9 Things To Talk About This Month

Hello, my name is Joanna and I am the chaos.

Another month has passed and I’m still absolutely out of my mind with stuff to do. I thought when we got the oldest moved into college and the other two back to school full-time that the chaos would ease off. However, I’ve recently come to learn that I actually am the chaos and that’s why it seems to follow me.

Like, if I didn’t have one of these jobs (mom, editor, book author) I’d just find another job. Or let’s say someone gave me two extra hours in a day — a 26 hour day, just for me — I’d probably just go find a fourth job instead of chilling out.

With that in mind, here is a chaotic list of what I’ve loved this past month or so.

1. Friends who refuse to contribute to your downfall

I got this great idea for a denim business and immediately texted my friend Katie Andersen (sorry, Katie) and said, “I’ve got a great idea for a business for us!” to which Katie replied, “You are too cute … I’m sure you need another job” with an emoji I can only describe as “happy but deranged with tongue out, one big eye and one small eye with a dilated pupil”. In other words, an emoji that looks like my face about 75% of the time.

Then she changed the subject.

That’s what real friends do, they tell you to stop burying yourself and then they ask you how your construction project is going. Oh yeah, I guess that’s my fourth job — and it’s not going well, guys. It’s really not.

2. The Netflix show ‘Feel Good’

This show is profoundly underrated. You know how you know? It’s in my top 5 list of favorite shows of all time, and I bet you haven’t heard of it.

It’s a semi-autobiogaphical comedy/drama starring comic Mae Martin, written very loosely about the period in her life when she fell madly in love with a Brit and also relapsed on drugs after years of sobriety.

This sounds dark, but it’s not really dark. It’s just real and lovely and somehow Mae managed to make this show funny throughout. Not funny in a dark-murder-irony way, but genuinely funny. I think it works because Mae is so dang lovable even when she’s messing up, and loved ones are constantly around her cracking jokes and making things feel like they’re going to be OK.

Also, Lisa Kudrow stars as Mae’s mother and genuinely plays the worst (and funniest) side all Canadian/Midwestern white moms. Very much worth the time to enjoy the gorgeous love and coming-of-age stories in this series. I just wish there were a third season — though the second one ended perfectly and leaves no string untied.

3. Handsome Podcast

Since we’re talking about Mae Martin, I might as well move straight into my new favorite podcast, Handsome, starring Fortune Feimster, Mae Martin and Tig Notaro.

This podcast is very simple: Three of the funniest comedians sitting around talking to each other as if none of us were listening; like eavesdropping on three siblings as they lovingly talk shit to each other at the breakfast table the day after thanksgiving, very mildly hungover, and laughing the way you only can with people who get all your same cultural references.

Here’s a little sample, starting in the middle-or-so of the second episode. I tried to use YouTube features to embed just 60 seconds of this video here for all of you, but it didn’t work. I started doing research into the reasons why and how to fix it, and then I remembered that accepting myself as being The Chaos In My Life means I don’t have to lean into and learn how to do every little thing including re-coding YouTube embeds.

Instead, click on this and just turn it off after 60 or so seconds. Or listen to the whole thing. Do what you want. Now my limits seem absurd.

4. These Maven Thread headbands

Yeah, this list is all over the place, but you were warned. I wrote it, it’s about my life, it’s going to be chaotic.

Anyway, these headbands are a game-changer for people who exercise, which I just recently started doing again (please clap). I know, all headbands do the same thing, but really they don’t, and I can’t explain the technical reasons these are different, you just have to try them.

First, I like the 4-inch ones because you can turn them into ear covers if you’re like me and even the slightest wind hurts your ears.

Second, there’s something about this fabric that absorbs SO MUCH sweat. It’s gross if I think about it for too long, but it’s true.

Third, it does this without being any sort of disgusting microfiber. Or at least not the kind that feels disgusting when you touch it. (If you didn’t know that some people gag and freak out when they touch dry microfiber cloths, consider yourself lucky.)

Fourth, you can just wash them and dry them in the machines and they still have stretch even after dozens of washes.

Fifth, some of them are only $4.50. Here’s the clearance page.

5. The Shadow Work Journal

I don’t know if I buy into the concept of your “shadow side” in the more metaphysical sense, but I will say that we all have an inner asshole and it’s good to be familiar with that person so you don’t unknowingly unleash them up on the world.

I learned about this book while watching TikTok (shut up) and ordered it. I think it scared Ivan, though after he’s seen all my ThriftBooks boxes being unpacked to reveal things like Polysecure and Screaming on the Inside and More Work For Mother, I assume he’s just glad it’s not called How to Burn Down Your House and Shoot Yourself Into Space on a Homemade Rocket.

That last book doesn’t exist but I assume it soon will. As Marianne says, the universe is always listening.

Anyway, what this book does, in my own words, is ask you questions about all the crap everyone who knows you is afraid to know. And while this seems self-indulgent or embarrassing, if you’re here because you like to think about being a better parent than you currently are, finding out what motivates your darker parts is really helpful. Not only so you can relate to the darker part of your children (you know they have them), but also because understanding our inner garbage helps us snap less and self-soothe more.

Here’s a photo of one page.

I love it, but I skip anything that involves staring at yourself in the mirror. That’s not for me.

6. I Don’t Want To Talk About It by family therapist Terry Real

This is a book about men and depression, and the ways in which society has taught men to repress their more painful emotions, often subconsciously turning them into rage, abuse or other maladaptive behaviors.

This book was written in 1998, but it’s astoundingly current. If you’d told me it was just a few years old, I would’ve believed it — and I spend 50% of my workday reading about and researching issues surrounding men and boys. The data cited has generally held up — often, current information about men and boys in relation to mental health is even more troubling.

If you are in a relationship with a man, struggled in your relationship with your dad or are raising a teenage boy, I highly recommend this book. I started reading it as research for our book, Talk To Your Boys (Workman, 2025), but as I got into it, I found myself walking into my son’s room to read him excerpts and sending photos of certain passages to my friends.

In fact, I’d put Terry Real himself on this list if it wouldn’t seem weird. To illustrate his firm-but-gentle style and the practical uses of his work around men and depression, I’ve embedded a podcast he recorded with Gwyneth Paltrow a few years ago — the entire thing is fascinating and illuminating. You don’t have to like Gwyneth to appreciate this episode (in fact, she’s extremely un-GOOP-like here, very respectful of his knowledge and willing to let him be the primary voice in the conversation).

Now I want to listen to it again.

7. Lee Bare’s Substack about parenting teenage boys

Aptly named

Parenting Teenage Boys

, Lee Bare, Ph.D., tackles one simple question per entry, from “Should I Track My Teenage Son’s Location?” (I’m glad she wrote this, as I tried to put Life360 on my son’s phone and mine and both of our batteries died within the hour so we gave up) to “Should I Worry If My Teenage Son Plays Video Games?”.

The answers are comprehensive, therapeutically sound, and simple enough to digest in a quick read.

Like my co-author

Christopher Pepper

and I, Lee is a fan of teenage boys (she has three of her own) and doesn’t want to shame or scapegoat them. She simply wants us to have a handy resource with advice about how to parent them better based on her clinical experience and plenty of research.

8. This song by Shakey Graves

You know I love to share new music. While this song isn’t new (or even new to me) I recently rediscovered it and it’s been on repeat for the last week.

9. Teenage boys and young men’s obsession with RealTrees

If you don’t know what RealTrees is (yes, it’s a singular noun), you either aren’t a 60 year-old Canadian/Yooper who buys their wardrobe at Bass Pro Shops or a male between the ages of 14 and 24 in a suburban or urban setting and who has no practical need to blend in with the forest.

Like Where’s Waldo, but with a compound bow (from RealTree.com)

While thrifting, my oldest son found a pair of old work pants in a truly wild camo print — not Desert Storm or Vietnam, not Baby Gap polar fleece or North Face puffer camo, but a print that actually looks like real trees in a real forest. After that, my boys were hooked.

There’s even a RealTrees that’s designed to disguise you while fishing in rivers, and I’m still trying to figure out if you’re hiding from the fish or from your wife. Regardless, it’s kind of cool?

I guess I wonder why he’s not also wearing this pattern on his pants? (via RealTree.com)

Here’s the thing. My oldest son is constantly finding stuff at thrift shops and resale stores that remind me of the boys in my high school who had shotguns mounted to the back of their pickup trucks and an annual pass to skip school on November 15th, so I figured it was just him being his unique self. He often wore them with a vintage 2003 OzzFest tee shirt (yes, 2003 is vintage now, I’m sorry to break the news).

Then I went to find a similar pair for my middle son on Mercari and discovered that a pair of RealTree Carhartt pants are reselling for $150 … pants that someone donated to the local Goodwill when their grandpa died in rural Indiana.

I guess it’s not just my son.

not the same child, not the same pants, not the same shirt

The “first day of school” photos I posted of my boys this year featured them in matching outfits (though 1000 miles apart): black tee shirts and RealTrees cargo pants. I didn’t even realize it until Sabrina and Katie pointed it out.

katie is very famous on this substack today

Concluding question for debate: Are the young men in your life into RealTrees? If so, what variety and how do you feel about it? Do you ever lose your teenage son in the woods? Has anyone mistaken him for Ted Nugent? Tell us in the comments.

Joanna Schroeder is a writer and media critic whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Esquire, and more. Her parenting book, TALK TO YOUR BOYS, co-written with Christopher Pepper, publishes in 2025 via Workman Publishing.