Hello friend, welcome to Scrap Facts. I’m Katherine, and I’m glad you’re here.
By day, I work in communications. In my free time, I write essays to better understand life.
The last time I cried this year was on July 2 around 9:15 pm in the evening. It was a solid cry — the kind where emotion bubbles up into your chest and transcends into the physical realm as snot and tears. I was marveling at the beauty of a movie I had just seen, Robot Dreams.
I wasn’t alone — the whole theater was crying. It was a really sweet moment. You should absolutely try to see this if you can.
On the roughly 20 minute walk home, though, I realized that a movie was one of the last things I’d expect to be crying about, given the state of the world. There are so many things to cry about. A brief list of current events that feel more worthy of my tears and emotional distress include:
Those who are experiencing homelessness and overdoses in my community
The U.S. presidential race — specifically concerns about what may happen to different groups of people depending on who wins
The ongoing genocide in Palestine, Ethiopia, and Sudan
Climate change
Even in writing that list, I had to Google ongoing genocides to make sure I wasn’t missing one. And I honestly probably am! That is a truly wild state of affairs. Unprecedented, you might say.
I can’t actually remember I cried over one of these massive crises in the news. Even when covering the pandemic, I felt more stressed over the accuracy of details and deadlines than the actual casualties. I was definitely depressed in general — I think it’d be impossible not to be — but there was never an acute moment of grief for me. This is also likely due to the fact that I was fortunate enough not to lose anyone close to me from Covid, which is a privilege in itself.
In D.C., I’ve noticed the same kind of perpetual slogging through tragedy is nearly ubiquitous. Most of the people who move to this town are high achievers who believe that through policy they can save the world — or at least a corner of it. Given that many of these people are from other parts of America, it’s not surprising that this city harbors the individualistic idea that any problem can be solved through enough research and written articles or reports. That’s peak American culture, right up there with hotdogs.
I certainly subscribed to that idea when I moved here. I figured that through my own fascinations, I could drum up care in others through my journalism. Maybe I was successful. Now that I’ve left the field and read the news as a more typical consumer, I’m not so sure.
One of the biggest troubles is that the problems we are all trying to solve are so far beyond us as individuals. They’re the result of systems of oppression that have existed for hundreds of years. Individual efforts don’t stand a chance at changing these systems — especially as we parachute into a lot of these problems from afar, as Washington tends to do.
What I’ve witnessed again and again — including in myself — is that the result is this swinging pendulum of hyperactive, inspired work to complete numbness.
Numbing ourselves is a pretty understandable defense mechanism, given the sheer awareness we have of the world’s troubles coupled with our disillusionment of our ability to make a change. Regardless of whether there are more atrocities now or historically, we have never been this exposed to them through the internet. I don’t know how anyone could feel adequately outraged to everything that we know.
The problem is that being numb leads apathy. Amid all the uncertainty of what I should do, one thing I know to be true is that I don’t want to be the kind of person who is apathetic to disasters. I value being an empathetic person who cares about the world I live in, as I’m sure many of you do.
So, how do we reanimate ourselves? Crying over a fictional, animated friendship made me realize that one of the answers could be art.
Art — whether it be books, TV shows, movies, music, paintings, or sculptures — has the power to move us when facts fail to. Where we can’t cry for atrocities, art finds ways to pull at our heartstrings. Or it will make us laugh. Or at the very least, remind us that we are not really all that alone on this big spinning rock.
The art that I’ve consumed this year — which has largely been in the form of books and movies, my preferred mediums — has stayed on my mind far more than news articles have. This could be depressing, but it reminds me that I am still capable of feeling empathy for those I’ve never met isn’t gone — it just needs to be woken up again.
When I realized this, I also noticed that I have never read more books in my adult life than I have this year. About 80% of what I read is fiction, with my non-fiction choices ranging from memoirs to deep dives on subjects that delight me. Some of my choices are serious and complex. A lot is light-hearted. The rule I made for myself is that there are no “shoulds” in reading — just pick up what interests you and don’t think too hard about it. It’s the strategy that got me back into reading for fun after I had put down books throughout most of my 20s.
Most of all what I value is the differences of perspective and ideas. I’ll never meet all the people in the world I’d like to, and storytelling meld new ideas and perspectives with entertainment.
The more I read, the more books I add to my ‘to be read’ list, like a benevolent hydra. Every work adds to my curiosity and helps me dream bigger and engage with the challenges in front of me that I can control in new ways.
Consuming art is leisure — an activity that high-achieving productive types (hello to the KEF of my teens and 20s) tend to wave off as useless. And that’s the tricky part — I don’t know that I ever would have come around to appreciating art as a tool to help me keep going if I hadn’t hit complete burnout.
Anyway, all that is to say: Fall in love with the characters, who are as real as the nameless people whose world you hope to improve one day. Even if it doesn’t solve all our problems, we deserve a brief respite of enjoyment from the worries on our plate.
What else have I been up to?
Summer’s in full swing. I have a hard time with it sometimes, because I feel like I have to enjoy every second. Frankly, I don’t have the energy for that.
But I have been having a lot of fun. My main goal has been to be completely submerged in a body of water at least once per week, and I’m happy to report I have achieved that goal — even while maintaining my running habit.
My spouse and I have been watching all 13 (!!) X-Men movies and X-Men ‘97 in anticipation of Deadpool x Wolverine, which comes out on Friday. (I am also re-watching X-Men: Evolution because it was my favorite show as a kid. It’s pretty cheesy, but it’s comforting.)
After careful consideration, we have concluded that Magneto has a lot of good ideas, but then shoots himself in the foot by getting carried away with murder. We have also concluded that if we were mutants, Ben would be either Magneto or Wolverine (without the murder), and I’d be Beast.
I finally finished the Scythe trilogy by Neal Schusterman, and I loved it. I’ve got the first book in the Unwind series up next, but first I’ve got to finish up Our Wives Under the Sea. In non-fiction, I just finished The Light Eaters by my former colleague Zoë Schlanger, which I loved, and More: A Memoir of an Open Marriage by Molly Roden Winter, which I did not.
To see my latest reads, follow me on Storygraph.
That’s all for now. Stay curious, friend! ❤️
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