In my lifetime, few things have pushed their way in to public consciousness and changed our social fabric the way tech has: smartphones, social media, and now AI. Publicly (in this space and in conversations at my neighborhood bar) I don’t hesitate to share my distrust and disdain for tech. Privately, that disdain is far…
Breakfast Conversations
Every once in a while, the fishhook of longing will catch me by surprise and yank me gasping towards the surface of some distant memory. The feeling is a little hard to describe. It’s a mix between envisioning some version of the future that I’d like to see come to pass and remembering some version…
Eat the Rich?
I love living in San Francisco. I love living in California. It’s sunny most of the time and seldom too hot or too cold. I love being near the water and the mountains. I love the quiet majesty of the redwoods. I love the chaos and unpredictability of the people on city busses. I love…
Anticipation and Resignation
I spent most of April interviewing for a new job. I made it to the final round and had good reason to believe I was the lead candidate. As of the beginning of this post, I have not heard anything (I sent a follow up and may know by the time I’m done writing). With…
Grumpiness, That’s What I Bring to the Table
Some days, I’m just grumpy, at odds with the world, and probably heading in the wrong direction. Wednesday was one of those days. I was fine earlier in the day, but then two things happened that sent my grump-ometer into the danger zone. First, I read an article in The Guardian about how single women…
On the Edge of Maybe
Oh, it’s been that type of a morning, that type of a day. Unshowered and wearing yesterday’s jeans for most of the day, I’ve been caught between reading and writing and going through old word documents. One document was a poem I wrote equating unrequited love and unwanted attention to the emails that still arrive…
Let It Be Known…
At the corner of Fillmore and Pixley, just a few blocks from my apartment and along the route of my evening walks, is a building that was recently painted bright red with white lettering advertising a new dating app call Known. In the traditional click-bait style of tech-based hype and obfuscation, the building converted to…
Art Fair Weekend
A brown-skinned artist dressed in dusty and muted colors and wearing a copper bracelet stood at the edge of the promenade near the beach facing west. His tripod easel sat atop a low cement wall that separates the walkway from the beach, and on his easel, a thin block of wood the size of a…
The Dumbest Timeline Ever
Maxxerism? Dumbmaxxing? Shallowmaxxing? Yesterday, for no reason other than seeing an article about him on a newsfeed, I read the Wikipedia page for the online influencer Clavicular. A few days earlier, I did a shallow dive (another Wikipedia page) into “looksmaxxing.” I feel a few IQ points lower for having subjected myself to this information….
After the Reading
I’m awash and spinning in feelings of gratitude and wonder, complexity and joy. I’m in the midst of one of those moments or days or half-days (half-daze) when the words seem inadequate or too abundant or too slow to keep up with the pace of thinking in order for me to wrangle them into any…
Anxiety’s Hangover
Today, I’m trying to re-discover my usefulness. Or maybe it’s my attention. And maybe the word I’m looking for is recover, not re-discover. Yesterday, I was useless and inattentive. I get this way when there is drama, when the world seems topsy-turvy – is topsy-turvy. I was useless on 9-11. I was useless after a…
Scooby-Doo Where Are You?
I have no platform. I have no audience. I have no real outlet or clout. Yet, I, along with many Americans, feel the urge to tell the world that I am not ok with what is going on in this country. We are not ok with it. We do not want to obliterate a civilization….