failed essays and life updates

checking in

My best friend Madi has a niece who is a similar age to my niece. Whenever we are together we like to talk about how cute and perfect they are and share videos and stories which often moves into general conversations about early childhood development. Madi is the true expert, as a teacher of young children, and I feign knowledge via osmosis of being friends with a lot of educators. We talk about the public behavior of children vs how they are with their parents or other close loved ones, the struggles of an elementary teacher when a child is not taught to differentiate how they speak to the different adults in their lives, and the variations of shyness we experienced in our own childhood. I used to be more boisterous, something I almost just remember while pushing the crispy noodles I no longer really have an appetite for deeper into the shallow pool of sauce on my plate. I wanted to lead my mother through the department store, I liked chatting with anyone who would listen, I was not afraid to speak first. Something changed—my relationship to attention shifted, perhaps when I did, to something I desired mostly in the digital space, to something I almost do not desire anymore at all.

My public social media accounts have been locked down for a bit now. Partly out of the performance of belief that employers care about what I am #posting and thus #lockingdown would get me better job prospects as I continued to search, partly out of general anxiety and paranoia of surveillance as a #Palestinian, partly out of an attempt to detach from these platforms—if my posts aren’t public, they get less attention, and I am less obsessively checking if anyone is mad at me, on and on. For a while, it felt temporary, as soon as I felt some sort of Relief in all of the things that have been contributing to my weeks and weeks of eye-twitches I’d be able to open back up again and regain all of the dopamine from Posts Circulating. For a while, I was stressed I was missing out on book sales, or recognition, or whatever. But it doesn’t really matter! I am learning I no longer crave attention for the sake of attention. As a writer, I do want my work to find the right readers, of course—and I will continue to do what I need to do to help that happen, but it’s interesting to consider that I am content with my false-closed spaces (Twitter with 4k followers is not actually private lol), with keeping some things to myself, with privacy does not feel like it is born of fear or anxiety. Oversharing is the game of my poetry, and so much of this newsletter is kinda TMI—but it’s couched in beauty, humor, or at least an attempt of it. One of my favorite things about being a writer is the intimacy curated with a reader, and so there is a performance of privacy, I think. It’s all just between us.

I want to get back to writing here, although make it more sustainable for myself; hopefully, just as interesting as #stackednatural (which kinda got me into a PhD program) if not less hyper-focused, maybe more meandering, maybe more hang-outty. In the spirit of starting over, let me tell you the essays I began and did not finish.

• “on brief return to the superhero genre”: on Gossip Girl, Sebastian Stan and Leighton Meester’s beautiful chemistry, the misogyny of Smallville amplifying the beauty of Buffy, and measures of “good” or “bad” when it comes to the CW.

• “in praise of being annoying”: meant to be a piece on the portrayal of fans/fan culture in Supernatural alongside Wes Anderson’s Rushmore but I realized there’s potential for a more focused Supernatural x Wes Anderson essay (which in itself is quite annoying, I love who I am through and through) and got overwhelmed by the sheer amount of Things I Would Need to Watch, even though they’re roughly all my favorite things? :/

• “movies that are Supernatural”: also a problem of needing to watch Too Many Things and being unable to decide what I want to save for one essay or whatever.

• “revisiting Jupiter Ascending, and genocide in fantasy art” I probably still will do this one but I haven’t rewatched Jupiter Ascending in a little while and although it’s a movie I adored for many years because of the sheer absurd magnitude of it, I find it difficult to reconcile alongside my growing and perhaps too-long-delayed aversion to Mila Kunis and her IOF fundraising. could be interesting though. I’d also probably talk about Supernatural. I know who I am.

• untitled Severance x Supernatural essay that considers the portrayal of sexual violence against men in genre television…realized I don’t care enough about Severance to do this but I really do have lots and lots and lots of texts to Helen about it

• “reading obsessions through etel adnan” so this one I am determined to actually finish…combines reading through shifting the silence, journey to mount tamalpais alongside my own poetry, and of course, supernatural. pseudo craft essay! would like to publish it Not on this substack, ideally, so if there are any magazine editors subscribed lmk if you want anything for the anniversary of her death, the 20th anniversary of supernatural, or upon the publication of my debut full-length collection the hungering years (out from host publications in feb 2026), let me know. (this is lowkey me announcing my book to my newsletter subscribers, if you didn’t already know)

As I said, I’ve been quite eye-twitchy the past few weeks, taking on too many assignments and unable to say no out of fear of something uncertain. I love what I do but I hate how I do it. I love having all of these thoughts bubbling around inside of me and I hope I can make space for them alongside the work that is more important, my continued responsibility as a cultural worker to my people in Palestine, to my loved ones and vulnerable communities living under empire here alongside me.

Anyway. Thank you for hanging out with me. If you wanna hear me read some poems virtually soon, I’ve got two readings (maybe more) in April:

• Poetry Reading for Oisín's Gender-Affirming Care; with many of my lovely Game Over Books family <3

• A Poetry Reading for Gaza, benefitting Gaza Poets Society