Now I have three foolproof methods for distracting myself: online window shopping, Nerds Gummy Clusters, and truck drivers.

I’d really love new ones though, especially because the truck drivers are kind of rare. What things do you do to instantly make yourself feel better? Breathing techniques are kind of boring, and I’ve tried the grounding technique where you hear and touch and smell different things but nothing in my vicinity is ever that soothing. Do you have a special tea or song or a candle? Do you call someone? Do you put on socks? Do you go for a run? Do you do push-ups? I’m not that interested in push-ups.

Thanks for being here, I hope all your thoughts are good thoughts.

I heard someone say the other day (alright fine it wasn’t in real life, it was Mae Martin on Handsome) that they’d been gratitude journaling.

Gratitude, I thought. That’s it.

More gratitude is the thing my life needs. If I gratitude journal every day, I could shift my mindset, to abundance and possibility and a story where everything happens for a reason and falls into place, a world where I’m so lucky - which is true, I am so lucky.

But then later that same day I heard someone say that building their self-confidence had changed their mindset.

Self-confidence, I thought. That’s it.

That’s what I’m missing. I’m not lucky, I’m talented. I make smart choices, I work hard, I don’t need luck! People should look to me because I’m doing amazing stuff. People know know me, they’re the lucky ones!

I asked Boaz which mindset seemed better and he asked why I had to choose. He was probably joking - it’s obvious we can only have one! Which are you trying to channel right now?

Is it a third thing? What’s the third thing? (And why can’t we have all three, Boaz asks.)

I hope you have a good week and move towards a better, more grateful, more confident, or more third-thing version of yourself. Thanks for being here on your way there.

The whole world was like that, one moment full of infinite possibility and the next moment drastically less cool than you thought.

Cats have nine lives!? Never mind, they’re just decent good at jumping. People can grow up to be magicians?! They’re memorizing tricks, it’s not real magic. Skin changes color in the sun?! It only turns like a slightly darker color than it started.

In high school ice cream also summed up my personality, or I hoped it did.

Because if ice cream is your personality, no one has the mental bandwidth to notice you’re maybe wearing the wrong jeans or don’t have a consistent answer to what your favorite band is.

Have you made your own ice cream? We made it a lot when I was a kid, and during lockdown I remembered I owned an ice cream maker.

My favorite flavor to make is pistachio.

My favorite recipe is the Jeni’s recipe, partly because in 2020 we didn’t have air conditioning and a lot of other ice cream recipes involve standing over a stove. Jeni’s recipe has cream cheese but to me the ice cream doesn’t taste like cream cheese. To other people, it does.

Unlike ice cream trucks at the park or the beach, this one is moving and you have to RUN to catch it. Every other Thursday around 5:45, we run.

I always get a Drumstick.

What’s your favorite ice cream and what does it say about you? What was your favorite ice cream before? Are you fine with melted ice cream, does that not taste bad to you?

Thanks for being here, I wish I had ice cream to give you. I hope you have a few times this week when you feel incredibly lucky, or if this is your off week I hope you have some times next week when you feel incredibly lucky.

It’s so nice out! Come for a walk with me.

It’s just there in the middle of the sidewalk. Would you nudge it with a stick, to see if it was really dead, or move it off the sidewalk?

I didn’t tell you this earlier, but this was the second bee I’d poked that day and the other one had been alive too. I’d relocated the other one to shade - but is it worth it? The bee clearly chose to pass out on the sidewalk, maybe it wants to be left there.

I wasn’t even twenty feet from home, I could go grab this bee some water! But first, it seemed smart to make a pile of sticks or rocks to mark where the bee was.

Then again, it was a huge yellow bee. I could probably see it from my window. And so hot and sunny, maybe she wanted the water right away. She was so weak, her little legs were limp and still had bags of pollen stuck to them.

There’s no adventure to choose here, we’re just grabbing the water and the curliest leaf and heading back over there. Alright fine, you want a little adventure?

I got outside with my (still totally full) shot glass of water, and this sweet older greyhound was there, with an owner too. The dog was so friendly and instantly delighted to see me.

Without any greeting, I rushed right over — wow, hold on.

I, um, I hurried over to the bee area, assuming the dog and owner would keep walking. But the dog was curious what I was doing and sat down at my feet as I stared at the ground near the sidewalk. And since the dog had a short leash, the owner stood there just a couple feet from me. Was it worth explaining why I was holding a shot glass and a leaf?

Instead of offering any explanation, I kept looking for my bee in silence, as the dog parked itself and watched. The leaves and dirt provided total camouflage, or the bee was just gone. But I kept quietly looking, with the dog and neighbor quietly watching. Do you want to be the neighbor now for a minute?

The neighbor just watched quietly.

Eventually I gave up. Still holding the water and leaf, I greeted the neighbor and dog and then said, offhandedly “I was looking for a bee.”

That seemed to make sense to the neighbor. As I went in the door they yelled a friendly “I’m sorry about your bee!”

It’s fine, I said, the bee is probably fine anyway.

Thanks for going on this adventure with me! Have you encountered any injured animals so far this spring? Do you have any good bee puns? Do you think the dog ate the bee somehow? If I see another bee tomorrow, I’m marking where I put it.

Don’t you miss these sounds? Decades of chatting has been so fun! I feel very lucky! I like how much faster internet is now!

But I also just want to sit and pet my dog or walk to a park or blow bubbles, and not know someone somewhere is wondering why I’m not getting back to emails on a Sunday afternoon.

If you’re nostalgic for early internet and buddy icons, have you played the game Emily is Away?

Our friend was visiting last week and we all downloaded the Focus Friend app by Hank Green. It’s cute, my character made a few socks and bought a window.

But I think what I really want is what I saw happen to this teenager when we went on a touristy boat ride with my mom a few summers ago. Right as the boat was leaving the dock, a teenager was holding his phone out recording the whole thing, and the phone slipped out of his hands and into the water, irrevocably lost. He spent the entire 90 minutes of our trip crying with his head on his mom’s shoulder - first loudly, then quietly. I’d be emotional if I lost my phone forever too, but I think they’d be happy tears.

Do you have any tips or secrets about how you spend less time online? Or do you like the amount of time you spend online? Do you change the ringtones on your devices so they make cuter sounds? Have you done anything fun outside lately? I saw kites available for checkout at our local library the other week.

Do you feel comfortable sharing your first username or email? Mine was brookestia, named after a Greek god version of myself I’d created. Against my better judgement I also feel comfortable sharing the first page of some fanfiction I wrote about the Greek god version of myself, and had published in our middle school anthology.

k ttyl, luv Brooke

—’—-(@

You heard that right, this month’s edition of my entirely text and image-based magazine is about the one thing text and image can’t convey: voices.

Do you like your voice? Do you like listening to your voice - do you have to listen to it often? Do you recognize your voice? Do you sound like anyone?

Erica has the last laugh

I was laughing at a friend’s house, a pretty innocuous thing to do, I thought, when their 11-year-old said “wow, when Brooke laughs she sounds like Erica.”

“That’s funny,” our friend said, and then moved on as though it wasn’t important to discuss.

“Who’s Erica?” I asked. They said she was a neighbor, sort of, it didn’t matter who Erica was. The conversation moved on, people talked some more, and I guess something funny happened, because I laughed again and our friend said “Wow she’s right, you really do laugh like Erica.”

What’s Erica laughing like? How can I laugh “like Erica”? I’m just laughing. No big deal, I put it out of my mind and we talked about something else, for another minute until I guess I laughed again and everyone wouldn’t stop going on about it.

“I can’t believe we never noticed how much your laugh sounds like Erica.”

“Wow it’s like Erica’s in the room with us, it’s uncanny.”

I tried out different laughs all weekend, with some success. But usually I laugh without thinking much about it, and when I do, I sound like Erica.

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Most of all I love knitting hats because I have a head too big for off-the-rack headwear.

Maybe you’re thinking “I bet it’s not that big.” It’s bigger than you’re thinking. But when I knit my own hats, I can knit them as big as I want. Here are a few things I made for my huge head this winter.

It’s a blue hat

I bought this yarn on clearance on a trip with Boaz and our nephew, and brought it to the hospital when I was in labor thinking I’d work on the hat between contractions. Ha! But a year later I finished it, and, it’s fine I guess. The yarn was on clearance because the person who made it was going out of business, and I think that’s ok, no one needs this yarn. The rest of the reviews will get more interesting. 6/10

Pattern: Manhattan

Striped bonnet

I had a fuzzy and not-fuzzy green yarn, and thought it would be cool to make a striped bonnet. And I was right, making it was cool! But wearing it isn’t cool at all - it’s too loose on me, like I’ve tied a garbage bag around my face. Worst of all, only people behind me get to enjoy the strips, I can’t see them in my reflection. 0/10

No pattern.

Lime green beret

This beret is a lot of look. I have a feeling whenever anyone sees me wearing this they think “wow look at that dork in a beret” and I’m fine with that. At least I’m not wearing it around Paris. 7/10

Pattern: Tiger Beret

Checkered balaclava

I used up seven different bits of leftover yarn from a sweater for Boaz and mittens for my mom to make this, and I love it. It’s super warm and makes me feel like I’m so cool people must think I came from another planet. 10/10

No real pattern.

Scarf with a tie

Ok, this isn’t a hat, but I made a tiny scarf with a $5 ball of yarn from a yarn shop near my sister’s house, and didn’t have enough material to make it long enough to really wrap around and secure. The ends just touched. But I did have enough to add these little ties, and I think it’s the nicest thing I’ve ever seen. Why don’t more scarves have little ties like this? 10/10

Pattern: Alex Scarf, with ties.

I still have more hats I’d like to make, but none of them are interesting enough to make me wish winter lasted longer. It can be spring whenever it wants at this point. The flowers are coming up over here, and Kip is willing to go on longer walks, and every night there’s another minute of sun.

Is it spring where you are? Do you have any seasonal hobbies? When you make things, is it to give away or to keep for yourself? Are you a hat person? I wouldn’t call myself a hat person, but I guess I am usually wearing them. What’s the alternative? A hair person? A head person? A helmet person?

Next week’s post will be a longer magazine issue, I can’t wait for you to see it.

Thanks for being here. I hope your week is full of people you love and signs of spring and that you always have the perfect amount of yarn you need.

We’re lucky to live in a neighborhood rich with little free libraries.

Every walk presents a fresh harvest of old travel guides, hardcover best-sellers, detective novels, and tens of thousands of printed words about Paw Patrol.

Peeking into a little free library feels a little bit like looking into my own brain. There are some gems there! But it’s mixed in with a lot of outdated reference materials and stuff that could be interesting but it turns out it’s soaking wet.

I like finding Little Free Library books to feature on here. So I was super excited when a few weeks ago The Knot’s Ultimate Wedding Gown Guide from 1999 appeared near us. When I saw it, I had the same thought I do whenever I notice a new idea in my brain, about a mail-order sock subscription service, or a tiny life-sized book about bugs, or knitting our dog a full-body sweater. I thought:

Wait, this is something.

I grabbed the book and started flipping through it, and I had the same feeling I often do when I think more about a new idea I have:

It’s even better than I thought.

On the very first page we’ve got a Joan Cusack inspired bride with a huge green computer, and an ad a website that looked like this at the time. This book is the best gift the universe has ever given me (besides my partner and dog and child).

I put my prized possession in my bag. Then a few days later I sat down with a lukewarm cup of coffee to write this post. And that’s when I had the exact same chilling realization I have whenever I start working on any idea:

Never mind, it’s nothing at all.

Upon closer inspection, the book is mostly 290 pages of photos of wedding dresses, for people with too slow an internet connection to look at them online.

And look, I’m not a fashion expert. I’m not even confident what jeans I should be wearing. But in my opinion these dresses look pretty cool. Not shockingly cool, but also not dated enough to be funny or interesting. The book is 290 pages of whatever.

Maybe if I’d found four wedding dress catalogs, from not just the 90s but also the 80s and 2000s, we’d have something. Maybe if it included prices, and wedding dress prices meant anything to me. Maybe if it was a turtleneck or crochet catalog. But as it was, the book wasn’t giving me much. I kept flipping through, sipping colder and colder coffee, and had the next thought I always have:

Unless… it is something.

The book is charmingly analog. Maybe you noticed (I didn’t) that the photos above don’t have any information accompanying them at all. That’s because they’re laid out “like baseball cards” so if you like a design, you cut it out with scissors, and the back side has a close-up photo with the dress info, for you to bring into a store. Here’s an example of a recto verso:

How delightfully moderately interesting, I thought. Still not much to see here.

And then, I found the quiz.

Ta-da!

I’m thrilled to present: an official style quiz with five wedding personality types!

Glamour Girl. It’s all about the attitude and the right tube of lipstick.

Regal Girl. Would it work at Westminster Abbey? Wear it.

Anything Goes Girl. Just wear it like you mean it.

Romantic Girl. Dig Deep. Indulge your fairy-tale fantasies.

Classic Girl. Sleek, simple, sophisticated—hey, you invented the look!

I love imagining someone who is ready to commit to a life partner, but is also flipping through this book whispering to themselves “I am a regal girl.” I love everything about it.

Here’s the quiz itself. Judging by the marginalia, our book owner was an “Anything Goes” girl. Not to get all child of two mathematicians here but because of the way this quiz is scored I think most people would be an Anything Goes girl.

Did you get magazines in the early 2000s? Did you also have friends over to wear matching bedazzled t-shirts and take personality quizzes together as you painted (and immediately smudged) your nails? How do these dresses look to you? They seem fine, right? Have you ever worn a super fancy outfit for an occasion? I want to hear all about it. I got a special jacket for one of my book tours, but in the end I just wore a sweater to every event. Do you have a lot of little free libraries near you, or regular size free libraries? Do all your ideas end up being good ideas?

Thanks for being here, even if sometimes it turns out the whole thing is wet.

Is it rude to assume you’ve never been to a recycling center? I’m just guessing you haven’t.

No offense, you seem cool! I bet you’ve seen a lot of things. I haven’t seen a recycling center either.

I’ve touched a lot of plastic bottles, and then put those bottles in recycling, but I have no idea wh…

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I’ve never bought clothes for myself.

But I’ve bought a LOT of clothes for someone who looks like me and has my body, but leads a completely different life.

Once, on trip where I was already carrying too much, I saw a handwoven market bag. I have a pretty good m…

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Have you heard the tip, that when you meet someone new you shouldn’t ask their job, but instead ask “how do you spend your time?”

It’s a nice idea. Assuming everyone has a full-time career leaves many people out, and why are we centering conversations around capitalism anyway? I’ve been asked “How do you spend your time?” and found it disturbingly existential, but I appreciated the thought.

Do people still ask kids what they want to be when they grow up? When I was a kid, it felt like everyone wanted to know. And I wanted an answer for them.

Welcome to Issue #2 of Nervous Magazine, about what jobs we wanted when we grew up. Nervous magazine is a monthly newsletter with more comics than usual. And you’re already reading it! This is how you spend your time!

What kind of benefits do wizards get

As a kid, all jobs fell into two groups: jobs I knew about because people I knew did them, and jobs that didn’t seem like jobs at all, and in hindsight weren’t jobs at all.

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In case you missed it: last week I shared the first issue of a longer monthly Nervous Magazine, about comebacks. Thanks to everyone who read it and commented, I’ve been thinking about your comebacks all the time. I’m…

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Welcome to the first issue of Nervous Magazine! A longer collection of comics and stories on a super-specific theme. This month is all about comebacks.

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Future monthly issues will get even cooler, and include illustrations based on your comments, physical mail, real life surprises, collaborations with cool people, and more. I’m really excited about it. Don’t be nervous. Or do! You do you.

Insults and Comebacks

Keep reading for more of the Comebacks issue:

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When I was nine, my family moved to Minnesota. My mom had me draw a cartoon of the seven of us bundled in s…

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