Jen Borkowski

Love this thread. It's the same energy I'm trying to bring to my own life and work this season.

"Will yourself into existence." 🧵

Still working out some kinks though! Apologies if anything is, or becomes, wonky.

It was a good opportunity to make myself a little website, too. I haven't had one in ages.

An Open Letter Originally to My Aunt... A friendly viewing guide to the Super Bowl LX halftime show

My weekend project as a resource for a relative: a viewing guide for the halftime show.

I tried to do this art-history-style, like a docent making a painting by one of the Dutch masters legible to a bunch of tourists visiting a museum.

What I am trying to do this year. Not "more," but just at all.

Don't give anything an Emmy until it's as good as this.

Welcome to Neokayfabe — Josephine Riesman // Writer

This Josephine Riesman essay about neokayfabe in WWE and politics has been lurking in my brain since I first read it 3 years ago. This week it came up in a chat with a friend who knows nothing about wrestling. Thank you @josie.zone for laying this out so well & making it free on your site!

I'm at that perfect little inflection point of recovering from a nasty cold where so many things in my office and my neighborhood seem new and delightful and full of promise again.

Wish I could figure out how to access this feeling without enduring weeks of feeling almost nonhuman first.

For me (NJ US), "shone" rhymes with "zone" and "waft" rhymes with... "coiffed".

* "Waft" is closer to "soft" than to "daft", but for me "soft" rhymes with "coughed", not "coiffed".

Two unicorns, Dennis and Butterscotch, looking into the future. There is a blinding white light. The text reads: What's that? It's the future! Will there be cupcakes? There'll be whatever we make!

#HappyNewYear

Pearl oyster mushrooms growing from the cardboard box of a grow kit on a deep windowsill. The view is angled slightly upward, so we can see the gills under the mushroom caps. The mushrooms look perky but a little tentative, leaning out toward the indirect winter sunlight. Bare trees are visible through the window, out of focus. Let's not think too much about the cold, they seem to suggest. Dark blue text running vertically in line with the tree trunks reads, "My friends are so much fun(gi)".

Some personal news:

Earlier in the week I rediscovered the joys of kale. Now, candles and music in the late afternoon when the sun starts setting hard before five. How did I forget all this?

Now that the garden is mostly done for the year, I miss having friends to check in on every day... which is how I find myself attempting to grow oyster mushrooms and lacto-ferment blueberries. Maybe I'll get along well with bacteria and fungi on their own? Fingers crossed.

Whomst among us hasn't felt a little vacuum about snackie all done

Inherited a flannel-print fleece shirt that shrank in the wash, and I have never felt more cozygrunge in my life.

Peloton, Kirkland, Stihl... Recalls are hitting close to home for my social circle today. Good info to pass along.

A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden A newly revived philosophy for publishing personal knowledge on the web

A lovely essay that I'd like to reread and branch out from on a day when I have time to explore and experiment afterward.

I think my body is just... calibrated weird. Been feeling cranky for weeks. Yesterday I went out for a 13-mile walk, and now I feel so much better. Like I know how to be a person again. (The person I want to be.)

Looking forward to this for a little creative refuge in a tough week 🖤

We have a strong preference to not be in the market for appliances until the shutdown is over. Knock on wood!

I hope so too! We need to replace ours one of these days. I hadn't even considered that there might be smart models. Let alone only smart models. Sigh.

You don't have to swallow frogs Klein and Coates show that if you don't know what your core beliefs are, you're going to get played.

I wrote about Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein, why swallowing live frogs is a bad idea, and how context and history can release you from bright-kid syndrome, the illusion that you yourself are going to have every answer or fix the world.

How is it the end of September already.

Hope you and the family are hanging in there through this 💕

One of the most life-changing things my therapist ever taught me is to stop responding to emotional subtext from others. You are not obligated to meet needs and feelings that others refuse to acknowledge even exist on their end. Others have to use their words to get their needs met.

Can't believe I've had this massive sage plant for three years and just now thought to try brewing it. This tea is delightful.

"we need to focus on kitchen-table issues"

hey wtf are you talking about at your kitchen table, if not the military being deployed to your cities and your family members being kidnapped by ICE and the genocide in Gaza going on two years and states maneuvering to make elections less democratic and

I hear you on all of this. Last week I wasn't interested in anything beyond small bowls of soup.

Though honestly, I could easily be neck deep in some serious writing and translation projects if I would just quit avoiding them. So.