"Humoress?" What is the Point of This Substack?

Ah, I thought you'd never ask.

Hi! I'm Sally. Just your everyday mildly disappointed former “gifted" child, attempting to live some kind of reasonable adult life!

I am frightened at the thought of touching my eyeballs (hence the glasses). I was once peed on by a tiger. I think these stupid matching-set outfits that have been around for a couple years now make us look like overgrown toddlers: our long-suffering mothers so harried that it's all they can do to fling a open drawer and grab two items of the same color or print to dress us while we squirm and scream, “I can do it myself!"

No, apparently, we cannot! Even as adults. Buy the set if you have to, but for God's sake, mix and match.

Anyway. I'm partially disabled: my right arm doesn't work right much of the time after possibly the most boring accident there had ever been at the time. I'm an Aquarius. In fact, I'm aaaaalmost 40 (in early February! Gahhh! It's coming!).

And I live in Southern California, near Joshua Tree National Park, with my dog, Jasmine, who is my biological daughter (because I'm one of those millennials), and my fiancé - whom I’m calling just The Writer here, although many readers know him. I don't mean to be coy or anything - I just prefer the focus here to be on my own writing.

Well, that's kind of a weird thing to say, right? How come?

Because The Writer and I run a start-up publishing company together, and it's aimed at bringing together writers and creatives who support the Jewish people and Israel. The Writer has singlehandedly made our company's main Substack,

God of the Desert Books

, an important hub for the Zionist activism that undergirds our publishing venture. I pop up there from time to time - usually to lighten the mood or make some comment on pop culture.

But those people want to read Israel-related stuff and Jewish news and takes. And I am just not best utilized writing about world events or politics all the time. Sometimes I want to write something deep, sometimes I want to write something a little goofy, and almost always, I want to write something that makes you laugh.

And my repertoire of Zionist activism jokes could really stand to be filled out a little. I actually do think I know one, but I might have to find a new place to live if I tell it here.

OK, so this Substack is not about activism or my company. Fair! What is it about?

Sorry: There's just one last thing I have to warn you that it's not about: It's not about the idea that I am just the funniest person ever, so hilarious and special.

I mean, I am fairly funny, especially to those with an absurdist-leaning sense of humor. But what I actually am great at is finding what's hilarious in the everyday. I'm also good at converting those silly, surprising moments into joy, which is essential when [gestures at world].

And in tough times, whether personally or in a community, a culture, or a country, joy is no less than the necessary fuel for the part of the brain that's designed to want to keep on living.

So I'm not here to be, like, “Remember my name when I'm on Saturday Night Live in a couple years!" It's not like that. I just want to crack you up at the doofy things I do and see happening around me.

Like tonight.

Tonight I fell asleep early and, unsurprisingly, woke up at a weird time of night - following a dream in which I was some sort of tulip but also a spy? Shaking it off, I tiptoed past Jasmine, who tends to assume that anytime I'm awake at night, I'm getting ready to take her outside. I came out to the living room, took my sleep gummy, and flopped onto the couch, where I picked up my phone, intending to read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Instead, my thoughts wandered around for a little bit before settling on a person I'm having a tough time with right now. I don't tend to get into disagreements with people much, or have petty little feuds, let alone the serious clash of respect and values I’m experiencing with this friend.

Not consciously realizing what I was doing, I opened my Notes app and began to write about how I felt.

I had two stanzas banged out before I realized what I was even really doing. Having caught up to the fact that I was writing a poem, I cast a gimlet eye upon it, assessing its rhyme structure and scansion.

When I had transferred all of my sad, annoyed thoughts from my head to the screen, I sat back, pleased. I had eight stanzas constructed in an “AA, BB" format in iambic meter, each line having precisely 14 syllables.

Then suddenly, it became clear that it was all terrible except for two pairs of couplets.

Yes, the sleep gummy had hit, all right. Even so, I started all over.

As I pushed hard for the most evocative imagery, rhyming synonyms, and plausible ways to cut or add syllables, I felt myself becoming … less relaxed, somehow? Tense, maybe? I realized my jaw had been clenched for awhile. It hurt.

I glanced up at our black and white retro Kit-Cat Klock and saw that, actually, two and half hours had passed. Sheesh.

He watches me - I know it. Is

Is this the best you can do, Sally? I reprimanded myself.

You're about to be 40 years old, and you're up in the middle of the night, pitifully high on the lowest-THC sleep gummies on the market - the ones they keep telling me to stop buying because they're such a bad value, what with having almost none of the psychoactive compound and still tasting markedly worse than any other kind of gummy - and I'm writing some kind of Taylor Swift breakup anthem in overwrought, sophomoric iambic heptameter?

While eating Great Value Birthday Cake Pop-Tarts, no less?

My cheeks reddened and an old, familiar voice reprimanded me inside my head. “You can't act like this!” it shrieked. “What kind of an example are you setting for -” But then I burst out in a snort.

What kind of an example am I setting for whom?! I thought. The dog? Because it's just her, me, and the Writer, who makes decisions all day long that exist entirely apart from any “example" I may set.

True, I am the oldest, and growing up, it was said to be very important that I set a good example. But we're in our thirties now: an age where your role models should be people you share an ethos and values with.

Speaking of role models, I always thought my life should be like my mother's. I always thought she did everything the perfect way. Why couldn't I? I didn't know, so for a long time, I decided I wouldn't even try. But it would have been cowardly and willfully obtuse to die on that hill! After all, my life has not been like my mother’s, although we share a painful or joyous similarity here and there.

Unlike her, I'm disorganized. Unlike her, I'm not unfailingly gracious. Unlike her, I'm not especially driven, and unlike her, I consciously base most of my life decisions on emotions: on what feels correct to me, rather than on facts. And in general, I'm hitting adult milestones much later in life than she did (I know: the economy, the housing bubble. Those are factors, but still.)

One thing that has helped more than I can say is to understand that I have ADHD. I have always had it; it wasn't identified because I did not careen violently around the house, dress to go out in a button-down shirt and PJ pants, play video games every waking hour, or generally act like a hyper little boy. Then, too, my fear of someone being mad at me kept me getting straight As (except in algebra and chemistry, and that's a story for another day).

But even with treatment, it's still fair to say that I'm a little bit all over the place! I'm an editor and a jokester and a person of great faith and someone who fails to take most things as seriously as she should, despite still harboring a little of that discomfort of ever being in the doghouse with somebody. But I'm trying to do better about that, and writing regular content here about the stuff that makes me laugh - like what kind of example I'm setting for my dog - is part of my plan.

I'm just going to share with all of you the silly, the funny, the absurd moments of my life that keep me waking up each day wondering what’ll happen next - even if it's my doomed, wincing, two-in-the-morning attempt at a feeling-pissy poem of eight stanzas whose meter and style of language are separated by approximately four hundred years.

And yes, I'm aware that the funniest thing of all would be to print it. I do have a teeny-tiny amount of dignity around here somewhere, so it's a no from me, dawg. Sorry.

Well—maybe on a day when I'm desperate for content.

But yeah, if in attempting to finally be myself, I'm influencing Jasmine irresponsibly, well, that's OK.

We've talked. She knows she can't try edibles until she's 18.