Just so… with Megan Butcher

all worries all ways

Uncategorized

  • Textures of Depression

    A year ago my mother carefully asked if it was really burnout. I was adamant in response. “I just wondered… with your history… it sounds a lot…” she said. Her voice was careful. Tight and thin. How scared did she have to be. I hastened to assure her. “Oh, no, Mum, it’s okay. It’s just Read more

  • Reasons to Read

    I started consciously investing time in reading again for a few reasons. Mostly simply is that I missed it. I missed the physicality of it, I missed the sustained views of other people’s worlds instead of the snippets you get on social media. I missed being the kind of person who could pay attention like Read more

  • Moving Targets

    In August, I wrote I have lost pieces of my mind to COVID. Which, looking back, is only half-true. Pieces of my mind had vacated the premises, but it was incipient burnout, and not just COVID. I’m on medical leave now. Before I went on leave, I thought that if I went on leave, I Read more

  • No Stars

    I have lost pieces of my mind to COVID. It’s hard to concentrate. The words sometimes blur. I need ease and comfort. Here, on the edge of burnout, I am finding it hard to connect with much. Read more

  • Doomscroll

    How much I read is inversely proportional to how much I scroll. Between 2018 and March 2020, I was scrolling less and reading more. I followed my own rules. And then every thing changed. And when I say everything I am not using hyperbole. You know this as well as I do. I started working Read more

  • On The Go

    Of course, me, myself, I’m not going anywhere. Nowhere my own feet can’t take me. I bike to a friend’s house to sit in the shade of her fence: I’m on the other side of the yard, sipping from the thermos of coffee I brought from home. I walk for an hour through a nearby Read more

  • Read or Don’t Read

    How quaint to re-read my post from February 3rd, where my main concern was whether to set a reading goal, rather than worrying about which of my friends and family members might get, might die from, COVID-19. Some of us are reading more to escape. Some of us can’t concentrate enough to make the letters Read more

  • Numbers Game

    I’m torn on setting a number as my reading goal for 2020. Which isn’t to ding the people who do set a number as their goal. Anything that gets people reading anything is good in my books. Set yourself the goal of reading 100 books and make all of them graphic novels? Great. Read one Read more

  • How to Read More

    I’ll start with a definition. I’m using the word “book” pretty loosely and without judgement. A book can be an audio-book, an e-book, a slim volume of poetry, a 60-page graphic memoir, or a 500-page work of historical fiction. If you want to include magazines, include magazines. It’s your reading life! You make the rules! Read more

  • My 2018 Top 9

    Looking back over my Goodreads, I had a really good run of reading in 2018. Of the 104 books I read, I gave 24 a five-star rating. That seems like a pretty high proportion – for comparison, I gave only one book a two-star rating.* I was really lucky, maybe, or really smart in taking Read more