[THREAD] How are you, really?

Ahhh!!!! Kesha’s album dropped yesterday and I LOOOOOVE IT. I’ve been playing the whole thing on repeat and and AND I got to go to a pre-release party on Thursday where I watched the album live on a 20-foot screen and ate some delicious Vietnamese food. It was so great. It made my month.

Have you listened yet? I’m so excited that I think it boosted me a whole point this week.

There are two ways to interact with this post.

1 - If you don’t want to say anything, or bristle at identifying yourself, then you can reply with this nifty poll.

2 - If you’re feeling very brave, then reply below and tell us how you are doing right now on a scale from 1-5.

Right now, I think I’m a 3. I was about a 2, and then Kesha brought me up a whole extra point (did you notice all choices are songs on the new album?). This is my first time at a 3 in at least a month, and I’m enjoying the feeling of not feeling terrible.

A new chapter of Magic launched this week. All new chapters are free to read, but paid subscribers get access to our archive, along with a dozen free books. 

Speaking of Kesha, my article on personalized marketing launches this week and people seem very excited about it.

A couple more posts went behind the paywall this week, but you can still read You don't have to like me as long as you validate my existence and Is it even possible to be a writer AND happy at the same time? for free. These two articles go together with this week’s article like peanut butter and jelly and chocolate. Of course, you can access all my previous posts by either getting a free trial or becoming a paid subscriber. You also get access to a bunch of free books and stories from my back catalog.

Here are some of my favorite Substacks from the week that you might like to read this weekend.

• The decline of webpages by surfaces something I’ve been thinking about with search engines moving to AI. I still think webpages are important, just possibly less so for SEO now and declining fast. Meanwhile, Why writers return to Substack by and The perils of launching a subscription product too early by focus on the future of publishing as the past burns behind us.

• Wait the Piña Colada song is about what?! by is hilarious and Dracula: May 18 by is the type of entertaining content we could all use every once in a while. Meanwhile, How the Town of Delta Saved Its Fire Department by is a heartwarming story to lift your spirits this weekend.

• I love this zine by and I have no idea how we got so bad at typing, , but you make some great points.

• To not look away by , Let's Take Magneto Out of the Holocaust by , and Episode 30: Doctor Who is Autistic by took me out of my lived experience and made me think about hard things.

• Why Can’t We Have a Sane Conversation About Mental Health? by put into context something I’ve been struggling to articulate for a long time. Martha Stewart's Sports Illustrated Cover Means Next To Nothing by put into context something that desperately needed to be said. Meanwhile, How Do I Know if My Agent is the Problem? by put into context something I know in my gut but never thought to contextualize before now.

• Here's Why AI Girlfriends Are Going to Make Everything So Much Worse by opened my eyes to an AI future that made my brain explode and On-boarding your AI Intern by showed me how to exploit the unpaid labor of a robot instead of an entry-level human with $100,000 in college debt for a change.

• wins the Golden Taco as the first person to ever get their own bullet with only their own stories in it because Breaking the Meta Cycle: Resisting Abstraction to Create More Satisfying Work and Welcoming the Silence were both bangers. Please stop writing such great articles because we only have so much space, but also please write all the things.

That’s it for me. Time for more Kesha. If you like this post and want to check out the archives, you can do that with a 7-day free trial, or simply go straight to being a paid subscriber. I’m recovering this weekend, and hope you get a chance to do the same. You also get access to my dystopian novel, The Vessel. A million years ago the world ended. Since then a group of five have kept the City running. Now, one of them has died.