by Sarah Hepola
It’s 3:54am, and your narrator has something on her mind. The details hardly matter, but it started on the Internet. To be specific, it started on Twitter. A one-time friend announced, in a rather subterfuge way, that he was no longer a friend. Your narrator reached out over email to try to understand; he did not reach back. What to do? Well, if you’re Sarah, you text Nancy Rommelmann (busy), call your mom (sweet, wise), and proceed to spend an enormous part of your day and brain space obsessing over what went wrong: Is it you? Is it them? It is the broken world?
This week’s “Smoking Diary” asks the following questions: What exactly does it mean to be a “garbage person”? (And what do we call the good folks who actually take out our garbage?) How can an inveterate People Pleaser thrive in an online world that refuses to be pleased? What are the lyrics to that one Frozen song, and is it ever a good idea for a smoker to sing before 7am? (No.)
The Internet has given us countless ways to run our days into the ground. But it has also given us countless ways to lift ourselves up. Your narrator will try to make a different choice today.
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