Author Archives: Isabel Brodsky

Over the past few days, political commentators and men-who-were-broken-up-with-once-by-a-woman alike have been calling for Dr. Jill Biden to renounce her title of “Dr.” because she does not practice medicine. To these people I ask, do you know how the American education system works? In Spring 2020 I graduated with two Bachelor’s degrees yet, I am not a bachelor. Confused? I know it can be scary when a woman takes credit for her accomplishments, but you can take comfort in the fact that, she’s still being paid less than you are <3.

The author of the WSJ article “Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an M.D.”, which sparked the debate around whether or not Dr. Jill Biden should be able to take credit for the degree she’s earned, seems to have missed a critical point: this article isn’t about Dr. Jill Biden at all, rather his own fragile ego and inability to report on real news stories.

Aside from my initial reaction to this article, which was to cackle to myself and then hop on Twitter, I did a bit more thinking surrounding its functionality.

In conservative opinion (unfounded and void of evidence) pieces like this one, what usually ends up being revealed is the insecurities and shortcomings of the author in place of an actual news story. On the bright side of course, men like the author of the WSJ pieces are the reason I will never run out of sarcastic comments and writing material.

I’ll end now with a very surface-level “thank you” to the author of this piece and all those who have thrown their support behind it: without you, I would have no future in comedy <3.

Kisses,

Isabel

December 9th

There’s something so infuriating to me about those little motivational posters where block text is violently pasted on top of a photo of a sunset. We never know who took the photo of the sunset and the quotes are usually misattributed to Gandhi or Einstein or JFK, but what’s worse: critiquing them makes you seem like a cynical asshole. While I might, on occasion, be a cynical asshole, I don’t believe my distaste for these motivational sunset-quote collages is a contributing factor.

The thing I think is most unfair about motivational posters, sunsets, and superficial acts of self-care (usually just someone trying to sell you a face mask) is that when they fail to make you feel better, it’s invalidating. If a motivational phrase leaves you unmotivated and a patented self-care-routine sold to you leaves you un-cared-for, then you must be doing something wrong. It has to be your fault because these things, presumably, are working for everyone else?

I imagine there must be some people out there who can put up a picture in their office of a cute puppy or a rainbow sunset with the words “there’s nothing you can’t do tomorrow” or something like that, and have their mood immediately improve; However, I have difficulty believing they are in the majority, or that a menagerie of motivational wall-hangings can have any lasting impact on someone’s life. I’m less interested in the people who these capitalism-approved methods of self-improvement have assisted and more interested in those it has shut-down or infuriated.

The few times I’ve been tricked into doing yoga or meditating, the point in the class during which my blood pressure tends to spike is when the instructor says “okay, now relax”. Like the puppy-poster people, there are some people who find being told to relax actually relaxing, but unfortunately it has the opposite effect on me. It’s the same pattern with motivational paraphernalia; You’re feeling demotivated, you look at a sunset, you’re told that now you’re supposed to be motivated and everything’s fine, you don’t feel motivated and you feel you should, and you end up feeling worse than when the whole process began.

So, why do I have a problem with sunsets? Well, I don’t. Not sunsets themselves at least. It seems to me that when meaning or inspiration is forced onto something like a sunset or someone like you, it dampens individual experience. We should all be able to experience sunsets on our own terms and derive motivation from wherever we can find it. And more than anything, we shouldn’t be shamed for not being happy when we’re told we should be.

I’m a recent *virtual* college grad and comedy writer who created this blog as a way to spread sarcasm, positivity, and avoid ego death. ❤

~Isabel M. Brodsky~

Contact: isabelsimcha@gmail.com

December 7th

I send myself a lot of emails. It might be slightly easier to write things down in a journal or my notes app, but there’s something motivational about an electronic call to action from a previous version of yourself. These charming intra-personal correspondences range from Trader Joe’s shopping lists to a 2am idea for a short story about a little girl who becomes friends with a sentient cliff face.

In the past few days, I’ve come to see the emails I send back and forth to myself as a bit more than a strange misuse of technology.

I recently learned that the little voice you hear in your head when you do things like reading, thinking through a difficult decision, or conjuring up a disturbing scenario, well not everyone has it. This was a shocking revelation for me, as someone who is well-acquainted with this voice and uses it to do just about everything. This voice, while helpful at times, takes on many tones of varying degrees of disrespect; The emails I send myself, I’ve decided, are just a mechanically articulated manifestation of one side of this voice.

Is there anything to take from this discovery? Well, not all discovery have to offer some extractive benefit, but this one might. If you’re one of the lucky some who’re accompanied by this voice in its many manifestations, look for the places it’s trying to materialize. For me, it’s my near-daily email correspondence with myself, but I have to assume yours might be different.

Good luck and good night and have fun talking to yourself 🙂

December 7th

It’s generally agreed upon that we should face our problems head-on before they fester and grow into something unwieldy like a $700 parking ticket or walking pneumonia; However, today that’s not what I’d like to talk about. Today, I’m going to explore the perhaps more-traveled and less-respected route of ignoring until it either goes away or gets so bad that Teen Vogue pays you to write an article about it. Well, maybe not ignoring, but approaching a problem or conflict through more passive means. Before I offer any specifics, I would like to address the troubling notion that we cannot create profound or impactful art and writing without experiencing extreme pain or loss.This is a harmful perspective which feeds the archetype of the suffering artist as the only valid origin for creation and furthermore, there are surely other ways to be featured in Teen Vogue.

So, what am I referring to really? Is it actually a good idea to approach our problems through passivity and sarcasm? Well, the short answer is that it can be. It can be exhausting, if not incredibly unsavory, to address minor inconveniences and larger issues from an active or offensive position. A hypothetical of this approach might appear as the following: Your roommate has failed to take out the trash (again) and instead has started placing empty cereal boxes back onto the shelf. You’ve considered just asking them outright, “would you please do the bare-human-minimum and take out the trash every now and again.” But, just as you’re considering, inspiration strikes. You gather up all of the empty cereal boxes they’ve put back onto the shelf and place them neatly on your roommates bed. They see the cereal boxes laid to rest on their IKEA duvet cover and you both have a good laugh. After sharing this pleasant experience, you find your roommate is almost dutiful in their newfound commitment to apartment hygiene.

Could things really work out this way? Maybe. I’d really like to think they could but unfortunately things like timing, the personality of your roommate, and the size of your apartment could all become obstacles to the success of this approach.

Whether or not this sort of offensive passivity is a feasible option for you and your problem-solving needs, it can serve as a reminder that we should all be facing life’s (many) challenges according to our own needs, the needs of anyone else involved, and the situation at hand.

December 2nd

It was cold today, which shouldn’t have been so upsetting since it’s December now, but it’s always nice to have a good reason to be in a bad mood. After clicking back and forth from my email to my Google Calendar for a few hours, I decided to go to Trader Joe’s with my sister. Right next to the entrance there was a giant blue bottle of Pinot Grigio, which is the only white wine I can reliably drink, so I picked it up to show my sister. “Look at this thing! Pretty huge huh?” A woman working one of the cash registers had heard me. She gave me a warranted suspicious glance and then resumed scanning gluten free pastas and vegan pestos. I take some sort of strange pleasure in looking at least 3 years younger than my actual age at any given time, it helps of course that my self-assigned quarantine uniform is a baggy sweatshirt, leggings, and dirty sneakers.

After carefully piling into our cart chicken fried rice, chocolate, romaine lettuce, and inevitably some things inbetween, we pull up to the checkout line. Before he even looks at the cart, the cashier asks if he could please see my ID after clocking the 5 bottles of wine. After almost a year and a half of being the legal drinking age, I still experience some strange twinge of guilt every time I produce my ID for examination. It could be that I don’t really believe I’m 22 years old because I still sometimes wear my American Eagle jeggings from high school and have yet to achieve financial independence, but I think there’s something else at play: I’m living in a state of perpetual guilt. There’s no discernable origin for this state, I wasn’t raised in a particularly religious family, I’ve never been shamed for anything I’ve done, but for some reason there are times when I can’t shake the idea that I’m about to do or have done something really terrible without even realizing it. So, of course, my eyes betray the validity of my ID as if to say “I’m so sorry we couldn’t look any older today, we really did try.” After careful inspection, he decides I bear a passing resemblance to the grimacing face on that small piece of plastic. 

After succeeding in looking my own age, I pull out my parents’ credit card to pay for the groceries. I’ve been home from college since March now and the one thing I could never see myself getting tired of is spending my parents’ money on wine and gluten free cookies. 

Once we’ve completed our weekly pilgrimage to our favorite grocery store, we pack our groceries (can you say groceries if it’s mostly just wine?) into the car. My sister drives. She usually drives because I got my license at 20 and my driving speed is reliably 5-10 miles below the speed limit at any given point. I think my driving style is charming if not generally unsafe, but she calls it what it really is: impractical and honestly just annoying. Well, those aren’t the exact words she uses, but I’d like to be able to share this blog with my parents so I’ll just end things here.