Birthdays and hurt feelings and memes, oh my!

Hello from the last day before birth week 🎂

It’s a gloomy Sunday in Brooklyn, and the week ahead looks to be full of rain and low temperatures, and frankly I don’t even care cause it’s birth week, babes! Yes, I’m 30 and I still anticipate and celebrate my birthday with everything in me. It’s a day dedicated to celebrating me, what’s not to love??

Okay, that made me sound incredibly narcissistic, lol. Maybe I am, idk, or maybe I’m just a human who craves external validation and affection to an extent bordering on the unhealthy, and birthdays are an easy way to get it. Also, it’s a celebration of having made it another year; especially as someone whose suicidal ideation is always at my feet, usually snoring like a sleepy dog but sometime attacking like a wolf, this is a big deal.

In other news, yesterday I saw Challengers (2024) in the movie theater and wow. Tashi Duncan, you have my heart. Art and Patrick, you’re fine, but Tashi??? I love her. Women’s wrongs etc etc.

In today’s missive, I’m reflecting on where life has led me; sharing a random collection of photos from the past two weeks; and furthering my reflections on writing as activism. Hope you enjoy <3

Stick around, share your thoughts in the comments, pass the newsletter on to a friend who might like it!

From the heart 💗

I turn 31 this week. It’s both incredibly young and much odler than I thought I would ever turn. I’m both proud of everything I’ve accomplished already and devastated that I haven’t done more.

In my youth1 I imagined that by this age I’d already have a husband, several children, some books published, a thriving career. In my early 20s, I pictured myself walking the streets of Manhattan in a power suit and stilettos, chasing down stories and writing explosive feature articles for a well-regarded news outlet. In my mid-20s, I shifted that goal and was going to be a part-time Brooklyn barista who sold books and chatted with her regulars, charming them and the masses alike.

None of those lives have come true, and somehow I fear I am living the worst reality of them all. I spend 90% of my time in bed, 50% of it on my computer. I write books and revise them and don’t know if they’re any good at all, but I keep doing it because there’s some beast inside me that won’t be sated unless I’m pouring my soul onto the page. I work for a company that doesn’t care whether I live or die2 and I make enough to pay rent and utilities and some food and the rest I put on my credit cards; my debt is overwhelming. I swipe pointlessly on the apps, looking for the love of my life because I’m convinced that my life will only have meaning if someone else says it’s so.

I am not living the life of my dreams. I’m barely living a life at all.

It’s about to be my 31st birthday, and I think I need to make some changes. I don’t want to get too deep into this decade the way I’m living right now.

Ugh, I started this newsletter being all positive and excited about my birthday, and then I hurt my own feelings with this section, lol. I feel like the process of writing how my life doesn’t look like I thought it would really shone a light on how much I don’t like about the way I’m living.

And maybe that’s enough. Maybe I just need to realize that things aren’t good, that I’m not healthy in my mind, spirit, or body, and that I need to drastically change things. Maybe I need to recommit, make some 31st birthday resolutions, determine to do better. Determine to work toward living the life I actually want to live, not just the one I’ve fallen into a rut with.

I turn 31 this week, and I think it’s time for me to wake up and start living.

From the camera roll 📸

From the page ✍️

This was supposed to be about writing as activism, but I just wrote “from the heart” and hurt my own feelings about it, so I don’t think I have the brain or heart capacity to do that topic the justice I wish.

So instead, I’ll just write about some of the things that matter to me, that I’m trying to do activism for. Kind of like a meta, “the writing is the activism to prove that writing should be activism” exercise, ya feel?

• Anti-censorship: If you’re enmeshed in the book world, you’ll know that the incidence of book bans, book challenges, and quiet censorship in the US has risen sharply over the past few years. This affects BIPOC & LGBTQ+ stories in disproportionate numbers, but it’s harming pretty much any marginalized author.

  • I’d encourage you to stay plugged in by subscribing to for regular news updates and excellent reporting, in addition to action items.

  • I’d also encourage you to plug in to your local communities, be that libraries or school boards. I’ve been meaning to reach out to my local library branches to do some writing activities and ask them what help they need. I’ll plan to do that this week.

  • I’ve written several articles about this topic; if anyone is reading this and interested in me interviewing them for this newsletter or other sites about it, hit me up. I’m always willing to talk and spread the truth as wide as I can.

• Pro-Palestine: If you’re subscribed to this newsletter, I hope you know that I’m pro-Palestine, anti-genocide, and for liberation. I’ve spoken about it at length, but in sum: there’s a genocide being carried out against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Israel has declined to accept deals that would stop the carnage, because this isn’t about hostages or Oct. 7, it’s about subjugation and eradication of a people. That is unconscionable. The fact that America is not just cheerleading but bankrolling it is infuriating. We must keep speaking up about this.

• Queer stories: I write queer love stories because it’s what I crave in my own life, and because I wonder if I would have realized who I was sooner if I’d had access to them in my own youth. I write them because every child deserves to see themselves in fiction; and I write them because every child deserves the chance to make up their own mind about accepting others.

• Mental health rep: I am mentally ill. I put it in my stories, in my newsletters, in my articles and personal essays, because seeing others discuss their own life with mental illness has brought me so much hope over the years, and I want to do the same.

• Young adult fiction and kidlit as a whole: Listen, I did a whole MFA in writing for kids and teens. It’s so important to me to write and celebrate stories for kids and teens.

There’s more, but I’m feeling emotions and they’re draining me so I’m going to stop there. Write your activism, friends.

Alla prossima 👋

I’m worn out. I hope you have a beautiful week. I love you.

— Karis xoxo