Scammers, you are killing me. Murder in the first degree.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been in a state which can only be described as catatonia. I’m sleeping through my waking life. Big smiles for the Zoom cameras! Speak! In! Exclamation! Points! I should be mining my NLP analysis for a brand equity study I’m doing, but instead I move slides around. Readjust fonts. Insert drop shadows. After hours of this tomfoolery, I close my laptop and feel as if I’ve actually done something when, in fact, I’ve done nothing at all.

Blessed be the fruit, Capitalism. …

The bunnies are boiling, my friends, and there’s no simmer or cooling in sight. Just the steady rise in temperature, the bubble and cackling of hot water and that smell. Brittle bones and matted fur — you almost feel sorry for the bunny until you realize you’re next on the stove. The smell reminds you there’s a massacre in the streets. We’re ruinous, but fashionable. Because when you’re going down in flames, you might as well switch out the soft pants for silk and slip on those sunnies because rumor has it it’s hot down there.

Calm down, I’ve only…

I feel irrigated. Watch my head sprout up from the soil. A neck nothing more than bulbous roots. My body is a column of cold, covered in dirt and rock, but still, I grow. Still, I cower from the blinding sun. Still, at 45, I feel like a child thrusting herself out of the womb, that valiant fist-pumping, screaming at first light because where the fuck am I? What is this? Is this the world? If so, I’d like a do-over. A refund. A chat with your supervisor.

Whether I broke ground or body, I recoiled from the light of…

For years, the Greek chorus shouted, get me 100,000 fans! There existed no rhyme or reason for this arbitrary number, only that it felt like they had arrived. They had something to show venture capitalists or a vanity metric to tout in their bios, because when I asked why this number, why this many fans, they did the equivalent of plugging their fingers into their ears and screaming, I CAN’T HEAR YOU.

When I chucked all of my social media accounts in 2019 after a public, epic meltdown, peers were apoplectic, on the verge of frenzy. How will you get…

The train eases into the platform. The doors haven’t opened yet, so my pop sees me behind a pane of glass. I lean against the door to feel the sun on me, the full warmth of it, and I press my eyes shut. Because that’s the kind of woman I used to be — squinting at things, always. The doors open and the air feels like an assault — the ice and ferocity of it — nearly takes me out.

My pop is a waver and he’s got both hands going because this is the first time we’ve seen one…

Call me a fire-starter. Instead of coloring in the lines, I’d rather torch the book and watch the pages cinder in the flames. I’ve never been popular or conventionally cool; my work has never appealed to the masses no matter how hard publishers try to market it, and I’ll never lead a mighty army. I can barely handle a group conference call without an anxiety attack, so why would I invite a legion of strangers into my life?

The last thing I want to do is influence people. The last thing I’d want to be is a person picked clean…

I picture the clothes you were buried in. When I see you, I see the red Pumas you laced up, the black skirts you bound with silver pins and the stockings that poured the sun over your limbs. But I suppose you wore something I’d never seen in the half-life since we last spoke. That time on the phone when I said, you make it impossible for me to love you.

Did you wear blue? I remember tearing the pink off me as if it were a hot poker grazing my skin. No, no, I was a blue girl down…

Forge Career Course

This is day five of a five-day course on finding what you’re meant to do. Read our introduction post, day one, day two, day three, and day four.

First, let’s take a pause. If you’ve made it this far, give yourself a stadium-level round of applause. You showed up and did the hard work of reflection and mapping out your pivot — all of which is a massive accomplishment. According to a Gallup study, 85% of employees have zero emotional attachment to their jobs. They’re either working to survive or biding their time before they leave. Sound familiar? …