Happy Sunday!

I hope your day is a 50-acre field of dahlias.

Hiya Reader!

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So JD Vance made this comment about Simone Biles being a quitter (this is back in 2021), and described how our “therapeutic society” was leading us to champion weakness. And possibly nothing describes the differences between me and the wannabe VP more than this: I’d give my left arm to live in a therapeutic society!

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One of the things Gen Z gets dragged for is that they’re kind of obsessed with their mental health. But history tells us that if older generations are harping on something the ‘kids’ are getting wrong then there’s a pretty good chance that the youth have figured out a Big Truth.

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The Vietnam War was, after all, a losing proposition. A slacker generation is a kinder, more nurturing cohort. The internet is a pretty rad place to hang out, and avocado toast is, indeed, a terrific breakfast. Now the Zoomers are encouraging one another to eschew corporate America and take care of their mental health. Seems like the basis of a happy, thriving society to me.

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I don’t really understand why older people like to denigrate The Youth of Today in any decade. Disliking people because they aren’t just like you is so boring. And imagine if 19-year-old you could hear you talking trash about the music kids are listening to these days. The humiliation alone should be enough to make you swallow those words.

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To date, there are three generations coming up behind me and I've got to say I don’t particularly envy any of them:

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Millennials are struggling to keep up with their kids and their aging parents and their jobs all while dodging the impact of the influencers; one of the not-so-great innovations some of their peers came up with to avoid getting real jobs.

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Gen Z is freaking out about what’s going to happen to the earth and its inhabitants, and concurrently realizing that their financial future is fucked a wasteland.

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As for the Alphas, let’s hope Covid hasn’t destroyed their ability to forge relationships and work within social constructs, such as they are.

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I love The Youth! Which now, in my mind, extends to anyone 40 and younger. Here are some of the many things I appreciate about them:
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• They scoff at the gender binary.

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• Their fashion spans every decade.
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• Their slang is on fleek!

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• They embrace the concept of queerness.

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• They are well aware that our corporate overlords view them merely as cogs and capital.

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• They don’t have a fixed idea of what a family should look like.
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• Any one of them could run an empire on a smartphone.

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• They are, in fact, our future.

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Also, many of them laugh at my jokes and think I’m cool. Which, I'm sorry to say, means the world to me.

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I’m really hoping that this whole therapeutic society thing comes to pass in the next couple of years, because I know a LOT of people who would benefit from therapy on tap, myself included. Imagine a world in which we’re all setting good boundaries, using I messages, upping our emotional intelligence and calmly talking out our differences.

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Sounds like heaven to me, Mr. Vance.

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xo, Julia

Recommendation!

I consider time spent in the garden my therapy! I'm only half-kidding. When I'm puttering around out there I like to listen to podcasts, and for my money there is no better podcast than Ear Hustle. It's recorded at San Quentin, and tells the stories of the men who are incarcerated there.

It's funny, it's poignant, and it makes you think about punishment, rehabilitation, justice, trauma, vengeance, privilege, and all the other things feeding into the prison industrial complex.

As our old friend Fyodor Dostoyevsky said: 'A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.' Right?

Though honestly, I think we should be spending more time thinking about how we treat all our residents; citizen, criminal, outstanding, rebellious - the whole kit and caboodle..

Recently published work

I can't seem to stop writing about decluttering, mostly because people can't stop reading about it! My theory is that it's more fun to read about managing your stuff than actually, you know, managing your stuff.

Here's the latest at Business Insider:

​Five tips for cleaning out the garage​

​Four tips for keeping your dorm room decluttered​

And here's a combo decluttering and managing family relationships piece on Next Avenue:

​Take Mom’s Old Knicknacks!​