*In My Best Carol Anne voice* I’m Baaaack!

I think it’s so cold out because hell has frozen over. That’s just a theory, but it feels right.

Oh hello, hi, it’s me! Your intrepid absent blogger crawling out from under my books to once again reclaim my corner of the internet (omg for realsies this time!) that is not owned by those loser-ass broligarchs taking over the world, app by app. (But I guess in some ways it is. Like does anyone have the deets on the WordPress CEO? How evil are they?)

Honestly, I think we really need to figure out a way to dose all the billionaire villains with ayahuasca until they realize they are not destined for shit, that we are all connected to the universe and they are destroying the planet. We don’t need to move to Mars if we just take care of the planet we are currently on, you stupid shits.

Free Luigi!

Anyway…

I know, it’s been a while since we last talked. Life has been a lot for me over the last 2+ years. Loss, grief, major changes and endless stress… I kept trying to get back to posting, and then something new would derail me. I ended up turning inward pretty deeply, neglecting all the things that brought me happiness in exchange for mindless scrolling and rewatching Bob’s Burgers again and again. If I’ve learned one thing about myself, it’s that I am a CHAMPION dissociater. Is that a word? Either way, it’s all I really had the mental capacity for. Sometimes I would buy a stack of books and post about it on #bookstagram, but otherwise my involvement in the book community has been pretty limited.

I’d like to change that, to rediscover why I started this in the first place.

I created this blog in 2018, which honestly feels like a different lifetime, or timeline, at this point. My first post was some verbal nonsense, as I do, about Sweet Potato Hitler and the end of the world, and honestly, it still stands. It seems only fitting that I would make my comeback (don’t call it a comeback, LL Cool J!) under similar circumstances.

There are literal Nazis in the White House now, half of my country is in rapt amazement by the 3-word slogans of PP Trump Lite, and we are on a crash course with our own destruction because the ultra-wealthy have completely sold their souls for immoral amounts of money. What’s the point of money if there’s no planet to live on, dumbfucks! Meanwhile, the proletariat is completely distracted by pronouns and banning books, all while paying $7 for an ear of corn and blaming the high prices on poor people instead of on the rich assholes exploiting our labour just to steal our money.

I’ve been making some choices for myself over the last couple of weeks that are stepping stones to taking back my energy. You know, being the change I want to see in the world, or whatever. That quote is so earnest I hate to say it, but it’s fucking true right now. I’m trying to move away from the big tech monopolies. I’ve cancelled my Amazon subscription, deleted my Tiktok and Facebook accounts, and joined Bluesky instead. I’ll be moving away from Instagram once a reliable alternative photo-based app is released. (I’m keeping tabs on new platforms like Foto, Flashes and Neptune.) I hope you’ll consider making some of these changes, too.

This is the time to start planting the seeds of our collective power, not just as Canadians and Americans, but as an global community. We are all being affected by the rise of corporatism, fascism and misinformation. Our collective resistance truly begins with where we build our communities. If it’s on apps that are beholden to curated algorithms and owned by the 1%, that shit is about to be state-run media in the U.S., and it’s only a matter of time before that spreads like a cancer.

Make your social media choices with intention and clarity.

I own my blog domain (as much as we can own any domain,) and the only algorithm I’m affected by here is search engines. So I’m going to say what the fuck I want while I focus my attention back on this space and the community I have here. You’re some of my favourite people to talk books with! And for the foreseeable future, escaping into our hobbies with people who bring light in our lives is going to be so important.

I’m currently recovering from surgery (just another lovely fork in my personal road,) and I’m on a Meta timeout so the apps are gone from my phone, leaving me with a few weeks off from work and a break from my typical distractions to – hopefully – build some good blogging habits again.

I’ll be putting out my Top Reads of 2024 and have a few mini review dumps in the chamber. That sounds gross, but you know what I mean. On top of that, I have a reading challenge going on Storygraph/IG that will result in a giveaway at the end of the year. It’s a year-long challenge, so there’s never a bad time to start! You can find that here. Checked my pinned post on Booksta for all the details!

Besides all of that, I have housekeeping to do to make sure this blog is in tippy-tip-top shape and a truly embarrassing backlog of reviews to write. Honestly, with all of that, who needs doom-scrolling?

The world is on fire and all we have is each other and our books, so let’s fucking read ♡