how are you, really?

how "am" i?

Jul 28, 2026

Oh my gosh, thanks so much for asking!

I’m doing pretty good. Things have been pretty quiet on the work side (which I’m trying to not worry about too much) so I’m looking for ways to ‘summer’ before it sips away like a bottle of wine. I’ve been playing with watercolors, lounging in the park with my book, attending afternoon matinees, going on evening farmer’s market dates and answering the siren call of soft serve. You know, that sort of thing. Less work means more time for this newsletter, so I’ve spent some summer afternoons cooling down in a local library feeling studious as I write about books. Sure it isn’t paid work1, but I’m persuading myself that that fact doesn’t make it less meaningful. It’s meaningful to me at least and, most of the time, I feel that is enough.

Oh, really, how am I?

I’m safe and sound, frightened and overwhelmed, confused and angry, satisfied and craving. I’m worried about a family member and feel antsy about where my next trip should be. I’m grateful and guilty about all I have— health, home, partner, safety, money, wit. I’m frustrated at myself when I spend too much time scrolling, when I procrastinate or am inefficient. I’m filled with blinding rage and deep sadness every morning when I read my daily HCR2. I’m a bit lonely sometimes and feel slightly stagnant in my routines. I love and cherish all my reading time but want to add something more social and physical to my life, though I’m confused about what that should be. I feel strong and buzzy when I weight lift. I am excited to reconnect with my fellow pilgrims for our virtual book club and slightly nervous about giving an online talk about podcasting next month. I’m quite satisfied with my hair today but am itchy on the back of my right shoulder where a mosquito bit me while I dined outside with friends the other night3. I feel chubbier than I’d prefer then, like clockwork, get irritated at myself for traveling that well worn path and try to guide myself towards more life giving ones. And you know what? Right now I’m hungry. My stomach is growling so I’m going down to Pike Place Market to get myself a Northwestern sandwich at Three Girls Bakery.

Today’s shelf contains novels about women feeling all the things and what they decide to do about them.

Check in, dig deep and see how you really feel with one of these.

DEFINITELY BETTER NOW by Ava Robinson

Emma is a young professional in New York City celebrating one year sober. For the past 365 days she’s gone to meetings, checked in daily with her sponsor and eschewed relationships for fear they’d cause a relapse. By reaching this milestone she hopes to finally be able to combine Work Emma with Real Emma and make some friends, maybe even date. But, really, the one year mark doesn’t mean the hard work stops and a work flirtation, the reappearance of her estranged father, an assignment to the company’s ‘Fun Team’ and a recovery program that begins to feel oppressive instead of empowering leaves Emma floundering. As she grapples with her present, she realizes that the path of trust, forgiveness and recovery isn’t smooth or linear and must begin with herself.

This book is a sweet, earnest romantic fiction told in first person. I’d not read much about the world of sobriety and recovery programs so appreciated getting a peek into the process, psychology and experience of treating addiction. Here Emma attends “The Hudson Group”, instead of AA, which had some cult-like language and systems so I empathized and was ready to follow as she wrestled with this fundamentalist organization while still being entirely committed to her sobriety. There were some lovely, moving elements as Emma was a strong, dedicated but struggling character who was realistically flawed and frustrating. Her relationship with her Dad was complex and layered without easy answers and I appreciated her snarky stubbornness, though I think this tone tended to be present more in her dialogue than in her internal narration causing a bit of a disconnect. Her romance with Ben, the smitten IT guy, and her burgeoning friendships were charming, fun and fizzy, adding some necessary lightness to the heavier themes. The writing was engaging and character focused, though sometimes Emma’s anxiety spirals could go on too long and bog down the pacing4. I think it could have been shortened by 30 pages or so, but overall I enjoyed the insights into the deep and difficult world of sobriety and cheered Emma on as she fought for wholeness, love, safety, balance and joy.

One of the reasons I wanted to get sober, and wanted to stay sober, was because I was exhausted from all my interactions being clouded by the fuzzy veil of a couple of drinks. I always felt like what I did when I drank didn’t matter, but that was also the problem: I did almost everything drunk, so nothing I did ever mattered—at least not to me. Which meant I was walking around living a purposeless life, easily distracted by the scent of anything new that would blissfully numb me out. Sure, maybe I did fewer things and talked to fewer people now that I was sober. But now all of the words that came out of my mouth at least meant something to me.

DISCONTENT by Beatriz Serrano

translated by Mara Faye Lethem

Marisa leads a typical modern life in Madrid. She works in advertising, has a comfortable apartment and a friendly hook up buddy as a downstairs neighbor. But when a corporate retreat weekend is announced, everything begins to fall apart. Because, really, Marisa has been faking it. She’s delegated, stolen, postured, procrastinated and weaseled her way out of doing any real work for ages and now she’s supposed to 1) attend a weekend away with her bland, idiotic colleagues and 2) give them a presentation about… something about creativity? All seems lost but running into an old friend reinvigorates Marisa and she wonders if she’s able to make her version of ‘a good life’ a reality after all.

Hurrah, another ‘woman on the brink’ tale!5 At just under 200 pages this zipped by and provided me with laughs and food for thought as I commiserated with Marisa’s incomprehension of why we spend every precious day of our lives doing what we do. Though depressed and apathetic, her snarky, buoyant voice carried me along as she suffered the confusing indignity that is modern life with all its accepted contradictions, absurd processes, annoying niceties and rote routines. Though she knows she has it pretty good, she still feels kidnapped and coerced by the fact that living means working and this persistent cognitive dissonance sparks darkly comic internal diatribes against anything and everything. She has the kind of voice I enjoy and relate to— feeling ‘above it all’ but simultaneously tired of the effort and isolation that comes with being so aloof— so I empathized when she went a little nuts. While I do not condone (some of) her actions, I did quite enjoy reading about them and found myself amused and not a little enamored at her dedication.

This had a bit of an ‘armchair travel’ feel with its chic Madrid setting, though the banality of office culture knows no borders so I was often reminded of the excellent ‘I Hope This Finds You Well’6. A one-note malcontented character can get old fast so I appreciated that Marisa had a love for luxurious food, her one joyful escape from the humdrum, and that her arc of self-discovery was initiated by connection, to her past and to someone outside of her. I laughed at the ironic, rather warped ending and left this story amused and a little inspired to give less of a shit about the things that mean shit.

What neither that doctor nor the therapist understood was that the stress was caused not by what I did at my job but, as I’d tried to explain to him, by having to go to work. Spending eight hours from Monday to Friday on alienating and unsatisfying tasks, surrounded by people with whom I was forced to have futile and boring conversations full of absurd platitudes about mortgages or parking spaces or the words their children said wrong or the last series they’d watched on Netflix.

All that time I was giving to others instead of staying at home reading or drawing or simply looking at the ceiling, half naked, observing the cracks. I couldn’t stand the idea of being forced to live that office pantomime in perpetuity just to pay for things like rent or food or a book or a weekend at the beach. I broke down every morning when the alarm beeped because life, lived this way, seemed like a badly written tragedy, boring and sterile, devoid of fun and, even worse, devoid of content, and so, on my way to work, I felt like grabbing strangers by the shoulders and asking them why they weren’t feeling like me. What was their secret, how did they manage to maintain their composure, why didn’t they cry every time their alarms beeped?

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DEFINITELY THRIVING by Kerry Clare

Clemence has moved into a charmingly(?) disheveled attic apartment weeks after “exploding her marriage, accidentally on purpose” in an effort to ‘become’. After years of following the normal narrative and feeling increasingly like a piece of furniture in her own life, she’s hoping this time of ‘deliberate meandering’ will lead to some self discovery. (Note that absolutely no Bridget Jonesing will be happening during this new phase of life!) But, really, trusting herself and following her instincts isn’t something she has much experience with and as she gets caught up in the peculiar dramas and petty grudges of her neighborhood, she wonders if there is more than one way to live, thrive and be.

I loved that that the author dedicates this adorable, adult coming of age tale ‘to the people in my neighborhood’. Cute. This was had a drily funny voice with some delightful banter and though it had some small town whimsy, I didn’t feel that it veered into cartoonish territory. Clemence is complicated and not altogether wise much of the time, but she’s wry, curious and endearing as she rebuilds her life through wondering, wandering, eating, reading and connecting. Her explorations outside her comfort zone felt inspiring, intimate and poignant and I loved following her journey to find and create meaning for herself. There were silly shenanigans, ridiculous side characters, closet make-outs and hilarious family drama which kept things lively and entertaining but still grounded in humanity and not without shadow, bite and mess. Clemence is a reader—eventually working in a dusty old bookstore and crushing on her colleague, a ‘pale book man’— so I reveled in all the literary references7 . But reader, be warned that her ex-husband’s monstrous book betrayal elicited a full throated GASP of horror8 from me.

The book explores what ‘thriving’ means for different people, using the metaphor of a jumble sale life vs. a catalog one, as it paraded out quirky side characters such as a meddling landlady and her hot son, a crotchety bookshop owner and her consumptive employee and a legendary town ‘villain’ that may not be as bad as all that. Clemence’s friends and family also add humor and heart and did the favor of not irritating me as so many rom-com friends and family end up doing. While I think it ended without answering a couple of lingering questions, I throughly enjoyed following Clemence’s steps, both large and tiny, towards creating a life and the idiosyncratic cast, zingy dialogue and intentional build-up of plot and character created a story both entertaining and moving. Have at it!

In her new life, Clemence will learn to adapt and make do, and to not succumb to her every urge or desire. She will learn that she is stronger and more resilient than she thinks, more than everybody thinks, proving that she is tough and has grit. That she has character, unlike the sort of woman who wimps her way through seven years of marriage and then ends it all in a most craven act of betrayal.

…

What will happen now, she wonders, in her new life, one that’s less a catalogue than a yard sale, or one of Barbara Pym’s jumble sales, constructed of odds and ends, other people’s discards? Clemence would never have selected any of these items, or this room in which she finds herself, but this is the point. Mild depravity and lumpy beds—could this be the road to excellent womanhood?