please witness me!
Many years ago, in the age of Internet past, there was a thing called “lifestyle blogs.” In those blogs, you could voyeuristically obsess over how crafty, stylish, and special bloggers’ lives were. This would eventually give way to Instagram influencers, and Tik Tok stars, and the days of lifestyle blogs passed quietly. Peter Pan collar necklaces made from blog tutorials were lowered to half-mast.
You Life started as a petty response to those blogs because I was in my twenties and insecure. And it catalogued all kinds of troubling (and…pretty gross) habits and behaviors because I was an animal.
And then I got older, and blogs became an obsolete form of exhibitionism. I started writing, and sometimes getting published, and running my own literary presses. With mounting responsibilities and a job where I couldn’t show up drunk and smelling of feet, there was significantly less material from which to cull.
But You Life is still special to me: an unburdened nostalgic section of the internet where there are no demands on my writing, and no threat of poetic perfectionism. So, now, this is where I home writing that feels the freest, and least structured, and in some ways the writing that is dearest to me. I doubt any literary journal would publish a piece about using a refrigerator as a garbage. However, You Life did.
This blog was supposed to be called, “Your Life Is Not That Great,” but I messed up while typing because I was drunk.
You life is not so great 