27,301 Yahoo emails and none of them from Robert Pattinson, sigh.
“Tell me about yourself,” my date asked. His jawline was sharp, gaze sharper and so I was blunt.
“I’ve got such trapped wind right now.”
Yeah. Yeah. He’s not my date anymore.
What Am I?
There are so many things I could tell you about myself. That’s true of all of us. So where do we begin? How do we choose? What defines our most notable attributes? What makes certain things more worthy of knowing than others? Where is our value derived?
And that got me thinking. A book is valuable not because of a single page, but because of the entire story…
When she’s not busy snacking, that is. And sometimes during.
Honestly, I tend not to reference myself in the third person — as though I am some omnipresent narrator observing myself from a faux leather recliner somewhere, a bowl of sweet and salty popcorn perched in my lap. To me, that would be like commentating the life of a parallel version of myself. And I’d like to think she spends a lot less cash on jars of peanut butter and Rick and Morty merchandise (only because that means there’s more left out there for me!).
But anyway. In the words of one Joseph Francis Tribbiani; how you doin’?
Me? I’m…
Em-bellishments
You are living inside an existential writing exercise
You don’t need to have lived a Life™ to be a writer.
You don’t need to have an affair just to experience life as the antagonist. You don’t need to give birth just to observe character development. Cancel that yearlong inter-railing ticket that you’re super dreading and can’t afford. Stop purchasing the latest edition of 642 Things to Write About. Leave the internet alone for an hour. And please, please don’t kill anybody.
You don’t need to do, buy or Google these things to live a life immersed in chilli pepper and jalapeños just to spark ideas spicy enough to…
It’s free, it’s portable and you do it 60,000 times a day anyway.
“Fancy a quick one?” the message reads, lighting up your boyfriend’s Apple watch as he snoozes soundly beside you. At first, you think it’s harmless, trivial, probably just his mate Brian inviting him for a beer before rugby. But then, you see the image. A girl, a naked girl, a naked girl you happen to share DNA with and often refer to as “twin sister,” is illuminated on the love of your life’s wrist. Baring all. All the bodily bits that look identical to yours but way more tanned because she’s just got back from Spain. …
To be a better maker, make like the moon.
Pasty white, super round, always lurking, wholly made of cheese, been trampled on by men. Am I describing the moon or myself here?
Of course, there’s a lot more to her than that. I only bagged myself a physics degree so I could ogle her and call it viable revision. The moon is one of Earth’s most fascinating companions, our most organic view of art. To those who are spiritual, it’s the root cause to many behaviours. To those who are religious, the moon has connotations of our human ephemerality. To scientists, it’s the tether between life here on Earth…
My ex-boyfriend’s sister is getting married. And I’m getting a ready meal for one.
My ex-boyfriend’s sister is getting married.
She’s two years younger than I am, the sweetest girl in this or any neighbouring universe, and she met her now fiance about a year after I started dating her brother.
Then, three years ago, I broke up with her brother (we’re still best pals, don’t you worry. He made me a cinnamon Danish milkshake last week. Love comes in a variety of flavours). His sister and her boyfriend did not break up three years ago.
And now — last night — they got engaged.
Have you ever felt your heart glisten with joy…
A fun-damental to-do list before it’s too late
I’m 25 tomorrow.
May 30th 2021, marking the title sequence to my quarter life crisis. And man, it’s going to be epic.
I’m 24 for one more sunrise, sunset combo, and that’s it. I have one final chance of being the same age as there are hours in a day, and days, much like this chapter of my life, come to an end. …
Em-bellishments
They say there are no new ideas — but there ARE untamed ones
Running out of ideas is impossible — you literally exist inside of them. Every choice you make, every conversation you have, every sly fart you release on a crowded tube, there lies another story.
Running with ideas is also impossible — they’re friggin’ fast and loose and slippery. There are days when you just can’t keep up, can’t catch them, can’t lure them back home. You ever let a hamster out of it’s cage for a half hour to run around your living room carpet? …
A poem about books
And if the other person is reading this too — here’s why they’re better than you.
Psst. Psst you. No don’t look up, they’re watching. That person over there — use your peripherals — you see them? Yeah, them. Want to know why you’re better than them?
Smashing. Here’s why.
1. You did that nice thing for somebody
For all we know that person sat across from you is a psycho killer (sorry if it’s your nan you’re in a room with. But hey, do you really know what she got up to in the 50s?). A heartless monster who might have stolen a kids’ lunch money or trolled a florist online or left the biscuit packet torn open for the custard creams to…
Emily Wilcox
I imagine in a parallel universe I might be a caricaturist or a botanist or somewhere asleep on the moon — but here, I am a writer.
