it was fun and now it is no longer,
the story of life

I’ve been shopping this essay around for the last year. This is probably the most “normie” piece I’ve written besides any journalism / press trip coverage I’ve done lol

a cat is looking at a graph with an arrow pointing up . GIF by Tenor.

"How I Learned I Was Allergic to Cats" will be published soon

What I have learned from AWP so far: We all have the resilience and resourcefulness of undergrads, as all of us love free swag and when orgs feed us.

friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ears:
i am still at AWP and will be hopping around like the little introvert loner i am, plz come hang out with me.

the count is up to one but if I count how many of my writer friends I have seen and not matched with or have matched with in other cities, this number increases exponentially

no one on here but me will admit it but how many writers am i going to accidentally match with on feeld during AWP

I'm at AWP!
(And alive. Come hang out with me for stickers)

Shout out to the Saturn in Aries babies and clients who came to me four years ago in a daze, attempting to brute force their way into prepping for this transit.
It’s your time now 🥹

I only say that because I went out on my first dates in a year or so, and realized that I could no longer give pieces of myself up like I did with my most recent exes. But also, this new person I'm seeing is cute even though we watched Hamnet, which is not a date movie but oh well lol

that describes my essence, it would be this one. The Daniels have verbatim said that this film also made them realize they had ADHD. Along with the way diaspora experiences time, when they finally confessed to never having watched it... I knew we'd break up. (2/2)

One of the reasons I knew my ex and I were going to break up besides the obvious and complete lack of respect for me, was that they did not understand or watch "Everything Everywhere All At Once" to completion. Once. It was "too busy" for them and they didn't get it.
If there was any one film (1/2)

Are some of these exhibition gala programs racist? Yeah, pretty much.

There was a website that used to post a series about people’s little black books (aka the hit list/people you screwed) and it was usually anonymous. That was my first piece of published writing at ~21? And it was anonymous. Miss u, magazine

I will probably crash out again in three to five business days thank you

hibernation from screen time fr

We are not supposed to have unfettered access to mass amounts of information at such rapid speeds 😭

the Epstein files are really devastating because they remind me of how many girls and women miss out on professional opportunities, mentorship and careers because of how many powerful, rich and influential men only view girls and women — and interactions with them — through the lens of sex

Ah yes, the Trump administration took notes from Veresailles...

weaponize your worst character flaws against yourself and write about them!!!

FYI the next month is going to be me crashing out in various ways because MFA application results are coming out

i am going to stay offline for the rest of the weekend bc my mind is just *not in it*

me: I am reaping the benefits of what I sow
also me: oh god why did I agree to doing all this much birjsbdiehfidhcidnn

I am aspiring to be less online and less available.
I want to be a mysterious blob that everyone is like oOoOOoOooOooOoO

hi friends,
my first publication of the year is out!
please check it out, respond if you enjoyed it and reshare!

theseventhwave.org/publication/on-separatio...

I resent the romanticism of writing in isolation. I blame Thoreau for it (thoroughly, pun intended) but even so, I'm never writing alone. Even if I'm by myself. Even if I'm in nature. I'm in good company, and my writing infuses every bit of inspiration and the love of others in its DNA.

writing about exes that you're still friends with is challenging, but you can warn them ahead of time AND change their names lol

also for ease, i switched my handle to @christalei.me 😀 because it was easier for people to remember. and i'm retiring isthiswhatyouwant.org

i do think that f murray abraham gives this a more obsessive quality than paul bettany's adaptation is like almost homo-erotic obsessive. like a man that fetishes mozart as a conduit of god and wants to consume him

i think adding a lot of mozart's life (tho obvs with the source material, still liberties taken) added a lot of flavour that deepens it. but god i wanted this to be gayer