I was a machine, now I am alive.

In 2021, I posted a series of short prose poems every day on Instagram. I wanted to push myself creatively with as little as possible, intending to do the project for 100 days. I stopped at 50 because my freelance practice took off and I thought no one would notice.

Everywhere we are lamenting the shortening of attention spans—or in the case of Netflix, the total disintegration of it, to which Netflix says it's not going down without a fight and has started making suggestions not of how to make films worth paying attention to but how to make films for people who aren't even paying attention.

In the grand tradition of fairy tales throughout history, The Wizard of Oz, both its literary and cinematic versions, is much darker than it seems at first glance. 

Miu Miu is currently an anomaly in the luxury fashion market; where sales have been mostly down for most other brands, they’ve just reported 93% growth in the first half of the year, up from 2023. As it turns out, Miu Miu is popular with Gen Z, the first generation to grow up completely digitally native in a land where cats rule. Could we be making a transition from cat ladies to cat girls, from a symbol of spinsterhood to girlhood?

I think this is what they call a prelude. Funny, all this time I thought things were ending. Introducing an array of inspirations for the prequel collection, "We were blue for a limited time only." Not for a limited time.

When I decided to write 30 poems in 30 days for National Poetry Month, I hoped that I’d learn how to be consistent and that I’d slowly edge my way towards becoming a “real” or “better” poet.

During the pandemic, it kind of felt like the world was ending. And then most of us came out fine: some with new careers and hobbies and businesses, some having lost, but most just fine. I can't help but think that despite the normalcy of the lives we have returned to, maybe the world as we knew it did end because the way I've been feeling since hasn't felt the same.

A while ago I was reading about the decline of the western as a film genre: “In recent years, the cowboy has been replaced by the superhero as the most common expression of American values in blockbuster filmmaking.”

I have been told all my life that I could be and make anything, and that it's up to me to make my own meaning in the world.

It was the Grammys last night, a time for Flowers, women, and poetry.

6 foot tall fashion models walk down the runway all somber in sculpted gowns with the tonally contrasting yet familiar sound of something blaring in the background.

Since the time I've had my very first website decades ago, so much has changed about the internet and how we show up online. Shiny object syndrome and a forever identity crisis means I’ve tried it all, various platforms and bio variations and labels to try to perfectly encapsulate what it is I do.

I’m going a bit behind the scenes to share some of what’s been going on internally over the past few months. And maybe this doesn’t fit into any plan, but you know what, sometimes I really hate strategy.

Of the many killer lines Miranda Priestly artfully delivers in the film version of The Devil Wears Prada—putting cerulean and the economics of materiality onto the map for the rest of us—one of my favorites comes near the end.

I’ve been selling things for a long time. I was the one rounding up my family’s junk to become another’s treasure in our first and last yard sale, the one begging mom at age twelve for $100 to buy the beeswax I needed to make and peddle lip balms, the one who, as soon as I was old enough for a credit card, signed up to sell jewelry at an online craft marketplace, the first of its a kind and a revolution at the time. I wasn’t particularly crafty; I just really liked making and selling things.

I have officially been a writer for a couple of years now but not necessarily a poet, even though technically I have this past week just launched my first collection of poems and I have made at least one sale, which, I guess, means I’m technically a poet. Hurray?

What’s your sign?

Life, the ratrace. We think it’s a race to the cheese but it’s really a race to the death; and along the way, there are a few things that matter in how we in the 21st century define a life well lived (the only time in history where so many of us can measure life by the subjective concept of fulfillment rather than a very cut-and-dry you’re dead-or-alive survival): how much you make, your relationship status, how big your house is, where you’ve travelled, and don’t forget this last part because if you do, the rest doesn’t count; how much of this is documented on Instagram for all to see.