The Pickety Witch — Year One.

Holy shit y'all, it’s been a year.

And not, like, “holy shit this year has sucked.” I mean it’s been a year since Pickety Witch launched to the public.

Time having no meaning hits hard when anniversaries land, but there’s a little bit more to it than that in this instance. Despite the ongoing Interesting Times™, y'all have been through a lot with me in the last year. I moved to a whole new city. I joined the highest critics guilds I’m able to. I landed my dream job.

A cynical woman would be stressed about all that good news and be constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And I am that cynical woman…

But I digress. Through thick, thin, world events, silliness, and newsletters both good and bad, y'all have stuck through it all. We’ve had format changes and weeks where I just straight up couldn’t pull it off and sent a bunch of animal pictures into your inbox. But you kept reading. And I never missed a Tuesday at 5AM.

I’ll never stop being thankful for all you folks who consistently read these weird babbles and various updates in my life. Lately, I’ve felt like I haven’t really lived up to what I want to be doing here, so the year marker feels like the right time to make a change.

First and foremost, the newsletter isn’t going anywhere! But it is changing its cadence. Shout out to everyone who participated in the survey I sent out. Your answers were hugely helpful both in terms of making this particular decision and shaping future content. So, now every second Thursday — Tuesdays are hard because Mondays are a pain in the ass — I’ll drop a new newsletter with all the goodies you’ve come to expect. Maybe some months will have more! But committing to once a month will help me get back to the quality we started at.

No one had anything bad to say about the quality drop, but I noticed, and I hated it.

And, to be perfectly honest, I can’t promise you that there won’t still be a month where all you get are pictures of my dog, but I can promise that I’ll only use it for emergency situations or, like, comic con.

For my patrons: nothing’s changing on that front! Slack remains open, cards will still happen, and the monthly Mia Babbles will still occur!

As for what I’m working on? It depends! Some days I’m thriving, some days I’m surviving, but I’m mostly just trying to remember to be gentle with myself.

I felt this tweet from Hannah in my fuckin’ bones.

I’m working on a long form feature on The Batman (which if you follow me on teh socials you know I absolutely adored) and have an exciting interview coming down the pipeline before the month’s out.

Critics Choice Awards are next weekend. I have a silly dress and nonsense shoes and can’t wait to stick out like a sore thumb for a few hours. And, yeah, cheer on some wildly talented people.

I’ve worked out at least 4/7 days for the last few weeks. I hate it. I’m eating better. I hate that too. (I actually like everything I’m eating it’s just more effort and I’m tired and there are a lot of days when health and 401ks feel like idiot investments because there’s no way this stupid world lasts long enough.)

IDK everyone said they wanted more personal updates in the survey and I’m just a little weirdo who writes sometimes. I’m not interesting, lol.

It’s an Apple TV+ kinda month. Severance and The After Party have taken up an enjoyable hunk of my life the last few weeks, but one is wildly more interesting than the other.

The After Party is a delightful whodunnit that’s good even when it’s not flying off the rails. Every performance is great, and I’m thrilled we’re seeing a Season 2. The finale was A+, give it a watch if you have a few!

Severance, I suspect, is one of those series that is going to be knock-you-on-your-ass-exceptional when everything comes to a head, but good goddamn it sure is a slog getting there.

I still haven’t finished Station Eleven. I don’t know that I will.

Burned through a Year One re-read and am sitting halfway through another pass on The Long Halloween. I have some stuff coming out in The Batman later this week, but suffice to say it’s all I’ve been able to think about since watching last week. I am so excited to have a Batman I’m stoked for again.

As for when you’ll be hearing from me again, it just so happens that next week is the second Thursday, I have part of the week off, and will have lots of exciting Critics Choice anecdotes (and at least one Batman piece!)