What a week this has been. This has to be the absolute dumbest timeline in history. The world has seen its share of horrors, but we might be living in the most profoundly stupid timeline since Adam and Eve. Not the most violent, not the most tragic. The dumbest.

Every Sunday that I wake up still semi-sane, not yet driven to bang my head against a wall, I count it as a victory. Another week endured under a ruling class that is both comically clueless and disturbingly violent.

This week’s collection hit me for exactly that reason: the combination of an absurd, comical display — paired with a total disregard for human life beyond one’s own circle.

Why do I do this to myself? A stranger on Instagram asked me today: ”How’s your mental health with all this? You seem to process so much news, and then you write about it, to contextualize it all. Serious question: what do you do to keep sane and normal?” I was startled, as no one usually asks me how my mental health is —…

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For the past two years, like anyone with a talent for words and a functioning conscience, I wrote about power. I wrote about wars, genocides, cruelty, violence, and the cost of bearing witness. That cost was high for me. I lost myself in the process. I became a shell of a human being — waking up every day to frantically research the latest atrocity that had happened while I slept, taking notes, consuming, sourcing, reliving it in my bones so I could put it on paper and pass the information on. I haven’t slept properly in two years; I was napping, researching, writing — rinse, repeat.

I stopped writing about myself, and in doing so, I stopped examining myself. I stopped caring for myself. I stopped examining the world; the art, music, and craft I had loved and written about for most of my life.

Live genocide, streamed daily on our phones, paralyzed me.

How do you write about your life, culture, movies, film, books, relationships, love, and tell all these beauti…

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Hi, folks. Three weeks into 2026, and wow. Checking in on you, and myself in the process. The first few days of the new year, along with the 2025 holiday season, felt promising.

What a beautiful thing it was to wake up on New Year’s Day and celebrate the inauguration of Mayor Mamdani — the joy, the hope, the inclusivity, the clarity of both the man and the message, all sprinkled with confetti as the final words were spoken, coming right after the high of a Heated Rivalry Christmas.

The year started strong, and we’ll hold on to that hope no matter what. Anything else would be capitulating to power — and we’re not the bending kind. Unless we choose to bend for things far more pleasurable than letting the government fuck us in the ass.

Did anyone truly believe we’d get a whole week into the new year without state violence, lightly seasoned with yet another breach of international law? I did. I was riding the high on my Mayor / Cottage crossover, and I foolish…

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I was never one of those people who enjoyed this day. New Year’s Eve, what is it for? I don’t even recall what I did last year, did I go somewhere, did I do anything, or stayed home — this is not a new thing for me. I’ve never been one for joiner activities or organized cheer. I like to be joyful when I want to be, not when someone tells me I should be; Palm Leaves by Bukowski always felt like my New Year’s Eve manifesto.

I’d gone to bed at 9 p.m.
turned out the lights
pulled up the covers –
their gaiety, their happiness
their screams, their paper hats,
their automobiles, their women,
their amateur drunks…

New Year’s Eve always terrifies
me

New Year’s Eve doesn’t terrify me like Charles, but people who see today as anything else but the 452nd day of genocide terrify me. I tried to wake up today and give you some hopeful words, but they just escape me. There’s a reason no one sane posted any plans, wishes, goals, or aspirations for 2025; what can we expect from an incoming year when the one we’r…

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Note: This article was written in October. I revisited it as a form of a pick-me-up I needed today. You might need it too.

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It’s time to have that conversation. It has been 8 months since you have been watching a live genocide unfold daily on your screen and you are still silent. You have witnessed what people speaking out can do, you have seen the power of a combined effort to beat the misinformation and propaganda the legacy media is serving you to get your consent for this carnage. You heard genocidal intent coming directly from the mouths of Israeli politicians. You saw the mass graves, and you saw a deliberate targeting of aid workers, schools, hospitals, and refugee camps. What needs to happen for you to finally speak out? How many blown-up children do you have to see for you to say - this is too much? Is there a magic number? What is your red line?

Why are you silent?

Are you silent because you’re trying to avoid grasping what you see, and understanding it demands an obligation or an action? Could the blown-up body parts of a small child be perceived as anything other than what they are? Are you look…

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Taylor Swift has a new boyfriend. Possibly! Maybe? We need this. Lately, the world has been exceptionally exhausting.; a joyous event unfolding before our eyes, even if carefully crafted in some PR office, we’ll take it. Lie to us! But lie well. So far it has been well. Someone on Twitter phrased it beautifully: “It’s awesome, it’s fun and it’s American culture in all its corn-syrup glory. Are you not entertained?”. Yes we are @awi_sinha, yes we are.

Some could say we discovered Travis Kelce through Taylor Swift. And I would say I discovered her through him.

I didn’t always understand the phenomenon of Taylor. Huge fan base, awards in plenty; I couldn’t quite see it. I’ve heard her perform live and Adele, she wasn’t. In fact, people on The American Idol sounded better than her. It took me a little while to grasp what it is about her that makes her a global phenomenon. The understanding of music. Melody. Arrangements. Songwriting. And above all - storytelling.

And boy can she tell a story.

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I’m a big believer in regularly reminding ourselves of who we are. The pace of life we’re on is hectic and fast, it’s easy to forget who we used to be, what we liked, what got our hearts running. What was our passion? What did we collect as kids? What formed us to be what we are today? And what part did we lose along the way?

Today, we need to remind ourselves even harder. The uncertainty the pandemic left us; careers shifted, jobs lost, new ones we never got - the struggle to reinvent ourselves in this new normal, failing, getting up has been more challenging than ever before.

The year 2019 and the beginning of 2020 were such good, fertile, inspiring, productive years. Is it really surprising the pandemic landed at exactly that specific time? And how did it change us? 

I wrote so many columns and articles on the effect it had on our relationships and friendships. But I never delved into the professional aspect. Our j…

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We made it. Despite everything that happened to you, you are here. You managed. You survived. And you also thrived. Give yourself some credit right now, while reading this; your past year was full of challenges and trespassers trying to get in the way of your peace, and you survived them all with a stable head on your shoulders.

That’s major.

They did not damage you.

They just taught you.

Sit in this realization for a few minutes. Let that marinate.

I launched this platform last year with the plan and a promise to myself to write stories that are more personal. Shorter than my usual articles (here’s hoping), and deeper from the heart. I didn’t do the greatest job with my resolution, as there was always some event that occurred in culture, a moment in society, a phenomenon in relationships, or a series/movie that touched me, that was more urgent to write about.

Is it urgent? Or do I always just run towards writing an op-ed on something that’s not me?

Going deep is hard, people.

Unpacking thing…

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