A bold new project from the designer who brought you “Obsessed with a Breadcrumber For Four Years,” “I’ll Do For Now Until He Decides Otherwise,” and our last blockbuster seller, “Somehow I talked them into dating me but they don’t respect me enough to end it despite a total lack of interest in me.”

We’ve been tinkering away in our isolated laboratory for a year and are ready to release “Casual dater with good boundaries.” Backers will receive weekly blog posts about the project’s progress.

Once fully funded, we intend to introduce exciting stretch goal rewards depending on our backer…

Remembering the chunk of days that encompasses all our private anniversaries

For some people, it was March 11, the date the WHO described the novel coronavirus known as Covid-19 as a pandemic. Also it is the date we learned that beloved actors Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson had caught the disease. For others, their anniversary might be the last day they were at work, often March 13, or the first true “day off” when they would normally have been at work, March 15. Or for some, some day in February, when the deaths began in the US. …

Mourning someone who has not died

Reader, I am a liberal. If you do not want to be offended by my decrying the beliefs of those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, stop reading here.

I first met my friend “Kelly” working at an insurance company. I negatively judged her at first for her appearance, and soon learned I was an asshole for doing so. …

“How are you doing?”

It began like any other OKCupid interaction: I thought he was cute, he had enough nerd cred in his profile that I knew we could converse on shared interests, so I messaged him. Some time later, he replied. We had some fandoms in common, he did art, I did writing, this and that. On and off conversation over a few weeks, and I thought I might be ready to meet in person. …

Discovering the Romance of Sheltering At Home

Everyone’s experiences during 2020 were both laser-tight specific and depressingly universal. Isolated and alone, struggling to afford living, surrounded by people, but anxious and numbing and exhausting for all. The less said the better, and anyway we all know. The year 2020 will become its own proper noun, like 9/11 did.

I had established (in 2019) a habit of posting something to Medium weekly, trying different styles, topics, anything to keep the fingers moving.

And then. You know.

Retreating to the past, I wrote cards, letters, postcards, emails. Bursts of feelings; diary entries…

This reporter has been embedded with the 12th Saturnine in the forward trenches these past three years.

Today: rain, such as we have not seen for many a week. The walls of our trench drip mud onto everyone, and we all resemble nothing so much as the victims of last week’s exploded cocoa factory. May the Swiss Miss Guard rest in peace. As the Red Cup forces gain ground, the Gingerbread Men have taken serious blows to both their bodies and morale. Across the tinsel-snarled neutral zone, one can just make out through the deluge the pointy green helmets of…

They haven’t earned my respect.

I’m not alone in this feeling. I’m a liberal, and I have watched the dark and crusty scab that has covered our country for decades be ripped off over the last four years to show the deep, festering wound that was always there.

I have witnessed seemingly rational people being directly, openly, shamelessly hateful. Whether it comes in the form of throwing a white power sign or coughing on a stranger, the embrace of hatred is everywhere.

I have witnessed people’s fears pushing their hand toward the lever that chooses the illusion of self preservation…

Navigating safely in a world full of Covid and loneliness

Online dating during a pandemic fucking sucks. We can’t even say, “I’ve met someone.” If someone intriguing finally graduates from a still photo in an app to dynamic conversations via text, we’re still just “talking.” Not like the millennials mean “talking,” i.e. casually hooking up, but literally exchanging words. Maybe even a photo, but never anything truly revealing. A sunset. A cat. A meal.

Since the pandemic began, I have been faintly mocked by my friends (who are all scientifically literate, liberal, taking it seriously) as being overly cautious about…