The bathwater is razor hot and sloshes at the edge of the tub. Soapy wrinkles in the water slide over my kneecaps. It smells like lemon soap and sweat. In my mind, this is the ultimate gesture of self-care – I even lit some candles and lined them up on the counter. This is the time for relaxation. There is no sound of traffic outside my window. There is no essay I need to write. There is no alarm set on my phone.
 
But I have never been so restless.
 
Sit with your mind, I think. Let the thoughts come, and watch them drift past you. Focus on the water as it squeezes through your skin and warms you to your center. Notice what you’re feeling. Let yourself feel it.
 
My fingers tip-tap on the edge of the bathtub. Tip-tap. Tip-tap. Tip-tap.
 
I should be doing something. I should be writing something. I should be reading something. I should be checking in on a project. Working on a new promotion post. Monitoring my book sales on Amazon. Agonizing over how to make sales go up. Texting friends to make sure they feel wanted. I should be making a story out of this. I should be writing about this.
 
Soaking wet, I climb out of the tub, grab a notebook, drip suds on the paper. Ink smears down the page in misaligned letters, clings to the lines of my thumbprint. I need to have something to say about this.
 
My first Christmas break since college has forced me to realize something that I’ve always kind of known: I am terrible at down time. I constantly feel like I’m supposed to be doing something. It’s partly because of how my brain works (as in, if I don’t keep it busy, my brain starts to eat itself). But it’s also more than that. The nature of my career is that I use my time and my experiences as a form of currency. The things I do and the things I feel give me things to write about. So in a way, if I do something and then I don’t write about it, it feels like it didn’t really happen. Or that it happened, but I am wasting that experience. It feels wrong to simply have an experience. I have to do something with it.
 
I’m self-aware enough to realize this isn’t super healthy. The point of taking a bath is to slow down. Feel your muscles relax under the water. Close your eyes for a minute. But I ended up tapping my fingers, worrying about wasted time, and scrawling an ink-smudged poem. Something is off here.
 
I have another week to practice slowing down. I’m going to give it my best try.
 

yours in haste,

The Christmas capital of the country sits about an hour and forty-five minutes away from me: a run-down southern town that leans off the side of a highway. For the last three years, I’ve made the trek to see it. Christmas Town is a sea of lights – every house strung up and gleaming, festive music jangling over the downtown speakers. Children wander the streets like it’s Halloween. They scream and wave at passing cars, roaring MERRY CHRISTMAS!! to everyone who passes.
 
It’s adorable. The point is to drive through the whole neighborhood and look at all the lights – so, okay, yeah, I drive an hour and forty-five minutes just to drive through a wealthy neighborhood and then drive an hour and forty-five minutes back. I know it sounds whack. But hear me out.
 
Last night, I went to Christmas Town with one of my closest friends back home. We used to go with a whole entourage of friends, but college and time and distance dwindled it down to the two of us. We drove down the dusty highway and blasted music, passed a canteen of hot chocolate back and forth between sticky fingers, and caught up about everything.
 
When we arrived at the town’s entrance, we found it completely blocked off. We had to drive another forty minutes out, loop around, and get in an infinite line to the sole open entrance. Yeah. It was madness. People were there from all over. License plates ranged from Florida to Maryland and beyond. We ended up waiting in that line for another hour and a half. It was a long time, but that grinding wait, that endless snaking line down the highway, that extra hour and a half, is what made me realize why I do this every year.
 
I don’t go to Christmas Town for the lights. I mean – I do, but that’s not the whole reason. I go because it is far away. I go because it means sitting in the passenger seat beside someone. I go because of the crackling conversation and swirling laughter and the music we play too loud.
 
My friend doesn’t have a lot of traditions. But he has this one.
 
I hope we keep it.

yours in haste,

P.S. THE LAST FOUR YEARS IS A TOP TEN BEST SELLER AT FOGGY PINE BOOKS!! I'm still reeling. I am so grateful to all of my amazing readers and supporters. Thank you so much!

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yours in haste,

A blue-boned restaurant, early morning. Weak city light crinkling through the windows. A man with leathered skin and bulging eyebrows, leaning over the counter to take our order. A plastic menu, and a friend sitting next to me. 2016. Summer. New York.

​ “I’m just tired of feeling selfish.”

Katie chewed her thumbnail, thoughtful. We’d met through a summer program at Columbia University, me on a scholarship for creative writing and she there for a psychology course. We got breakfast together most mornings before class. Several months beforehand, I went through my first major breakup. The relationship was rotting from the inside out and it was far from healthy, but I still felt like shit when I broke it off. Weeks after the ending, I got a text which accused me of being selfish.

I felt selfish throughout that entire relationship. Selfish for wanting to go out. Selfish for wanting to stay in. Selfish for saying what I thought. Selfish for talking about writing when it bored him. Selfish. Selfish. Selfish.

 “I’m just tired of feeling selfish,” I said.

Katie had the sort of burnt sneaky smile that still gives me goosebumps.

 “Why?” she said. “What’s so bad about being selfish?”

That summer, in the black-out heat of New York and the slip of her smile, I unlearned my understanding of selfishness.

Being “selfish” is both condemned by society and necessary to function within it. Our system of capitalism and competitive marketing requires that we put our own needs at the forefront of our ventures. We do what we have to do to make money, buy food, pay for college. That means putting yourself first. In a capitalist society like the United States, it is necessary to put yourself first to become traditionally successful. It’s great to be self-motivated, right? To put yourself first, to work hard, to ask for what you want, that’s admirable, right?

Of course it is. If you’re a man.

  Women, on the other hand, are taught from the get-go that our job is to serve others. To make other people more comfortable. To make room. To lower our voices. We are taught that if we exercise the same assertion and privilege as men – whether that be in the social world, the educational world, or the work world – we are being selfish.

Screw that.
 
“Everyone’s in the same situation,” said Katie, her eyes drifting across the restaurant. The smell of hash browns and fried eggs smoked in the air. “There is only one thing that you know, for sure, is real in this world. And it’s you. So why not be selfish? You’re real.”

In saying you’re real, Katie was saying something different too: you matter. I matter. So why should I feel cramped with guilt whenever I make a decision that makes me happy? When I make a decision that improves my life?

Selfish, to go to college hundreds of miles away. Selfish, to study the arts. Selfish, to travel, or turn my phone off, or use my money the way I want to. Selfish, to kiss people. Selfish, to have secrets. Selfish, to speak.

Screw that.

I am loud, and passionate, and nomadic. I am selfish: I put my own needs first, I ask for what I want, and I work hard to get it. People will try to tell me that this is a bad thing. But I’m done believing them.
 
              

yours in haste,

yours in haste,