I suspect that living 24/7 in workout attire is the clothing version of the messy topknot. We all know that your hair is dirty, or too long, or too frizzy, or your roots have grown out, but we are all going to accept it as fabulous because that's the deal.
— Mary H.K. Choi
Everyone is such a mystery, yet we chug along so much of the time presuming we're all on the same page.
In order to be a good emergency contact, you need a lot of friend-patience and empathy. Often, this comes from personal experience with anxiety, trauma, and depression.
I find texting to be kind of a safe space.
Eventually, I just want to write wavy little short stories.
The thing about leaving New York is that you can come back.
Texting is incredibly anxiety-laden, but I know people who will have a full-blown panic attack if you call them. I'm one of those nightmare humans where the little mailbox has an ellipsis on it because I have 1000 unread emails. So texting is the most immediate yet least anxious of all the incredibly anxious ways that we talk to each other.
I'm definitely an indoor kid who's turned into an inside person.
There's a really generous readership with YA.
As a consumer, I love superheroes.
You always feel like a hack and a fraud when you're writing. It's just how it goes.
If you are someone's emergency contact - you are their person, and they are your person - there is work involved.
Yes, Justin Bieber is a contrivance. Yes, Justin Bieber's lyrics are insipid - worse still, disingenuous. Yes, his tattoos stink. Yes, he's lousy at skateboarding. But what does any of this actually matter? In case you missed it, Bieber won.
The second single from 'Purpose,' Justin Bieber's fourth studio album, 'Sorry' is an infectious confection - a Dorito for your ears.
The first time I drank LaCroix, I half expected it to be filled with self-tanner. Or Axe body spray.
Join a Bikram-flow-yoga, Flywheel, or Pilates class so you can find spiritual oneness amid grunting socialite moms. Do whatever you want. Just, please, for the love of God, stop talking about it.
Nothing is more untoward than a grown man tasking another with snapping a pic expressly so he can 'flex the 'fit.' It's tacky -self-aggrandizing - and speaks to an existential neediness typically reserved for failed actresses and phenomenally successful rappers.
When I moved to New York City from Texas at 22, amateur hour was over. As a newly grown-up person, I vowed I would wear dresses and skirts, wool trousers occasionally, and heels always.
Reading aloud to other people is wonderful - if you have people who will suffer it.
Your mom is the first person you fall in love with, so it's loaded forever and carries all this baggage. There's almost always a communication barrier in place. In my case it's a language and cultural barrier, but other times, it's because your mother's love is conditional or because you're fundamentally different.
The thing that I find interesting about teens now is that no matter how desperate we seem to be taxonomically 'othering' them, for one reason or another - because the Internet, because whatever - I feel like a lot of the benchmarks and the experiences are, you know, same for teens through time immemorial.
I have a lot of respect for people who write a whole book because I've heard it will kill you.
I love New York, but sometimes New York is so mean to you.
The notion of this 'emergency contact' is, Do you have someone who is holding you down? Do you know where to go if you're feeling bad? I keep likening it to assigning yourself a godparent of your choosing.
I'm just going to write whatever I'm going to write, and whatever shelf or section they end up on at the bookstore is just going to be that, and I'll let the marketing people pull their hair out and worry about it.
I commit words to paper and the Internet for everyone to pick apart, so I think I tend to be a lot more cynical and dulled.
My brother's in comics. I work in media.
My sweet spot as a writer and, especially, as an essayist is sub-1500 words.
'Emergency Contact' is about the anxiousness that is inherent in meat space interactions.
Bieber has taste and pull, which is as important to making quality pop as actual talent.
Learning to ride a bike in a public park means anyone can see you.
LaCroix sparkling water is absolutely delicious.
Food rules. Little rivals the pleasure of tearing into a glistening burger.
I'm pretty sure I peaked at 15.
I've always been a texting advocate.
If you can relate to what another person is going through while giving their experience room to be its own discrete thing, you're probably a crackerjack emergency contact.
For people who deal with anxiety or depression or can't be in large social groups cognitively, emotionally, or even physically, phones help bridge the gap.
Hopefully, if I get enough of a fan army together, people will let me write fiction.
The thing about living in New York as a writer is that you hit that age where it feels like everyone has a book all at the same time. It's like that one year where you're invited to twenty weddings.
There is so much focus on being self-sufficient, and it makes it very difficult to ask for things. I've been crippled by this notion of high-functioning self-sufficiency. And I see it a lot in younger girls. Asking for help brings people closer in a way that I suspected but didn't actually put into practice.
Jockeying for a popularity position has been a valorized teen tradition since the notion of a discrete teen stage of life was invented.
If you're holding your iPhone, and it's the newest iteration of it, you're like, 'Oh, famous people have my phone. Captains of industry have my phone.' And that can be an intoxicating experience for someone who is going off to college for the first time.
I just love the comics industry.
I'm a big believer in puking out all your thoughts in a single sitting and getting some version of the work down, because the alternative just prolongs the agony. The first draft is hideous and ajskdlkdfksjdfslfjk, but it's just a map for where the big blocks go.
I always get super confused by the way we look at technology, because since when were all phone calls created equal? It's not like every text is the same or that all texts are human interactions that are compromised. I don't get how conduits somehow dictate sentiment.
Part of me just wants 'Jane' magazine back, and 'Sassy,' too.
'Sorry' is unlike anything Bieber has made in the past. It has been classified as 'tropical house' and 'dancehall,' but everyone seems to agree on one thing: It's a banger.
Aside from the can, everything about LaCroix is gentle.
Do you know why we pay trainers and nutritionists? Because having to muster interest in the minor successes of someone else's journey toward pedestrian-ass healthiness is taxing and should be compensated.
I would never give up 'The Wire,' 'Breaking Bad,' and 'Game of Thrones.' I'm grateful for all these expensive, excellent, graphically ambitious programs.
