Secret Anxiety Dream Notes Edition

February 2023 newsletter

Photo by Kym MacKinnon on Unsplash

Meredith Ireland @MeredithIreland

There are two types of people in the world: those who need absolute perfect darkness to fall asleep and those who can sleep with the TV on and an LED beamed directly into their eyes They marry each other

Hello Friends,

I appreciated the above joke when I first saw it because it describes my marriage. I am the one who falls asleep easily except the catch is I sometimes immediately fall into some sort of anxiety-ridden dream state in which I think things like one of my kids is on the ceiling fan or lately, that I’ve forgotten to do something very important.

When I wake up in the morning I can never remember what the thing I think I’m forgetting is, but at night I once again convince myself it’s real. The catch is my husband is often not yet asleep when I sit straight up in bed and start talking about this thing I’ve forgotten to do.

My husband sometimes tells me it’s just a dream and to go back to sleep and sometimes I do, but other times I am convinced he doesn’t know what he is talking about and I must make a note in my phone about the thing I’m forgetting. He tells me that I sometimes get mad that he is trying to tell me it’s just a dream and then I try to hide what I am writing in my phone from him.

In any event, in this newsletter exclusive I am going to now reveal some of these secret notes I’ve made in my phone notes app to myself:

So yeah, those are pretty helpful. I guess I need to train myself to dream write more specific notes or accept that it’s just anxiety dreams.

Funny stuff and other distractions:

• TV Show: I recently enjoyed watching Wednesday on Netflix, which has a good dose of dry/deadpan humor. It did have a little bit of gore (which I do not love) but that did not feel too over the top to me.

• Funny books:

  • I listened to Jessi Klein’s book I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood on audio. It made me laugh and her essay about messed up feet was #relatable. I think parents of younger kids might particularly appreciate this one.

  • I also listened to How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur. (Schur created The Good Place and fun fact, also played Dwight Schrute’s cousin on The Office.) The book covers some of the philosophical concepts from the show in an accessible (and often humorous) way, so if you liked the philosophical questions in The Good Place, you might check this out.

• Short humor: I have been trying to get better at humor headlines (a work in progress), so I appreciated that this one made me laugh and set up a clever concept.

Writing-related things:

• I’m in the middle of reading the book 7 Figure Fiction which talks about the concept of universal fantasy to explain why readers find certain stories compelling. I think this one might be particularly useful for romance writers, but I am finding it interesting to think about what makes stories compelling in both what I’m reading and what I might potentially write.

• If you are in the midst of building a platform or planning for a launch of an upcoming book, friend of the newsletter Aileen Weintraub has a helpful series of articles up at Writers Digest.

• Interested in writing sports-related satire? Check out this site.

News from me:

• I’ll be presenting on a panel at AWP next month: “The Intersection of Art and Revenue: Writing for Literary and Mainstream Outlets.” Will you be at AWP too? Let me know!

• I had a co-written humor piece with Sue D. Gelber run on New Yorker Daily Shouts on Valentine’s Day: Classroom Valentines by Emily Dickinson. Sue reminded me that we first started the piece in 2021. So yeah, I’m a pretty fast writer.

• I had a new humor piece go up at The Belladonna Comedy: Welcome to RuinedGoods, the Home Furnishings Store for Parents Who Can’t Have Nice Things. Shout out to fellow parents with destroyed furniture.

• This piece of mine on promoting your book as an introvert also recently ran on Jane Friedman’s site.

• I contributed to the “How She Makes Friends” episode on the podcast How She Moms. The podcast pulls together tips from different parents so you can choose what works best for you, which is a format I really like.