No. 138 • 10/5/2026

Dear readers,

First:

The next AMA on Writing is happening tomorrow, Tuesday, Oct 6, 12pm NYC time.

Click [here] to register.

Same rules apply:

1. Email me your most pressing questions on writing, publishing, or note-taking (or bring them to the session).
2. I'll do my best to answer them.
3. If I can't answer them, we'll see if someone in the Zoom room can answer them.
4. If I can't answer them, and no one else can either, we'll collectively find a resource to get help on the issue.

Easy breezy.

• Date: Monday, Oct 6
• Time: 12pm NYC time
• Link: Sent upon receipt of payment [click to pay]

Second:

Taking the ol' "High Pony" for a spin this week. Seeing how it feels to write under this moniker again. In light of that....

Did you know The Youth™️ are taking over unconventional social spaces like Spotify comment sections, in order to skirt under the radar of their parents' ban on social media? From a recent episode of "This American Life:"

"Dave Blanchard runs the public radio show Wild Card. And one of the less exciting and, in fact, rather tedious parts of his job is that he has to keep an eye on the comments that people post about the show online. And one day last fall on Spotify, he saw all this activity about this episode they did with the writer Elizabeth Gilbert. And Dave thought, oh, her book was controversial. It must have struck a nerve, this episode. And then he looked at the comments."

"I think these are just kids hanging out.... My guess is that they're just using Spotify comment threads as their group chat, maybe because other apps on their phones are blocked."

This got me thinking of the ways youth (and adults like me) find ways to repurpose spaces for activities they weren't intended to be used for.

Places I’ve hidden in and things I've hidden

• In high school I used to sneak into the mezzanine of the auditorium after school and write poems. I remember thinking the taboo-ness of the act would generate wild insights. Maybe it did, probably it didn't.
• When I was in my twenties, I worked for my landlord in Boulder CO who had a contracting business. For a while we were working on a remodel of a house. I avoided work by hiding behind his truck in the gravel driveway. To keep busy, I would find a unique piece of gravel, and hide it under a bunch of others (like a squirrel). The next day, I would see if I could find it.
• Sometime between kindergarten and first grade, I spent many school hours hiding behind a "shrubbery" in front of my grandmother's house with the neighbor's daughter, who was also in that age range, trying out what little we knew about romance. The furthest we got was nibbling on each other's ears, which I suggested, and neither she nor I liked. Also, there's no way people did not see us.
• In college I had a job as a barista, and used to hide in the basement where we stored the oatmeal jam bars and frozen coffee drinks. I would eat the jam bars and drink the frozen coffee drinks.
• In my twenties I went through a short-lived thieving spree at an Old Navy that didn’t put sensors on their clothes. I would walk into the dressing room with multiple pairs of pants folded inside a single pair. I'd put on the hidden pairs under the clothes I was wearing, and return the single pair. Then walk out.
• For two years I secretly wrote a very popular blog under a pseudonym that people would talk about in front of me, not knowing I was the author.

And, that's that!

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