Happy 2019, everyone!! Hope you all had a great few weeks with loved ones, hopefully relaxing and maybe eating a little too much. This week’s roundup includes the Thursday and Friday after New Year’s Eve, aka once I was back at work. It felt too weird to not be working while also reading some of these articles so I decided to go ahead and get started on this first roundup of 2019.

Reading

When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi.

Girls on Fire, Robin Wasserman.

How I Get It Done: Comedy Writer Megan Amram of The Good Place, The Cut. I remember seeing Amram’s Twitter profile picture on one of the first viral tweets I saw, or at least one of the first super popular and retweeted tweets. I had no idea she was an actual comedy writer, much less for some of my favorite shows. This article (and all the tweets you end up reading) was delightful!

How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, BuzzFeed. This article hurt my heart because it was so true. We work our asses off to receive less than any of the previous generations. Don’t call me entitled. Don’t call me lazy. Sure, all I want to do when I get home is watch sit on the couch and watch Netflix because 1. I’m working overtime every single day by either staying at work late or logging on at home, 2. I commute three hours a day to work so my partner and I can afford to live in a one-bedroom and not a studio and 3. I’m running this blog in my “free time” because I have no other outlet for my creativity and I felt my soul wasting away without one. Instead, I have to try and get to the gym so I can attempt to make up for the days I do give in to my couch (and the cookie butter), I cook so that I don’t have to spend $12 on a single lunch at work, I scrounge for quarters to do the piles of laundry we haven’t had time to get to, I try to scrub the tub and toilet so it doesn’t get gross rings. All this in the three hours I have between getting home and when I need to get up to do it all again. Basically, I generally try and keep my shit together without breaking down because I’m. SO. TIRED. And broke. And BURNED OUT. And I’m not alone. So don’t call us lazy because we’re busting our asses just to survive. (You can also checkout Petersen’s follow-up if you’re so inclined.)

The Best Skin-Care Trick Is Being Rich, The Atlantic. This was actually a far better article than I expected. Favorite section: “It’s no mystery to beauty editors and writers, as well as the famous women surveyed, that the answer is a combination of youth, genetic luck, and access to expensive products, treatments, and cosmetic dermatology procedures that few people outside their world could ever hope to experience. But a dozen 20-somethings telling you about their expensive laser treatments would be too depressing for women to read about and too embarrassing for the professionally beautiful to admit.”

It's a Good Time to Be Melissa McCarthy, InStyle. “I just love people’s weirdness.” Yes, Melissa. Yes.

Frank Ocean Is Peerless, GQ. Frank Ocean just seems like such a sweetheart, but also someone who would make you think on a level you had never breached before.

Picking Up Steam Now: The Bath, The New York Times. I’ll admit, I’ve definitely taken a few boomerangs of my bath bombs disintegrating in the bath. Are y’all more bath or shower people? What do you think of the rise of tub selfies? 🛁

Book-Lovers, Brace Yourselves: The 2019 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge Is Here! Popsugar. Yeeeessss! I’ve always wanted to do a year-long reading challenge and, for some reason, have never gotten around to it. 2019 is my year! Follow along on my Instagram and, if you join in later, find past reads in my “Books” highlight!

Which Festivals are Actually Worth Going to This Year? Nylon. I would go to Barcelona just to see FKA Twigs, UGH! 😍 Also, my main squeeze, Firefly, is on here and yeeeesss to the need for more gender-equality!

This Is Our Youth: From YouTube To Netflix, Gen-Z Is Remaking Celebrity. The Z-List Is Here, Refinery29. Honestly? These kids make me feel bad about myself. 😅 I’m so behind!

Will Poulter, Wonderland. “I think we’re so overly stimulated that sometimes just watching a film isn’t enough to satiate us, whereas this, because it actively engages us, potentially it is the new kind of satisfying way to ingest media.”

28 Tweets About Food That Are Honestly Way, Way Too Real, BuzzFeed. This truly was WAY too real. Toast is the MF G.O.A.T. Don’t @ me. And I MUST watch a show while eating (which is super unhealthy, by the way). Loading? Nope. I’m going to wait till that shit has started.

Costco Is Selling A Massive 7-Pound Tub Of Nutella, Delish. I need a Costco card, STAT. (I know how bad palm oil harvest is for the environment, trust me. Unfortunately, this is a vice of mine. Ferrero Rocher does get their palm oil from a plantation, at least, not the rainforest.)

How to Revive a Friendship, The New York Times. I read this because, as someone with a lot of long-distance friends, I was curious if they would have any tips I didn’t already know for staying in touch and close. I was also interested in seeing what they would suggest concerning a friendship like this. Spoiler alert: there’s no point in reaching out, as I suspected.

Gov. Bill Haslam grants full clemency to Cyntoia Brown, sets Aug. 7 release from prison, Tennessean. I know I said I was veering away from depressing news in these roundups, but…THIS DESERVES A MASSIVE SHOUT OUT! What a wonderful ending to such a tragic story.

12 Reasons Why The World Will Use Less Plastic In 2019, BuzzFeed. Let’s DO IT, y’all!

Women Are the Primary Consumers of True Crime—but Why? PureWow. It’s fascinating and reassuring. Women could be scared for their lives a majority of the time if we let ourselves, but true crime makes us feel safe because we can tell ourselves, well, I don’t run at night with headphones in, so that’ll never happen to me! Reading about gruesome murders is a way of easing anxiety, ironically.

Four Best Friends Decided to Share a Tombstone, The Cut. 😭😭😭

If You Were Stabbed By A Pencil And Still Have A Mark, YOU ARE NOT ALONE, BuzzFeed. I THOUGHT I WAS!! My parents told me it wasn’t real!!

Listening

Firefly 2019. It’s a new year and, thus, time to create my Firefly playlist for this June.

Watching

Brooklyn Nine-Nine, NBC. I obviously knew about this show before, but one of my friends recently went off on me for not having actually watched it. So I took her advice and started binging it with the boyfriend. It’s our new favorite show. I’m obsessed, he’s obsessed, if you haven’t seen this show yet, well, you’re next. Go watch! It’s on Hulu.

AlunaGeorge, Wonderland. I loooove AlunaGeorge. This piece talks to one half of the duo, Aluna Francis.