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July, I ❤️ New York

I went to New York, and boy, oh boy, did I have a good time. It was like the world stopped just for me, or maybe I entered vacation mode for one of the first times in my life and was able to successfully focus on my trip and just my trip. The humidity in New York City was absolutely awful, and if Seattle suddenly felt that way, I’d complain way, way more than I complained while I was on the east coast. Not that I didn’t complain. It’s one of the main topics of conversation, even for people who l
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June, ARC, nostalgic, and yearbooks

One book I didn’t write about this month was my middle school yearbook. My oldest friend Megan and I sat down and flipped through three years of embarrassing photos, home phone numbers, and fashion choices. I love old yearbooks, especially ones I helped create! Megan and I were in yearbook class, so we helped highlight shirtless 12-year-old boys in a gross middle school pool, all their puka shell necklace glory on full display. Why did we give a four-photo spot to the motivational speaker rippin
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May, words and flowers

I got my reading groove back this month, and thank buck. (I’ve never in my life said or heard “thank buck” before, but it feels right, so we’re going with it.) I read a lot and tried to write a lot about what I read. I usually have some thoughts I’d expand on here, but my brain is full of May flowers. To the books!

The Egg & I by Betty MacDonald (1945) | Quick summary: A memoir by a relatively unhappily married woman about her life on a chicken farm.

As readers of my April newsletter may recal

February is for lovers

I'm not the kind of person who is ever going to start an OnlyFans or anything that's based on my sexual prowess or attraction. I hope I don't have to explain that I'm not a person who judges anyone for taking that path in life; it's just extremely low on my list of interests. I don't have anything to prove to anyone about my sexuality, and I certainly don't need any members of my family privy to my desires or literal naked body.

No one said, "hey Jess, when are you going to start an OnlyFans?"

January, learning how to grieve

January always feels long but this one stretched out, tirelessly, and exhaustive. I was on the precipice of Big Change and now here I am, sitting in the throes of it. It’s not just that I’ve started a new job after 5 years and 7 months, as LinkedIn told me, in my former role. It’s not just that I’ve termed off the board at the Northwest Abortion Access Fund after two all-encompassing years. It’s not just that my best friend’s son is dying and every wonderful moment of enjoying a dance party with

December, I smell ice

This year ended in such a rush even though December was more frigid than ever. Here, we had snow and then an ice storm. Everything was cold and sharp and grounding. With too much time to reflect, I soaked in my grief over losing Mackenzie and was hollowed out as the realization that my small friend Walter will not live set in. Sets in? Knowing that a child is going to pass away is one of the grossest, worst feelings I’ve ever encountered. It’s shifted my priorities and centered my friendships in

November, the month it all fell down

I hate when people are cryptic about tragedy or anything really, but I’m going to be cryptic about tragedy right now. I’m not personally ready, nor do I think it’s appropriate, for me to share what is easily the most tragic news I’ve ever experienced. It’s not my tragedy to share even though it’s absolutely my tragedy to help bear. I’m only even mentioning it because I have a series of newsletters I’ll be very proud of myself if I send out this month, including this sort-of-tardy November one, a

October, October

I met a man named Milton Kidd the other day. Milton’s tongue, thick in his mouth, made it hard to understand him at first, especially with the rush of Seattle traffic—both foot and wheel—passing by. I was out for a drink with a few coworkers after an incredibly rare nearly-full day in the ghost of an office we once occupied. The few of us were at an (outside) table, discussing what was next for us all, career-and-otherwise, when Milton interrupted, asking if I’d order him some fish & chips.

I d

September, coming in late

I’ve never actually read Marie Kondo’s book in its entirety but I have read enough of it and seen 2.43 episodes of the Netflix show that I feel confident in my understanding of the whole deal. You hold something, you feel nothing, you donate the thing.

I’m a big donator. I don’t like to keep things that make me feel bad—or worse—make me feel nothing. Even before the concept of “tidying up” gently shook American culture, I liked to tidy up. I perpetually have a box in my bedroom that I throw clo

August, it requires patience, resignation, event

My friend texted me the other day something along the lines of hey how are you, is it just me or did this summer not feel like summer?

I was always a school-loving kid. Summer was magical but I was always eager to get back to it. Even though growing up I liked playing outside with my brothers and cousins and and I really liked celebrating my birthday, especially when it fit my family’s formula of the same group of people, the same dependable dinner, the individually decorated and fun cake my mo

July, and the living is not at all easy

The last week of July made up for the horrors of the rest of it. I’ve never been so aware of how bad of a time I’m having in my life. There are many, many good things about my life but the weight of what’s not going well is overwhelming.

But I got out of town. Out of country, actually. I went through customs and had to answer weirdly pointed questions for anticlimactic answers. I rode a big ferry and thought about Titanic a lot and the morning of our return home, a different ferry sustained hea

June, goals and romcoms and nonalcoholic beverages

I’m not going to talk about abortion here because I’m so tired and I don’t feel well and the sky is really pretty and I just want to think about the sky being really pretty. I have, however, written about abortion fairly recently so please enjoy that instead.

Do y’all set goals? I used to be a big goal-setter but because of the way life is and feels now, I don’t go as hard for making a list of 5-15 aspirational things I hope to achieve. But every turn of the season, my little-list-making mind w

May, please stop telling me to vote

I wish I’d started writing this before a kid murdered a bunch of other kids in Uvalde, Texas but I didn’t. When I used to use twitter more regularly, I remember starting to check what was trending before I tweeted something I thought was particularly clever or funny. It had become all too common to tweet something like “why is Channing Tatum so sexy but I don’t want to have sex with him” right as some truly awful news broke. It’s usually a mass shooting. I won’t spend time repeating the angry, h

Abortion, again

Here's some abortion stuff I've been thinking about lately as I keep growing my advocacy. These are my thoughts, not NWAAF's.
• None A Black woman came up to us at the rally and said that we keep comparing abortion access and reproductive rights to slavery and it's offensive and needs to stop. My colleagues and I were affirming and ensured her we'd never use messaging like that but it does get used in the abortion movement way too often. We offered to talk to anyone who was using those callous a

April, a Concept

I’m very tired from the month of April. A lot of people in my life had weird, big months. I didn’t necessarily have a weird, big month in that my life is the same as it was before April started however I did just co-organize a huge event and fundraiser all in the hopes of raising $215,000 for abortion access. That’s a crazy number. I don’t know how I read at all this month other than I haven’t returned to my Harry Potter games and being on social media in my free time is exhausting to think abou

March, and This Isn't About the Slap

Usually when I’m not consistently reading, I feel bad. Not bad in a “what will people think of me” way, but bad like when you don’t drink enough water and feel weird halfway through the day. I feel the same way when I’m not watching TV regularly. I spent most of March co-managing the launch of a major fundraiser for the Northwest Abortion Access Fund. I didn’t have time to read because I was herding cats, building excitement, and trying to make sure I didn’t miss anything fucking big. Funding ab

February, layers and layers of discontent

I’m not going to talk about war because I don’t really understand it, the small details. I have a hard time comprehending governmental warfare and the words people use to explain it. I don’t get Putin and I don’t know that much about him or his leadership. I never even really understood (or found any humor in) the endless Putin and Trump jokes and memes and that was my actual country. Actually, I think that’s when I started to get “dumber.” By the time we were gearing up for a new presidential e

January, and Joy Comes in the Morning

Before I get into it, a reminder that I have a paid option for Completely Booked now! You’ll get additional newsletter(s) including one coming this week.

I read a lot of books about grief for someone who hasn’t experienced very much death. My baby brother’s dad, the only father-figure I ever had, was murdered at the end of 2005. I was three weeks into my first year of college and didn’t know how to grieve, I just knew how to stay busy. All these years later, I find myself deeply moved by books

My Top 10 Favorite Reads of 2021 + A Paid Subscriber Option

I’m not giving you a gigantic intro here because good grief, you don’t need two of those from me in a single holiday weekend. I did want to hit y’all with a Top 10 Faves of 2021 and importantly, announce that Completely Booked’s paid subscriber options are here!

The first paid newsletter will go out in two weeks and in general, you should check for one mid-month. Subscribers will receive non-book recommendations, access to giveaways from time to time, and honestly me talking some shit I prob wo

December, and How Are We to Be

There’s a tweet or meme or whatever we call stuff these days that I’ve been thinking about a lot. (I don’t know the proper terminology when so much stuff shows up everywhere?? Is it a tweet if it’s a screenshot of a tweet I saw in an instagram story? Is an overused screenshot from a popular TV show a meme?) Now I sound absurd because here is a link to a literal tweet so obviously it’s a tweet not a meme but I’m going to scoot forward to my point.

It’s hard to sit down and write a monthly recap,

November, a Whirlwind

I don’t even know what to say about November because I have been way too busy to sit down and think about November. When I picked this draft up to see what I’d been feeling in the beginning of the month, I came across essentially “you don’t know me but you think you know me, but things really suck for me too!”

But I’m not going to go on an instagram vs. reality lecture. What I am going to say is student loans are due soon and money is tight. This is not required and I think it’s anonymous???, b

October, you ol' ghoul

A few months ago, I could not stop dropping my phone flat on its glass face. I dropped it on my boyfriend’s uncarpeted floor multiple times, I dropped it in the gravel in front of my building at least twice, and its last hurrah was when I dropped it on the ground outside of my coworker’s house in a city I don’t live in. I’m not a phone dropper usually, and I’m in the minority of someone who’s never even really cracked a screen in the decade of having a phone as expensive as one month of my rent.

September, and the rain's finally here

A few months ago, my last living grandparent, the only one I knew, died. “We're not close," is what I've reported about our relationship throughout the entirety of my life until having distanced-outdoor-coffee with a friend when I explained, "people say 'we weren't close,' but what it means is ‘she didn't like me.’"

Family lore gives me a few key stories that describe who I am that happen to be in relation to my grandmother, like when she pointedly told me something I thought was wrong and I st

August, and Now I'm 34

I had a birthday this month. It was the most unlike-a-birthday birthday I’ve maybe ever had. The year I turned 29 my dad had started drinking again, it was a Wednesday, and I had been living back in Seattle for a few weeks. Two friends brought me takeout thai food even though I would genuinely have been fine treating it like a regular Wednesday. That was 2016.

This year felt the same without the particulars. Turning 34 on a Tuesday wasn’t necessarily exciting and even more so than last year, ce
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