Photo by Mark Duffel on Unsplash
Well, we made it to February.
That’s right.
We did that.
Give us all a trophy.
God knows it cost Elmo his innocence, poor baby.
Oh, you didn’t hear?
You obviously live under a rock because it was one of Those Weeks when the fourth wall was breached and tweets (yes, that is what they will always be for me) became the News thanks to a massive trauma dump onto the head of (checks notes) a puppet.
I’ll admit that I was an early adopter of Elmo Therapy. Picture it: It was early on Monday, January 29th. I’d just experienced one of the worst Sundays of my NFL fan life, watching not one but two of my teams lose on a Sunday when only four teams were left. You do the math. I was pissed, ever so slightly hung over, despondently doom scrolling to find fellow sufferers and there he was. The little red monster who was not part of my personal Sesame Street childhood but was a big part of my kids’. And he was asking me (and only me, of course) how I was doing.
My tweet below, with its typical robust response (don’t be jealous):
I barely held back tears as I bravely hit the QT and wrote something along the lines of “I suck. My teams lost. It’s Monday. I hate my life. Wah.” I hit post.
And I swear I felt better. I was grateful that Elmo could allow me to move on with my day—one fraught with writer’s block, imposter syndrome, week 4 of my feeble attempt to make my 57 year old body resemble my 27 year old one. Ok my 37 year old one. But you get me. Up early every morning. Exercising. Pounding water so hard I figured I might as well keep the laptop in the bathroom. Denying myself donuts. Squeezing my belly and yelling at it that “I have had salads for something like 21 days straight why are you still HERE?”
All very real sacrifices** to me.
I checked back later. All part of my “start to write then do social media instead” plan to be a Better Writer. Lo and behold, little Elmo’s sweet post on a random January Monday had blown up like…like…I don’t know (insert super clever meta-level simile here, Jesus you’re a WRITER!).
Yeah. Folks on the Xwitter app were, shall we say, “Not good,” in response to Elmo’s simple question. Once the good folks behind Sesame Streets’ character profiles on said app were made aware of this, they rallied. A new hashtag was created: Muppet History got involved. And the main SS account made sure that we knew that they see us and hear us and…..oh boy. Blowing up Elmo’s account over his sweet little Monday morning tweet was not on my 2024 Bingo card but neither was the Lions making the NFC playoff game and blowing a 17 point lead to lose.
But I digress.
Gotta start promoting a book soon, in a new to me genre. Updating my website to reflect this. Paying a company in the high four figures to promote it. Stacking up newsletters to tease it. Prepping my budget for Amazon and social media ads. Hoping against hope to get one of the authors I suggested to said expensive promo company will blurb the thing for me. Praying for some decent events to attend. Or if not that, one of those “what if I wrote a book and paid to promote it and drove 3 hours to a fancy bookstore to sign them and no one came” social media viral sympathy pile-ons.
Wish me luck.
But I’ve got Elmo on my side now. So who needs luck anyway?
Have a great First Full Week of February, gang.
Also. This:
and this, because Marshall is All of Us Lions Fans rn:
xoxo.
Liz
**this is by no means meant to discount actual trauma being experienced by people right now. I’m a writer. I deal in hyperbole.
Whatever keeps you sane. I'm in.