This One Won't Go Viral

A writer’s confession: I’m so tired of squeezing my moments like sponges, trying to wrench every last drop of meaning. I’m worn out from wondering if every hour of my day—and every book I read, every conversation I have, every weird symbol I see in the clouds—should be mined for a tidy anecdote, a shining story, a neat little lesson reported back in an essay. Am I paying attention in life because I want to, or because I want to write about it later? Am I always sharing words with a secret end goal—to make myself look good and smart? Is Substack the new Instagram, just with more Joan Didion quotes?

I’m sick of hot takes, cold takes, and most of all, the lukewarm takes we all swish in our mouths before spitting back out. Maybe what I’m saying is I don’t want to be a writer who takes everything she witnesses or feels and churns it into content. I especially never want to be a writer who uses the term content. I don’t want to see every lived experience through the smudged lens of how-can-I-take-this-precious-fleeting-moment-and-later-hack-it-halfwise-into-a-packageable-email-with-stunning-one-liners-people-will-open-and-share-and-maybe-even-love-me-for.

Instead, I want more writing unraveled from the meaning I could hit you over the head with.

I want something like

When I order a drink in a coupe glass, and she says That’s so you. The hum humans make at the back of their throat, when they’re listening or trying to comfort. Burrata stamped with constellations of black pepper and salt. Babies who wave from strollers. Us side-stepping chalk drawings, reverently, so as not to desecrate the green cat and hopscotch squares. Anything with lemon. That night we played connect-the-dots with our freckles. The creases in our hair when unfurling French braids. Sharing a lip balm in church and water on the ferry and plate of eggs in the greasy booth because what’s mine will always be yours. When a woman’s rosary bracelet broke on the subway, sending beads and rolling prayers all over the C train. Measuring olive oil with your heart. The unbearable intimacy of bandaging someone’s finger. A cartoon hiccup after crying or laughing. Clouds melting at sunset in sherbet colors, orange and grape and generous pink. Handwriting I’d recognize anywhere. Feeling very far away from other humans in a cosmic, galactic sense. Feeling very close to other humans in a cosmic, galactic sense. Shelving myself, and a friend noticing, mouthing where did you go. The way both our eyes fill when we say something true.

sometimes these things just happen