Winter 2024-2025 Newsletter

Hi pals!

Well fuck me, it’s been a time. It’s been hard for a lot of people, it’s been hard for America, and it’s been hard for me. It’s always hard for the animals #climatecrisis.

To be honest, I have been in my own little universe of suffering that it’s been hard for me to support others in this time other than the few I am directly responsible for. Hell, even those people I still couldn’t support [I needed to be supported!] – so I’ve taken a break from working.

On a macro-level, Donald Trump won the election; North Carolina was devastated by Hurricane Helene; the wars in Palestine and Ukraine are still ongoing; and there was a wildfire in Camarillo destroying homes.

On a micro-level, my first boyfriend and friend Daihachi died; my boyfriend and I broke up; and my stress-levels from work hit their maximum and I’ve been out on sick leave since November 6th.

In two weeks, I experienced the highs and lows of love and life. I honored the life of my first love around the people who loved him, too AND I celebrated the marriage of two of my oldest college friends back in St Andrews where we all met. I cried tears of sadness and tears of joy; and am so grateful that I was able to be there for such important life events.

So yea, it’s been a lot. While things have been hard, I have so much to be grateful for. I am slowly processing these experiences and transformative shifts are happening.

I mentioned my teacher burnout in the fall newsletter, now it has engulfed me. Thus I’m calling this chapter, “Burnt Out Bitch” and writing a blemoir (a blog-memoir) about it.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. I have just been offered a new job at a quirky environmental justice focused school across from the zoo that starts January! YAY!

I am so excited, and yet I know in order to move forward, I need to heal. That’s what my blemoir is about (more details below).

In this newsletter, I’ll be sharing about:

Love,

Sammy

Chapter: Burnt Out Bitch

In order to heal from my burn out as a teacher, I have decided to write a blemoir about what happened to me. This has helped me in the past, and so I am doing it again.

I’ll be publishing blog posts for the next while as part of what I’m titling, Burnt Out Bitch: How to Get Your Needs Met & Your Boundaries Respected as the sequel to my blovel Victim Bitch: How to Validate Your Own Thoughts. I took Victim Bitch down because I got nervous, but planning to reupload it to the internet because why the fuck not.

If you want to know more, go to Blooks for all the deets, or directly to Burnt Out Bitch. Would be honored and grateful for you to read it!

LA Culture Club

I love going to cultural events. In London, my friends and I went to so many cool events together, and it brought me so much joy.

In LA, I have slowly made friends who love doing that too although in LA style, they are mostly separate groups. It’s been challenging to organize these different groups or to meet other like-minded people who want to attend and aren’t busy. LA lifestyle requires scheduling in advance but also being able to flake at any time cus it’s sexy like that.

At Treehouse, we had a Culture Vulture Group for a little bit, but it fizzled out. A friend of mine recently suggested that we do it again; we’re also trying to get our film club going again.

I’ve decided to mix them all together (film is one medium for communicating culture, right?) and try to connect friends, too, in the way that it happened organically in London and St Andrews.

Thus, launching – the LA Culture Club!

On this page, you’ll find a google calendar with cultural events I’m attending. Can check here if you want to join! If you have a cool event you want to attend or are hosting, let me know! I’ll consider posting it, sharing it, and possibly review it, if I’m able to go. Just contact me!

Writing Wednesdays with Sammy

I have started hosting a writing group once a month for teachers of writing. Our next one is December 4th, if interested in joining, sign up here!

Culture I’m Consuming

Due to not working, I have been engaging with a lot of culture, other than Desperate Housewives. Finally, my brain is able to process and engage. It’s delightful and I have started to feel like myself again, to feel like who I was in London, the person who dreamed up Literary Pixie.

I have been having a lot of nostalgia, especially about my time at St Andrews and when I lived in London. I was so happy and joyful and open and curious. I felt like I was my true authentic self and I felt supported and appreciated by the people around be for just being me. Also, I got press passes to write about events I attended and felt really fucking cool because of that.

In LA as a teacher, it has been a battle ground to feel like that, and I have lost the battle. LA is a huge city and so I have taken steps to get into a place that is more like-minded and appreciates me the way I am. I am so close – moving out of the Valley has helped a lot!

Thus, here is the culture I’ve been consuming:

Attended an event organized by Los Angeles Public Library called Where Does Democracy Go From Here where a bunch of journalists tried not to post-mortem the elections and then did anyway.
Attended a reading by Lydia Lunch, Jerry Stahl, and Zoe Hansen at Bar Covell that discussed stalking, addiction, and the 4bs ( a radical feminist Korean movement who tell women bi-hon (no marriage), bi-yeonae (no dating), bi-chulsan (no birthing) and bi-sex (no sex) in order to change the system!).
Watching A Real Pain, the new Jesse Eisenberg movie, all about those white Jewish boy problems – aka the literary realism film version of Lil Dicky, Watsky and Hoodie Allen with some ASMR Poland trip.
Watching Anora, the new Sean Baker movie, all about a bad bitch sex worker fighting for a better life in our patriarchal system and confronting how much of her survival is at the whim of immature boys who don’t deserve their privilege.

Would love if you read my reviews and commented at the bottom! The reason I write these reviews is I want to discuss them and engage in critical discourse about these cultural texts to better understand our society and improve our lives with people who think differently than me.

Culture I’m Creating

I’ve had so much of my writing just sitting on my google drive, and while I’d love to submit them to loads of magazines and earn the validation of the poetry and writing community, I have other priorities right now and I probably won’t get around to that for a couple of years.

I still want to share some of them! Calling them poems feels too much given that they are largely unedited, so I have decided to publish them as bloems aka blog-poems.

Here’s three I wrote recently:

Winter Goals

My goals for this winter are:

I want to prepare my teaching materials to have a successful and strong second semester where I am proud of the curriculum I am teaching ang student engagement.
I want to have my needs met and my boundaries respected, and know what that means in practice to create a healthy, joyful and loving lifestyle specifically plant-based cooking and meal planning; budgeting; yoga; hiking; fun; community; and healthy relationships.
I want to heal from my teacher burnout.
I want to show appreciation and gratitude to my support system and my community – aka you guys!!