.SOMETIMES RAW.

My son and I watched all Episodes and Seasons of Stranger Things, and he loved how these kids dressed up and lived a seemingly easier and carefree life. I mean, honestly, I think the 80s were, besides the shoulder-pad blazers and shirts, the best time. The ’90s were okay, but I loved the ’80s, and I will tell you why, kid.

You want to know what I was like in the ’80s and ’90s? Take a deep breath and imagine Snapchat and TikTok don’t exist, and the only way to find out who’s having a party tonight is to dial a landline phone number and ask someone’s mom.

We were built differently back then. I once had a three-hour argument in a mall food court about which actor was in that one movie with the bus, with absolutely no way to resolve it other than unearned confidence. I wish you knew what an indie record store basement smelled like vs. the Instagram-worthy birthday parties I have been throwing for you since you were five.

Toys? I think that the 80s were a golden age for toys. This decade introduced us to toys like Cabbage Patch Kids, Glow Worm, My Little Pony, Transformers, and the iconic Rubik’s Cube, to name a few. These toys sparked our imagination and provided endless hours of entertainment.

In the ’90s, I wore belted, baggy jeans, not for the silhouette but because they covered the fact that my primary source of nutrition was gas-station pretzels and lukewarm coffee. I wasn’t doing beach waves with an automatic curler from Sephora. My look was more “I passed out with wet hair on a radiator last night.”

The best word that describes 80s hair is excess! From big hair to gravity-defying creations, the 80s really did push the boundaries of hairstyling to new heights. Not to mention how the sale of hair spray and gels must have skyrocketed through the roof!

Big hair was all the rage, and almost everyone’s motto was “The higher the better”. Oh, how I envied my friends who could rock the big, messy Madonna-style hair with the glorious standing-up fringe. I was never allowed to leave the house looking like this. God knows I tried, but my mum would always catch me and send me back to brush my hair out. She would say, “Why do you want to look like a cockatoo?” I just did, Mum…..I really, really did!

Nothing about love was complicated back then. Relationships lingered without the ability to instantly reach someone via text, and most breakups were done on a folded piece of loose-leaf paper. My peak romance was the guy I met at an ice cream shop next to the public pool who gave me a mixtape, followed by a hickey he sucked out on my neck while I leaned on a dumpster in the alley.

If I said I’d meet someone at a bar at 10 p.m., I just stood there alone sipping my amaretto sour. If they didn’t show up, I didn’t get a text saying: Running late. I just went home and assumed they had moved or died.

What did I do for fun? I read the liner notes of my Alanis Morissette Jagged Little Pill CD like they were scripture. I scrounged for loose change in Grandpa’s car to pocket for my next Hubba Bubba pack to make the biggest bubbles. Or I went to a movie and didn’t know what it was about until I saw the poster in the lobby. There was no doomscrolling, only staining my fingertips with the same copy of Rolling Stone or Bravo magazine for months.

So, no, honey, I wasn’t “vibing” in the ’80s and ’90s. I was perpetually slurping a Slushie, waiting for a payphone, and shaking cigarette ash off my oversized flannel shirt. Just like you, I was figuring it out, only with better music and thankfully scant photographic evidence.

But if you really want the ’80s and ’90s experience, take your iPhone 17 Pro, throw it into a storm drain, then go sit in a dark room listening to the Goo Goo Dolls until you feel an unidentifiable sense of dread. It should take about four minutes and fifty seconds. Then ride your BMX bike (not an e-bike) without a helmet, because it wasn’t mandatory, which offered a sense of freedom. Of course, we hurt ourselves, but it was usually fine. We cleaned off the dirt, washed the wound with lake water, and off we went again. We survived and had so much fun.

So, lowkey and no ragebait, my love. You’re welcome!

If there’s one question I get all the time, it’s “Why can’t I be as smart as you?”

This is a good question, for which I have a brilliant answer.

I am extremely smart. Extremly. No kidding. So, so smart.

Some people refer to this as being “gifted.” This term is misleading. It implies that intelligence was handed to me like a present in a box that, upon shaking, feels like it might be a video game or the keys to a vehicle with a “thumping” sound system, but that, upon opening, is just a sweater with an embroidered pussycat on it that gets you beaten up when you wear it to school three days in a row. But my genius is not a gift, nor does it spring from textbooks or manuals or the ramblings of my so-called teachers, professors, employers, and parole officers. My brilliance is a tree that grows in the fertile soil of experience, and extends 74 km into space, where it catches passing satellites, which not only hang from its beautiful branches like multimillion-euro Christmas ornaments but also impart to my brilliant tree all of their satellite knowledge. This is how I know the coordinates where someone is or what someone did (or didn’t do) even though they tell me they never did X, Y, and Z. I can detect almost anything because I am so smart. It’s also why you get such great cell-phone reception in my presence.

In short, unless your brain is a 74-km-tall tree that catches satellites, that’s the first reason you can’t be as smart as me.

Second, I know the answer to every question that has ever been asked and that can ever be asked. Each and every answer is written on a sort of cheat sheet that I keep folded up under my watchband (which may sound like cheating, but it’s not, because I memorized all the answers when I wrote them down, so I don’t ever actually look at the sheet—I just like knowing it’s there). You may ask (and I knew you would, because it’s on my sheet) how it could be possible to get such a wealth of information onto a piece of paper that could be folded up and put inconspicuously under my watchband. The answer is lasers. (“Lasers” is also the answer to almost all the other questions that have ever been asked or could ever be asked, so if you less intelligent folks find yourselves facing a tough question, try just answering, “Lasers.”) But these are not ordinary lasers. They’re special lasers that I invented, potty-trained, and put through school. And they write their information in a typeface that I also invented, which can only be deciphered by a person like myself, a person whose IQ is an infinity symbol.

To summarize, unless you can read the infinity-IQ typeface written by special homeschooled lasers and happen to have made a cheat sheet containing all the answers to all questions, that’s the second reason you can’t be as smart as me.

There are 847 more reasons why you can’t be as smart as me, but our time is short, and, really, is there any point in dwelling on that which you can’t change? (The answer is no. But if you said “Lasers,” you were close.) If you would like more information on your inability to be as smart as me, send a bottle of Jim Beam, a pair of binoculars, and a self-addressed stamped envelope to: “Smartest Woman in the Universe.” You don’t need to write anything else. They’ll find me. The law always does. Reason No. 8 involves sticky buns, and Reason No. 612 details my nightly aluminum-foil mummification ritual. They’re all good reading and well worth your investment in time, bourbon, binoculars, and stamps.

To conclude, there are many reasons you can’t be as smart as me, but my hope is that when you see giant trees extending into space you’ll think of me and my mind, and be inspired to leap into the branches of those trees and begin to climb, reaching ever higher, until you grow too tired and hungry to continue and eventually fall and wonder why you even tried to ascend to the heights of my genius.

If I could say one final thing to each and every one of you, it would simply be this:

Lasers.

“I’ve learned to value failed conversations, missed connections, confusions. What remains is what’s unsaid, what’s underneath. Understanding on another level of being.” – Anna Kamienska

It is what it is. This statement could simply define our collective malaise. Lately, I have been catching this phrase uttered repeatedly. Another bullshit at work: it is what it is. A breakup: it is what it is. A missed deadline: it is what it is. Wars all over the world: it is what it is. Lost keys: it is what it is. The TSA demonstrations and super long lines at the airport: it is what it is. New prices on gas and electricity: it is what it f***ing is. The GIZ fee even though I pay for internet and have no TV or radio: it is what it is!

Sometimes there is an optimism to these words. It is what it is, and I can find a way to tolerate the circumstances and work with what it is. Then there is a shrug of resignation, it is what it is and there is nothing I can do about it, nothing to work with. Both lenses hold a truth, but where the former offers acceptance, the latter brings an abandonment of hope. 

Perhaps, I abandon hope as a way to protect myself. When things are difficult, uncertain, and weird, my responses get hard, rigid, and defensive. So, if it is what it is, how do I “dance” with what is? 

I begin to find something to value in the circumstance, in this mess, I can sometimes find something miraculous. If I cannot find something to value, maybe I am stuck in some weird mindset. Maybe I am trying to change things, trying to dissect things, trying to win at things. But in the trying, I often muddy the water that is best cleared by leaving things alone. 

To me, it becomes a dance between taking responsibility for what I can control and find value within it, and leaving alone what I cannot. That is perhaps the difficulty. I keep splashing about because I don’t want to lose something, be it an expectation, be it an opportunity, be it hope. But finding a way to be okay with whatever it is becomes about accepting loss. 

Are you still with me? I hope you are. 

One of my favourite poems is One Art by Elizabeth Bishop, a prompt to ‘lose something every day.’ This is a practice because I don’t want to lose things. I want to hold on tight. I don’t want to accept it is what it is, because then I lose what it is not. But as Bishop opens the poem, ‘The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.’

Sometimes how it goes feels like a deluge of loss. Lost keys, lost love, lost experiences. But perhaps that deluge is leading us to something and helping to soften us into the dance. As Anne Lamott wrote, “When a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born—and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.”

Sometimes, this distraction allows me to step back and see what THIS really is. To uncover what I might have been long ignoring, to extract the reality from a fantasy, to hold the good bits and the not so good bits. Sometimes, this distraction is teaching me to hold things lightly. To learn a bit, to laugh a bit, to let it go. Sometimes, this distraction is showing me what I really need. 

Sometimes, this distraction is teaching me to brace uncertainty with love, rather than resistance. Then I tell myself that it all may look like a wreck, but I go at it like it is a new opportunity, a new challenge. And I bring love to it all. Any disaster I can survive is an improvement in my character, my stature, and my life. 

“Every storm runs out of rain” – Maya Angelou 

I don’t know when I will meet another storm. That is the basic truth of life. It is unfair and it doesn’t make sense. But if I can bring love to the moment, maybe in time I won’t mind so much, or at least find myself caring about certain issues less. I just don’t mind that much anymore what happens and this way what is can be what it is. From my side, there is no resistance (doesn’t get me anywhere anyway), aversion, gasping or chasing around in a spinning wheel. This does not mean I become passive. It simply is what it is, this is what I need, I don’t mind what happens are all forms of acceptance that allows me to greet my wants, goals and desires and work toward them, without worrying about how something will turn out. 

So, to sum this all up. You worry and resist, you grasp, but it will be what it will be whether you worry, resist or grasp. You can sometimes lower your expectations to ensure you aren’t hurt by whatever it will be, but you can still encounter hurt. It is what it is. Whether I lose something, whether someone is disappointed in us, whether something turns out differently from how I expected. All I can do is keep going with what is, finding the love in it, accepting and soften. So my sharp edges don’t wind up being death by a thousand cuts but I can mould to what is, instead. After all, it is what it is, and it is also this. The surprise phone call from a friend, this memory, this person who loves you, your kid(s) who love(s) you, this smile, this idea. Just look around at everything beautiful in your day. Take it all with you – what it is, what it is not, what you have lost, what you have gained, what you are waiting for, what has arrived. And then just dance with it all.