An update, a dispatch, an announcement
i've been away but right now i'm back
I must acknowledge my lengthy absence… A lot has happened.
For starters, I got laid off at the end of the year. That actually ended up being a great thing. Considering I was working for a company in free fall, being cowardly led by a man whose biggest claim to fame is a blood relation to Rob Dyrdek and the nickname “Drama,” being released from the shackles of my copywriting confinement was, in many ways, a blessing. Thanks to my therapist, I’ve been able to spend much of my unemployed time finding ways to refuel my creative tank and stop thinking that productivity in a capitalist society = value. I’m also officially back into full tilt job searching mode, so if you have any leads on content management roles… I’m interested.
I also got married and honeymoon’d! Technically, we had already legally and discretely gotten married last September (chic, I know), but we had the whole big iconic wedding that will fuel my dreams for a lifetime in March. It was so fun and happy and inspiring and full of love and everyone looked so hot. If you can figure out a way to convince everyone you love to come celebrate you for one day (and end it by jumping in the pool fully clothed), please do it. It will remind you of all the good that’s in the world and, conveniently, right in your backyard. And then we gallivanted around France for three weeks and ate too much cheese and hiked through the alps and I was very disappointed at the shopping in Paris.
In the last couple months or so, I’ve transitioned away from social media. I’ve obviously shaped this substack (and a lot of my conversations with strangers) around being online, in the know, and having opinions about things people over the age of 45 won’t hear about until it gets covered in the New York Times because they have actually fulfilling and fruitful things to do with their free time… so I do feel a bit weird about taking myself out of the game, but it really needed to be done. I’ve fortunately never been the kind of person who has a terrifyingly high screen time report every Sunday to grapple with, but after spending more time off my phone while traveling, once I returned to Tiktoks and Instagram stories I started getting so frustrated with basically everyone I saw.
It started with $20+ bagels people were lying about actually being good (they simply cannot be, there is only one place with good bagels in LA and they don’t need to cover them in spirals of berries to make it so). Then it was half-baked think pieces about Sabrina Carptenter’s upcoming album cover (slut shaming in the name of feminism is actually conservatism and patriarchy in a Party City mustache). And finally, it was the soul sucking feeling I kept having after spending more than 10 minutes on the app.
Social media right now is just proving time and time again that almost everyone has lost the plot. Really, truly, fully missing in action, nowhere to be found. We all think we’re the main character in everyone’s story, forcing people to think deeply about what we believe and agree wholeheartedly with our opinions because there can only be one truth. This realization is actually the main reason I haven’t clocked back in here sooner. How can I believe that people all over the internet are forcing their opinions onto the general population while also doing the same exact thing? I’ve finally accepted that I don’t have an answer to my hypocrisy, just that I wanted to come back and tell you what I’ve been thinking about – and to make a couple quick quips as a reminder that your girl’s still got it. And for everyone who has been sending me Tiktoks and IG stories that I’ve been incredibly late or completely absent from responding to: sorry! This is why!
And now my final update: I’m writing a book. With no credible bylines in large, respected media outlets and only my freshman year as a Creative Writing major at SUNY Oswego to look back on, I’ve returned to the world of fiction writing and it feels equal parts inspiring and a bit spooky. I’ve been having so much fun! I’ve been contemplating what this means about my future! I’ve been doing a lot of tarot readings! (My saturn return has also started, an update I maybe should have mentioned earlier.) Considering my aforementioned unemployment, it’s been incredibly satisfying, enjoyable, and energizing to create something that is, for now, strictly for myself. And to indulge in satirical absurdity to my heart’s content.
Because I’m dedicating most of my creative energy toward writing my book, I’m not sure when I’ll be back in here, but I hope I am soon. Maybe I’ll finally build out some passing thoughts I’ve had in my last few offline months (e.g. the contestants on this season of Love Island USA don’t know how to kiss properly, for some reason all adult millennial women think the ideal weight is 120 lbs and I can’t figure out who taught us that, etc.) – but I can’t say for sure when that time may be.
If you do have any book writing advice that is not simply a Reddit thread, or just want to say hi, you know where to find me.