Welcome to My Blog
January 14, 2026
I’ve been sitting on this for awhile.
The inaugural piece. The welcome to my blog, where I stake out my plot of cyberspace and coax you in, beckon you to sit upon my shag rug of thoughts. Where I establish ethos, dial in the mood and make promises: one post a month, topics ranging from Christ to pulp to popular culture.
I have tried this before. When I first moved to New York and was fresh off of reading Atomic Habits, a self-help manual for juicing quantifiable success out of everyday life. This book posited that with the right rituals, anyone could be a rockstar. Or a millionaire. The key was repetition, no matter how clunky. So I began writing and posting blogs for a few weeks in a row––a calculated signal to the universe that I meant business, that I intended to be published and celebrated.
The issue was that I could not churn out consistent material. Not while working my dehumanizing coffee job. Not while I was struggling to forge friendships at the dog park. Not while I cried on the J train, which jostled my skeleton to and fro across rivers I did not recognize, depositing me between two hells: work, and my doorless bedroom in the apartment I shared with strangers.
The other issue was that everything I wrote had a bad shelf life. This was partially because my prefrontal cortex was undercooked, and also because I was writing out of urgent despair. I could only lament the dim and uncertain shape of my new metropolitan life. I could only write about the dog park, with its dirt and glass shards and cigarette butts. Or the job I hated, with my perpetually vaping manager in his pixellated contact lenses.
And these complaints, unsurprisingly, were unbearable to read. I could not believe how badly my words curdled in mere days. I’d write them with what felt like heroic vulnerability. But what I read afterward was wilted, spineless whining. I was trying for Fran Lebowitz; I sounded like Hannah Horvath.
So I scrapped the blog entirely. I could not bear to be misinterpreted or disliked. I could not accept my own clownish fears and impulses, made bald by Squarespace formatting. And I could not reconcile the warp speed of the internet, either. I could not produce at the pace Atomic Habits had instructed, eking out timely hot takes and cajoling my audience’s sustained, parasocial attention.
But I have since aged a bit. The density of my ego has been redistributed, my priorities renegotiated. I am less hellbent on fame, less paralyzed by young doubt. I am flossing my teeth dutifully; I cannot afford any more dental crowns. I’ve also come through grad school, where I confronted the utter glamourlessness of muscling through an entire piece of writing.
And with my self-consciousness temporarily disarmed––I’m coming off of a Saturn return––I figure it is prime time to get back in the saddle.
And so I hereby welcome you to this slow-cooked corner of the internet, this psychological junk drawer. And humbly, I ask:
Y’all read?
Not because you’re unintelligent. But because I myself am fried with dopamine and dread. I struggle to read, to resist the unending clips of Dog Whisperer and Teen Mom that burble up from the depths of my YouTube algorithm. I would not blame you for scrolling past this. Who, after all, can stomach another listicle?
But we are here, despite all digital malaise––conjoined by cyber serendipity, however fleeting. And we are, in fact, reading. We may even get around to speculating. To mythologizing, to pondering, to needling at the very nucleus of existence. (First up: what really happened the day Meghan Trainor wore a unicorn onesie on Drag Race?)
Whatever happens, I’m glad you’ve landed. I’ll do what I can to make this worth your while.
XO,
Natalie (The Boss)
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