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Have I mentioned here before how antsy I get when I run low on books? When I say “low on books,” it doesn’t mean I’m out of books I haven’t read, because that hasn’t happened since I was in grade school. No, we’re talking mostly about library books. Or new books. Anyway, when this happens, I can’t just get one book. Or two. No, we’re at

this many.

What I’m Reading

One thing I’m enjoying is this book called “Stories,” edited by Al Sarrantonio and Neil Gaiman. Sarrantonio is the author of this horror book I read as a teen called “October.” It’s one of those non-classic, not-special books that has always stayed with me, especially the ending. The ending was actually the best part of the whole book. I began reading it again and yeah, definitely not the best book.

But anyway. These Stories. The idea here was to challenge well-known writers to just tell a good story, sort of in the campfire vein. It features a few of my favorites, such as Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Jeffery Deaver and Joe Hill. And as with any combination of talent, you will find a variation in what (they think?) counts as a good story. Some of them were solid and stayed with me for days after I read it (Gaiman’s The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, Catch and Release by Lawrence Block, Hill’s The Devil On the Staircase and Deaver’s The Therapist are a few). Some of them, I’m still wondering, like, what? The one I can’t stop thinking about for not-good reasons is Samantha’s Diary, about a young woman whose diary was discovered in the future. She had become the living embodiment of the “12 Days of Christmas” poem. It was a great premise, one where the horror of the situation is balanced with the humor of someone bringing geese a-laying to your doorstep every day, but the end was a letdown. I spent several days asking myself, “But why?” I guess the answer is that it’s the nature of the campfire stories. Some are great and some are not.

And I just started “Thick” by Tressie McMillan Cottom. I’m trying to stop just following people on social media and actually read their work. Cottom is so good on Twitter (my girl tweeted about water bottles and opened up a discourse on wealth and privilege that lasted most of the day) but I realized I had no idea who she was really, besides podcast cohost with Roxane Gay. That first essay fixed my feet (you gotta read the essay to get it) and I am ready to read all her stuff now.

What I’m Listening To

I was all set to recommend this podcast I’d started listening to during my evening walks called “Unf*ck Your Brain.” It’s hosted by thought work coach Kara Lowentheil and no, I still don’t fully understand what thought work is because it sounds like you’re teaching yourself to view things from a different perspective, which can be helpful, but also sounds too easy to be considered work. Her mantra is “Thoughts lead to feelings and feelings lead to action.” Lowentheil focuses mainly on your professional life and how to think about setting goals. The goals has been top of mind for me as I try to focus on several things at once right now without forsaking the work I wanted to do as a writer this year. And as it pertained to how I think about my full-time job, a lot of what she said resonated with me and actually helped me think differently about my professional challenges.

Kara was on a roll with me, so I thought to myself, “Let’s see what she has to say about personal relationships and the difficult feelings that come from those.” I decided to listen to the episode called “Drama & Toxic People” for reasons I’m not getting into, thinking she could offer some tips on dealing with difficult people. But I was surprised to learn that there are no such thing as toxic people! Or drama! It’s all in your brain! The solution is not to cut these people out of your life, but how to deal with your thoughts about them and their actions. And because people aren’t literally radioactive, they’re not toxic, either, it turns out. A “toxic” person is only someone you can’t manage your mind around. So no one else is responsible for drama and toxicity is you. There’s also no such thing as gaslighting and emotional abuse! It’s all in your head! Why would you allow someone to make you feel that way?

This was wild enough to begin with, and I almost threw my phone into the lake, but then I managed my mind and turned off the podcast instead. This took me back to the main list of episodes and I noticed there was a Q&A episode, the first one, and directly after the drama episode. After what I’d heard in the previous episode, it occurred to me that other people might have had the same WTF reactions I did. And sure enough, there came in a question about emotional abuse and accountability on the part of the abuser. Her answer was that the anger the abused person is feeling is because of the way she chooses to think about the situation and that she allows herself to expend excess energy on this person and to feel anger.

Yeah.

At the end of that Q&A episode, there was a question about straightening your hair for professional purposes versus keeping it curly, and THAT was the one she found fascinating and wanted to discuss further.

That was the last time I listened to it. I was almost at a place where I was going to recommend her episodes about goals and nothing else. I still kind of might? But it is actually dangerous to suggest to people that you should find another way to think about people mistreating you — suggesting even that sticking around and learning to manage your thoughts in the behavior of terrible behavior, what, builds character? Builds strong thought work? And it’s not to say that you don’t have to come to a place of peace within yourself in the aftermath of these encounters, because it’s not healthy to get flared up every time you see this person/people. But this is work that is hand-in-hand with understanding what has happened to you and how to recover whenever possible, not mentally minimizing what has happened to you.

I think the overall problem with this podcast is that Lowentheil is a very fortunate person to appears to have never been in emotionally abusive or difficult relationships or in work situations with people who are overtly racist or sexist. I did see she has an episode on racism after George Floyd and I’m not doing that to myself. But if the limits of the challenges in your life keep you from understanding what others have been through and why thought work probably doesn’t help with truly terrible things that can happen to a person, then there are topics you shouldn’t touch. It’s better to know your own blind spots coming in as opposed to having others discover them for you.

I don’t know — that feels like a thought-worky thought.

This, by the way, is why I stick with true crime podcasts. I don’t need this angst and am probably about done with the self-help podcast genre unless someone has an idea that will keep my phone dry.

Let’s end on a positive note: The other thing I’ve listened to recently that I liked: “The Line.” Now that is a great series about a topic I did not think I wanted to hear about and not from Dan Taberski. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Taberski — it’s just that his storytelling style wouldn’t seem to fit with a story about a Navy SEAL who killed a war criminal in Iraq. But it fits (like his Heather Locklear analogy — just listen to it) because he can tell a good story without forsaking his style. I definitely didn’t think I wanted to hear from Eddie Gallagher, who I felt previously was a war criminal who got a pardon from a president who gave them out like candy. But Taberski actually landed the interview with him, his wife and his brother, and then saved the mic drop for the appropriate moment.

Plus, the podcast is tied to an Apple TV documentary by Alex Gibney (the “Going Clear” guy).

Fine. Just take my money.