Tag: COVID-19

Pandemic postcard #50: Help along the way

Julie Fanselow

There are plenty of reasons to cheer as the Senate seems poised to pass the latest — and let’s hope final — pandemic stimulus package, from ramping up the vaccination campaign to cutting child poverty in half to offering help with daycare costs so parents can get back to work. Personally, I am glad because I’ve already spent my next stimulus check.

I didn’t wake up the other day planning to buy a new laptop. But after a few weeks of increasingly sluggish performance, a Microsoft warning that I could no longer update my cloud-based Word software was the nudge I needed to replace Tom’s late-2011 model MacBook (which itself had come out of the closet to replace the 2013 Mac desktop that had hemorrhaged on me last year). With luck, I will get nearly a decade of use from this nimble new machine. Meanwhile, I’m marveling at the speed with which I’m opening and saving files.

It definitely feels like we’re accelerating out in the world, too. And much as it helped to have spring arrive just as we were locking down last March, the longer days and warming temperatures are welcome harbingers of better times ahead. But we’re not out of the dark winter yet, despite what certain governors would like to think. Ask the essential workers who haven’t yet been vaccinated as variants of the virus continue to spread, or grocery store staff working hazardous jobs for $10 an hour, or the kids who are eager to return to school before fall. Ask the folks in Jackson, Mississippi, who haven’t had water to drink or even flush their toilets for three weeks.

We’ve learned a lot of lessons this past year. One is that official inaction kills people, as it did with weeks of insistence that the virus would magically disappear. Another is that government can do a lot of good, as it did with the first round of stimulus relief, passed last March like the emergency bill that it was. Yes, the national debt is piling up, but with near-zero interest. Economic activity will replenish the coffers as we spend money and pay taxes. It’s smart to go big, especially to help the littlest and the least among us.

Self-sufficiency is a myth that deserves to die, and it sometimes feels like a more humane form of capitalism may be within sight, if only we can learn the lessons of 2020. Wouldn’t it be great to live in a country where people didn’t need to choose between food and medicine? Where people have help — via a reasonable minimum wage, for example — affording rent and child care, not just when emergencies happen, but to prevent them?

The government rescued me and millions of others last year with the first-ever unemployment assistance for freelancers, and now it has helped me replace the main tool of my wordsmithing trade. I am happy to have my first new computer in nearly a decade. Thank you, Uncle Sam. I’ll pay you back soon, I promise.


Thank you for reading Surely Joy. You can find the first Pandemic Postcards and my earlier writings here. If you’d like to get future posts via email, look for the link on the right side of this page (or maybe below this post, if you’re on a mobile device). I write for a living, so if you’d like to support my work, please hit the tip jar. Thank you.

Pandemic postcard #49: Reel life and real life

Julie Fanselow

Like most of you, I’m sure, it’s been nearly a year since I’ve been in a movie theater. Of all the activities I’ve missed most this past year, sitting in a big dark room with strangers ranks near the top. Here’s how I described the experience in a column I wrote many years ago:

Everyone knows why we go to the movies. To escape, right? And sometimes, there’s nothing like a few hours away from reality, bathed in darkness, completely consumed by a story that sweeps us far from our daily routines.

The last movie I watched in a theater was exactly like that. Portrait of a Lady on Fire took viewers to France in the late 18th century, immersing us in a forbidden romance. My act of seeing it in a theater on March 14, 2020, had a hint of danger, too, even with only a handful of people at the Saturday afternoon showing. Two days later, all theaters in Washington state shut down. Some are reopening now, but I’m not especially eager to go—except, perhaps, to a no-concession matinee where people need to stay masked the whole time, and that doesn’t sound like much fun.

Still, there’s a part of me that aches to see a film in a theater. That feeling was reawakened last weekend by Nomadland, a film currently in theaters and on Hulu that is about solitude and self-discovery amid community and hardship. I was captivated by its indelible characters, by its understated music and lovingly photographed scenes of the American West, and by its portrayal of resilience—so much so that I watched it again the next day.

From rom-coms to action epics, films sometimes serve as Rorschach tests, giving us a chance to see aspects of ourselves through the characters on the screen. We needn’t identify with a character to love a film: The weekend before last, I re-watched an old favorite, Harold & Maude. I thoroughly enjoyed it, yet I don’t see myself in either of its main characters. But I see much of myself in Fern, the central character in Nomadland, an uprooted woman in the residual stages of grief, a person near my age who enjoys the company of others yet is prone to wandering away from the pack. For that matter, I see myself in Dave, the other lead role, someone who is more of a people person than Fern.

Nomadland reminds us of what we are missing in 2021, as many of us who live alone mark the first anniversary of our last hugs. The film is a feast of human connection, from haircuts to campfires to stargazing parties, from breakroom conversations to Thanksgiving dinners. It made me deeply miss seeing people in person, but it was comforting to watch the people onscreen casually go about their lives, especially because—with the exception of lead actors Frances McDormand and David Straithairn—people in the film are playing themselves.

That’s yet another remarkable aspect of the film, how it blends real life with reel life. It shows that there is dignity in hard work, that 99 percent of people are essentially decent, and that everyone has a story. You only need to ask—and to listen. Nomadland also serves as a 108-minute meditation on why we decide to keep the things we hang onto, from homes to vehicles and jobs and relationships and stuff, and why we choose to let things go. It’s also about how people and things come back to us.

I could go on and on; Nomadland is a cinematic onion, revealing many layers and asking many questions without resorting to political debate or judgment. In the end, its central question seems to be: What makes a good life? If one version of the good life goes away, do we have the inner fortitude to make another one? Do we greet these changes as obstacles or opportunities? Can a restless and often difficult but ultimately free life be as satisfying as a settled one in a comfortable, well-furnished home? Is there a middle way?

We’re all living with versions of these questions in 2021, no matter what the past year—or decade—has thrown at us. I expect I’ll watch Nomadland many times over the coming years as I live into the answers.

Thank you for reading Surely Joy. If you enjoy my work, please consider sharing it with others.

Pandemic postcard #48: The best coast

Julie Fanselow

We got about a foot of snow in Seattle last weekend. It’s always dramatic and unusual when that happens, but it was here and gone, nothing like our last big storm in mid-February 2019. I remember that one well because I was trying to move that week, and because we had several waves of heavy snow, enough to bring down trees and close schools for days. Of course, with remote schooling in pandemic times there are few excuses for a snow day, and besides, this year’s snow all fell over the weekend, Monday was a holiday, and rains brought a big thaw by Tuesday. Kids, you were robbed.

Originally, I had planned to be in Tucson this week for a week of relative warmth and some high-desert hiking. But when COVID rates remained high in Arizona a few weeks ago, I canceled my plans and decided to do a short trip close to home. Plan B put me in a little Airbnb a mere stroll from Grayland Beach, a hard-packed expanse of sand that was close to deserted in the middle of this week in the middle of February.

I walked for miles on the beach, enjoyed a gorgeous sunset and some bald eagle sightings, and had the chance to meet my friends Cai and Marty for an impromptu outdoor lunch in a nearby town. When it’s warm enough to eat outside in winter (though we did each have many layers on), you know life is good. The quick trip was enough to start me dreaming of summer camping adventures, too. It won’t be long.

Although Seattle is on the salt water of Puget Sound, we are about 100 miles from the open ocean—and with heavy metropolitan traffic, it takes about two-and-a-half hours to get there. So I don’t go to the coast as often as I’d like, and every time I do, I swear I will do it more often. There’s nothing like it, and especially in a week where people in the heartland have had truly terrible weather, I need to remember how lucky I am to live where I do.

“Here in the corner attic of America, two hours’ drive from a rainforest, a desert, a foreign country, an empty island, a hidden fjord, a raging river, a glacier, and a volcano is a place where the inhabitants sense they can do no better, nor do they want to,” Timothy Egan wrote in The Good Rain. He didn’t even mention the sea. It just is. How spoiled we are, we who dwell on the edge, we people of the best coast.

Grayland Beach, looking north and northeast, Feb. 16
Shadow and sand dollar, Grayland Beach
Sunset on the best coast

Pandemic postcard #45: Screen saviors

Julie Fanselow

More than once since they began last spring, I’ve wanted to skip the Zoom vespers my church started amid the pandemic. “Screen fatigue is real,” we all say, and that’s true, but something keeps calling me back to this online congregation within a congregation, this constellation of kin who realize the value of a spiritual booster shot twice a month on Wednesday nights.

I especially had to force myself this week. The good news is I have a lot of paid work for the first time in more than a year. My brain is happy and my bank account will soon be too, but my back and neck and butt are not pleased to be spending long days in front of my computer again. My computer, such as it is; my desktop more or less died a few months ago, so my formal work station is now an ancient MacBook propped on a pile of books. It’s probably not the best long-term ergonomic solution, but it’s OK for now, as so many things are “OK for now” in this state of suspended animation in which we’ve lived for nearly a year.

So, wary of yet more screen time after an especially long work day, I decide to join vespers via my iPad, a good option when I want to be present but a little less tethered to the technology. The service is heavy, centered on a January-through-December remembrance of all that we lost in 2020, with many reminders that the toll of COVID-19 has fallen disproportionately hard on people of color and poor folks. I get up several times to do a few stretches. I assume the corpse pose on my floor for a while.

At long last, the litany is done. Our minister lights candles in memory of family and friends we’ve lost to the virus. (By this point in the pandemic, many of us have had that happen. I ask for a candle for Kelly, my friend who died last April.) The service has gone on for an hour and we are finally winding down when one among us says she wants to read a poem. And these days, who can deny a poem? So we take another minute, because that’s all it takes, to hear “The Patience of Ordinary Things” by Pat Schneider. It is beautiful, and once again, I am happy to have tuned in, happy to have these people and this poetry in my life, even via a small screen.

As with so many things in life, our technology can be both a blessing and a curse. The key, as always, is balance. During my now-long-again workdays, I get up to stretch as often as I can. I take walks, as often as not in a Seattle drizzle, because it’s worth it to be outside and breathe fresh air, even behind a mask.

As work re-asserts itself into a life that felt perfectly full in its absence, I can go days without checking social media. I pare back some of my online social calendar, which has grown robust over the past many months, begging “bandwidth issues.” I will miss something, but that’s OK. Ten months into this new way of being, we are all doing the best we can, and whatever we are doing is good enough.

“The Patience of Ordinary Things” can be read here. It’s also in Poetry of Presence, a 2017 volume I found a year later, shortly after Tom died. It is a beautiful anthology, worth having if you are “hungry for poems,” as a friend recently said. This week’s video is “Sanctuary” by Carrie Newcomer, also featured at vespers this week. Thank you for reading–and for sharing a small sliver of your too-much-screen-time with me.

Pandemic postcard #44: Let’s go, Joe

Julie Fanselow

I’ve never understood people who loudly dislike and distrust government yet still seek to run it–or, more likely, run it into the ground (or drown it in the bathtub, to quote Grover Norquist). But a whole bunch of them have lost power in the past week, and thank goodness for that. Government alone can’t solve all our problems, but its might can do plenty of good. We’ve seen glimpses of that this past year in the pandemic relief packages and in government support of vaccine development, but not nearly enough was done under our dire circumstances.

And now comes President Joe Biden, who clearly loves government and who has stocked his White House with people who, like him, know how to use big government to get big things done. In his first two days on the job, Uncle Joe–no stranger to the West Wing–got right down to work. Even with just a narrow Democratic majority in Congress, we could be in for one of the most productive times for our government–and by extension, our country–that we’ve witnessed in decades.

But arresting the pandemic and its accompanying economic fallout is Job One. Biden refers to the fight against the mutating spread of COVID as a war, and he noted in his inaugural speech how the pandemic has already killed more Americans in one year than died in all of World War II. On Thursday, officially releasing his 200-page pandemic response plan, the new president noted that COVID will likely claim its 500,000th American victim by February.

As Biden said, the “brutal truth” is that it will take many months before most Americans get vaccinated, especially since the current supply can’t easily be increased when the manufacturing capacity simply doesn’t exist. But our new national CEO has already ordered other steps that should help in the near term, including using the Defense Production Act to produce more testing supplies and protective gear and even a special syringe that ekes another dose from every vaccine vial; mandating masks for federal employees and on interstate travel; and asking FEMA to open community vaccination centers.

Taken together with his swift actions on other policy priorities–especially advancing another economic relief package and rejoining the world community’s fight against climate chaos–I am excited by Biden’s commitment to action. Joe Biden is a get-it-done guy, Kamala Harris is a formidable partner/tie-breaking Senate president, and that’s exactly what we need now: as much progress as possible, as fast as possible.

I was working in politics the last time we had one party holding power in both the executive and legislative branches, in 2009 when Barack Obama became president with Biden as his VP amid another economic crisis. (Here’s a remembrance of that year’s inauguration, which I attended.) Within days, Obama and Biden faced Republican stonewalling over the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that Obama nevertheless signed into law within a month of becoming president. Within months, the Tea Party–unfortunately abetted by some “Blue Dog” Democrats–rose up to oppose most of what Obama wanted to do, especially the Affordable Care Act. “Obamacare” passed in March 2010 but Democrats lost the House in that year’s elections and the Senate in 2014.

In the past dozen years, as Biden so memorably put it, hyper partisan politics has become “a raging fire destroying everything in its path.” (I blame Fox, MSNBC, and especially antisocial media, for enabling this decline.) But Biden said it doesn’t have to be this way, and I’m inclined to think that most Americans–weary of a fight that has nearly cost us our country–will agree that we can disagree on plenty of issues and still accomplish a lot of good.

As Charlotte Alter writes in her upcoming cover story for Time magazine, “Unity is not the same as uniform opinion or even widespread agreement. By these standards, the United States of America has rarely been unified, and never for long.” But earlier generations still managed to pass social safety net programs, environmental protections, and voting rights for women and people of color (which, extensively rolled back in recent years, must now be restored and strengthened).

“Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for war,” as Biden put it.

How refreshing.

Let’s go.

I’m sure you watched the inauguration, but you might want to read President Biden’s speech. Here you go.  And of course you want to hear the incandescent Amanda Gorman perform her poem again. See below. I’ve also included two of my favorite highlights from the “Celebrating America” show. Thanks for reading.


Pandemic postcard #43: Wonder

Julie Fanselow

That’s my word for 2021: wonder. I appreciate this word for its many layers of depth and meaning. To wonder can mean to be astonished and amazed, and it can mean to dwell in a state of scientific curiosity or philosophical pondering. Occasionally wonder can signify all of the above, all at once. I think we call that transcendence.

Wonder is what led me to become a journalist: wonder as a license to ask questions and be inquisitive about how the world works. We live in the golden age for this sort of wonder, since answers to our questions are as close as the computer in our pocket. Yet if the past year–and especially the past week–prove anything, it’s that most big questions defy easy answers. I am grateful for the working journalists who are asking the questions anyway, and for the historians who are trying to make meaning of our times even they unfold, and for everyone who is navigating our layered pandemics and shutdowns and breakdowns with open hearts and open minds.

Although I appreciate wonder of all kinds, I am especially partial to wonder as magic and awe. This sort of wonder is what compels me to stop whatever I’m doing to watch the sunrise or notice the play of shadows and light in my apartment. I am grateful for these small, sublime moments. They seem to be happening more often amid and perhaps because of the chaos of the world, and I am grateful for this, too.

Wonder as awe often leads to wonder as curiosity. This scientific sense of wonder has been the key to our species’ survival and it may save us yet. The scientists of long ago discovered fire and the wheel and the fact of the Earth’s orbit around the sun. Today, our scientists seek to address a global pandemic and tackle climate change. They are heroes in an era of competing narratives and cognitive dissonance, yet they’ve also long recognized the inadequacy of facts to explain much of the human condition. Take Albert Einstein, who wrote this in his book Living Philosophies:

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.

Or, if you like, Tom Waits. He’s neither a scientist nor a theologian, but I think he’s onto something here:

We live in an age when you say casually to somebody “What’s the story on that?” and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That’s fine, but sometimes I’d just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now.

I prize this sense of wonder as much as that of wonder as awe and curiosity. This philosophical strand of wondering helps us ponder whether and how the world could be a kinder, more just, more generous, and more loving place. It’s this sense of wonder that can make us more comfortable resting in mystery and reckoning with nuance and shades of gray. It’s what compels me to keep writing these columns for myself and for the few who see them. (Thank you, dear reader.)

Wonder as awe enriches our souls. Wonder as curiosity can lead to greater knowledge and wisdom. And sometimes, wonder itself is enough. May it be all those things for me and for you and for our world in 2021.

I’m curious to know whether you’ve adopted a word or phrase of the year for 2021. If so, what is it and why is it calling to you at this time?

This week’s videos: Iris Dement sings her song Let the Mystery Be; The Wonders perform in my favorite movie, That Thing You Do!; Mary Oliver reads her poem The Summer Day.

Thank you for reading Surely Joy. You can find the first Pandemic Postcards and my earlier writings here. If you’d like to get future posts via email, look for the link on the right side of this page (or maybe below this post, if you’re on a mobile device). I write for a living, so if you enjoy my work, feel free to hit the tip jar.

Pandemic postcard #41: Thank you, 2020

Julie Fanselow

We stood near the base of the Golden Gate Bridge, ready to join the throngs walking across the span and back. It was my second time taking this New Year’s Day stroll, billed by our organizer as a chance to walk with friends and with our intentions for the new year.

Before we began, we each shared a word we hoped would guide us in 2020, an idea I’d recently learned about and proposed to the group. Felicia chose “patience.” CJ vowed “courage.” Jeff’s focus would be “health.” My word was “learn.” The Bay Area skies were a brilliant blue as we walked north across the bridge, then the fog descended as we returned, so our timing was perfect. Of course we had no idea the murk that awaited us in 2020.

Me on New Year’s Day 2020

So what have I learned in 2020? I mainly chose “learn” as my word of the year because I was getting ready to travel to Mexico to earn my Teaching English as a Foreign Language certification. When class began in February, I learned I was the oldest in my cohort of seven people. (Another older student decided by the third day it wasn’t for him.) Day 3 was also the day we taught our first English class, and the next few weeks were packed with lesson planning, student teaching, grammar review, and piles of homework.

Beyond academics, I learned to make do with an apartment that, while fine in many ways, lacked a decent mattress and hot water for dishwashing. I turned the living room couch into an acceptable bed and was grateful to have adequate hot water for showers. I successfully used my limited Spanish to order food, talk with the corner laundry attendant, and buy a return bus ticket for a day trip to Lake Chapala. By the end of my Guadalajara stay, I had someone ask me for directions in Spanish and I was able to give them. I flew home to Seattle with my new teaching skill, a bit more Spanish, and a feeling of accomplishment. But 2020 was about to send us all back to school—except the kids and teens, who were coming home to learn.

My life has been blessedly simple during the pandemic. I live alone. My child is grown. My parents are long gone. I have no serious health conditions that keep me from venturing into public places, so I’ve gone out for groceries, laundry, and a few walks with friends.

Others’ lives are not so simple. Relatively few in my close circle have been directly affected by life-threatening bouts with COVID. But one friend has been navigating the needs of her mother, who has dementia and lives a thousand miles away. A cousin’s teenage daughter with a rare childhood disease had heart failure a few weeks ago and was flown to a hospital. She was able to come home for Christmas, but the future is unclear. Another cousin who has been battling cancer wound up back in the hospital on Christmas Eve. These people and their immediate families are truly doing the hard things in these hard times, and I feel humbled by their selflessness.

I’ve also learned humility in my work life—or perhaps this is less humility and more realism. As an older person who has only sporadically held staff positions in my career, I am unlikely to be hired as an employee in a historically tough job market. Still, I spent lots of time all spring and summer pursuing full-time work, grasping for some security in those most uncertain seasons. By fall, I had learned, once again, that I am meant to continue on the high wire of freelancing, but it is a life I chose long ago, and it is a life I like.

“Learn” was a very good word for 2020. Next week, I’ll write about my new word for 2021. Meanwhile, here are a few other things I learned in the past year: I learned that anti-racism is a lifelong practice. I learned to look for and trust in the next right thing. And I learned how I don’t always get to choose, but that’s OK.

Click here to read my post about picking “learn” as my word of the year for 2020, and here to read the Braver/Wiser post that inspired the exercise. Maybe you’d like to try it yourself in 2021–and if so, I’d love to know the word you choose to guide you through what is likely to be another trying yet oh-so-worth-it year.

Thanks for reading Surely Joy. I write for a living, so if you enjoy my work, feel free to hit the tip jar.

Pandemic postcard #40: Quarantine holiday jukebox

Julie Fanselow

The snow started falling in Seattle on Monday evening, just as the shortest day of the year came to an end. I took a little video that wound up having a bit of “Christmas in Jail” in the background (more on this later), but the song in my head at that moment was “I Believe in Father Christmas” by Greg Lake and Peter Sinfield. “They said there’d be snow at Christmas,” Lake sang in the 1970s. But in 2020, the snow fell on the solstice instead, and somehow that seemed more fitting in a year when we’ve learned how closely we are connected, to each other and to the Earth.

I looked to the sky with excited eyes ...

Holiday music is a deeply personal matter. Most of us have seasonal songs we cherish and others we’d be fine with never hearing or singing again, as well as songs that have gained shades of complexity as our lives unfold and our spiritual views evolve. I still enjoy singing Angels We Have Heard on High, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, and other tunes that evoke happy memories of times spent caroling with my childhood church choir, even as I’ve come to love a wider palette of music that reflects the many ways people celebrate light coming amid the deepest darkness.

In that spirit, the rest of this week’s post is the Surely Joy 2020 holiday jukebox, with a selection of songs that may not immediately come to mind when you consider the sounds of the season. It’s accompanied by a longer playlist on Spotify, including many songs nominated by my friends when I solicited suggestions on Facebook this week. Enjoy and be well, and I’ll see you here next week with some final thoughts on what I’ve learned in 2020.

Continue reading →

Pandemic postcard #39: I think we have a shot

Julie Fanselow

“We are in the valley of the shadow of death. It is really dark. We know the sun is going to come up over a mountain at the other side of the valley, but it can’t rise fast enough.” — Science reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr., discussing the state of the pandemic on “The Daily” from The New York Times

“In North Dakota, you’ll see the most beautiful sunrises. Today is the most beautiful sunrise.” — Fargo physician Dr. Rishi Seth to reporter Jack Healy, last Monday just before he received one of the first COVID-19 vaccinations given in the United States

Mark well this middle week of the darkest December, for we will never forget it. For all their multitude of sins, big pharma and big government have come to the rescue, and men and women of science and medicine are now rolling up their sleeves to accept the best-ever holiday gift—a vaccine that has arrived just in time to help them gird for the many months of battle still ahead.

How fitting, too, that this historic event is taking place at the solstice, when we have mere hours of daylight in much of the Northern Hemisphere. The valley of death is still all around us, in relentlessly grim pandemic statistics and in months of Congressional dithering amid job and housing insecurity and long lines at the food banks. But the vaccines are arriving, more slowly than promised but much faster than we expected. Truth is finally dawning for many who’d prefer fiction, and the long nights will soon get a little shorter, minute by minute.

Bless the anonymous angels of encouragement

Given the events of this week, it feels like the world is leaning into the light as never before, actively choosing hope and repair over despair. Hope is a choice we’ll need to keep making over and over this long winter. Yet we need the darkness, too, as a time of rest and reflection. Even as we anticipate the return of what we knew as normal, we can use these winter months to consider what we want to save from this long pandemic year.

I want to hold onto the knowledge that even in a year I earned very little income, I found ways to share what I have—my time and talent, mostly, but even some treasure–because my government and my family and my friends have been generous to me. Amid this year of unparalleled loss and inept leadership, there has also been also widespread recognition that “all of us need all of us to make it,” in the words of the Rev. Theresa Soto.

Together, we have an opportunity to start remaking our world. We can end the pandemic through science, we can encourage reason as a road to happiness, and we can adopt mutual care and concern as the ground on which we stand.

Here are links to The Daily’s interviews with Donald G. McNeil Jr. (Dec. 14) and healthcare professionals receiving the first vaccines (Dec. 15). Deep gratitude to the essential workers who have labored overtime all year, and for whom much hard work remains. May you stay well.

Thank you for reading Surely Joy. You can find the first Pandemic Postcards and my earlier writings here. If you’d like to get future posts via email, look for the link on the right side of this page (or maybe below this post, if you’re on a mobile device). I write for a living, so if you enjoy my work, feel free to hit the tip jar.

Pandemic postcard #38: Simplicity made easy

Julie Fanselow

Item 1: The Minimalists have a new documentary on Netflix. Actually, you need to wait until Jan. 1 to watch it, but the trailer is out now.

Item 2: Netflix likes minimalism. The streaming service already showcased the work of Marie Kondo, whose tidying-up tips made her a star.

I’ll get back to those thoughts. First, though, welcome to Surely Joy’s new home! I had to make a quick move this week. Here’s how that happened:

Not my license plate, but I love it.

Last Saturday morning, I woke up and realized that my latest post hadn’t gone out to email subscribers. I’ve been blogging in various places since 2003, always favoring the simplest possible platforms, and my low-tech approach has served me well. Lately, though, I’d been frustrated with some typographical glitches in Google Blogspot—so when the email feed failed my readers and me last week, I decided to build a new website. “What the heck,” I thought. “I don’t have anything better to do today.”

So that’s what I did, and here we are. I’ve thought about moving all my Surely Joy content—or at least the first 37 pandemic postcards—over here, and I may eventually get around to that. But what I really want to talk about today is that word: content.

Content, noun. Stuff that people produce and buy to fill the insatiable demands of our consumerist culture. All the stuff clogging our online feeds and our homes.

Content, adjective. A state of being satisfied. I am enough. I have enough. You are enough. You have enough.

I think The Minimalists, Josh and Ryan, are basically good guys with genuinely helpful advice on paring down the possessions you already have. They refuse to sell ads on their website and their podcast, and that’s admirable. But they sure do sell themselves and their philosophy.

More power to them, but can you truly have a simple life with millions of followers, bestselling books, speaking tours (when those were a thing), and two Netflix documentaries? And if a key principle of minimalism is buying less stuff, why not release the documentary before the holiday shopping season rather than on New Year’s Day, to give people plenty of time to practice the idea of “enough” before adopting minimalism as a 2021 resolution?

As for Ms. Kondo, I haven’t read any of her books and I didn’t watch her Netflix series, but I know she’s all about sparking joy—a word I obviously cherish. So I will admit to having been a little bit appalled when I heard last year that she’d launched her own line of … stuff. I just took my first-ever peek at her website and, amid the gift guides, I see she is also offering a 10-lesson, 75-minute course in mastering her method. Just $39.99.

I get it. Everyone needs to make and spend some money in our world. But know this: You have everything you need to live a simpler life. You don’t need any more content to be content. You don’t need a guru, a method, or a teacher. And you don’t need this blog, though I am grateful you’ve spent a few minutes reading this, and that you’ve found Surely Joy in this new space.

We’ll meet again here next week. In the meantime, be content—the adjective, not the noun.

Thanks for reading Surely Joy. I write for a living, so if you enjoy my work, feel free to hit the tip jar.