While everyone else is watching Tiger King on Netflix I decided to veg out with some throwbacks and a brand new drama.

Filling time during isolation has been very easy so far. Unending scrolling through social media helps and then distracting myself with a healthy dose of TV takes care of the rest.

Here’s what I’ve been watching this week.

1. 10 Things I Hate About You on Disney+

I keep a notebook filled with notes scrawled from books I’m reading. I scribble down my favorite quotes when I hear or when I find them in an essay. Here are the ones I always go back to.

These quotes keep me writing.

1. “Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.”

— James Baldwin

I keep this quote on my bedside table so I see it before I go to sleep. Talent is nothing without hard work behind it. …

If you feel like it’s impossible to write during this current upheaval, I get it. The future is uncertain and everything feels unknown and futile.

But now is when the world needs your voice the most.

As the world feels like it’s falling apart right in front of us, it’s nearly impossible to stop scrolling endlessly through social media, past news headlines, and actually look inward. This cultural trauma is not easy to deal with as much as we might make jokes or look for levity.

When my partner noticed the toll the news cycle has been taking on my…

The news is unbelievably terrible right now. While it’s important to stay up to date on incoming information, we also need to protect ourselves from the endless news cycle.

So here’s what I’m watching to soothe myself when I’ve had enough.

*Spoilers Ahead*

There are days that I’m a BoJack and there are days that I’m a Diane. But I’d prefer the latter. I started watching BoJack Horseman when it originally came out. I was a completely different person. I went through a lot, but there was always Bojack, Todd, Diane, Princess Carolyn, and Mr. Peanut Butter. Certain shows have that sort of power. No matter the state of mind I’m in they calm me down, they bring me home.

Watching BoJack was fun and it was also often a reflective, introspective endeavor. Despite the heavy storylines in the final season…

My dad makes a homemade curry powder that is famed among our family and friends. Having watched him make it, I know it’s a labor of love. He carefully selects the spices from the jars, each lined up in the kitchen, waiting for their moment. The next step is toasting the spices, before finally grinding them in his designated electric spice grinder. You would not want to accidentally grind your coffee in it. It is decidedly not repurposable no matter how much washing goes into it. The grinding has to happen in a very specific way, or it’s all over…

I knew I would read Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys the moment it popped up on my radar. Last year, I listened to the audiobook of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Underground Railroad while driving across the country.

As I drove through the south I listened to his descriptions of the marshy landscape as it passed outside my window. The horrors and the beauty of the novel seemed to exist in the same space I was driving through but in another time and place.

This year, while I was visiting family in Florida I began reading The Nickel Boys. The…

We are in the wild west of food right now. Plant-based meat is all the rage and the market is growing. It’s a new frontier that everyone is interested in being a part of. It’s also an exciting time for vegetarians and vegans and everyone in between as new meatless options begin circulating. We have an exciting future ahead of us.

When I was growing up, fast food, especially McDonald’s, was a special treat. I’d savor each and every fry. I relished the diced onions swimming in the pool of ketchup and mustard on top of the patty. And the…