That’s one way for you to know that a millennial is writing this—things like “that’s my jam,” “this is how I roll,” “I rock (insert any object here).”

Now that that’s out of the way, I thought Sabrina Carpenter was cool since I first saw her in Tall Girl. She played the tall girl’s big sister with bad allergies and was extremely charismatic and funny in her role. (I did find it unrealistic that she was a pageant girl; pageant girls typically have to be tall.) I watched the Tall Girl sequel just for her as well as Work It and my opinion didn’t change, though I wondered why she wasn’t a bigger star.

Well, look at her now. Music was the way forward for her, as well as a cute pinup girl aesthetic.

This “Yoo-hoo boys!” ass outfit pic.twitter.com/UplGPM4ePB

— drew (@fkapigz) June 23, 2024

She’s enthusiastically leaned into her image, and her music and even her commercials tend to be more than a little suggestive.

And so, there’s been a lot of discourse about the cover of her latest album Man’s Best Friend and how it’s actually degrading to women and inviting the male gaze. I’m not about to join the fray. I just want to say that I think the song “Go Go Juice” is a lot of fun. It sounds like a summer day with an impossibly brilliant blue sky, but there’s sadness behind it; Sabrina sings about missing an ex and getting drunk and maybe hooking up with another ex to numb the pain. I’m enjoying the song purely because it’s such a playful tune; it sounds like something that the brokenhearted can scream–cry–laugh–sing to while driving down a highway. I also appreciate the vulnerability behind it, and no doubt someone out there will find this song cathartic.

Just so I can say that I did some research for this hastily written blog post, I found a thread of people saying the song is disrespectful to the current girlfriend of a guy whose name she references along with other exes who can be identified based on the rhyming names in the lyrics. I feel like people might need to remember than not everything an artist does is autobiographical, and that maybe the song is purely theater and maybe she doesn’t really intend to hook up with an ex in real life and that a song can be just a song. Also, maybe I really should avoid snark pages.

Anyway, people who look at Sabrina and her work and say “oh boy, here she goes again, being short and horny” are missing out on music that’s a fun, cheeky exploration of relationships and feelings—though if she just wanted to sing about how hot she is, there’s certainly nothing wrong with that either.

In those dreams, I’m living my life as it currently is in that old house. It was a huge, lovely space, with a massive garden and backyard that I wish I’d appreciated more and even a warehouse-type structure in the back that would have made a very nice gym and yoga studio. But we are here and this is now, as I often tell myself when thinking about the past. Still, every now and then, I like to sit with the memory of that house, the warm breezes through the screen windows, the cats that made it a home, fresh ensaymada from the neighborhood bakery, dancing in the family room with my mother, and parties parties parties, so I suspect that the dreams will continue.

After months of hearing “Golden” and “Soda Pop” on the radio and reading rave reviews on the family group chat, I finally said sure what the hell and watched KPop Demon Hunters. The movie’s been out for months, it’s been memed and stitched nonstop, and the songs continue to chart pretty high, so I don’t think I even need to get into the plot. I’m really just here to say:

• Yeah, it’s cute and fun.
• I still don’t like “Golden.”
• “This is what it sounds like” in, um, “What It Sounds Like” sounds like the line “We can do this all night” in, um, “All Night” by Icona Pop. Love the song, though.
• The true demons they are fighting are those within themselves and are something that they constantly have to battle against, in the same way that they need to be working constantly to seal the Honmoon. But it’s a lot easier with the support of friends and loved ones.

_{I wish I could remember when and where this was taken. © me, whenever.}

Dwelling on thoughts of mortality, as you do. This year alone, I’ve seen a handful of friends grappling with surgeries and pretty serious health issues, with one of them nearly losing their life. It’s had me feeling like

for a while now.

I remember being six and lying in bed late at night when I had the horrifying realization that my parents—heck, my entire family and I—were going to die one day. (I never got the hang of early bedtimes.) I spent the next few nights muffling my sobs as I dwelled on that inevitability.

You’d think that having been aware of mortality for decades has made me more prepared and accepting of it. But learning about friends’ health issues and not their parents’ combined with my aching knees and occasional unexplainable pains are just making it all too real.

Yo, check out this calming landscape. © me, June 2024.

A major life change in the past month has had me panicking more than usual. I’ve taken on new responsibilities that come with added expense (bills, I’m talking about more bills), so I’ve been frantically looking for extra work to make sure I’ll always be in the clear.

That’s part of the reason I decided to go with a friend’s suggestion to join LinkedIn: to make myself more visible and start building a network, something I’ve always been averse to because of my massive social anxiety. That’s also why I decided to make this site: to share my work and hopefully come across as a real professional you can rely on. As you can see, I AM DOING A HECK OF A JOB!!

I always did my work anonymously, my name being visible only in the occasional byline (and that’s even stopped happening because I’m not writing as much for publications anymore). I’m not credited publicly for many of the materials I edit; that tends to happen if you’re part of a pool of freelance editors. I guess I’ve just been feeling inadequate and unaccomplished as a result because other people I know seem to be doing great professionally. So I figured I’d put my name out there to get more projects, gain more connections, and stand a greater chance of surviving financially.

Then I recently took stock of my situation and figured out that it’s not as bad as I’ve made it all seem in my mind.

So now I’m checking LinkedIn and panicking a lot less and figured, whatever, my profiles and stuff are out there already, and if someone sees my work and experience and gets interested enough to get in touch, they can and I’ll just be here. Not very “smart marketer” of me, but I think I’ll pour most of my energy into my existing jobs and all the other personal projects I finally have time for.

I always loved taking screenshots of the websites I made ever since I discovered the power of the Print Screen button. I used to change layouts every couple of months at most and would beam with pride while staring at each one.

I lost screenshots of my old sites when my computer was destroyed in a fire at our house in 2008, though. The only ones I have left are screenshots from archive.org of whatever sites they were able to crawl but with broken images.

Anyway, last month, I decided to finally start working on this site when I figured maybe it would help to be less anonymous for work and networking purposes.

This is what this site looked like before I decided to change things up.

The WordPress theme is Björk by Anders Noren. I made it pink because cute and also, too many sites are white now. I know nothing about UX and UI so maybe this is not the “correct” way to do things. It’s a cool and straightforward theme, and I’m sure I could have turned it into something like what I have here now, but I figured I’d just start over with a new theme.

Aside from the look, I also decided to do away with the stuffy-sounding writing. I think I was influenced and intimidated by what colleagues and acquaintances wrote about themselves on their LinkedIns and websites that it made me go, “Hmm, I too must highlight my expertise in such a manner.”

Anyway, good luck to the current layout and may it last at least six months.