Step 1: Identify the problem. Step 2: Make a TikTok about it. Step 3: Make adjustments and manage it. Step 4: Find peace.

Black on black on black with a touch of gray
To communicate you’re just not in the goddamn mood today.
To announce a state of mourning.
To send a silent warning.

Fear can be mastered. Loathing is destructive.

If I could travel through time, I’d go back and invent a time machine sooner.

“Margaritaville” hit our ears in 1977 but by 1978, it was already being played to present depression and self-destruction to be as much fun as a conga line. Jimmy Buffett turned that into a billion-dollar business. Misery loves company, especially when there’s boiling shrimp, regrettable tattoos, and frozen tequila concoctions involved.

It’s a deafening sound.
The screams of passion belted out
from the bugs with the giant eyes
and wingspan of a Prius.

Thank God for the dog. If not for her, my girlfriend wouldn’t let me leave the house. When the pandemic got serious, she didn’t care about toilet paper; she b-lined it for the milk. Our freezer is perfectly packed with Swedish meatballs, broccoli florets, and twenty-three gallon-size Ziplocs of milk.

They say—they being creative writing professors, esteemed novelists, and hacks with wordy Instagram posts alike—that writers write. Writers who get their shit out there—not all of it, but enough of it—are the real writers. True warriors of the pen and keys.

I should've been a plumber. At least then being covered in shit feels productive.

The hardest part about being an adult is the same as being a kid: so often, you have to do things you just really, really don’t want to do.