21. April Fools' Day

Being serious!

Completely Regular not April Fools’ Day Announcement 

When my grant-funded public health job ended in the summer of 2020 and I found myself looking for work in a discouraging job market, I turned my attention to writing, the only thing that made sense in a disorienting world. I’ve written my whole life, but viewed it primarily as a side gig, never something I could make my career. 

I’ve changed my approach since the start of the pandemic, and I’m taking steps to commit my life to writing. In the past two weeks, I was accepted to journalism school, and I’ll enroll in the fall. I plan to keep this newsletter going, business as usual. And though it’s a labor of love, it is labor. It takes time and effort, and in a world in which writers often perform work that is under- and uncompensated, we’ve got to hustle however we can. So after a lot of thought, I’ve decided to launch paid subscriptions. 

For now, nothing is changing with regards to content access. Everyone will be able to see everything I publish on Substack, no matter your subscription plan. But if you enjoy this work, if you derive value from it, if you are able to make a contribution, consider becoming a paying subscriber. It helps keep this work sustainable; it helps me keep going. 

(If you’re having trouble, Substack offers this walkthrough for upgrading to a paid subscriber.)

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My mother has always loved April Fools’ Day. Once in high school, I awoke, disoriented, to my mom hovering near my top bunk, my sister passed out below. “Go back to sleep,” my mom said to my barely conscious body. And I did, for another thirty minutes, before waking up to a room decorated with toilet paper. TP hung like streamers around the room, draped from the top bunk to the bottom like fringe you could wipe your ass on. She’d tucked strands of TP into the door of the closet, strung it from the dresser to my bedposts. My mother does nothing by halves. 

Another year, I stumbled into the kitchen (my high school mornings were characterized by sleepiness) to find my mom had set breakfast. We usually drank orange juice from these little glass tumblers, but the OJ was in an opaque yellow plastic cup. I tipped it to have a sip, and a few drops of liquid entered my mouth (much less than expected). I tipped it at a steeper angle. Nothing. So I set the cup down, peering inside. She’d filled the cup with orange jello, topping it off with a few milliliters of juice. 

She chuckled as I moved onto the bowl of cereal and dipped my spoon in, submerging just the metal tip in milk before hitting something solid. By now, my mom could not contain herself and turned toward me from the sink, laughing hysterically, evidently proud of her scheme: she’d frozen water in the bowl, then adding a shallow disguise of milk and a few cereal flakes. 

Under my mom’s influence, I started getting excited about April Fools’ Day jokes, too. A favorite of mine was to rubber band the spray nozzle attached to the sink so that, upon turning on the faucet, a stream of water shoots out at the poor sap just trying to wash her hands. I’d get my mom in the morning, plastering her nightgown to her stomach. She was so good-natured about it. She’d laugh and laugh, then say, “Oh let’s leave it on and get your dad!” Then she’d forget and proceed to squirt herself two more times before he even got out of bed. 

I stuck double sided tape to the toilet seat so it would adhere to the thighs of the toilet sitter (shitter?). I snuck a layer of saran wrap over my dad’s toothpaste tube opening, concealed under the cap. My mom put marbles in my bed. One April Fools’ in school, I snuck into my friend’s locker and moved all her items to her first period class. (Don’t feel bad for her; she got to skip her first class and spend the next 30 minutes leisurely taking all her belongings back to her locker on the opposite side of the school.)  

We had certain unspoken rules about April Fools’ Day. The pranks were always playful. They never ruined a day. They never resulted in permanent damage to clothes, much of a mess, or mortification. We were in it for fun, not injury. 

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It's a surprise that my mom loves April Fool’s Day so much, even knowing her well (at least in the context of her being my mother). We’re both the type that has trouble laughing at ourselves, dialing back the intensity with which we approach just about everything. We take ourselves seriously. We are Serious People. So it’s reassuring, if disarming, to see a side of her that is goofy and a little unhinged. I am used to big glasses Mary. Serious Mom.

My whole family is this way—when my sister moved in with my remaining roommate Eliza and me, after a few months, Eliza divulged that she’d been surprised to learn my sister was so silly when she comes off as so serious. And then there are my parents. My mom was the first woman from her college to win a Rhodes. My dad soloed with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at the age of 17. Like I said, Serious People. 

I’m similarly inclined to bring intensity to my every pursuit. I’ve mellowed a little over the years, but I still fall prey to my own black-and-white thinking when it comes to my level of commitment. I’m either all in, or not in at all. 

Late last summer, I got the go-ahead to start running after a long break due to ED recovery. I’ve been a runner my whole life; running is like breathing for me. I was ecstatic to be back, and fell back into a rhythm I’d been out of sync with for months: I started doing interval workouts and long runs and let my weekly mileage creep up higher than what I’d agreed on with my many mental health providers. They gently asked me to reel it back in. Not stop, but please slow down. 

And because I’m a (mostly) compliant patient, and because I care about recovery, I ran less. But I also stopped doing workouts—no one on my treatment team asked me to do that; in fact, they’d said it was fine to incorporate harder efforts into my training as long as the total volume stayed within range. But a switch had flipped in my head, and my entire approach to running changed. I couldn’t bear the thought of not taking my sport as seriously as I want to, as I have in the past. So I just cut myself off. Sure, I was jogging, but I didn’t believe I was training. 

That’s the fallacy of this broken thought pattern: seriousness isn’t either/or. Like many, perhaps most, ways of approaching the world, it exists in degrees. We are allowed to be more and less serious at different times in our lives, giving weight to a host of factors that may influence what “training” or life or [insert any other pursuit] looks like. But after a decade and a half of competitive running, it’s hard to let go of everything I’ve constructed in my head about what serious running is.

Which is why I’m often looking for permission to do things a different way, to be a different way. April Fools’ Day offers that special dispensation: Be silly! Be spiteful! Be reckless and then just yell “April Fools!” to whomever you have just offered Oreos filled with toothpaste. April Fools’ Day presents an opportunity to step outside of my seriousness without it leaving a mark on my permanent record the other days of the year. 

And while the first of April provides superficial relief, I don’t want to have to wait for a designated day to change how I live. So I’m trying to seek permission less, stop asking the April Fools’ Committee if it’s okay to proceed with my plans. For that matter, I’d like to stop asking the What’s For Dinner Committee, the Wardrobe Police, the Fast Runners’ Association, and the Board of Writers from On High for hall passes to live my life. No one but me is keeping track of these imaginary permission slips or my imaginary record or grading me on how serious I am. I’d like to remember that all the time, but at least I remember it today. 

And that’s a start.

Fortnightly Faves

1. This short, very funny stand up comedy set by my freshman year suitemate. They are hilarious and if you click on no other links, please watch this one.

2. This horrifying New Yorker article that demonstrates how powerful institutions use the media to portray themselves in a positive light while invalidating the experiences and personhood of people they are supposed to support. Gripping, heartbreaking, infuriating.

3. This article by P.E. Moskowitz, author of Mental Hellth, on the lesser-known side of antidepressants, especially the fraught process of coming off of them. The pharmaceutical industry tells us a lot of stories about how drugs will solve all our problems, but patients are rarely given all the information they need to make decisions for their health, both immediate and long term.

4. Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird. Yes, I know, I can’t believe it took me until now to read it. But it’s just as wonderful as I hoped and was told it would be. Hilarious, biting, and filled with so much excellent advice about writing and life.

5. Been really into toaster waffles and feel compelled to recommend that you bring them into your life if they’re not already there.

6. This short piece by Nick Kristoff on how to think about the response to Ukraine given so much other suffering in the world. I found it helpful.

   Is There a Double Standard on Ukraine?