As we roll into 2022 in earnest, the cultural mood seems to be pure shit. Beloved celebrities are dying, a huge chunk of our state turned into a damn tinderbox, grocery workers are on strike, and this godforsaken virus continues to hang around like a party guest that just won’t fucking leave even though we’ve stopped refilling its drink and have done all the dishes already. Everyone seems pissed all the time, and in many cases, rightfully so.

So what am I doing about it? I’m trying to bring some joy into the world. And one of my most pointed efforts involves largely eliminating snark from my repertoire, which is not an easy thing for me. Working against me: I grew up in the 90s where snark was the mother tongue, I’m clever, highly educated and civically engaged (which also makes me pissed off pretty much all the time), and given my personal history of zinging people, a track record that’s tough to break.

But I think I’ve been trending away from public snark for awhile now. I despise the “meeting cut-up” and wrote about that nearly five years ago. I discussed all of the characters that turned me in many ways into an insufferable douche in high school as part of Top 5 Fun Friday. Shit, nine years ago I wrote a whole thing about why I generally don’t trash talk. The Bouncing Souls have a line in “That Song” that says, “If I want to change the world, it’s gotta start with me,” so here we go.

So, on this episode I go a little bit deeper about WHY I want to eliminate snark from my life. It actually has little to do with me, and more about creating space for others, which ties into why I do this show at all. I talk about how my girls can literally be anything they want to be, but there’s one thing I will not tolerate. And I discuss who I actually save my snark for which dovetails into a story of me being wildly insubordinate in graduate school, and why I think I got away with it. As always, I had a general idea of what I wanted to talk about on this episode, turned the mics on, recorded what came out, and presented it to you free from editing.

Available on iTunes, streaming on Spotify, on podcatchers everywhere, and at the Jon of All Trades homepage.

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