Uh oh 20 minutes earlier, listening to Mr. Morale:

Had a great conversation with Leslie Jamison about the joys and perils of daydreaming.
askpolly.substack.com/p/daydreaming-… One thing we didn't get into here: I'm starting to view imagination and fantasy as a necessary counter-measure that creates some internal balance in the face of the aggression, darkness, and shallow rage inherent to social media and the outside world.

Ignoring your deepest needs and emotions in the name of principles will turn you into an unprincipled person. You deny yourself freedom, supposedly for the sake of others, and eventually you're denying other people their freedom because it pains you to witness the life you surrendered to your rigid worldview.

The fact that there's not a popular Facebook alternative or a popular Twitter alternative yet half of the humans on Earth now do the Wordle every morning. Just explain it to me. Is it really so hard to start a new Instagram?

Stingaram: Like Instagram, Except Not Evil.

Please just explain why we can't start our own club, Johnny.

I express gratitude for their tolerance repeatedly, which you'd know if you actually read the book.

https://twitter.com/Femsplainers/status/1511071786850570249

Here's the condensed version for @Femsplainers @davidfrum @CHSommers and @DCrittenden1 since you're all so passionate about books you've never read.

I wrote a funny, romantic book that underscores the challenges of marriage and paints my husband as the hero of the story, and from the NY Times review to the tabloid coverage to The View, it's been warped to "Wife Is Total Bitch."

https://twitter.com/TheView/status/1499202906825711618

Do men who write comedic memoirs wind up with headlines like "Husband Hates Wife, Calls Marriage 'Insane'"? Or are their full names used?

Do editors find and publish Instagram photos of them in bathing suits, or are they asked thoughtful questions about their actual books?

Some are making jokes about Walter Kirn being married 3x. Divorce is not a form of failure. People outgrow each other or choose without knowing what they're choosing. It's not humane to treat marriage as a litmus test of character or stamina or honor. I don't have a beef with him. Dog-piling a person with a flawed past can turn against everyone one of us, because we're all flawed and will continue making mistakes until we're dead. My concern is how we continue to encounter women's stories and emotions with suspicion and fear.

Why am I not at all surprised that the @nytimes assigned my memoir about marriage to a man who feels an absolutely moralistic sense that the details of a marriage should be kept secret?
nytimes.com/2022/02/04/boo… Oh look, it's a man reviewing my first memoir, as an excuse to declare all memoirs by unfamous humans pointless and self-indulgent!
nytimes.com/2011/01/30/boo…

I love this essay by @surlybassey. Thinking outside the box of what our fractured, isolated, fantasy-fixated culture tells us is normal is so eye-opening and necessary.
nytimes.com/2022/01/04/opi… Marriage doesn't have to isolate you from a communal life, but so many people let it -- in ways as big as moving far away from friends and family to raise kids alone with your spouse and ways as small as socializing only with other married couples.