Sub Routine Reset

I haven't been here long, but the months won't matter - it never winds up feeling like home. My collection of vintage furniture grates against the clean lines and city skyline of the condo I find myself living in. It's quiet and the few sounds that living alone creates ricochet off the glass, the whole space not feeling sweeping but sharp. There's a kitchen island and two stools that came with the place so I had my antique maple kitchen table put in the storage unit in the parking garage but the chairs are lined up in a half circle around the TV. I didn't get the couch when my life collapsed.

It's late and dark and the air conditioning is cranked in the humid Toronto summer. I'm grateful for having found a place to land, to find my bearings when everything around me crumbled but I already know it's not worth getting comfortable - it won't last. I'm still sweating from the bike ride home from the brewery and I am trying to find some sort of comfortably lazy position in the old wooden chair. I place my beer on the carpet next to a sprawled out Kafka and glance back to the TV casting it's light about the room. YouTube autoplay has done it's thing while I made myself something to eat and I am not sure what is playing. Two people are partitioned away in the lower corner of the screen and they're chatting as they play a game, I'd be lying if I said I remember which. Exhausted from one of many 11 hour days that my life is comprised of, I let it play and find myself oddly comforted by the chatter and laughter that had suddenly gone missing from my life. The isolation of a world shut down was only exacerbated by finding myself living alone in a completely new neighbourhood, far from work and friends. The laughter that quickly became common background noise in my new abode was that of Jacob and Julia, also known as Secret Sleepover Society. One YouTube autoplay quickly became part of my algorithm and through Secret Sleepover I would find the show the hosts work on called Drawfee. It was funny and lighthearted, but what got me to stick around was the hosts talking about their plans for Pride. The content itself was utterly goofy and not particularly political, unlike most of what I consume, but the politics of the people making the show aligned with mine, making the laughter all the more desirable to have on in my home. Over the years, they have only earned more of my laughter and respect, several of their Pride livestreams raising over 100, 000$ for The Stonewall Community Foundation. Maybe I would have found something else that wasn't Drawfee but I am so glad it is what made its way to me. As the difficult months wore on, it was a salve against a lost friendship, a balm for my anxiety as change felt nonstop. It is both reminder and celebration of art and creation, of fun and absurdity, all things I felt like I was on the brink of losing.

It's late and we're sitting on the pink couch in my home, doubled over in laughter, beers leaving rings of condensation on the coffee table. I have seen this before but even on a second watch it still gets to me, and having you laugh along is just making me laugh so much harder. I no longer live in a glass bowl, high in the sky, kept company mostly by recorded laughter. I am in a home, warm walls and comfy furniture absorbing all the love my friends carry up the stairs with them. It took no time at all for this new apartment to feel like a place to live, not just a place to survive. Tears of laughter and relief stream down my face. Words do no justice to the sheer absurdity of watching a talented artist desperately try to recall what characters look like while being chastised by the other hosts, so I won't try but this and many other episodes have invited so much laughter into my home, a joy I don't take lightly. Over the years, they've been on my lunch breaks, in my pocket, in my headphones as I pieced my life back together, as the world opened back up and as I found myself again.

I definitely still reach for the horror, for the dark and difficult, but it has been a respite for my brain to have a show I enjoy that isn't detrimental to my emotional state, not a challenge for my mental ability to compartmentalise the horrors of the world away from my day to day life. Sometimes I worry I don't feel enough, some days it seems like I feel nothing at all and having this silly, lovely, ridiculous show to bring me back to reality is something I am grateful for. This is not a mandate for you to go watch Drawfee, though I find it hilarious and hope you would too, but rather to find the joy in all the little corners of the world.

Thank you for being here, friends. It feels weird to write something about joy while the news feels more insane by the day, but I do fundamentally believe that to fight for the world, you must first and foremost love it. And goddamn if this silly show isn't one of the things I love. I make no promises about the consistency of writing not completely depressing essays but I did recently rewatch the 2002 Vin Diesel masterpiece Triple X and had way more thoughts about it than I expected so maybe I'll subject you to those thoughts next. Sorry to Maddy for sending twenty six voice notes while I was watching it. What goofy things do you love?