Author: Kate Sloan

My New Work-From-Home Setup, Part 2: My Desk

Kate Sloan

Writers can debate endlessly about whether the space where you choose to work, and the tools you use to do that work, actually matter. Some writers can throw their laptop in a tote bag and take it to a café, or the library, or a random picnic table in the park, and create masterworks; others need their perfectly-appointed desk with just the right mood lighting, soundtrack, and assortment of artisanal pencils if they’re going to produce their best work.

I can go either way, but that’s partly because I’ve rarely had an actually-functional workspace in my life. A blend of depression, body pain, and chronic disorganization has often led me to clutter up desks and tables with useless tchotchkes and accumulated trash, choosing instead to work in bed or (in pre-pandemic times) at cafés and bars. I always wanted to have a more settled, organized workspace, but rarely got my shit together enough to actually make it happen.

Earlier this year, for my birthday, a few different friends and family members very generously got me gift cards aimed at helping me update my workspace, because I’d mentioned wishing I could do that. Wanting to put their gifts to good use, I started brainstorming what I wanted and needed to make my vintage, worse-for-wear wooden desk into an oasis of creativity. Here are some of the things I bought to spruce the place up…

 

• Since one of my main issues was constantly having too many random objects all over my desk, I decided storage was a top priority. My desk has two built-in drawers, one of which I use for weed stuff + incense and the other of which I use to store logistical necessities like Scotch tape, loose change, and my passport – but everything else needed a place to go. So I bought an assortment of stackable wooden drawers from Kirigen, and a matching monitor riser that also has a couple of drawers in it. These have already made a HUGE difference for me. Some of the stuff I store in these drawers: pens, pencils, extra batteries, extra pairs of glasses, documents, cards/letters/notes, notepads and notebooks, index cards, spare sets of earbuds, cheques I need to cash, and an occasional snack.

• Buying my new monitor was a JOURNEY! I wanted a specific 24″ ViewSonic monitor (the VX2485-MHU model) because the Wirecutter had recommended it as one of the best budget monitors they’d tried, and because it has a USB-C port, allowing me to connect my MacBook Air to the display and charge it with just one cable. I ordered a pre-owned one from an online seller, but it got lost in the mail somehow, so they refunded me. Then I saw a new version of the same monitor on a semi-sketchy retail site and asked Staples if they could price-match it, which they agreed to do. But 2 weeks after I’d already placed my order through Staples, they told me the monitor was actually out of stock, and cancelled my order. So I ordered it from yet another store, and it finally arrived. I’m glad I managed to acquire this one – it looks pretty damn good for being a $300 monitor, and fits nicely in the space allotted for it.

• One of the bulkiest items on my desk, pre-makeover, was my Day-Light SAD lamp. It was a must-have for my depression, especially in the winter, but I’d had that particular model since 2007 (!!) and knew there were some less cumbersome options on the market now. I arranged to give my old lamp away to someone from a local mental health support group who needed one, and then bought this new one, the Day-Light Sky. It takes up way less desk space, and I love that its angle is adjustable. I currently have it sitting atop a small stack of hardcover notebooks, to give the computer monitor enough space to fit neatly underneath.

• I told you about this keyboard when I showed you my working-from-bed setup. Still loving it! It’s the Logitech K380. I adore its sweet pink hue, softly clicky-clacky keys, and ability to swap between up to 3 different devices as needed, so I can move from my computer on the desk to my iPad in bed with ease.

• My mouse is the Logitech M720, which is also great. I’m considering switching to an Apple Magic Trackpad, though, because after years of using a trackpad instead of a mouse, I find them much more intuitive now. But this mouse is lovely, as far as mice go.

• My spouse bought me a beautiful vintage pink Brother typewriter as a gift after we watched the movie California Typewriter together. It’s mostly a decorative item because I lack the hand strength required to really hammer out any substantial pieces of writing on it – plus I worry about annoying my roommate with the loud typing – but I love having it displayed on my desk. It’s such a gorgeous symbol of my writerly ambitions and achievements, and I enjoy occasionally banging out a poem or two on its snappy black keys.

• A while ago, my friend Thomas sent me a spinning desk toy called a Mezmoglobe, and that’s sitting underneath my monitor riser where I can periodically spin it and admire its gleaming prettiness throughout the day.

• While it isn’t new, I do want to mention that my coaster was a gift from Penny, who is an incredible photographer and used to make these adorable sex toy photo coasters. This one features a picture of the NobEssence Romp, easily the prettiest butt plug I’ve ever owned. I use it every day for water, coffee, cocktails, or whatever else I happen to be drinking while I write.

 

Things I’d still like to acquire for my setup:

• A webcam. I used to just use my laptop’s built-in webcam for Zoom calls, video podcast recordings, etc. but that’s less convenient now that I keep it tucked under my monitor riser. I’m hoping to pick up a Logitech C920S on the Wirecutter’s recommendation. It’ll sit nicely on top of my monitor and make all my video calls and livestreams look way better.

• A better system for getting my microphone and headphones out of the way when I’m not using them – like maybe a boom arm.

• A better desk chair. Right now I’m still using the blue faux-leather one my dad bought me for about $50 at Staples when I was in university, and it’s really seen better days. I’m considering getting an Albin task chair from Wayfair. It’s surprisingly hard to find an armless chair that’s slim enough for the space under my desk, ergonomic enough for my chronically achy body, and costs less than a zillion dollars!

 

What workspace essentials are you loving lately?

How Do Creativity & Curiosity Affect the Libido?

Kate Sloan

When you think about things you could do to boost your libido, you probably don’t immediately think of creative activities, like playing the guitar or painting a landscape. But I’m increasingly convinced that these types of pursuits are a factor in how high or low my sex drive is at any given time.

My friend Bex often describes curiosity as a contributor to his sexuality, in that when his life lacks things to be curious about, he feels less excited about life in general – including sex. It was difficult to organically stumble upon things to be curious about during the pandemic, since so many of us were confined to our homes or at least our routines. He’s finding that his libido is reawakening now that he’s able to be back out in the world, doing stuff, meeting people, having adventures, learning new things.

This makes total sense to me, and also reminds me of how I feel about creativity. In my youth, when I was a prolific songwriter, I often felt most inspired by the situations that made me feel the most sexually frustrated or excited – and, likewise, the feeling of being creatively inspired and “juiced up” often seemed to make it easier for me to get turned on, develop sexual attractions, and act on them.

I think part of the reason for this is that being creative makes me feel like I’m an attractive, interesting person, which gives me more confidence for flirting, sexting, etc. But also, I think creative pursuits remind me of how much fun it can be to work on a project from start to finish, to see it developing from nothing into something, to cobble together a meaningful piece of art with your own two hands. A good sexual encounter – or masturbation session – can feel like that too.

Emily and Amelia Nagoski explain in their terrific book Burnout that one of the ways to “complete the stress cycle” – i.e. temporarily rid your body of stress-induced neurochemicals so you can chill the fuck out – is to do something creative. I can think of several potential reasons this might be, but I think the main one is that doing creative activities often induces what’s called “flow state,” a positive psychological state associated with deep focus, a loss of self-consciousness, a feeling of agency and mastery, and the “merging of action and awareness.”

Several studies have found that experiencing flow state makes a person happier, not just in the moment but in their lives more generally. I can easily see how the relaxation and happiness you feel after a session of creative flow could also inspire arousal and desire, or could at least create conditions under which those things could more readily bloom. Flow state has also, incidentally, been widely compared to the “subspace” or “topspace” experienced by many kinky people during scenes. If you’ve ever felt on top of the world while spanking someone or being tied up or engaging in needle play or whatever it is that you do in kink, it’s quite possible you could access similar feelings through creative activities. (I mean, arguably kink itself is a creative activity, but you know what I mean!)

During the pandemic, I’ve been diving back into some artistic endeavors I’d let fall by the wayside, like playing piano and writing poetry – and it’s astonishing how much these activities affect my self-esteem, and thus my ability to feel desirable. I have such respect for the creative fields that it’s euphorically empowering to remind myself that I, too, have talents in those areas. Doing these things regularly also helps keep my stress level low (or as low as can reasonably be expected), because of the positive, calming impact of flow state. I can drift off into the pleasant fog of my focus for a while, just like I do in kink scenes, trusting that when I come back to earth, I’ll feel refreshed and relaxed.

The human brain is a mysterious lump of cells that eludes our attempts to document and categorize the infinite phenomena it can conjure. But I’m glad to have discovered that making time regularly for my creative endeavors is good for my stress levels, happiness levels, and – yes – libido.

 

Have you noticed a link between creativity and sexual desire in your own life?

What Are Your Professional Boundaries?

Kate Sloan

Some spiritual traditions posit that souls are reincarnated, and that some souls spend entire lifetimes trying to make amends for, or improve upon, things they did in previous lifetimes. If this is true, it seems clear to me that I must have been sent to this earth to work on my boundary-setting. It is a theme that has haunted my life.

For one thing, I’m a woman, and that’s a gender group our society explicitly encourages to be bad at boundary-setting. Women are supposed to juggle a career, housework, caretaking of their partner and/or children, and their own self-care, all while somehow being “chill” about the amount of physical, emotional, and logistical work thrust upon them. Women are also routinely encouraged to ignore or suspend our own boundaries in the realm of the romantic and sexual, chiefly because it often benefits shitty men when we do so. (Yuck.)

I’m also a freelancer and a person who works from home, two oft-overlapping identities that make a person even more vulnerable to having their boundaries bent or overstepped. Freelancers may experience bosses and editors expecting quick responses to any and all communiqué, work overflowing past the hours allotted for it (often without additional pay), and friends and family assuming we’re available at all times simply because we set our own schedules. It’s a nightmarish career for anyone who struggles with boundary-setting!

…Except that it doesn’t have to be. Whether you see it as a spiritual lesson or a purely practical one, there is much to be learned from having your boundaries repeatedly steamrolled in settings both personal and professional. The better I get at protecting my own energy and time through ruthless boundary-setting, the stronger and happier I feel overall. It’s a fantastic skillset to develop, for so many reasons. I’m not always as good at it as I’d like to be, but it feels great when I am.

One of the reasons I’ve been obsessed with boundary-setting in recent years is that my chronic illness has gotten worse and worse. My flare-ups are triggered by stress, among other things, so stress reduction is a top-level priority for me at this point. One of my new year’s resolutions for 2021 was to eliminate as many unnecessary stressors as humanly possible from my life this year, and setting better boundaries in my work life is a key way I’ve been doing that.

 

Here are some of my current professional boundaries:

  • I only work between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., and only on weekdays. This includes work-related writing, answering business emails/DMs/etc., doing research for articles, and so on. Past 5 p.m., and on weekends, I am unavailable for business interactions. There are 2 exceptions to this rule: 1) If I’m genuinely excited to work on something – such as if inspiration for a fun blog post suddenly strikes on a Saturday – then it’s okay to work on it at any time, so long as I’m not pushing myself too hard. 2) I sometimes have to do podcast recordings outside of work hours due to guests’ scheduling needs, which is fine. I’ll just try to rest for an equivalent amount of time during the next work day to make up for it.
  • I do not accept writing assignments that pay less than $0.20 per word. (If the assignment in question offers a flat rate or an hourly rate instead of a per-word rate, I’ll try to convert it to per-word to figure out whether it meets this standard.) In the early days of my career, it made some sense to take on low-paying (and even unpaid) assignments much more often, to build my portfolio, skillset, brand, and professional network – but with two book deals and countless bylines under my belt, I deserve and expect better payment these days. I sometimes consider lower-paying gigs if they offer some combination of creative freedom, a topic I find fascinating, a prestigious byline, fun perks (e.g. free travel), and/or cool collaborators, but for the most part, I’d rather have fewer projects (even if that means making less money overall) than feel resentful of the low-paying work I’ve allowed into my life.
  • I don’t generally accept feedback on my writing from people who have not actually read the piece(s) they are criticizing. I used to think theirs was a valid form of critique in some ways, but there have just been too many baffling instances of people becoming angry or upset because of what they assume I’ve written, having not even read what I’ve actually written. Almost all of the time, the points they’re making are already addressed in the piece, and sometimes we even agree with each other. You cannot reason with someone who is arguing from a place of presumption and bad faith. Reading someone’s work is the lowest possible bar you have to clear before you’re able to critique it in a coherent, accurate, and good-faith manner.
  • I don’t write things I don’t really believe, ever. That means, among other things, that I don’t accept sponsored post assignments from clients who demand fraudulently positive reviews of their products/services. Everything on this blog (except for a handful of guest posts written by people I personally invited to contribute) is written by me and reflects an opinion I actually hold (or, at least, an opinion I held at the time that I wrote it).

 

Despite how clearly necessary these boundaries are, it can be surprisingly hard sometimes to hold firm when they are pushed. This is why I have certain stock phrases/messages I can send to firmly but kindly express my boundaries, such as:

  • “That rate is too low for me, but best of luck!”
  • “For your future reference, I work Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET and am otherwise out of office.”
  • “From your suggested rate, it sounds like you’re looking for an entry-level writer. As you know from my portfolio, that isn’t me, so it sounds like we’re not a fit at this time.”

 

Some such sentences sound embarrassingly self-aggrandizing (particularly when you have impostor syndrome!), such that I sometimes have to give myself a little pep talk before I can hit “send.” I often have to remind myself to avoid language that softens my boundary (e.g. “Just a reminder that I mostly only work on weekdays…” or “Usually my rate is at least double that, but…”) and to remain firm in my tone. Sometimes I’ll have an assertive, communication-savvy friend or partner read over my message before I send it, to make sure I’m expressing myself clearly and kindly. Or sometimes I just trust myself and click “send” easily, knowing I’m doing the right thing for myself and that any client worth having will respect my boundaries wholeheartedly.

Standing up for myself is simultaneously one of the scariest things I ever do and one of the most empowering. It doesn’t always feel comfortable – or even possible – but whenever I manage to do it, my life gets easier, calmer, and happier. My achy body appreciates the reduction in stress immensely – and my nervous brain appreciates the reminder that my needs and wants are just as important as everybody else’s.

5 Yummy Summer Cocktails

Kate Sloan

Summer is well and truly upon us, and my city is reopening after lockdown, meaning soon I’ll be able to return to my solo-date tradition of sitting on a cocktail bar patio with a good book and not a care in the world. Blissful!

To celebrate, here are the recipes for cocktails I love to sip in summer, incase you, too, are craving refreshing libations. (Be sure to also check out my previous post of cocktail recipes to learn about the Southside, possibly my all-time favorite summer drink.)

Margarita

As a white lady, I won’t claim to be any kind of margarita expert. Really, the thing to do is go to the best Mexican restaurant in your city/town and order their margarita – just the basic/traditional version, nothing fancy. (Try as I might, I can’t seem to make a margarita as delicious as the giant ones served at Toronto’s El Catrin.)

That said, this drink is so classically summery that I appreciate being able to make one at home if I feel like it. Here’s the specs I use…

Ingredients:

  • 1.5 oz tequila
  • 0.75 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice
  • 0.75 oz Cointreau
  • 0.25 oz agave syrup (or simple syrup if you don’t have it)

Run the juicy part of a lemon slice around the rim of a glass to get it sticky, and then gently roll the lemony rim against a pile of salt on a plate until you get your glass as salt-rimmed as you want it. Then, combine all above ingredients in a cocktail shaker, add ice, and shake until well-chilled. Strain into glass over ice (or sans ice if you prefer).

Black Walnut

This is one of the house drinks at Northwood, a local bar I like very much. I have no idea what their actual recipe is, but this version was devised by my partner Matt when I told them I missed being able to sip this drink. They did a bunch of research on it and messaged with one of our bartender friends to try to figure out an approximation of the Black Walnut as served at Northwood, and I think it tastes very close to the real thing!

Ingredients:

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker. Add ice and shake until well-chilled. Strain into glass over a big ice cube. Garnish with a cinnamon stick.

*To make cinnamon demerara syrup: Bring 2 cups of water to a boil on the stovetop, then reduce heat to medium-low and add 1 cup of demerara sugar + a few crumbled cinnamon sticks. Stir continuously until all the sugar is dissolved. For maximum cinnamon flavor, let steep for anywhere from 1 hour to overnight. Then, strain mixture into a bottle.

**To make walnut tea-infused rum: Add ~2 tablespoons of black walnut tea to a bottle of white rum (I like Bacardi’s). Shake vigorously. Let infuse for at least 2 hours, then strain and return to bottle.

Daiquiri #2

This is a fruitier, even more summery take on the classic daiquiri, which traditionally contains just lime juice, rum, and a little sugar. I like this orange-centric version because it reminds me of tropical vacations.

Ingredients:

  • 2 oz white rum
  • 0.75 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice
  • 0.5 oz simple syrup
  • 1 teaspoon fresh-squeezed orange juice
  • 1 teaspoon curaçao

Add all ingredients to cocktail shaker with ice and shake until well-chilled. Double-strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with an orange twist.

Jungle Bird

My spouse introduced me to this formidable drink. It feels like a super grown-up cocktail due to the way it balances sweetness with bitterness so well, especially compared to other fruity drinks.

Ingredients:

  • 1.5 oz dark rum
  • 1.5 oz pineapple juice
  • 0.75 oz Campari
  • 0.5 oz lime juice
  • 0.5 oz simple syrup

Add all ingredients to cocktail shaker with ice and shake until well-chilled. Strain into an old-fashioned glass over a big ice cube. Garnish with a pineapple frond and/or orange slice.

Jasmine

This drink, too, is a nice interplay between sweetness and bitterness. I first had it when my partner and I decided to watch the movie Blue Jasmine together and wanted a thematically appropriate cocktail to sip during the film. Cate Blanchett’s character in that movie, Jasmine, probably would have liked this drink – it’s bright, refined, and a little quirky.

Ingredients:

  • 1.5 oz gin (ideally a London dry gin like Tanqueray or Bombay Sapphire)
  • 0.75 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
  • 1 oz Cointreau
  • 0.5 oz Campari

Add all ingredients to cocktail shaker with ice and shake until well-chilled. Strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

What have you been sipping lately?

Bo Burnham’s “Inside” is a Fucking Masterpiece

Kate Sloan

Content note: This post contains discussions of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts.

 

I think some of my friends think I’ve lost my mind a little bit. I keep talking about Bo Burnham lately, and I think many of the people in my life are like, “Wait. What? Isn’t that the kid from YouTube who wrote shitty songs making fun of every marginalized group under the sun? You’re into HIM now?”

Well, to be fair, I’ve unironically (though sometimes surreptitiously) loved Bo for over a decade, in part because it’s clear that a lot of his past missteps were just pointed leftist irony that viewers didn’t interpret as such, being (reasonably) hesitant to assume a cis straight white guy has good intentions. (“If you were offended by that, it was ironic,” Bo explains after performing a song called Straight White Male in his special Make Happy. “Isn’t that fun? I meant the whole opposite of it!” The tone is jokey, but like… he’s right. That is what he, and other irony-based crooners, do.) It’s fine if you don’t forgive him; you don’t have to. BUT ALSO, he has come a long way since those YouTube days. Like, a loooooooong way.

Bo’s latest Netflix special, Inside, touched me in a way that no piece of art has in a very long time. Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette came close, as did the movie Ex Machina and the Andy Shauf album The Neon Skyline. All of these works of art accessed deep wells of emotion in me through razor-sharp relatability and big themes. But I really think Inside might be my favorite piece of art I’ve consumed – in any medium – for at least the last five years. I’m not fucking kidding, y’all.

If you haven’t seen it, first of all, SEE IT, and secondly, here’s what it’s about: Bo, like many of us, found himself cooped up inside during the pandemic, socially isolated and inundated with terrible news on the internet every day. But unlike many of us, he had the technical skills and creative vision to sequester himself in a single room with a camera, a lighting setup, and a bunch of audio equipment, and create a 90-minute musical comedy special that somehow expresses a giant range of quarantine emotions and 2020 Big Moods.

Toward the beginning of Inside, Bo’s hair is beginning to get long, a beard is forming on his face, and he seems merely perplexed and thrown by the pandemic, like we all were. As the special progresses, however, his hair grows longer, his beard expands, and his mental health starts to slip. But he keeps making the special anyway. We learn, through his occasional tiny disclosures of big truths, that working on the special has become his tether to the world, the one thing keeping him semi-afloat as his mental health reaches “an ATL (all-time low).” As a creative who has, myself, used writing or music or podcasting to give me a sense of purpose and belonging when I was unable to find one any other way, this resonated so hard that I often found myself yelling “WOW” or “YIKES” or “DRAG ME, BO” at the screen.

Bo’s songwriting has levelled up IMMENSELY since his last special, Make Happy. As a music nerd, that’s one of the main things I noticed on my initial watch of Inside. He was always a highly skilled lyricist and pianist, but his songs until now have mostly stayed within a pretty small range of chord progressions and styles. In this special, he reaches almost Sondheimian levels of intricacy and beauty with his songwriting, and explores styles like hiphop, folk, and cabaret. It feels like his ability to execute a project has finally caught up with his creativity and vision, such that every song in this special functions wonderfully as an actual song, rather than just being a framing device for Bo’s clever jokes and witty observations.

I can’t possibly tell you about all my favorite parts of this special because there are frankly too many. But here are a few:

• An early song, “Healing the World with Comedy,” gets us all on the same page, in Bo’s signature half-joking-but-kinda-serious style. He establishes right off the bat that he knows comedy is simultaneously pretty useless in the face of worldwide strife and also potentially a platform through which he can effect change. As an artist who also sometimes struggles with the question of “Why the fuck am I doing this when so much awful shit is going on?” I found this one screamingly hilarious and also useful as a reminder to use my platform for good. “If you wake up in a house that’s full of smoke, don’t panic – call me and I’ll tell you a joke,” Bo offers; “If you see white men dressed in white cloaks, don’t panic – call me and I’ll tell you a joke.” It’s a chilling reminder that art can only do so much.

• There are two sort of silly-sexy jams in this special, called, respectively, “FaceTime with My Mom” and “Sexting,” which are about… exactly what they sound like they’re about. In a very classic Bo Burnham way, these songs crack you up for most of their duration and then hit you with an unexpected emotional punch – like when Bo’s mom puts his dad on the phone and they have a stilted, emotionally disconnected conversation (#relatable) or like the one frame in “Sexting” where you can read Bo’s paragraph-long textual meditation on the line between playfully begging to see someone’s nudes and pressuring them in a way that feels uncomfortable. Also, these songs are both absolute bops.

• There’s a lot of… gender… in this special?? There is, in fact, an entire song (“White Woman’s Instagram”) where Bo is essentially in drag, albeit with a beard. And, um, my gay ass can confirm that he is pulling it off. I was wondering what other people thought about this, so I typed “Bo Burnham gender” into the Twitter search bar, and there are dozens upon dozens of trans and nonbinary people tweeting that Bo gives them gender envy. Understandable, tbh.

• An extended bit in which Bo does “commentary” on one of his own songs, and then does commentary on his commentary, is a brilliant depiction of the self-criticism and self-policing that can come with depression and anxiety. He does something similar in another section where he takes on the role of a hyper-masc Twitch streamer playing a video game that is actually just Bo’s own life: sit in a room, cry, play piano, go to sleep, start the day over again. Both of these bits crystallize an overarching theme of dissociation, derealization, depersonalization, and the way that the internet encourages us to view ourselves and our lives through an externalized lens.

• One of the prettiest songs in the special laments, “Can one be funny when stuck in a room?” In reflecting on his own past tendencies to self-isolate as a protective mechanism, Bo sings, “Well, well! Look who’s inside again! Went out to look for a reason to hide again,” at which point I felt like someone had stabbed me through the heart because DAMN, @ ME NEXT TIME, BO.

• Speaking of Bo’s (numerous) past fuck-ups, there is a song toward the middle of the special where Bo fully, explicitly, and sensitively apologizes for the problematic jokes he built his fame on. “Are you gonna hold me accountable?” he dares, almost begs. In classic Bo fashion, the song is simultaneously self-reflective and hilarious. It’s filmed as an athletic scene reminiscent of a Rocky training montage, which contributes to the overall image of masochistic self-flagellation and doing penance for past mistakes. I kept screaming at the screen “I CAN’T BELIEVE HE’S DOING THIS” at this point, because it really is that rare to see someone of Bo’s demographic owning up to what they’ve done. “Bitch, I’m trying to listen; shit, I’ve been complacent,” he sings toward the end. “If I wanna catch up, first I gotta ‘fess up.” Too true.

• Bo’s really bummed about turning 30 during the making of the special because he thought he’d be done with the special, and ideally with the pandemic, by then. Again… relatable as fuck. Then he sings a song about turning 30 which is a beautiful meditation on aging, feeling “out of touch,” resenting others who are “adulting” better than you are, and just generally mourning the passage of time. He does his own light show during this song, pressing pedals and rotating a handheld light around his nearly-naked body, orchestrating his own vulnerable self-exposure. (There is also a whole lotta bisexual lighting and genderless hotness in this song, tbh.)

• The catchiest song from the whole special, in my opinion, is a Lizzo-esque hiphop/pop tune that begins thusly: “Wake up at 11:30, feeling like a bag of shit. All my clothes are dirty, so I’m smelling like a bag of shit.” It goes on to paint a perfect picture of not only depression (which many other artists have tackled) but the specific brand of dark, self-effacing humor that can emerge out of a bad depressive spell. It’s not the most thematically complex song, especially compared to some of the others in this special, but it’s the one I find myself singing the most, and laughing at so hard that my depressed body shakes. (I’m listening to it right now as I write this, and dancing in my chair.) There is also just something about seeing a person perform a slick, upbeat song with perfect lighting choreography… while wearing a white T-shirt and baggy shorts. You get me, Bo.

• Probably the objectively best song in the special is “Welcome to the Internet,” an absolutely chilling and devastating takedown of the internet and the ways it corrupts our minds. After I watched this for the first time with my spouse, they observed, “I think that’s the best thing that’s ever been written about the internet,” and I had to agree. That’s high praise, friends.

• A low-key folk song toward the end of the special grapples with existential dread, climate change anxiety, and dissociation in the internet age. It’s the prettiest Bo’s voice has ever sounded, and perhaps the most sensitive and sincere he’s ever been. “There it is again,” he croons sweetly, sadly, “that funny feeling.” He never names exactly what “that funny feeling” is, but by the end of the song, I always feel like, Yep. I know that feeling. I know it well.

 

Overall, I simply cannot recommend this special enough for anyone who struggles with mental health, their relationship to the internet, the weirdness of being a public figure, and/or mounting dread about the state of humanity. It’s a “comedy special,” sure. It’s also a fucking masterpiece that depicts, better than anything I’ve ever seen or heard, what it’s like to be a certain type of human in this terrifying time. It’s given me comfort, solace, and laughs – if just because it showed me that I’m not the only one feeling “that funny feeling.” Not at all.