Tara and AJ and I connected to talk about books, wins, and wishes, and took a great side trip into why the term “quiet quitting” is hot garbage, and how to achieve contentment and peace by being as mediocre as possible. If you’re feeling burnt out, you might find a lot to love in this conversation.
We also discuss AJ’s new favorite genre: gay longing in spooky landscapes.
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Visit LifeMD.com/SARAH today to experience healthcare the way it should be! #lifemdpod
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Music: purple-planet.com
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Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:
We also mentioned:
- Rescue Time (affiliate offer in link)
- We Can Do Hard Things, Ep. 139 with Tricia Hersey
- Queerly Recommended with Catie Randazzo and J Chong from The Big Brunch
- Queerly Recommended with Milena McKay on Truth and Measure
- I Love Mess Substack
- What is Competitive Intelligence?
- The Big Brunch
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Transcript
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[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello and thank you for letting me into your eardrums. I’m Sarah Wendell. This is episode number 541 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, and it is yet another fun and festive end-of-the-year episode! This week, I am connecting with Tara and AJ, and we are going to talk about books, wins, wishes, and a big ol’ side trip into why the term “quiet quitting” is hot garbage, how to achieve contentment by being as mediocre as possible, and we talk a lot about AJ’s new favorite genre: gay longing in spooky landscapes. It’s a surprisingly fulsome list of books, too. This is a really fun episode, and I had a really great time recording and edititing it? Edititititing. Editititing. That’s a really good word. Editing. Editing this episode – I’m leaving all of that in by the way. And I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I have tried to say editing with the correct number of syllables.
Hello and thank you to our Patreon community. Hey, folks! Thanks for making these episodes possible by, you know, being in them. If you would like to join the podcast Patreon, please have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at one dollar. You get bonus episodes. There is an absolutely fantastic podcast Discord that I love very much, and it would be wonderful to have you. If the show is valuable and has helped you out this year and you’d like to support it, that’s the best way to do so: patreon.com/SmartBitches.
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It is time to talk about books and wins and gay longing in spooky landscapes. I love this genre title. On with the podcast.
[music]
Sarah: AJ, let’s start with you: what are your holiday wishes for everyone?
AJ: My holiday wishes are lots of books for whatever gifting holiday anyone is involved in, and minimal to no family drama for anyone who is around their family.
Sarah: Yes!
AJ: [Laughs]
Tara: Truly wonderful!
AJ: Enough sleep. I feel like we all need to just get enough sleep.
Sarah: Yes. Tara, what about you? What are your wishes for everyone for this holiday? Is it, it is -26 degrees centigrade weather with a wind chill of -40? Is that your holiday wish?
Tara: No!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tara: Why would I –
[Laughter]
Tara: No! Why would I wish that? Yeah, just come to my house, friends. Come to my – listen, listen: it is a balmy -16 degrees Celsius at this exact moment in time in Calgary. I’m still not stepping outside.
Sarah: I will –
Tara: It’s awful.
Sarah: I will tell you -16 degrees Celsius is a balmy 3 degrees, 3 whole degrees Fahrenheit. But it was -26 there –
Tara: Yeah.
Sarah: – earlier, right?
Tara: Yeah. Let me, I have the page open. The low overnight was -11 Fahrenheit.
Sarah: NO thank you.
AJ: That’s, yeah, I’ll pass on that.
Tara: [Laughs]
Sarah: Yeah, no thanks. There are times when I will go snowboarding in Vermont and it’s very, very cold, even though it’s the end of February, early March. There are some times when, like, the high is, you know, the high is, is 2, and the low is -10, and I’m like, I’m not leaving the condo! I don’t even plan on putting on, like, a bra. No, absolutely not. Like, I don’t want to fall on that! It’s just ice and it’s going to hurt my butt! That’s not fun. I cannot –
Tara: I used to work with a guy who would go, he would go overnight ice caving in this kind of weather with his boyfriend –
Sarah: Oh yeah!
Tara: – and I was like, why? What? Why? And he was like, it’s fun! And I was like, we, my friend, have wildly definite, different definitions of fun. No, I am in my basement. You, people listening can’t see, but you can see something flickering in the background; that is my fireplace. I have a heated blanket on my lap. This is perfection. [Laughs]
Sarah: I have a, I have a heating pad and a blanket; I completely understand. But also it’s not -26 here.
Tara: No, no. Okay, in terms of actual holiday wishes for people, so my wish is actually related to one of my book recommendations – ‘cause I did cheat and bring more than one – and my wish for people is rest, because it is through rest that we can have imagination, that we can dream, that we can problem-solve, that we can be our best selves, and that we can recognize that we are more than what we produce, and if you are able to step away from work for a little while over the holidays, I hope everybody takes the time to reflect on that.
Sarah: So true I could cry! I bet I know what book you’re going to recommend. And –
Tara: You probably do, ‘cause I told you to read it. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yes. It, it is my vacation book this year. That’s really beautiful, and it’s so true. It, the, the grind culture that tells you you don’t need rest, you don’t need to pause, you must always be producing is so harmful on multiple levels. But it also serves as a distraction to keep you from noticing how unhappy you are.
Tara: That’s right.
Sarah: Yeah.
Tara: It’s so true.
AJ: Mm-hmm. It also diminishes your worth as a person to what you can produce and makes us forget that we have worth even if we’re not producing anything for capitalism.
Sarah: Yeah! Absolutely true.
AJ: Not that that’s a – [laughs] – rant that I want to go on frequently!
Sarah: I, yes. A thousand percent? If I, if I had a lighter I would be holding it.
So let’s talk about book or books that made you happy this year. Tara, do you want to go first on this one?
Tara: Okay! So the book that made me happiest was, it’s two parts; they absolutely do not stand alone, so I am recommending them together, ‘cause even though you have to buy them separately, it is not enough for you to read the first book, and the second book probably won’t make a lot of sense without the first book, and it is Truth and Measure and Above All Things by Roslyn Sinclair, and anybody who pays attention to me online will not be surprised about this. And the reason it made me happy is that Truth and Measure was my favorite fanfic, and I loved it so, so, so much it was, I counted it in my top five books, ‘cause I don’t care if it wasn’t published as original fiction: when you’re reading something that’s three hundred thousand words? That’s a book. That counts. It’s fine! [Laughs] And I would read it –
Sarah: That’s actually three books! [Laughs]
Tara: Right. Exactly! Right?
Sarah: It could be four!
Tara: Exactly. Surely it counts. And I probably read it two to three times a year for like the last four or five years, and I was super nervous when I heard that it was being turned into original fiction, cracked in two, hundred thousand words being pulled out. What’s going to happen? Like, if it’s my favorite, is it still going to be good? And it’s so good. I loved it so much; it made me so, so, so happy. So the real brief, for people that don’t know about this and haven’t heard me banging on about it a bunch, ‘cause actually, recently, just this week – we’re recording this December 2nd, but earlier this week on my podcast we released a deep dive into the fanfic versus the fiction? It was me and the author Milena McKay going into the – ‘cause she’s also a super fan; she started writing because of this fanfic, and she’s a really popular author in the Sapphic romance community – and I was like, heyyy, come talk to me about this. [Laughs]
Sarah: That’s so cool!
Tara: Right?
AJ: I need to listen to that like immediately, because I am also super into fanfic and read many three-hundred-plus thousand words, so I’m like, ooh! Need the link!
Tara: Yeah, it was, it was so fun. It’s the conversation I’ve been wanting to have since I first read this book in April. It started out as a The Devil Wears Prada fanfic? So it is, so if you look at the original fiction, no longer the case, but there is an age gap there. It does sort of start as a boss/employee situation. I know that’s a no-go for a lot of people, but I think the way the author handled it was quite delicate and sensitive? ‘Cause I did wonder, like, okay, #MeToo happened between the fanfic coming out in 2013 and the original fiction coming out earlier this year –
Sarah: Right.
Tara: – and I think it skirts the line quite, quite nicely but the idea is Jules is the EA to Vivian; Vivian runs this large, you know, very, not, the not-Vogue, you know fashion magazine. [Laughs] Vivian finds out she’s pregnant. She and her husband are splitting up; they had one last hurrah; oh shit. And so Jules is, like, scheduling all her stuff, coming with her for doctor’s appointments ‘cause she’s taking notes, and kind of along the way they each grow to care for each other? And then what else happens. And it just, I love it so much. It makes me so happy. One of the things I love about these books, like, or the book, is that a lot of books end right after the I Love You or the, like, okay, we’re together! With this, you actually get to see more of the relationship –
Sarah: Yeah.
Tara: – and in a way that it doesn’t feel like, okay, we’re just writing more stuff; like, it’s actually essential to their story? You see them get to, like, a very good, settled place that makes sense, and I don’t know that I’ve seen passion written better than this author does it, especially in this particular book. And so, like, I used to sort of link the, the fic link to people, and they were like, I don’t know; I don’t really like The Devil Wears Prada, and I was like, me neither! I never got into the movie; I never read the book; but, like, if you like age gaps, if you like workplace, that’s kind of all that matters, and I – [laughs] – so many people’d be like, fuck you, I just lost three days to this fic; and I’m like –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tara: – mm, I’d be sorry, but you love it! And you know you love it. So that’s my fun book that, I wouldn’t say that one changed my life, but it made me so, so happy, and honestly, it’s my favorite book now. It’s replaced what was my kind of ultimate favorite.
The one that did change my life, and it is related to my wishes, is Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey. Tricia Hersey is the founder of The Nap Ministry. I can’t even call it a nonfiction book, although that’s what it is. I would actually call it a meditation –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tara: – almost more than anything else. And it is a meditation on the fact that, the fact that we can liberate ourselves through rest –
Sarah: Yeah.
Tara: – and that it is the horrific marriage of capitalism and white supremacy that works together to keep us all exhausted, because when we are exhausted we don’t have time to consider the fact that we are all being exploited, that there are injustices that are happening. We don’t have the energy to try to dismantle these systems of oppression because if we’re not at our full-time job, we’re working on our side hustle, or perhaps our second side hustle and all these things, and instead, when you read it, there’s a lot of repetition, and that’s on purpose, which, again, is why I say it’s a meditation –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tara: – because it says things like, you are, you are enough. Like, when Tricia Hersey talks about it, I first heard – like, I’ve been following her for a while, so I saw her promoting it on Instagram, but I saw that she was on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast with Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach? And the way she talked about it is, she says, you know, capitalism can’t have me. It is through rest that we are all going to have liberation, because when we rest, when we close our eyes, we can solve problems. Things just kind of come to us; things float to the surface. We have that kind of energy to tackle things that we’ve been trying to figure out. We might have revelations about ourselves that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. And there has been something so powerful in taking some of these mantras for myself, saying things like, capitalism can’t have me. I have to live within capitalism, but it can’t necessarily have me.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tara: That I am enough as I am. I am so much more than what I can produce, and I just think everybody should be reading it, and I am telling, especially I have been telling some of the women in my life, some of them are at work, who are in their early twenties, you need to read this book, because that is the kind of message that I wish I would have received early in my career –
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Tara: – because –
AJ: Mm-hmm.
Tara: – in your early twenties you’re still also kind of figuring out who you are, right, and the message is, no, it’s time to hustle; it’s time to grind; it’s time to – and so what I tend to say to them is, do it if you want to. If you feel like that hustle is fulfilling for some reason, you’re doing something that is bringing you joy, I’m not going to tell you not to pursue joy. But don’t do it just because people are telling you that that is the only path to success, ‘cause that is actually the path to being ground down, to being burned out, to not getting to live to your own fullest self, whatever that actually looks like.
So that’s my, that’s my book for everyone, and to revise my wish, I wish that everybody takes the time to read this over the holidays and to spend some time thinking about how they might want to reclaim some of their life and some of their space through rest, ‘cause even just what I’ve started doing is just ten minutes at a time, close my eyes, put on some super, super chill music, and let my mind wander and see what happens, and I have been shocked at how transformative even that’s been.
Sarah: Yeah. The thing that makes, that, that I think of first is – and, and I knew you grew up with this ‘cause we’re about, about the same age – that your job has to be your identity? You have to find your purpose –
Tara: Yes!
Sarah: – and do what you are. Your identity has to be –
Tara: Yes!
Sarah: – your job, and you must find your job in your identity, and I have to say, as someone who has made her job out of the things she loves most in the world, I don’t always recommend that. It is very hard to take a break –
Tara: No!
Sarah: – from doing the thing that you love when the thing that you love is also your job. It’s very hard.
AJ: Mm-hmm.
Tara: I actually think one of the most radical things I have chosen to do as a parent – because I have two kids; they’re eleven and seven – I have never asked them what they want to be when they grow up, because I didn’t understand it when I was growing up, but something that I came to realize more as an adult is, I believe that question is actually violent, because that question is asking kids to already start to plot out where are you going to fit in the capitalism machine?
AJ: Mm.
Tara: Why did they need to know that at this age?
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Tara: And instead it’s asking more like, what are you into? What do you want to learn about? What – my oldest loves drawing, and she said herself, maybe I’ll be a graphic designer. But we said, what do you want to do? And she’s like, I want to do digital art. So we got her a Wacom tablet, not because I’m trying to prepare her to be a graphic designer but because she wants to do digital art.
Sarah: Yeah!
Tara: Let’s encourage that. She’ll find a path; she’ll figure it out. Most people figure out how to feed themselves at some point, but why do we need to box kids –
Sarah: Oh yeah.
Tara: – into – why, like, so much of childhood is about preparing them for where they’re going to fit in capitalism. School systems: that’s what they’re for. Really? We’re trying to get kids used to social norms: show up on time; eat at a scheduled time; sit where you’re told; do what you’re told. We all –
AJ: Do repetitive work without an immediate impact to your own wellbeing. Like, homework –
Tara: Yes.
AJ: – doesn’t teach them anything; homework is not –
Sarah: There is –
AJ: – educationally valuable.
Sarah: – no pedagogical value of homework. I want to read you something that I got today. One of my Friday newsletters is mostly about exploring fashion in the absolute bizarro paparazzi photos and fashion photos and, and photo service of celebrities? It’s actually looking at these pictures and being like, what are those – what? So it’s called “I <3 Mess,” but this, this arrived, and I read this fifteen minutes ago in a, in a moment of great, like, great kismet:
The only other thing I wanted to say is that I feel like academic brainpower is wasted on the young. Because I have chosen a profession that is essentially just committing to doing homework on a deadline forever, I think back in total awe about how prolifically studious I was as a high schooler and my ability to read and maintain multiple books and pump out two-thousand-word essays and design presentations in an afternoon, and for what? A fictional grade with no bearing on the real world? Of course now when I desperately need that superhuman focus, it’s nowhere to be found! I think we got the order of this thing wrong.
Tara: Hell yes! As a person who also does a lot of homework for work, I second that, and I would love – although I don’t think I could pick back up my habits, ‘cause when I was in grad school every single paper I wrote was written between the hours of 9 p.m. and 7 a.m., and I just, I am too old for that, and I’m too tired –
AJ: [Laughs]
Sarah: Was it the night before it was due?
Tara: I think sometimes, like for the ones in the middle, but, like, at the end it was nothing but papers ‘cause I did a, a Master’s that was all course work, and so I would do it for two weeks in a row –
Sarah: Ah!
Tara: – and then my term would be over, and I would go to my parents’ house and collapse in an illness for a week.
Sarah: Oh man.
AJ: Man. Yeah, I always did my papers in the hour to two hours before the class started? And –
Tara: Mm-hmm.
AJ: – yeah, I don’t know if I could do that again, but –
Sarah: My brain had so much, so much more at the last minute. Like, my brain, my brain was really good at last-minute stuff, right?
AJ and Tara: Mm-hmm.
AJ: Which then is so maladaptive, because then you train your brain that the only way to, like, activate is –
Sarah: An emergency.
AJ: – under that pressure –
Sarah: Yeah.
AJ: – and panic, and then you have to manufacture that panic in order to do anything?
Sarah: Yep.
AJ: And yeah, that’s tangentially related to what we’re talking about, but the discussion of, like, rest and capitalism not, not being able to define you and all that stuff, it made me think of the best decision that I made for myself this year was, I made a New Year’s resolution to be mediocre at my job.
Sarah: Oh, I love everything about this! What an awesome resolution!
Tara: Tell us more! [Laughs]
AJ: Well, I was, so I had just gotten a new job; I had gotten a promotion and I was absolutely just stressing myself out so badly, being like, I need to be the best that I can be! Like, I need to be the best person at this job! And, and my mental health was suffering; I was having physical health problems; like, it was just, yeah, it was rough; it was a mess. And I sat myself down, I took a week off at the beginning of January, and I sat myself down and I was like, what if I just was okay? And, like, if I, if I did the bare minimum, what would that be? And I made a list, and it was only like five things. And so every time I started to stress myself out I would just be like, were you mediocre at your job today? Yes? Okay, good. And –
Sarah: So you, you started quiet quitting. It was you.
AJ: [Laughs] Yes, it was me!
Sarah: It was you who started quiet quitting –
AJ: Well –
Sarah: – where you’re just going to do your absolute, the absolute minimum of your job. It was, it was you.
Tara: There’s a –
Sarah: Well played.
Tara: I actually hate the term. I hate the term “quiet quitting” so much?
Sarah: I completely hate it too. It is so, it is, it is so pejorative? It, it –
Tara: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: But I, I think it was you, AJ. I applaud you. I, I am, I am, I’m in awe of your influence. I don’t know if you knew that what you did –
AJ: [Laughs]
Sarah: – but you really scared a lot of people in, in, in established media industries. Like, they came up with a shitty name and everything. [Laughs]
Tara: Can I ask a follow-up question?
AJ: Yeah!
Tara: Did anyone note this?
AJ: The ironic thing is that, no, because –
[Laughter]
Tara: Mm-hmm. I had a feeling.
AJ: – because, let’s be honest, a lot of people are out there giving it their like forty percent at their jobs. But also, I ended up performing better when I wasn’t so stressed out about performing well.
Sarah: What?!
Tara: Yes.
AJ: [Laughs] I, which –
Sarah: What?!
AJ: – which I was like –
Tara: Yes.
AJ: – first of all, what the hell? But second of all, then I ended up teaching a seminar for other people in my position about how to stop trying to do everything and calm the heck down and just try to be mediocre. [Laughs]
Tara: I’m actually not surprised at all, because I remember from reading Laziness Does Not Exist, which, you know, we love at the Bitchery, by Dr. Devon Price. Talks about how you actually need to, if you want to work better, you should work less. You shouldn’t be trying to work sixty-, eighty-hour weeks. Like, as much as people – there are some people that I know praise Elon Musk for, like, the grind and the super hardcore mode and all that bullshit, and, like, we’re going to work eighty hours. You don’t work a good eighty hours.
Sarah: Never.
Tara: If you work a good thirty hours, you’re actually probably going to produce more and better work than what you would do by giving all your life over.
Sarah: I have a program on my computer designed to track my time – it’s called RescueTime – and I tell it what is and isn’t work. I use it because every Sunday I get a little summary of my prior week, and you’re sup-, what you’re supposed to use it for is, of course, you know, maximize your productivity, don’t waste time, don’t spend too much time on Twitter, whatever, but what I’m actually doing is, if I go above twenty-seven hours consistently, if I’m at thirty, thirty-five, forty hours of, of work, which most of what I do is creative or administrative – if I go over thirty-five, there has to be a really good reason. There has to be a really, really good reason I am busting my ass, ‘cause I have worked so hard to streamline my workflows and to figure out the way to do things, because me being miserable and me being stressed out and exhausted is not going to bring me more traffic to my website. No one’s going to be like, wow! Sarah is in a puddle of tears in the shower ‘cause she’s so tired! Definitely going to check out that site! Like, that doesn’t get me anything and actually just harms me. There’s no direct correlation. You know, if I’m about to go on –
Tara: Well, and it harms the longevity of your business too.
Sarah: It does harm the longevity of my business. And if I’m about to go away and I’m, like, prerecording and preloading, that’s fine; I’m about to take like two weeks off. But if I see that number consistently being too high I know, all right, something is going on; I either need to address how I’m working or figure out how to cut back, because I will burn out very quickly, ‘cause again, thing that I love, also my job, job that I love: it’s really easy to just do it all the time because, I mean, I like it; I made it up!
[Laughter]
Sarah: But I, I have this productivity app tracking me so that I will work less. So I understand completely being like, yeah, what if, what if I didn’t burn out?
Well played! Somewhere a legacy –
Tara: Very good.
Sarah: – media billionaire is, like, super freaking out about this whole giving a seminar thing, and they’re coming up with a pithy, pejorative name for it, so just, you know, watch for that in January.
[Laughter]
AJ: I, I can’t wait.
[More laughter]
Sarah: So it’s not quiet quitting –
Tara: Can’t wait to ignore it, right?
Sarah: It’s not quiet quitting; it’s loud mediocrity.
AJ: [Laughs] Yes!
Tara: I still think it’s just doing your job!
[Laughter]
Tara: This is the part, like, I got so, when it first started coming around and people were sending me the article and I was like, fuck off! Fuck off with that! It – they’re getting mad because people are doing their jobs and companies are showing their entire asses ‘cause they’re showing that they did not appropriately plan their resourcing.
Sarah: And –
Tara: Because if your resourcing is based on people working at a hundred and fifty percent, you didn’t resource.
Sarah: And if you are working –
Tara: I have –
Sarah: – on the assumption of invisible volunteer labor of other people that you’re not compensating for it, you have a budgetary problem.
Tara: Yes, absolutely.
AJ: And if you’re a person who is insisting that, oh, I’m going to give this hundred and fifty percent, and that will, like, giving everything of myself will in some way justify my life because I have not separated myself from the idea that, that that’s the way to, to be a good person, then you’re going to burn yourself out and –
Tara: Mm-hmm. There is so much I could be doing all the time. I could do probably three jobs’ worth of things in my job ‘cause I am one of two people in my company that do what I do, and the other person reports to me and is junior, and I just believe in ruthless prioritization.
Sarah: Yes.
Tara: What is the most important thing I can be doing right now? ‘Cause, like, yes, I’ve been saying all these anti-capitalist things; I also recognize I work at a company! I work at a company ‘cause I like to eat food! I like my kids to eat food. I like us to all live in a house. [Laughs]
Sarah: I like that you have heat right now. I’m really glad that you have heat right now! [Laughs] It makes me feel relief!
Tara: Exactly! But, like, I can still help my company –
Sarah: Yeah.
Tara: – be great at what it does –
Sarah: Yeah.
Tara: – while having boundaries with my time if I make sure that what I’m working on is the most important and impactful and urgent thing that I could be working on right now, rather than trying to do everything.
Sarah: Yeah. Absolutely.
AJ: Yeah! That’s the other thing: you try to do everything and you lose sight of what are the things that actually matter.
Tara: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: And also, if you’re giving a hundred and fifty percent, to quote Tressie McMillan Cottom, the institution does not love you back. You’re not paying –
AJ: Right.
Tara: Yes.
Sarah: – you’re not, you’re not, you’re not investing in some kind of good will that will be reciprocated; you’re demonstrating that you will do a hundred and fifty percent of the labor for one hundred percent of the salary they’re paying you. You’re demonstrating that they don’t have to take care of you.
Tara: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: You’re, you’re, they’re not going to love you back ‘cause you put an extra fifty percent into your job. That’s not what happens.
Tara: No. Agree.
AJ: Yeah. Even if the people that you work with do, but the company –
Tara: Yes!
AJ: – the job does not.
Sarah: The institution cannot love you back!
AJ? What book blew your mind this year? Was it The Communist Manifesto? An invitation to socialism?
AJ: [Laughs] You know, I haven’t actually read The Communist Manifesto; maybe I should. But –
Sarah: When we checked into an Airbnb in Portugal last winter, when we took our kids to Portugal, there was a copy in Chinese of some sort of communist tract? And we kept trying to read it! It didn’t work!
[Laughter]
AJ: Better than the Gideon Bible; that’s all I can say about that.
Sarah: Hey, absolutely!
Tara: I know! I was trying to think of, like, the two of them lying side by side in the bedside table!
Sarah: Opposites attract.
AJ: Right?
[Laughter]
AJ: Well, if I was an Airbnb owner and I was going to spread my personal propaganda, the book that I would leave in a bedside table this year is Ocean’s Echo – [laughs] – by Everina Maxwell.
Sarah: I could not top that if I tried! Mwah! A+!
AJ: [Laughs] Thank you!
Tara: Same! Perfect. Perfect.
AJ: So, yeah, this, I read the, this book – I think I’ve been yelling about it in Slack a little bit, and I’m working on a review and all of that, but I had to, I have to cut the review severely because I wanted to quote like every single chapter, and I had to – okay, that’s enough quotes; let people read the book. It is my personal catnip of a sci-fi, slow burn, gay, fake relationship romance. It just made me so, so happy. So the, the characters are, one of them is a, like a receptive psychic, so he can read people’s minds; the other one is a projective psychic, so he can control people’s behavior; and they’re supposed to, like, bond their, their brains to form like a, a permanent mental, psychic bond for the, so that they can be better soldiers for the military, and they decide to not do that, and then hijinks ensue, and the characters are so opposite, but they appreciate each other. There’s not any fighting between the two of them. So one of them is like the disaster aristocrat, doesn’t care about anything, and the other one is like, oh, I’m, I’m a, no, I’m a good sol-, I get a, I got a good grade in soldier –
[Laughter]
AJ: – which is normal to want and possible to achieve! And when they meet, they both are like, oh! You have all of these, like, strengths and, that I appreciate and I wish I could be more like you, and they, they just really work really well together, and as you can see, I’m just, like, almost nonverbally gush-y about how much I love it, ‘cause it was so, it was so good. Just like, yeah, I had book hangover for like two weeks. I couldn’t read anything else. It’s great.
Sarah: That is –
AJ: So that one –
Sarah: – the best kind of book hangover, too. Like, I can’t read anything else; I’m sorry.
AJ: Yeah, I almost just went back to the beginning and read it again.
Sarah: Well, I mean, why not?
AJ: And I still might.
Sarah: Why not? What’s stopping you? You don’t get a, you’re getting a good grade in rereading!
AJ: Yes! Which is also normal to want and possible to achieve! [Laughs]
That’s going to be my number one, for sure, for the year, and I’m sure, I definitely have another that I can mention, because –
Sarah: Bring it.
AJ: Yeah, so in the spring, my internet went out at home, so I actually have a long list of books that I read ‘cause I was just like, all right, I’ve got no internet; let’s go face down in the library catalog. But, but this one actually was recommended by a friend. It’s Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo? Which is also gay and paranormal. It’s, it’s like Southern Gothic paranormal, and it launched this whole trend for me and, and the friend that recommended it of, like, gay longing and spooky landscape as a genre?
Sarah: Oooh! Gay longing in an ominous setting?
AJ: Yes. So we, we came up with a whole list. It’s like Summer Sons, which is contemporary and set in – gosh, I forget now; I want to say Virginia. But then there’s, like, the Emily Tesh books, Silver in the Wood and Drowned Country, and Spectred Isle by K. J. Charles. So I realize this is a giant list, but, like, this is all of the gay longing and creepy trees books that we could come up with, and it, it’s been very fun to just be a little bit creeped out but, like, in a super queer way.
Tara: Are they pretty broody too?
AJ: Yes. Extremely broody.
Tara: Hmm! Wonderful! That sounds perfect.
AJ: Yeah.
Sarah: AJ, have you, have you read Hither, Page and The Missing Page by Cat Sebastian?
AJ: You know, I haven’t! But they got recommended on my Kindle page the other day. If they fall into that genre, I am in.
Sarah: They are, the, the tagline in it is, the tagline is Agatha Christie, but make it queer? So it’s –
AJ: Sold.
Sarah: – post World War II, I think? A small town doctor who has significant PTSD has moved into this very small town practice. There’s a murder; you know, people die. There’s creeping about at night. Everything is very dark; it’s the – and for The Missing Page it’s cold; it’s winter. So there’s a very ominous – it’s not paranormal, but there’s an ominous sort of gloom and creepy vibe around it. It’s also extremely cozy. But, like, Agatha Christie also did a really good blend of cozy and creeping the shit out of me.
AJ: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: So this is –
AJ: Yes.
Sarah: – similar in that vein.
AJ: Yes, and I, I am definitely on board for, like, cozy creepiness this time of year?
Sarah: Yep!
AJ: But yeah. And just to give a little bit more info on Summer Sons, it’s, the main character has a best friend who, they were super co-dependent; slight-, somewhat gay; but, but very, like, in the closet, who has died, and he’s going down to figure out his, like, estate, and then finds out that his friend was murdered and meets another guy who was, like, hanging out with his friend, and they go on to investigate all of the shenanigans and, and creepy things around the situation.
Sarah: So, so, so many, so many people have just hit Pause.
AJ: [Laughs]
Sarah: When, when this episode airs, like, just so many people will hit pause right there. [Laughs]
AJ: Good! Good! Everyone needs to go read it, and then they need to write more fanfiction for it, ‘cause there’s only like twenty fics on AO3 and I’ve read them all. So.
[Laughter]
Sarah: This is all about finding yourself more fanfic to read, right?
AJ: Honestly, yes, because I also want people to write more fanfiction for Ocean’s Echo, so I’m just saying, get on it.
Sarah: I mean, fair! Absolutely fair.
AJ: [Laughs]
Sarah: All right, so in addition, AJ, in addition to deciding to be eminently mediocre at your job, what was a big win for you in 2022?
AJ: Honestly, I think the big win for me has just been settling into who I am. Actually, yep, yep, now that I say that, the big win for me was coming out as nonbinary at work.
Sarah: Nice! Well done!
Tara: Hell yeah!
Sarah: Well done!
Tara: Congratulations!
Sarah: That –
AJ: Thank you! Yes.
Sarah: – was not mediocrity, for the record.
AJ: [Laughs] No, no, that part I am not mediocre at. I am excellent at being nonbinary.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Good for you! I am so impressed! Way to go!
AJ: Thank you! It was much less dramatic than I thought it would be. I was like, do I need to send out an email and, like, explain and do Gender 101, and my HR person was like, do you want to? It was like, not really! He was like, then don’t. People will figure it out. [Laughs]
Tara: So true.
AJ: Yep.
Sarah: Amazing. Well done! Imagine what kind of panic and incredible revelations are coming next year! Between giving seminars on how not to work yourself into exhaustion and also being excellent at being nonbinary, I mean, I expect pithy names any minute.
AJ: I mean –
Tara: Yes!
AJ: I’m going to think of one.
Sarah: Okay.
AJ: But it might take a little bit.
Sarah: That’s fine.
Tara, what’s your big win for 2022?
Tara: I’m kind of torn between podcast-related and personal-career-related, and I know personal career sounds really funny, given my earlier anti-capitalist rant.
Sarah: [Laughs] It’s okay to –
Tara: Especially when –
Sarah: – like your job! I mean, it is –
Tara: Especially when you hear my next words: I’m, I finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up –
Sarah: Ooh!
Tara: – and it’s what I’m doing now.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Yaaay!
[Applause]
Tara: Yeah, it’s so nice, ‘cause I feel like, looking at my career trajectory, it’s been very serendipitous bouncing around. I was a copywriter for a long time; I did communications for a mental health research and policy nonprofit and learned I don’t want to work for nonprofits – it’s really, it takes a special kind of soul, and that’s not me – and then when I came to where I am now, like, I did product marketing for a few years, which is great, but I had the oppor- – because I say yes to everything – well, I don’t say yes to everything; that’s not true – I stand by what I said about ruthless prioritization. But because I say yes to opportunities that sound interesting and I know will have an, an impact on the business, I fell into competitive intelligence, and I’ve been talking to other people that are doing it. I’ve been connected with some incredible people in the field, and I realize this is, this is what I want to be doing, ‘cause it’s so fun; it’s so interesting. I’m taking, like, intelligence courses with people from the RCMP. It’s a little weird; it’s like, oh, one of these things is not like the other, and it’s me! But, like, getting to harness all the things that I’m, that make me great, like my curiosity, my relationship-building skills, my – [laughs] – low-key pettiness and liking to win, and getting to turn it all into a job where I win by helping other people win, I do well by helping other people do well is so good, and it’s so fulfilling, and it’s such a small field and there’s so few people doing it that when I build it here as much as I can and I feel like I’m done, I can go somewhere else and build it there.
Sarah: Yeah.
Tara: So that’s been a really great win.
And this has been an incredible year for the Queerly Recommended podcast. There, there were a couple of opportunities: one has already happened; one is about to happen. And actually it was at work, at their conference where I had the opportunity to interview Jonathan Van Ness on stage in front of, like, all of our clients and everyone responsible for my paycheck, and it went really, really well, and on stage he said at one point, how are you so good at this? And I was just –
Sarah: Ah!
Tara: – so, I was so flustered that I told him the truth. [Laughs] Which also turned into something incredible, because I said, oh, well, here’s the thing: I’ve been on a public speaking journey, ‘cause I used to have public speaking panic attacks like five or six years ago, and so to go from that to I’m interviewing a personal idol in front of all of these people, like, that’s a big, like, a lot of work is happening.
Sarah: That’s a really big narrative arc.
Tara: Yeah, and I, and so I, I told him, look, I’ve been on this public speaking journey and I was nervous about this, and so the way I calmed myself down was by saying, I’m going to pretend that we’re recording a super secret episode of my podcast, and he said, you should have just ripped the audio and put it on your podcast. And I said –
Sarah: ‘Kay!
Tara: – what?! And he’s like –
[Laughter]
Tara: – yeah! Yeah, just do it! Legal agreements in California are binding! And he held true to it.
Sarah: Oh!
Tara: Because my company could not even post that conversation; it was not in the contract terms. But for whatever reason, during Pride month, he looked at me and said, you can do this, and that was incredible.
And then the next thing, I’m so – I mean, you both probably know, ‘cause I’ve been breaking out in the, in the Smart Bitches Slack – one of the great joys for me this year has been watching The Big Brunch, Dan Levy’s next project post Schitt’s Creek, ‘cause it’s like he took –
Sarah: It’s so good.
Tara: – everything he learned from the first two seasons of The Great Canadian Baking Show and was like, okay, what if we dial up the warmth, we add some swearing, and it’s just, it’s all about kindness. There’s no cruelty in this show, and I just loved it so, so, so much –
Sarah: It’s so queer.
Tara: – and I recommended it on the – it’s so queer! Yeah, like a third of, I think a third of the cast is queer. And usually I wait until a season is out of a show before I would recommend it, but after three episodes I was so, I was freaking out I was so happy about it. I went ahead and recommended it, posted a – we, we, we put clips of our podcast just to promote it on all of our socials, but I posted that one on Instagram, and I tagged Dan Levy and the three queer chefs, and Chef Catie ended up in our DMs saying, hey, I’m a total podcast junkie; I’d love to be on your show if you’re interested, and I went, ahhh!
[Laughter]
Tara: Ahhh! [Indecipherable] Thompson at the end of Sense and Sensibility with the, when she, scene that she does the blah! Like, Dawn French makes fun of it –
Sarah: Yep.
Tara: – in The Vicar of Dibley.
Sarah: Yes.
Tara: I basically did that! And I was emailing back and forth with Catie I said, like, we’re still just so shocked ‘cause we were talking about how amazing it would be to talk to, to have you or J on the show, and Catie said, I bet J would be down. And so we’re talking to both of them at the same time on Sunday. So that is a very, very, very big moment for, for us, because just the way they represented on that show, like Catie representing nonbinary people and J representing queer Chinese Canadians, like –
Sarah: It’s the Canadian part –
Tara: – so –
Sarah: – I know. I know it’s the Canadian part front and center.
Tara: That was – I mean, okay, for me, that was part of it. Like, I actually had pure joy when Dan Levy ordered a Caesar on the show, ‘cause Americans do not understand, and those are delicious.
Sarah: Do you know how many Caesar jokes happened on my couch when that happened? I mean, that’s how they advertise Caesar’s is to say, you know, make a Caesar; that’s how they do it.
Tara: Yeah.
Sarah: It was so much Letterkenny going on.
Tara: [Laughs]
Sarah: AJ, if you’re not familiar, a, a, a Caesar is a Blood Mary with Clamato.
AJ: Okay, I was wondering, ‘cause I’ve heard of a Caesar in many, many contexts –
Sarah: Yeah.
AJ: – and I was like, but what is it? Okay. Well, I’ll pass on that, ‘cause I don’t like Bloody Marys, but.
Tara: Mm. Yeah, a lot of people, well, like, they think it sounds like it’s going to be gross because of the Clamato, but I promise it’s delicious. It’s also the spices they put in and stuff that makes it delicious. I would never drink Clamato on its own, but I would drink a Caesar.
Sarah: I’m surprised –
Tara: Anyway, that’s my –
Sarah: – you’re not having a Caesar right now.
Tara: It is still the work day! I’m having a Slurpee, thank you very much, ‘cause yes, I have a fireplace and a heated blanket and a frozen drink! Why not? I, you know, I want to know!
Sarah: I think you’re making A+ adulting!
[Laughter]
AJ: We contain multitudes.
Tara: Thank you! Yes, exactly.
Sarah: And a Slurpee.
AJ: And a Slurpee!
Tara: [Laughs]
Sarah: So that was your personal professional win and your podcast win. Those are both big-ass wins.
Tara: Not bad.
Sarah: That’s amazing.
Tara: It’s been a pretty, it’s been a pretty all-right year.
Sarah: One of the things that I love is how much all of the interviews that I’m doing, people are, you know, wishing for peace and rest, but also so many of people’s wins have been recognizing themselves and then being themselves more fully in some way. Or just refusing to pretend to be not, someone else. Like, to drop masks and to stop, you know, hiding part, parts of themselves that they keep secret. It’s really lovely! I’m glad everyone’s just sort of showing up in the world and being themselves. It’s going to be a lot better, I hope! [Laughs]
AJ: Agreed. I think that makes a big difference, even, even beyond, like, the big things this year. Just looking back at 2022, I’m like, yeah, I was way more myself than I’ve ever felt comfortable being, even to the weird things like I started keeping beer in the crisper in my fridge because if I put vegetables in there I forget about them, and then they go bad. Beer’s not going to go bad, so the veggies go on the shelf, and the beer goes in the crisper. There you go.
Tara: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: Makes perfect sense! And, and you’re not going to have to worry about them falling off the shelf or rolling somewhere; they’re in a, they’re in a bin!
AJ: Yeah, exactly!
Sarah: Absolutely! Absolutely!
Tara: Yes.
AJ: To anyone listening, this is your official permission to do whatever shortcut makes your life work better, even if other people think that it’s weird.
Sarah: Yes.
Tara: I saw a documentary once about, oh! Žižek? I don’t, I’m not totally sure how to pronounce his – it’s like Slavoj Žižek. I’m so sorry to all the philosophy nerds? But he would keep, like, clothes in the kitchen. He was like, why does it matter? Storage is storage! And there would be like, and here is my, here is my shirts on my kitchen shelf! And I was like, yeah, all right, man.
Sarah: I know, I know of a few people who, if they have a, a habitual anxiety trigger like did I unplug the coffee maker? Did I unplug the hair dryer? Did I unplug my curling iron? If, if taking a picture of it isn’t enough, just unplug it, put it in a bag, and bring it with you! Then you can train your brain, no, it’s right here; it’s not plugged in.
AJ: Exactly!
Sarah: Yeah. Who cares?
AJ: These are, these are the things. Who cares?
Sarah: Everyone’s brain is a little funky sometimes. You can work with it. [Laughs]
Tara: Uh-huh.
Sarah: Thank you so much for doing this. I really, really appreciate all of your time and how thoughtful you’ve been. This is so much fun; I cannot wait to edit this. Thank you!
Tara: Thank you for having us! This was fun!
AJ: Absolutely; this is a blast.
Sarah: This was super fun! Let’s do it again in the mid year in, in the new year and be, like, super mediocre at each other.
AJ and Tara: Yes!
Sarah: I love this plan. I will be –
Tara: I’m in.
Sarah: I will, I will message all of you and we will, we’ll, we will do another let’s talk about things.
AJ: Yes.
Tara: Sounds great!
Sarah: Have a great weekend and be excellently mediocre.
AJ: Well, I say we – I’m not going to promise for you, Tara, but I will be excellently mediocre this weekend.
Tara: [Laughs]
Sarah: Awesome.
Tara: I’m going to do it for everything but that one conversation, where I’ll be too excited to be purposely anything.
Sarah: Yeah! Just perf-, just be a big ball of squee; it’s fine.
[music]
Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you so much for how, like, joyfully you’ve responded to the end-of-the-year episodes. They are so much fun to put together, and it’s really fun to share them with you.
I will have links to every book we talked about, as well as all of the other things we mentioned, including Tara’s podcast, Queerly Recommended. Heads up: the episode with The Big Brunch is out, and it is so good. I’ve already listened to it; it was exactly what I wanted to hear. It was so lovely; it will completely make your day, and I’ll link to it in the show notes; never fear.
As always, I end with a bad joke. This joke comes from Martin by way of the podcast Discord jokes channel, which is like the greatest place on the earth. Martin, tusen takk. All right, are you ready for this joke? Here we go.
Did you hear about the building that looks ordinary on most days but at the full moon becomes a storage facility?
Yeah. It’s a were-house.
[Laughs] Okay, I have a lot of storage facilities near where I live, and now I’m going to think of them all as were-houses and wonder what they transform into at the full moon. Thank you, Martin!
On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you back here next week.
Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.
[end of gently festive music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
You were clearly having a fun time! Wishing you and all reading this a happy and healthy 2023.