I don’t know if I could have programmed up a more platonic ideal of the log cabin sunday if I tried without actually having access to a real log cabin.

An irony of the whole football thing is that this week in Utah we had our “Holy War,” the rivalry game when University of Utah plays BYU. Though everyone is supposed to have a very strong stance, I’ve never cared much about this game but have friends and family who are very passionate about the outcome.

I think these are both very flawed institutions. I don’t like the way BYU has historically handled sexual assault and certainly that’s kind of the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how the university treats marginalized folks. On the same token University of Utah really, really blew it when failing to protect Lauren McCluskey so they’re both on my list. But if you’re the guy in your office who has made being a U of U fan a large part of your personality, my condolences today. 

As for me and my house, while watching I literally said out loud at one point “I’m sure glad I don’t let how this goes dictate how my mood will be for the next year,” and then a day later let myself get really mad at a different football game. Except that while at least some of my neighbors attended one of the universities playing and have a direct rooting interest, I was angry about a team who represents a city I’ve only been to once and didn’t care for.

It has made me think about all the things I let affect my mood for no good reason in a world in which a lot of genuinely sad and terrifying things are happening. Maybe in times of plenty we need to find new things to be sad about, but those times are not these times.

Do you all have this petty gene that makes it so you want some people you don’t like to fail just because you don’t like them? Your reasoning may be completely justified. Like I don’t enjoy Jared Leto because he’s an alleged serial sex offender who somehow manages to continuously fail up while making his coworkers uncomfortable and concert audiences sing all his songs for him. But in the end his successes and (hilarious) failures don’t change my life one bit. Similarly I get angry every time I see Johnny Depp’s dumb face advertising cologne where he poses with a guitar he can barely play. I get mad when someone in a reddit thread about a band I like doesn’t like their new album. But I like it. Am I stupid?

I almost certainly alienated friends in junior high school because I was so concerned with Nintendo beating SEGA in the console wars, an attitude that still persisted when I was arguing with friends about whether Playstation was better than Xbox (in my defense it obviously is). From the outside it’s always ridiculous. Who cares if you like Fords or Chevys? But a coworker I once had started boycotting the NFL because they made whichever one he didn’t like their official truck one year.

Many years ago I had to come to the conclusion that there’s nothing that wears away a soul worse than rooting against someone and putting my happiness at the alter of their failure. That person or organization doesn’t know who I am, seems to be enjoying their lives immensely, and I’m sitting there miserable. Maybe they suck as people, or you think they're over-rated, or maybe even they are a real-life person who hurt you without seeming to pay any price for it. Either way it’s giving them too much power. In the case of someone hurting you, it absolutely sucks. It reminds me of something I just heard in a training for my volunteering, though: yes, they took something from you. It doesn’t mean they get to keep it.

Maybe the Chiefs have a long history of overlooking  domestic violence in their players, and certainly their kicker is annoying, but they’re going to win a lot of games. I try to remember a quote that I can’t find an attribution for, “Anger is the punishment we give ourselves for someone else’s mistakes.” Sometimes people you don’t like are going to get wins when you think they should be racking up L’s. Unless you’re in a position to personally deliver an L, though, sometimes you just have to step away and stop keeping score.

There’s a bigger picture here, too. When we put so much emphasis on the people whose actions don’t affect us, or for whom our existence means nothing, we take energy away from the ones for whom we can have an impact. There’s a whole industry that thrives on making us angry. They need us to be in a constant state of fury to keep consuming their content, buying their merch, and subscribing to their podcasts. It makes our neighbors into villains and it’s a muscle I wish we would let atrophy.

There are times when we should be furious, and we saw a productive outlet for that kind of emotion on Saturday as what people organize into what may be the largest single day protest in the world. But I think it’s worth looking at what that anger looked like on the ground. To me, it looked a lot like joy. People get a lot of pleasure from seeing their opponents red-faced and yelling, sobbing, or ranting. How much more disarming is it to see it in the form of frog costumes, funny posters, and dancing?

I don’t attend a lot of live sporting events, but I made a promise to myself some time ago. If I’m ever at a game where my team is losing badly, and the camera finds me, you will not see a sad sack. I want to be laughing with my friends while eating nachos and getting my money’s worth soaking up the vibe of an event I presumably looked forward to. Not only will that be more fun for me, but it will make the haters laugh a little less. And I think we can agree that’s what this is really all about. Eat it, haters.

I beat myself up enough about my own mistakes. I can’t keep doing it because someone I root for blows it or someone I root against succeeds.

Andi is a mother, educator, writer, and domestic violence advocate from the Canadian prairies. She graduated with a BA in English and History as a newly single mother, carrying her passion for Romantic poetry and the quieted voices in history into her work. She loves hiking and gardening with her two children and partner, cross-stitching video game flora and fauna, supporting safer communities, and being curious! You can find Andi on Instagram as @wayward_wyrd and had the following to say about her poem:

This is goofy but I will use this spot for my favorite microblog post I wrote this week so you’re not missing out if you don’t use those nightmare platforms

I am taking any and all submissions. Poems, art, essays. The only request is that the fit into the general vibe of what I do online, these include: ecology, domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy, books, recipes

Also, if you make stuff that you sell online, I would love to feature your products in anticipation of stocking season.

Feedback, chats, questions? Email [email protected]