After agonizing writer’s block, this award-winning writer reminded me that our work allows us and our readers to be free — I have a script in hand at all times. From my speech to become class rep in the first grade to the last presentation I gave in college, I’ve always followed my script. My off-beat details, spontaneity, jokes, and all the other features of great oratory skills are planned out…

Understanding the power of angry naps saves relationships, helps you be more in touch with yourself, and gives your anger the significance it deserves — Anger was a key descriptor of our lives in 2020, and it’s not looking any better this year. The pandemic unmasked all the failing facets of our society, so we aimed our anger at Government, Police, Healthcare, and the other Big Issues we now suffer from in a more visceral…

ChatGPT this, ChatGPT that… Have you tried chatting with a human person? — “Haha, just wrote an article criticizing ChatGPT, but turns out I used ChatGPT to write it! Sike!” “We just made a video about ChatGPT, but you know what would have made it better? If we had told ChatGPT to write the intro!” “I’m writing 100 blog posts this month! How…

Protecting the natural world goes against a centuries-old rule of patriarchy: women and nature exist to be controlled — In her 1773 work “The Invitation,” the poet Anna Laetitia Barbauld likens modern scientific practices to the rape of nature. While a botanist cautiously “unfold[s] the silky texture of a flower” and an entomologist carefully “inspect[s] a hornet’s sting, and all the wonders of an insect’s wing,” the modern scientist…

Eclipses are opportunities to reimagine the sun as our main energy source — Eclipses bewitch millions of people every time they happen. Regular people like me love the rare spectacle of it all. Photographers eat them up like candy. And astrologers love them for obvious reasons I know nothing about. There’s just something fascinating about celestial bodies that we just expect to be…

Freelance writers have always been our own editors — now we’re just supposed to edit Copy AI articles? — Writer, if that’s your real name, do you want to keep in touch with the emptiness within? Do you want to feel hollow on the inside? Do you, for some reason, need your creativity to just go ✨poof✨, gone into the ether? If you somehow answered yes to these questions…

You and I need to read more about the long tradition of indigenous resistance and what it can teach us in our fight against climate change — Welcome to the You and I Need to Read This series, in which I take a book on my bookshelf that I still haven’t read, and explain through a bit of meandering why I, and consequently you, should read it right now. My goal with this series is to foster…

Please, forgive me, umpteenth book I’ve checked out of the library and never read, but I might borrow you again later — Dear [insert most book titles], I talk about you the way a 12-year-old talks about their new girlfriend who goes to a different school — a lot, in both great detail and impressive vagueness. I know what you’re about. I judge you by your cover and I do it well…

The act of writing is excruciating but trying to make it in the writing industry is also excruciating — I reinstalled Twitter on my phone and now my search history on this godforsaken app only consists of “Medium buyout.” Every day I check back in to see who else will be leaving Medium next week as a result of Ev Williams’ bombshell of an email. …