some stories never found the right publication
so i stopped waiting and started writing
welcome to pitch imperfect
july 14 2026
i've learned the only thing worse than being ghosted is being apologized to for the ghosting and then getting ghosted again.
which got me thinking...when did disappearing become an accepted form of communication?
because ghosting feels like such a modern problem even though people have probably been disappearing on each other forever. before smartphones, people didn't call back. they never wrote another letter. they simply vanished into some social equivalent. the behavior isn't new. the branding is.
somewhere along the way we took an experience that used to be shrugged off as someone flaking and gave it a name dramatic enough to make it feel like a shared cultural event. ghosting. suddenly it wasn't just someone failing to reply. it was something everyone had either survived or accidentally become guilty of.
did technology change the expectations?
it's hard to accidentally disappear when everyone knows you're carrying a tiny computer in your pocket at all times. blue ticks. active status. story views. location sharing. we have more evidence than ever that someone is alive and well and simply choosing not to answer. silence stopped feeling ambiguous and started feeling intentional.
but i also wonder whether naming it made it bigger.
once you give something a title -- you give people a way to recognize it. to compare stories. to joke about it. to write about it. suddenly ghosting isn't just an awkward experience its a category of human behavior.
so, did we normalize ghosting by talking about it so much?
because theres something strange about how casually we use the word now. friends encourage each other to ghost instead of having uncomfortable conversations. we've somehow turned avoidance into a dating strategy and then into office language and then into friendships. you can now even be ghosted by a recruiter (speaking from experience). its escaped the romance realm entirely.
maybe ghosting says less about manners and more about the world we've built. we have endless ways to contact each other and somehow fewer expectations that anyone actually will. convenience has made disappearing easier than explaining. and if avoiding discomfort is only one swipe away its not surprising thats the option people choose.
or maybe people have always disappeared. the only difference is that now we have a word for it. ghosting turned silence into a verb and absence into an action. and once you can name something you start noticing it everywhere. maybe you even start feeling it more.
what if no one knows?
july 23 2026
we've become really good at explaining ourselves.
we explain why we're overwhelmed. why we need a break. why we disappeared. why something hurt us. we've learned the language of healing, boundaries, burnout, grief. and i think that's a beautiful thing.
but i wonder if somewhere along the way we also started believing that our pain has to be visible to be valid. that if we can't explain it, maybe it isn't real enough.
the truth is, some of the hardest seasons of your life won't come with the right words. sometimes there isn't a story you can tell yet. sometimes you're still living it. so you wake up. you answer the messages you can. you make dinner. you laugh when something is funny. i think there are more people living like this than we'll ever realize. not everyone who is struggling looks like they're struggling. some people look completely ordinary because surviving has become part of their routine.there's something quietly extraordinary about that.
and not because suffering is something to admire, but because the human spirit has this incredible ability to keep moving before the heart has figured out how to make sense of what it's carrying.
maybe we don't need to ask people to prove they're having a hard time. maybe we just need to stop assuming we'd know if they were.
because sometimes strength isn't loud. sometimes resilience doesn't have a caption. and sometimes the bravest thing someone does all day is make it look like an ordinary day.
august 5 2026
i had a weird moment last week. i found myself in an argument with someone and i had this very strong suspicion they were using ChatGPT.
and look, before anyone gets upset...i am not anti-AI. but something about this particular moment really bothered me. because here i was...with 10+ years of legal experience. ten years of reading contracts where one word changes everything. ten years of spotting the tiny detail everyone else may have missed. ten years of learning that "it depends" might have to be the answer.
and then suddenly we’re in a world where knowing how to ask a chatbot a question feels like it might be more valuable than actually knowing the answer.
which brings me to my law degree. my law degree literally caused me pain. not emotional pain. actual physical pain.
taking it out of the envelope when it arrived and getting a papercut.
a papercut. my law degree was basically like “congratulations on your achievement... here is your first injury.”
and now i’m sitting here wondering...does that even matter anymore? because there is something very strange happening. it feels like we are starting to confuse having access to information with having expertise. and they are not the same thing.
anyone can ask AI to write a legal argument. anyone can ask AI to summarize a document. anyone can ask AI to sound like they know what they’re talking about.
but sounding like you know something and actually knowing something are two very different things.
the scary thing isn’t AI. the scary thing is forgetting the value of the person behind the tool. because experience is not just information.
it’s judgment. it’s knowing when something feels off. it’s knowing the question someone forgot to ask.
i don’t want to live in a world where qualifications suddenly become irrelevant because someone knows how to write a clever prompt.
i don’t want the person advising me to just know how to use the tool. i want them to understand the thing they’re using the tool for.
let’s not pretend that 10 years of experience and a really good prompt are the same thing.
because if they are...i would like a refund on my law degree. and also compensation for the papercut.
disclaimer: i genuinely love being a lawyer and i think this supports that even more.
