I never thought I’d find myself staring at a rejection email for a job I was perfectly qualified for, wondering if it was even read by human eyes. Last month, that’s exactly what happened – I’d applied to a mid-level marketing position that matched my experience almost perfectly. My CV ticked every box in their requirements list, I had glowing references, and I’d even worked in the same industry for six years. The rejection came…
Most adults show a unique form of temporal optimism while feeding a parking meter, which is otherwise reasonable. “I’ll just be ten minutes,” somehow translates to a quarter in a meter that charges a dollar an hour. It’s a math that doesn’t really add up. It’s a type of delusion where I’ve accepted errands can be completed in top tier Navy SEAL efficiency. Last Thursday is a good example of this self deception. Dropping off…
I like to consider myself a tech-savvy millennial. I’ve got all the apps, I doom-scroll with the best of them, and I was an early adopter of that weird phase when everyone was making their photos look like they were taken in 1977. But there’s something particularly strange about opening my phone each morning and having an algorithm tell me whether or not I’m fertile today. It started innocently enough. After going off hormonal birth…
I had what you might call a proper meltdown yesterday. I’m talking the kind where you’re staring at your laptop screen and suddenly feel the overwhelming urge to launch the bloody thing straight through your window. What caused this rare moment of tech-rage? I just wanted to read a simple article about growing tomatoes, but first had to navigate what felt like the digital equivalent of Dante’s nine circles of hell. It started innocently enough.…
It started with a late-night rabbit hole of cardiovascular research papers after Mei found me obsessively checking my pulse for the third time that day. “It’s just a routine health metric,” I’d explained, while she gave me that look—the one that says she knows I’m about to disappear into a weeklong experimental vortex. “Your pupils are dilated in that specific way they get when you’re formulating a terrible idea,” she observed, closing my laptop. “What…
When I was younger, gyms were nothing more than simple buildings. They had all the charm of a Soviet-era government building and smelled like old sweat. People did not seem to care about aesthetics. They only went to lift heavier things and put them back down, a strange ritual that for some unusual reason led to larger muscles, smaller waists, and a greater amount of pride. No one needed to record any of this, and…
There’s something oddly satisfying about highlighting a passage in a self-help book. That little swipe of neon yellow across a particularly profound sentence feels like a tiny victory, doesn’t it? Like I’m saying, “Yes, this right here—this is the nugget of wisdom that’s going to change everything.” I’ve got a confession to make. My bookshelf is packed with self-improvement books that look like they’ve been attacked by a highlighter-wielding maniac. The pages are practically glowing…
I believe there’s a conspiracy of sorts that revolves around my experience on the road. I have this theory that there’s a group of people under the name “slow walkers” whose sole purpose is to walk extremely slow in front of me when I’m in a rush. Who even does that? But I realize, this seems quite ridiculous, but the amount of times I was late because of… Just the other day, I had a…
I’m still trying to figure out exactly when it happened. That moment when my carefully constructed work-life balance tipped over into just… work. It wasn’t a dramatic collapse—more like watching sand slowly slide through an hourglass until suddenly you realize the top chamber is empty and you’ve been staring at it for ages without noticing. Last Tuesday I found myself sitting in my car at 11:43 PM in the empty parking lot of my apartment…
It started with a careless comment at my brother’s wedding. His new mother-in-law—the type who reads self-help books exclusively and believes crystals can fix national debt—cornered me by the hors d’oeuvres. “Jamie,” she said, examining me through narrowed eyes, “you’re carrying so much emotional baggage! I can practically see the weight of it bending space-time around you.” Now look, I’m used to being psychoanalyzed at family functions (hazard of being perpetually single in your thirties…