This Week in Grief and Media: 7/1/24
Ben Affleck, wait we love reading outside, what's the deal with Emily Blunt's husband?, being 93 percent anti-AI
I feel defeated this week, similar to this is going to ruin the tour energy, but I would never commit a crime or be Justin Timberlake. (Though I’m really scared of accidentally committing tax fraud because I don’t understand taxes. And I would release SexyBack if given the opportunity.)
If I was Nicole Kidman frolicking last week, this week I’m teetering closer to Ben Affleck. It’s some combination of burnout, mixed with grief, mixed with lack of routine by unemployment, mixed with job-search hopelessness. I realize this is probably not fun to read, but it’s not fun to feel either.
I find in moments of ~not feeling OK~, my phone screen-time goes up exponentially, which I hate because I’m not consuming anything of substance and rather just switching between three social media apps while simultaneously ignoring everyone on them. The best distractors have been Love Island USA and working on this newsletter. If anyone has any fun movie/show/book recs, please let me know! (Not Perfect Match, I’m tapping out at episode five. I can’t stand the Stevan couple.)
In order to feel better, I took a mental health day today. I rescheduled a meeting I had, told myself I wouldn’t check anything off my to-do list and made it a point to only check my email and LinkedIn job boards 120 times today, rather than my standard 430. And since I can’t allow myself to relax these days in even intentional moments of relaxation, I made myself sit outside in the sun, without my phone, and read.
It was nice. I’m writing this as a break from reading, and again, because I can’t allow myself to relax, but I do look forward to getting back out there and reading. It’s calming, grounding, really every synonym for peaceful you can think of, and it makes total sense why society tells people like me to touch grass. I feel better than I did writing the first section ^ this morning. My Ben Affleck is settling a bit. Maybe I’m Ben Affleck with the same expression, only he’s wearing a crop top and shorts, sunglasses and a bucket hat, and replaced the cigarette with those dark chocolate rice cakes from Trader Joe’s. That’s certainly an improvement.
Of course, sitting outside with a book doesn’t come without tears. Because sitting outside with a book alone is a reminder that my mom isn’t alive, or else I’d be sitting outside with a book and my mom. It’s something between unfortunate and completely lucky, or maybe just both, that I can’t do anything without thinking of my mom. I miss her.
I’ve kind of unintentionally become a BAGGU Correspondent™, reporting my findings from the BAGGU Enthusiasts Facebook group as well as the BAGGU subreddit that I scroll daily. This is unemployment, babes. The latest in the BAGGU world? There was a collab with designer Collina Strada that dropped last Tuesday, but the BAGGU community was upset because some of the designs were created using AI as a tool in the designing process.
Even before this news dropped, I’ve been increasingly interested in AI. (In fact, this week’s GRIEF AND MEDIA podcast episode is a conversation around using AI as a tool in grieving.) I use interested loosely—I’m overall pretty anti-AI. Anytime I’m at a nice and completely normal outing with friends, I find myself going on a rant about how AI is going to one day evolve our communication to sound more robotic. Because AI sounds robotic, students are using it for schoolwork, professionals are using it for their LinkedIn profiles and emails, its horrible sentence structure is going to become normalized, oh my god what happened to the art of a sentence, that sort of thing.
After my upcoming podcast episode (out Thursday!), I’m like seven percent okay with AI. So would I buy one of the BAGGU bags that used AI as a tool in the designing process? Probably, if I had a job. But it’s actually best I don’t have a job, because this was the bag I wanted, and I have no practical use for it.
In other media news, I finally watched A Quiet Place. You know the one: the scary movie with Emily Blunt and John Krasinski, who I’m sorry to say very much irritates me, where they have to be quiet or else some unexplained monster thing comes and murders them? Eats them? Swats at them like an annoying fly? I don’t even know.
When I initially finished the movie, I thought, “That was fun!” but the more I think about it, the more I realize I didn’t love it. First of all, John Krasinski. My brain has to recalibrate for a second and a half every time I think of him and Ryan Reynolds in order to tell them apart. And they are both annoying, though John (Can I call him John?) is admittedly slightly less. My dad used to say two out of 10 people will love you, two out of 10 people will hate you and the other six can go either way. I’m solidly in the two who hate them camp. It’s just their general aura, I think. They’re not to be trusted.
Secondly, I know nothing about the unexplained monster. Why do they like the silence? I can’t relate, as I need a podcast playing at all times, and if there’s ever a lull in conversation, no worries, I have six questions on deck to ask. I wish we got further explanation, but I suppose that’s what the next two movies will provide. And they got me—I will be seeing the newest one in theaters.
Third, if they can make more noise when they’re by a loud river, why not live near the river? I mean, honestly.
Fourth, and this was my biggest gripe of all—why did Emily Blunt and John have to put their fingers to their mouths multiple times throughout the movie when the unexplained monster was around? We fucking know we have to be quiet. If someone told me to “shush” in A Quiet Place, I would be pissed. Like, no shit! Do you think I was born yesterday?
New podcast episode is coming this Thursday, so be on the lookout for that! You can catch up on the podcast so far on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, directly on Substack and wherever you listen to podcasts by searching “GRIEF AND MEDIA.”
I also dropped my latest essay—#3: Hold me closer, tiny dancer—in honor of my dad and 10 Father’s Days without him.
I’m a fraud because I haven’t watched The Bear, but season three is now out and I hear it’s good!
The Bear
That’s it for This Week in Grief and Media. Please consider sharing the GRIEF AND MEDIA PROJECT with a friend. It would mean the world! <3
Don’t forget to join the conversation in the comments! How was your week in grief? What media are you consuming this week? Are you in an entertaining Facebook group a la BAGGU Enthusiasts? Tell me all about it.