"CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE THAT?"

AKA my new favorite game I made up this week :)

Hello Dear Readers,

I’ve always liked when an author addresses their writing to their “readers.” I think it’s fun when you call someone by the skill that they are actively doing. “Runners, on your mark!” “Bakers, time to bake!” “Singers, stop singing! It’s 1am and you’re waking up the baby!” Etc.

If you’re reading this then you can read and that is a very cool skill. If you think about it for a second, it’ll blow your mind. Like… think about reading. Your eyes are looking at these little tiny shapes. Your brain is understanding the shapes. Interpreting the shapes. Translating the shapes. Into a LANGUAGE. Don’t even get me STARTED on THINKING about LANGUAGES. There are over 7,117 languages spoken worldwide!!! That’s what this foreboding “experimental generative AI” answer just told me after I googled “labguages how many" !!!!

I made up a new game recently while on a nature walk with my partner. We both had been experiencing stressful work things such as money, how to make more of it, what will happen if we don’t, and what’s the point of life if it’s just about being stressed about money. The classics. Pretty boring. Nothing new. Trite and depressing.

I said, “Do you want to play a game? I just made it up. It’s called:”

“Can You Fucking Believe That?”

How you play is simple:

1. Look around you and pick something, anything, and say “Can you fucking believe that???”

2. Absolutely go off in wonderment about how this thing in front of you came to be. Just be completely and utterly bewitched by it’s presence. It’s history. It’s mystery.

3. Once you’ve fully comprehended the magnificence of said thing, it’s the next person’s turn to pick a new thing in front of them. This game can also be played by yourself. (As an only child, I will always have a strong affinity for games that can be played in groups or by yourself.)

That’s the game! It fucking rocks!

It had just rained and there was all this clay? Around us? Slipping down from the mountain side? I think this is all correct? My partner said “Look at all this clay, can you fucking believe that.” We marveled at the clay, how it’s always been here and always will, how it hardens and changes and erodes and how we were standing on a mountain which is just a huge pile of rocks and minerals with trees and bugs and coyotes living on it. I mean, can you fucking believe that?

We went over to these things that I thought were hard rocks but were actually LARGE CLAY ROCKS. We picked up the large clay rocks and slammed them down on actual hard stone rocks. The clay rocks EXPLODED. It was FUCKING AWESOME. WE DID THIS FOR TEN MINUTES. I HOPE ONE DAY YOU CAN TRY THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY. IT WAS SO COOL.

We left our phones in the car like we always do when ~going out into nature~ so there is no photo or video evidence of this incredibly fun, incredibly child-like and incredibly human moment of clay smashing. Probably made it more fun. More special. More grounding. Etc. You get it. I’m not saying anything new here. We all know life feels better when our phone is out of reach.

(Unless you’re driving in the middle of nowhere, say for example, hypothetically… 45 minutes outside of Bakersfield, California - and you have no service and you’re running out of gas and you haven’t seen another human for miles and miles and the sun is going down and everything is looking real “True Detective Season One” vibes. Then, having a working phone is probably the only thing I would personally want. I’d probably be having a panic attack and praying to a God I selectively believe in to give me just one fucking bar on my stupid fucking phone that I clearly cannot fucking live without. Probably. Hypothetically. I’m never leaving the city again.)

So, my dear readers, let me know if you play this game. I love games and I love playing them with other people. It’s my best or worst quality depending on who you’re talking to and whether they love or hate people who love games.

Have a wonderful day and I’ll talk to you soon. As always, below will be a more personal report on how I am doing and what I am working on for my paid subscribers. By giving me money, you are saying that you care about me and in return I shall let you look behind the curtain and hang out for a bit.

Xoxo, Addie

PAID SUBSCRIBERS HELLO! Below you find: How I am doing, an exciting new business development, and you get to listen to my new song before i release it!