Ins & Outs
& other reflections
This past Sunday I had the privilege of reading this edit of Certain Writers Make Me Want to Die at Ebony Tomatoes Collective’s Storytelling Slam at Saint James Libations on Stanhope Street. It’s an essay that tours my frustration as a writer just getting their start as the world crumbles, and, as Ava said in their introduction of my sharing, is a salve to those of us who got plenty of rejection letters this year. You can find the messy original blog edit here and the extended published edit here. Check out Ebony Tomatoes Collective and their work on their website!
Don’t forget applications are open for the pilot of How to Write When You’d Rather Scream :)
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INS & OUTS
INS
Kindness. I think we are all tired of the snark. If we are forced to embrace the suck from “leaders” might as well be kind to each other.
Earnestness and honesty. I have a dream that people will say what they mean when they mean to say. I have a dream that communication will be clear. I have a dream that curiosity will be preferred. Now that I’m done cosplaying Martin Luther King, let me make my message a little clearer: Ask some questions before you assume the worst, we’ll all be better for it.
Pattern Clashing. And I am talking like London circa 2005. I’m gonna be on my Lily Allen shit, get with it. Oh and animal print is THE neutral of 2026, I am compulsively echoing this BECAUSE IT IS TRUE.
OUTS
The relationship you started in Quarantine. I feel like I’ve just seen them all fall apart and am mostly glad I stayed single for half a decade
Relatability. Everything is fucking boring. Now is the best time to be openly strange and get others in on it. Please invite me while you’re at it, I’m too nervous to do it alone! We all are!
Self-deprecation. I think this has been out for a while; let’s keep it that way. Let’s find a sense of neutrality. I believe this could resolve many abusive dynamics because it’s less likely that your ego will reach for hierarchy in either direction when interacting with others. Power doesn’t have to be negative if it’s democratized.
I would add Self-inflation as well, conversely. Like, be chill. This is a note to self.
“Traditional” influencers, if you can call them that. No one wants to see hauls when they can’t afford to eat
That being said political/intellectual/newsy influencers are already extremely in, and it’s likely to stay that way for a while.
Pretension. How are we going to revolve if no one knows what we’re talking about? Being overly referential only makes you seem cool to other dorky assholes. People who really know what they’re talking about have nothing to prove and everything to provide.
And, because I need it, more 2025 reflections:
I’m usually the one to make fun of people using their laptop on the train, but, now that I am doing it, I find it kind of freeing. I think it might actually be the most normal thing ever to be using a screen in public, and I feel like an extraterrestrial for even having this thought. I get weirder looks for looking at nothing. Being present is becoming a cardinal sin, but there’s plenty of Substackers who have written that essay, and I’ll leave them to it.
This year I didn’t write that much new shit, and we’re all just going to have to be okay with that. I’ve mostly been submitting, workshopping, and editing the work I churned out in 2023 and 2024, which has provided me with so much knowledge as to what I want out of the experience of artistry.
The Firing and subsequent Move of 2024 took 2025 to recover from. I don’t know if you can ever say you’ve really “healed” from something, as much as the voices in our phones try to convince us, and I don’t seek to heal as much as I seek to move on. There has to be more, and I’m set to find it. Life wouldn’t let me stagnate this year, as much as I might have wanted.
And so here I am, on the train to get my medicine, and then I will get right back on the C and back into my Tompkins Avenue castle (railroad apartment). It will have taken me all day to do almost nothing, and sometimes it is just like that; welcome to Saturn’s season.
2025 was decidedly not a flop. And I don’t just mean for me, I mean for all of us. This year was dogshit, sure, but I feel learned. We have seen this world take its mask all the way off, and while experiencing this is harrowing and I wouldn’t wish it on any of us, this is arguably the best possible strategic start to birthing the world based on the wants of a newer, fresher set of earthlings. We have a very clear comparison to work against. What’s missing now is the generative image. What does freedom feel like in your mind’s eye? What do we have to turn it into the present? How do we make sure they don’t pull us away from one another?
It took five years for me to finally take the hint that life had been winking at me: It’s time to spread those wings and go freelance, babe. I ended up doing it all year on accident. It is a struggle and an adventure everyday. I need all the advice and support I can get, because I do not know how I am doing this, and I would like to.
This year my network blossomed into something that refuses to keep me stagnant. My friends and colleagues are all that kept me busy this year. An invite to read here, an editing opp there, a few tarot readings in the mix too, and, somehow, my belly ends up fed and warm. Can’t ask for more, but I can and will.
As I am watching Chani Nicholas talk about the astrology of last January, I am overcome with a deep sadness, as I realize how much I have pushed away how truly dreadful the beginning of this year was. My entire so-called community had abandoned me in a time of great need, and it felt like those who had any opportunity to lean into my misfortune took it. Sometimes that is how you feel when you are really depressed, and sometimes it is just true.
Chani is now reminding me that this year, Mars is in the opposite sign that it was last year, and I unclench. I am objectively starting in such a better place, but sometimes time sends reverberations of your most heinous experiences and you just can’t feel the win. But I did win. Every day of this year was better than the last. I looked up into a subway window in May and couldn’t recognize myself, but I liked what I saw.
This year I tried something in February, I asked a longtime crush if they wanted to come into my hotel room and do what you do in hotel rooms. We did, and then we got in so deep with each other it scared me; I pulled out of it really harshly.
Then, later in the year, we saw each other at a different dorky conference thing. They put their credit card down when I checked in, because I refuse to do that on work trips and they had a bunch of research funds (ok, daddy).
I was doing really well at acting like I wasn’t interested, and I honestly wasn’t (because feelings can be like a switch sometimes, for better or for worse), but they just have these eyes, man, and I think about what they look like when they’re looking up at me and four fingers deep and I was in such a bad mood and they were being so good to me and I had to take that opportunity and lay down.
