The opposite of a doomscroll

On remembering your dreams, cultivating hope, and making the unconscious conscious

The other morning I woke up and remembered a bizarre dream. I was at a gender-reveal party, but due to the high price of eggs and butter, the couple could not afford a cake. So instead, they cut into a baked potato. Inside that potato someone had stuffed pink or blue icing. I don’t know which, because I woke up just before the color was revealed.

In my predawn haze, I started thinking about gender identity and inflation and politics. I remembered a story from a few years ago where a couple’s gender-reveal pyrotechnics sparked a wildfire. Wildfires! This got me thinking of water tanker planes, and suddenly I wondered: If a couple was rich enough, could they pay to have a tanker plane dump pink or blue fire retardant on the closest wildfire? What a way to symbolize their little gift from heaven!

Still only half awake, I sat up in bed, grabbed a journal from my nightstand and wrote this down. Babies. Baked potatoes. Wildfires. Planes. I started to imagine other ridiculous scenarios and wrote them down too. Like maybe the White House Social Secretary has declared piñatas un-American? So instead, parents are filling giant pumpkins with candy and confetti and letting the kids shoot at them with toy (or real?!) rifles. Or maybe local post offices will start hosting baby showers, since the government is so eager to define someone’s personhood?

I numbered these ideas, titled my satirical list “Project 2025’s Guide to Gender-Reveal Parties,” and felt certain that McSweeney’s would jump at the chance to publish it. I was very amused with myself… until I got up and took a shower. Fully awake, I realized that my late-night doomscrolling had rewired my brain and infected my dreams. In the liminal space between asleep and awake, I’d taken thoughts that were disturbing and filed them under “funny.”

The line between comedy and tragedy is blurry these days. There’s pain embedded in laughter. Humor attached to grief.

Still, recording strange dreams is a practice I used to love. In college, I kept a dream journal on my nightstand and would write in it before getting out of bed. If I had a nightmare that woke me up, I’d jot down a few details before drifting back to sleep. It felt therapeutic, like a self-exorcism.

Later, I’d read through the journal entries and discover powerful insights and creative ideas I hadn’t remembered writing. Many of these ideas made their way into my work — gifts from unconscious me to conscious me.

So I decided to try this again. I’m putting my phone away every evening and replacing the doomscroll with whatever feels like the opposite of that. Hopescrolling? Gleefreshing? In a way, this feels like revisiting another kind of dream. A few things I’ve enjoyed so far:

• listening to music, making playlists

• reading something new, or when that feels too difficult, rereading old favorites

• going for walks

• making desserts from the long list of recipes I’ve saved over the years

• playing miniature soccer in the basement with my teenager

• taking this teenager to Lowe’s to buy a wall repair kit and teaching him how to patch the grapefruit-size holes in the wall we caused by playing miniature soccer in the basement

• working on my latest book — this thing I’ve been tinkering with for several months that I’m finally admitting is a novel. It’s daunting. But it’s also the most vibrant, urgent, invigorating writing project I’ve worked on since the memoir.

• journaling (which is different than writing)

• witnessing as much art as possible. I was recently flipping through my friend Dona’s photographic memoir, Black Box, and had the thought that it felt opposite of a doom scroll. I love the visual storytelling of her “ditties” as she calls them. Give me all the visual and performance art, all the dancers and singers, sculptors and disruptors. If doomscrolling numbs us, then consuming art makes us more sensitive, more empathetic.

• creating my own art, maybe? I used to make pottery and knit. And busy hands can’t hold a phone, so I’ve been thinking about revisiting those practices.

A friend told me recently that she believes crisis either drives people deeper into their comfort zones or kicks people out of them. Personally, I want to be knocked off balance by the injustices of the world. I want to continue to feel things, challenge my own complacency, be stirred to action.

On keeping your hands busy and making things: One day last fall, my 17-yr-old daughter asked me how to use a DSLR camera, and after about 3 minutes of instruction, she took this photo of me.

Speaking of action,

When everything feels terrifying and overwhelming, it helps to focus on one or two areas where you can take action. Baby steps. Sustainable. Ongoing. I’m currently focusing on some work within the disability/rare disease community, bodily autonomy, and reproductive rights.

And writing, of course. As escape. As self-discovery. As community. As resistance. I’m working with a local indie bookseller to offer some creative salons where people can come and spend some time in communion — writing, reading, creating, sharing, finding inspiration. If you’re local (Denver/Boulder/Lafayette) and interested in attending, let me know and I’ll add you to the list.

No matter where you are or how you show up in the world, please take care of yourself. Find safe people and safe spaces where you can fully be you, where you can effect change, even if it feels small.

Remember your dreams. Make them visible in some small way.