Quietly Hostile - and Other Gratitude Stories
December 16, 2023 |
| My copy of Samantha Irby’s Quietly Hostile came through this afternoon |
Good evening beautiful people,
I finished my Fall Semester last week and jumped into a five week online Positive Psychology Winter class (the mission is to get those credits in and make sure I am on track to graduate in May). The class is on Happiness and Wellbeing, and this first week we learnt about the Hamburger model of Happiness which was designed by Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar (a former Harvard professor whose Positive Psychology course was apparently the most popular class in the early 2000s).
The model consists of four quadrants that show lifestyles or points in our lives where we engage in healthy or unhealthy things that give us present benefits/future detriments and vice versa. For our assignment, we had to write a reflection paper on the times we felt like we were in the different quadrants and some of the lessons we learned.
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| Image Source - proakemia |
It was a very eye opening exercise that put some of the work Don (my therapist) and I have been doing into perspective (can’t wait to share my eureka moments with him during our next session). I don’t like hamburgers but in terms of this model, I’d say we are currently working on getting my ‘ideal hamburger’ - one that provides me with healthy benefits now and in the future.
Another concept that we learnt this week was from a paper on the pursuit of happiness, which included a study showing how doing regular gratitude lists is beneficial to our wellbeing. In the spirit of pursuing the healthy hamburger quadrant, I wanted to tap into this by sharing my gratitude list. As I was drafting this post, I almost left out this gratitude part because right now I am grateful for some ‘simple things’
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| …fell in love with this brand early on in life and I am grateful I can get it here |
1. going to the other side of the city to cop snacks that remind me of home (Cardbury Dairy Milk Chocolate and Ghathia),
2. popping into a Vintage type thrift store on my way back ‘just to see what they have’ and leaving with an oversized sweatshirt and the type of jeans we wore in the 90s, the ones that have REAL POCKETS including the little ‘emergency fund’ pocket.
3. getting notified that my copy of Samantha Irby’s book, Quietly Hostile has arrived. FYI - Over the last couple of months, Sam’s Substack bitches gotta eat has been one of those spots on the interwebs that give me joy. On the blog, and through her weekly newsletter (which you should subscribe to), she a) recaps a reality type courtroom drama TV show called Judge Mathias (which I have never watched but thoroughly enjoy through Samantha’s writing) while b) humorously updating us on what is happening in her life (as a black lesbian married to a white woman, and living in the Midwest). I live my dream life vicariously through her and so getting notified that her latest book is waiting for me, gave me so much life (just to be clear, she did not send me her book - we will be that close someday soon - I bought myself a copy).
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| Not my notification…but related - I was so close to meeting Samantha this Fall at the Harrisburg Book Festival but she couldn’t make it (so I skipped the festival). |
I know my gratitude list is so simple but I am grateful for days when the only thing on my agenda is leaving the house to grab snacks to nibble on as I hang out with one of my current favorite essayists and bloggers (ok...hang out with her work).
What’s on your list?
Sending you love and light,
Sitawa
Update:
I finally finished Samantha Irby's book and I have to say that it sorta kinda wasn't my jam. There are essays in there that were really funny - like laughing on the bus almost missing my stop because I did not want to put it down funny...and others I honestly skimmed through. To be clear, I have not read her other books so I am not sure if this is her book writing style (which is clearly different from her blog writing style) or if this is one of those 'written during the pandemic' books which like everything pandemic related, it just decided to go down the path less travelled (we should have a library/bookstore section for this genre - Books written when the entire world was shutdown category).
The main thing that did not work for me is all the 'down the toilet trail' essays. I am not sure if I mentioned it here or to Don (my therapist - read about Don here) when I was updating him on my then 'current reads'. Anyway, Sam Irby has Crohn's disease (an inflammatory bowel disease), which she writes about in this book...a lot...like a lot a lot and in a very descriptive way...and that ends up stealing the punchlines. In a way, I think if you know more about the disease you might find the humor in the essays (thinking about the bias I have at times when I write or read about depression related stories that others do not get). In my case, I had to pause my reading for the night every time I saw the 'toilet trail' because I didn't want the last thing I thought about as I waited for sleep to take me away was Sam Irby in the toilet - I just had a mental picture of her in the toilet based on an essay of her experience with an edible or something, and started laughing.
Maybe these essays should not be read all at once.
Maybe the trick is in spacing them...because there are some good stories in there.
Either way, I am still subscribed to her blog which I will continue reading as I gather courage to try her pre-pandemic/pre-marriage material. I am not saying either of those things influenced her writing, I just want to get another feel of her book writing style before I decide if she is just good and funny on her blog but things get tricky when it comes to books. I also know that if something is getting published on a blog vs for mass distribution, there might be additional 'cooks' in the latter, who might literally spoil the broth.
You know I will do another update, if I decide to get one of her first books.
Sending love and light,
Sitawa
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