Let me tell you something about waking up at 40 and realizing you’ve built a career that pays the bills but starves your soul: it’s not a graceful epiphany.

Somewhere, George Orwell is either laughing darkly into his tea or screaming into the void—and honestly, both feel appropriate. I picked up 1984 again last night, thinking I’d casually revisit a “classic.” Spoiler alert: it didn’t feel like fiction. It felt like a damn news report.

You don’t just go to my parents’ place. You arrive—heart first, lungs adjusting to air that still remembers what it was like before concrete and deadlines.

It’s strange how absence has a sound. You don’t hear it until it’s deafening—until the familiar background noise of someone’s presence goes quiet and you’re left sitting in the echo.

Is it seriously already May Long?! Time’s flying like it’s got somewhere better to be. What’s everyone getting up to—camping? Road trips? Hiding from relatives?

There’s a kind of magic that lives in the early hours—the kind you have to earn by crawling out of a warm bed before the sun even remembers it has a job to do. It’s quiet here.

Let’s rip the Band-Aid off, shall we? Rejecting someone gracefully is like trying to eat a taco without something falling out—it looks doable, but reality hits different when the guac is sliding down your wrist.

There’s something about a phone call with my mom that feels like stepping into an emotional tornado—equal parts chaos, unsolicited life coaching, and a kind of fierce, unshakable love that could probably power a small country if we figured out how to bottle it.