I’m on the Hampton Ambassador — the more pricey, reserved-seat version of the Jitney — and someone’s texts are going off every few seconds.

Ding!
Ding!
Ding!
...Ding!

I huff. Annoying, and a violation of Ambassador policy.

I look around at nearby phones. Everyone’s on theirs. I hear another set of dings and see the culprit in the window reflection in front of me. A text banner pops up on her screen to match every ding.

Unbelievable, I think. So clueless. Who doesn’t silence their texts in this setting? Now that I know where it’s coming from, the noise bothers me even more. I’m stewing.

I should ask her to turn off the sound. But I’m sure she’ll be nasty about it. (I’ve spent too much time on Threads, where my algorithm feeds me constant jerks-on-a-plane and d-bags-in-the-quiet-car stories.)

First, I consider whether the sound bothers me in its own right, or because it’s coming from an inconsiderate human.

What about the ticking of the bus’s turn signal? It didn’t even register with me until I started analyzing my irritation at the dings. And now that I did notice it, it doesn’t bother me, even though it’s constant.

For a year and a half in the 2000s, I was in a self-help group I can’t legally call a cult, where one of the core tenets of their “well-being technology” was “What you resist persists.” I had big issues with this group, which I wrote about in my book Tough Titties, but that bit of their content was sound (if not original: I’d heard Jennifer Aniston say the same thing in O, The Oprah Magazine).

It certainly applies to pet peeves like the repeating chime of someone’s texts. Or of a baby crying. If I believe that’s what I’m hearing and then discover it’s coming from a cat, I think, Oh, that’s fine, then — and it immediately stops driving me batshit.

Problem is, I know these dings are coming from a phone and not a cute animal or a mechanical function. For a few minutes, I experiment with not resisting them.

I think about how much it grates on me every time someone says “I” when it should be “me,” and how much more pleasant life would be if I didn’t resist that. I could watch a Bravo show in peace instead of flinching at each “Things are rocky between Kyle and I.” ARRRRRGH just typing that makes my butthole clench. But why? It makes me feel superior. Don’t I enjoy feeling superior? I’m one complicated human.

I remember my dad, who’d get outraged whenever a cashier handed him change. An industrial engineer before he became a shrink, he wanted the coins first, then the paper, or the coins would slide off. “PLEASE HAND ME THE COINS BEFORE THE BILLS,” he’d say, as I pretended I didn’t know him.

What if he’d just accepted that no one would ever do it his way? What if he’d stopped resisting it and just let the coins slide? Maybe he would have lived longer.

The dings have started again, and I can’t ignore them. Bracing for a fight, I lean forward. “Excuse me, would you mind turning the sound off on your texts?”

“Oh,” the woman says. “Of course.”

I thank her as she presses the button to silence her phone.

“I’m so sorry about that.”

“Oh, no,” I protest as though I haven’t been seething. “Not at all, it’s totally fine! I appreciate it.”

Now, who the fuck on this bus is playing a video without headphones? I will cut a bitch. There goes another year off my life.

When I’m on top of shit, I get in the shower a full hour before I have to leave for something. I know I need at least twenty minutes after a shower to lie on my bed in my robe and wet-towel turban watching Real Housewives or something like it. Or scrolling. As if showering has really taken it out of me. Whoo! Need to lie down. I’m not sure why I need that lie-down time, but I do. It feels punitive to get out of the shower and go straight to drying my hair.

So on the days when it’s actually important to be on time, I leave myself that buffer. What I probably should do is use it to test my outfit, because the one I’ve seen in my mind’s eye as perfect rarely is. Weren’t these wide-leg pants loose around the waist last fall? Maybe they’re just tight because I’m tucking in a thicker shirt. Either way, something doesn’t hang right. The pockets jut instead of draping. So I change. A couple of times.

And then I fuck up my eye makeup. Wrong color on the lid — the sparkly one meant for nighttime. It gets everywhere, too, all over my undereyes, so I have to wipe off the concealer. I know to do concealer last, but I always forget, because the blue-ish shadows are so egregious it’s practically animal instinct to cover them first. So I start over.

By this point my time buffer has disappeared and I’m sweating. Rushing. As usual. I use the wrong lipstick — meant to put on a subtle rose, but I’ve applied poppy red, which looks weird for a breakfast thing. Morning events: why? Nothing should start before 11am. Preferably not before three.

I still have time to be on time, if not a few minutes early. So I transfer the essentials from my everyday dirty tote (husband: “You’re a published author, you really want to be seen with that? With the plastic bags hanging out?”) to a nice bag and leave — and realize as soon as I’m in the elevator that I forgot my fob to open the building’s back door onto the street nearest the F train.

I press my floor again. Impatiently jab at the door-close button on 1, go back up to grab the fob, which is on my key ring, which is not in the leather bowl where I keep it. Must rummage through aforementioned dirty tote and some jacket pockets, come up empty, then retrace my steps. When did I last use my keys? What did I do this past week? Who’d I hang out with, and where? What happened to my memory? Oh yeah. My travel bag, outer pocket. Victory. Run out the door with keys and backdoor fob in hand. Remember I forgot to transfer my wallet to the good bag. And a lip balm. (Sugar Lip Therapy by Fresh, always and forever.) I can’t spend a day without one. Just knowing I don’t have it makes my lips dry, my mouth parched. Shit, my water bottle. Back inside for that, too. Would a normal person just leave without it? Or would they have sanely allotted a full fifteen minutes just for the act of leaving the house?

I wonder if I get this from my dad. “I’d love to play,” he’d say when I was little, “But I’m working on my dissertation.” That project took him ten or so years longer than it was supposed to, and I can relate. In later decades, when my mom asked him to please go through those Zabar’s bags full of old mail and papers cluttering their bedroom, he’d look at her like she’d just asked him to build a car and ask, “With what time?” Well, maybe the time he spent watching porn or yelling at AOL customer service because he couldn’t log on to Facebook.

My friend Susie has so much extra time, she’s actually Googled “What to do when you have too much time.” She asked me, “Can you believe there were zero search results?” Why, yes —I can. I think part of her abundance of hours in the day has to do with her efficiency. She does her work at lightning speed, partly because she’s not afraid of doing it badly. “Confidence is the best productivity hack,” she often says. Truth.

They say everyone has the same 24 hours Beyonce has. (I’m not sure why she’s the model of getting the most done in one rotation of the sun, but she is.) Thing is, do they? Or is one person’s 24 hours longer than another’s? It’s something we can never know, just like I’ll never know if my friend perceives the color red the way I see chartreuse.

My intuition coach, Deb, believes we can stretch time — and if she believes it, so do I. Becoming a time stretcher would solve just about everything. I try the exercises she gives me, keeping in mind that I won’t become a time stretcher overnight, and that developing any of these spiritual/intuitive talents I’m after takes…well, time.

Fob, water, lip balm, wallet, check. I have a subway to catch. Out on the street in time to be just two minutes late, I turn east, the direction I’m so used to walking that I don’t even know I’m doing it, and walk the opposite way from the F train, toward Union Square, and go at least two avenue blocks before I have to double back, making me a full twenty minutes late.

On days when luck (or my brain) really isn’t with me, especially if I’m taking the 2/3, I hop on the uptown express when my destination is downtown, and realize it only when the train pulls into the 96th Street station.

Once I’m on the proper subway, I breathe and tell myself that I’ll get there when I get there, and life will turn out OK. It has so far, even when I’ve been late.

But dammit, I was so close to being early.

I named this Substack “Woo Adjacent” with the idea that I’d constantly have new stuff to write about on that theme because my intuitive superpowers would keep progressing steadily, frequency of magic moments trending upward like a hockey stick. Welp…

Peak woo

For the first four or five months of this “woo journey,” I kept receiving texts from people I’d just thought about for the first time in forever. Having prophetic dreams. (Well, at least one.) Hearing or visualizing numbers and looking them up. Spotting the strawberry Bonne Maman right away in a chaotically stocked supermarket. Found it in the first aisle I went to — one that preserves had no business being in. Like, the soup section or something like that.

Lost steam

Around April, I stopped remembering dreams, stopped noticing wild coincidences. I relapsed with social media and started unlatching the baby gate that is my Refocus app habitually and unconsciously, refreshing access to Instagram and Threads like a newly-addicted crackhead going back to the ATM.

The chicken-or-egg sitch

Did the burst of euphoria (or, as I’ve heard they call it in AA, the “pink cloud”) that came from ditching the evil apps wear off on its own, my resulting fiendish scrolling interfering with my budding consciousness?

Or did that woo-woo magic just plateau, leaving me bored and in need of a dopamine hit from my social feeds? (*Taps Instagram open tenderly: “Hello, old friend.”*)

Or maybe it’s all because I fell off the meditation wagon. Not that I ever felt like I was doing it “right.” My friend Julie Riesler, who’s been meditating for at least a decade and goes on those higher-plane-or-bust Joe Dispenza retreats where sessions start at 4am and sleep is barely an afterthought, says there’s no such thing as a “bad meditation,” but still, it’s frustrating that my mind can’t quiet. I suppose meditating on an email marketing campaign I need to write is still meditating, right?

I was keeping up the daily practice until an end-of-March trip to Colombia, where I found it hard to incorporate into a travel schedule with almost zero downtime. (The friends Steven and I went with pack a day the way I do a suitcase — as in, so stuffed you have to sit on it with a lead-stuffed rhinoceros in your lap to close it.) If the choice is meditate or get in my steps, I’m picking the walk every time.

Gotta say, it felt nice to take a break from all that discipline: Wake up, resist checking texts or emails or anything else checkable, write down dream, brush teeth, do ten squats (that’s new), meditate, take Wellbutrin, get dressed for walk (wishing I didn’t need a bra for that), walk three miles, return home, make iced coffee, write 750 words, take vitamin D supplement with breakfast (usually a croissant, my reward for all this). I actually love my strict morning routine, but some days, I want to do none of it. So it was a relief to drop the meditating part for a bit. Didn’t do it in Spain, either.

Back on the woo horsey

But I picked it back up and got daily about it. I’ve remembered dreams here and there, and, last week, woke up and scribbled down five from one night. Most are the usual —about being late, losing my bags, or getting the worst room or seat at the table in group travel scenarios. I also heard a name: Leon Spaetzle. There’s no such person on the internet, but if he existed, he’d have been friends with my dad. He did have a pal named Lou Carp. (“Tell your father he got a call from Lou Carp. Like the fish.”)

And then, one my walk one morning this week (5/29, if that means anything to the numerology freaks in the house) came a synchronicity mini-bonanza. We’re back, baby. Like low-rise jeans (whose idea was that) and Valerie Cherish.

1. The book
   A new title in the window of Sag Harbor Books caught my eye. John of John. Hadn’t heard of it. I don’t know why, but I wondered if it might be like “that Ann Patchett book Buckeye,” which I read this winter and loved. Then I remembered it wasn’t an Ann Patchett book. It was what I read after finishing and loving The Dutch House, which was by her. On my way back past the bookstore I looked closer, and the blurb at the top of the book (which, no way I could see without walking right up to it — nearsighted AF) was by…Ann Patchett.

2. The lost-then-found dress
   As I passed the clothing shop on the Wharf, I noticed a rack of navy dresses that looked, at a glance, just like the one I’d recently lost, looked high and low for, scoured the internet in hopes of replacing, and finally found thanks (at least in my mind) to my developing psychic powers. I’d actually searched for it online even after finding it, thinking maybe I should have a backup. Yesterday, right before we left the city for Sag Harbor, I followed the impulse to grab it from my closet to bring out here, even though it probably won’t be hot enough to need it for a while. I felt like I didn’t want to let it out of my sight.
   This morning, I stopped and examined the identical dresses on the rack. Same color linen as mine. Same cap sleeves. Same shirring below the V-neck. And, WTF? Same designer. I’d bought this dress on sale two summers ago. Never expected to see it sold at retail again. I almost re-bought it, but when I buy backups of an item I often end up not wearing it again. And now I know, the Universe has plenty of that dress.

3. “For You” iPhoto Widget Creepiness
   At the end of my walk, I was thinking about my friend Jana. In the fiction I’m attempting to write, should I model a character after her, or is she too likeable? Too generous and lovely? I pulled out my phone a few minutes later, and that widget that clearly connects to a chip Apple put in our brains showed a photo of me and Jana.

Make of those moments what you will. I know none of them make me Nostradamus. But all in a row, in the span of one morning walk, they feel like being back on track.

Let’s see how long it takes me next time to find the jam.

PS - People always ask me about the intuition/spiritual coach I started working with in October. Her name is Deb Driscoll, and she’s a fantastic coach, period. I signed on for another six months with her. She offers 20 minutes of practical magic for free here.

In 2005, The New York Times published a profile by Frank Bruni titled John Grisham’s Contented Existence. I’ve never stopped thinking about it.

It ran in the dining section and described the mega-bestselling author’s unfairly slim physique — despite his habit of chowing carbs at the world’s best restaurants; and his shockingly grounded, humble character — despite having already sold over 100 million copies of his books.

That’s not what stuck with me.

Yeah, I’m jealous of anyone who can hoover farfalle and risotto at lunch and not have to work it off with a few thousand extra steps. Grounded and humble, don’t really care about. I’m never worried that if I hit it big and become wildly rich and famous, I’ll get a swelled head. Cross that bridge when…yadda yadda.

The part I always dwell on is about his writing process. It’s not on the first page of the article, and when I click “next page” the Times site keeps taking me back to the top.

I ALREADY READ THIS PART! I’M A SUBSCRIBER, GODDAMMIT — DESPITE BEING FURIOUS AT HOW THIS RAG HAS NORMALIZED THE ROTTING ORANGE TURD IN THE WHITE HOUSE!!!

I digress. I’ve tried on Chrome and Safari. Tried on the mobile app.

No go.

What I’m looking for, just so I could quote it and/or refresh my state of “I want that, why can’t I have it?” is where Grisham says that when he starts writing a novel, he sees the whole story laid out for him from beginning to end.

I think he describes “seeing it all from above.” Maybe I made that up. Unless one of us has access to the second page of that NY Times piece, we’ll never know, will we?

Either way, me want. Or, you know what? I’d settle for seeing it from below. From the front. From the side. Even a “partial sea view,” as the most-recommended hotels I’m looking at for a September trip to Greece describe the only rooms still available.

I’m trying to write fiction right now. I want it to pour out of me like I already know the plot — like I did when I was writing Tough Titties because it all really happened — but I don’t. Not a bit of it.

I know having no idea where a story is going is a perfectly normal part of the process and that E.L. Doctorow said “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

But even when you drive at night with poor visibility, you know your destination, right?

So eff that advice. I want to see the whole route. I want to Waze it. Or give me an outline, like in a coloring book, and I can fill it in.

That’s all part of why I started on this “Woo journey.” I want to channel. Download. Access my genius — all of it.

I know I have full stories in me. I know I have an imagination. We all do, right? Otherwise, how would we dream? “You were there, except you weren’t you, you were Jimmy Kimmel but female and a mermaid, actually, and you had me on your show which was set on an airplane and you interviewed me in dolphin squeaks.” Our dreams are all made up shit based on the real-life shit. But when I’m awake and trying to conjure that brilliance, I feel like some of it is behind a paywall.

Or stuck on the first page. GODDAMMIT!

I hadn’t met Suzanne, who would later become my book mentor, development editor, and close friend. My friend Terri Trespicio, a brilliant speaker and writer, had been telling me about Suzanne’s Gateless Writing method, a concept which had me hooked from the name alone.

“Gateless? What’s Gateless? I think I need that.”

It sounded like freedom. Like pent-up creative genius, finally let off the leash to run free in the countryside. I’d been writing blog posts and subscriber emails for years, and those came pretty easily, but when it came to writing a real-live book, I felt blocked and whiny. “I don’t know what the book is, how do I write it if I don’t know what it is?” “My stories don’t fit neatly into a book.” “If it’s a memoir, I don’t have a theme. Or an arc of any kind. I’m still me, I never became something else, The End? That’s not a book.”

Etc. Etc. Yawn.

“Trust me, you need to come on a Gateless retreat,” Terri said. She claimed she’d done some of her best writing at those. Sounded great to me. So I looked it up. Glimpsed the pics on the website and clicked it shut. Nope. Nuh uh.

As I remember it, the main photo was of a priestess in a white robe — probably just Suzanne in a white dress — with both palms on someone’s head. Massaging it? Anointing it? I just wanted to free up my writing, not get blessed by a shaman. Anyway, the dates didn’t work.

Terri kept pressing me to meet with Suzanne, or at least talk to her. I did, and we hit it off. She wasn’t the woo-woo freak I was afraid she might be. (Though she actually is, and now I appreciate it.) She loved the hodgepodge of personal stories I’d labeled “Writing for Book” in Google Docs and wanted to help me shape it and sell it. Which she did.

I went on my first Gateless retreat in February of 2020. All of us lounging elbow to elbow on couches and pillows on the floor of a house in Panama Beach, Florida, just as some new virus from China was spreading in Seattle. Is this your water glass, or mine? *Shrug* Does it matter? Good times!

At a Gateless retreat, I learned, each writing session begins with a guided meditation that segues into a prompt. I closed my eyes for the meditation, but let my mind wander instead of feeling the floor with our feet and all that, as instructed —Why? Guided meditations made me feel silly.

Then, you write for 20-30 minutes, followed by reading aloud. Every person reads their work (no disclaiming — no “I didn’t get to finish” or “This is really rough”) and then receives Gateless feedback, which means we say what stood out in the work. What parts were powerful. No editing suggestions, no assuming the speaker is the writer (in other words, we don’t say “I can’t believe you want to murder your mother-in-law”), and no relating it to our own lives — as in, “I can totally relate to the speaker’s eating disorder, because in high school I was a massive bulimic.”

These guidelines are designed to neutralize, or maybe neuter, the inner critic, AKA the inner cunt. The voice that says “Everyone but you is talented. You should have written your piece like that. Your writing has no stakes. A supermarket receipt would be more compelling.” That voice puts us in fight or flight mode, which is the cock-blocker of creativity.

All of this, I was into from the jump. There was just one part I sat out, which must have been what I saw in that website photo.

After you read your work, you “get in The Nest.” The Nest is a makeshift bed of cushions with a duvet on top, where you receive Reiki/massage/body work from the designated (and trained) practitioner while you listen to the group’s feedback.

I said you do. Not me. I don’t like being touched, especially in front of people. I used to be anti-massage all together. I did recently start saying yes to the 10-minute shoulder massage during my manicure at Think Pink nail salon, and I consider that a breakthrough. I like it because the massage guy’s a brute. The pain makes me think, “I must need this.” Lots of knots in my neck and shoulders.

But gentle touch? No ma’am. It makes my skin crawl. At every hair appointment, I have to tell the person washing my hair “No head massage, please.” For one, I don’t want my neck on that torturous sink divot for a second longer than it needs to be. I recently read that the position can cause a stroke. I believe it. I nearly black out each time from the pain. And two, the soft, circular rubbing of my ears, plus bonus sound of tiny suds bubbles like someone’s eating Rice Crispies in my ear canal — fuckin’…YUCK. I want to jump out of my skin. The hair washer always seems both offended and baffled by my request that they nix these ministrations.

So, at my first retreat, each time it was my turn to get in The Nest, I said “I’ll pass — someone can have my turn.” That meant double gentle-touch time for whoever had gone before me. Yay for them!

Six years later, I’m just back from my second Gateless retreat, this time in Altea, Spain. It was magical. At the one in 2020, I was generating material for Tough Titties, hoping I’d soon get a book deal. (Spoiler: I did.)

This time, I went in hoping for an idea. I’ve been wanting to try my hand at fiction but haven’t known what about, and I was counting on my newfound woo-ness to pair with the more spiritual aspects of Gateless and summon my shy, reclusive muse.

So in Spain, I didn’t close my eyes during the meditations just to play along. I was into it. Put me into that sweet theta state, yo! I didn’t flinch when Suzanne massaged my head — except once, when her fingers caught in my hoop earrings.

I did, however, still give up my Nest Time — even though my friend Sheena, whom I totally trust, was the Official Toucher. Everyone else tried to be the reader before me, by which I mean they used laser eyes and telepathy to will me to say “I’ll read” as their feedback wound down. Maybe by next retreat, I’ll be all about The Nest, saying “Gimme that healing white light,” but for now, in this department, I’m still woo-adjacent.

PS - A few notes on the retreat and writing in general:

• I think I may have found a thread for a first fiction project. My fellow retreaters say I definitely have, so I’ll trust that I’m on to something. Now, I just have to keep having the courage to write when I have no idea where it’s going and what the actual plot or logline is, and remember I’m just exploring the characters.

• I can’t write in a vacuum. I need the validation of having people reflect back to me what landed, stuck, stood out after they hear or read my work. That’s one reason I love emails. For a new form, the live group setting really helps.

• Re above: Thankful I’ve got Studio in my pocket. That’s short for New Rules Studio, founded by Terri, who’s a certified Gateless instructor. It’s a drop-in group program (think Peloton for writing sessions) where you can show up any weekday to crank out something brilliant and, sometimes, read your work for Gateless feedback. I’m a member, and I’m committed to showing up at least once a week, hopefully more, to keep up the writing I’m most scared to do. (The stuff where I don’t know what I’m doing.)

• Even though I compare myself constantly when I hear others read their writing — according to Suzanne, a habit of the “inner critic” that’s so common it’s boring — I also get so much inspiration from different styles, different turns of phrase. List-form writing: I need to do more of that! Writing in second person: yes! Gonna try it. Etc.

• The writing from our group was absolutely brilliant. Yes, it was a special bunch, and also, people write their most powerful stuff in a Gateless “container.” (I will never say container without air quotes unless it’s a literal, physical container — like a jar, or Tupperware.)

• On the first night, I had a little reunion dinner with my Gateless posse — Terri Trespicio, Daisy Florin, and Sheena Cook. We’ve all come a long way from that retreat in 2020.

  

• Favorite takeaway was a reminder from Suzanne that the best writing is the kind that makes us forget we’re reading.

My friend just suffered an inconceivable, tragic loss. When I found out, I had just landed with my husband, Steven, in Bogota, Colombia on the first leg of our trip to visit our friends Avo and Manuel in Pereira. I started sobbing outside the men’s restroom, waiting for Steven. In line at immigration, I cried with one of our mutual friends on the phone and then spaced out, dwelling on the idea of it all. I remembered the person my friend lost once saying something about turkeys, and had the thought, “I bet I’m going to see a turkey on this trip.” But I instantly dismissed it as trying too hard, coming from a place of desperate woo. It didn’t happen to me; why should I get a sign?

When we arrived at our friends’ spectacular home, they gave us a tour. Outside, on their patio overlooking the countryside, we heard a squawking racket. “Turkeys,” said Avo, pointing at a bunch of them in the treetops.

He took out his phone for a video. I stood there, low-key bowled over, wondering if I should tell my friend and immediately deciding against it. I’ve always found it creepy and offensive how people throw unsolicited mysticism at a grieving person. Telling them their loved one is “up there” or “all around us,” and pointing at a bird — it’s always a bird, though not normally turkeys, I don’t think — as proof.

The turkeys kept going. Then, Manuel:

“Sounds like my asshole in the morning.”

….

UPDATE: I visited my friend at the estate where her loved one is buried. Wanna guess what creatures walked past the car when I came in and left? You know it: 🦃🦃🦃

In December, I gathered a bunch of summer clothes from our house in Sag Harbor, where most of my beach-y stuff lives, to take back to the city and bring on our annual Christmas vacation in Anguilla. The most important item was a favorite, easy-breezy dress I planned to wear to the Italian place we go every New Year’s for overpriced shrimp al diavolo and just-bearable live covers of “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Sweet Caroline.”

When it came time to pack, I couldn’t find the dress anywhere. It wasn’t in the bag I’d put it in, which I’d emptied out. Had I hung it in the closet? Nope. Was it on the floor of the closet? Also nope. Had I, in an ADHD fugue state, hung it in the coat closet? The broom-and-vacuum closet? Was it in a different bag than I remembered? Had Steven found it on the floor somewhere and shoved it in the drawer where he puts items of mine he doesn’t want to look at? Like my AirPods. Or personal development and business books my colleagues have sent me that I still haven't read but insist I'm going to. Or a package I swear I'll open and deal with (meaning, try on and send back the ill-fitting jumpsuit that looked so great on Instagram) after I'm done with this one thing I'm writing. Didn’t seem so, but that didn’t stop me from accusing him. When something’s gone missing, he’s the first suspect. “You sure you didn’t do something with it?” I ask at least twice a week.

But a dress, I had to admit, he would have left on the bed for me to put away. So he was released without charges.

I decided I must not have pulled the dress from the closet, even though I vividly remembered doing so, and that it must be on its hanger in Sag Harbor. It’d better be, I thought. It’s a lightweight navy linen dress that’s loose but not shapeless — most loose dresses make me look like my high school art teacher — and that I can throw on and look cute in two seconds. I got it on sale in Bridgehampton, and it feels like the perfect, not-trying-too-hard thing to wear to a fancy person’s brunch. Not that we’re invited to those, but I live in terror that we will be and I’ll have nothing to wear.

In January, back in Sag Harbor, I ransacked the closet. Not there. I looked in my drawers. Had I folded it, my head somewhere else and my body thinking I was putting away laundry, and shoved it in my t-shirt drawer? Was it in the clothes hamper? With the coats? In the closet where we keep weekend bags, toilet paper, and expensive hair products I got in a Conde Nast event swag bag and can’t use because they’re for curly hair but don’t want to throw away?

It seemed my dress had evaporated, or been taken in The Rapture (AKA The Raptor, as they’re calling it as an in-joke on Threads). It wasn’t mine to keep. The Universe wanted me to let it go — but, first, to scour the Internet for no-name Italian linen dress brands, as well as the archived web pages of the store where I’d bought it. No luck. I gave it up for dead.

Last weekend, after months of missing it and working through the acceptance stage of grief, we were about to leave Sag Harbor for the city when I had the thought, “Maybe look in this weekend-bags-and-Cottonelle closet one more time.” I opened it, looked first in the big, black tote I’d inspected countless times, and there in the bottom was…you guessed it. The dress.

I nearly picked it up, spun it around, and kissed it.

What made me take that one last look? Was it desperation? Or intuition? Or maybe intuition born of desperation? Did I MANIFEST finding my dress? Can you manifest a verb? Can you manifest something that was already right there in the closet?

I don’t know, but I’m taking the win. Score one for my psychic powers.

For my next trick, maybe I’ll find my AirPods. Haven’t seen them in two days. Where did Steven put them?

First, it was a series of 121s in a half circle, with the number 343 in the center. Like in the below image, which I just spent an absurd amount of time instructing Claude to make for me. It kept getting the spacing wrong, then the curve, then the spacing again, and once I’m battling AI to have it produce something as I envisioned it, I won’t give up, no matter how unnecessary the final product is.

If you tally the hours, I’ve also wasted approximately half of the past six-ish years trying to move stickers around on an Instagram story and losing them behind the main image — and then discarding and starting over. Throw in the time I’ve spent choosing the perfect emoji for a text (while hoping the person on the other side isn’t watching the three dots and wondering if I’m typing a dissertation), and you’ve got a good picture of how I spend my days. Anyway, the image I just abused Claude over:

A voice in the dream told me to “pay special attention to 343.” Easy, it’s bigger and right in the center.

I’m not sure what the configuration means, but I did look up the numbers. I’ve started doing that: googling them and browsing search results under “numerology.” I suspect that no matter what number you look up, the top sites (ie, the ones with the best SEO) give you some combo of what any human wants to hear. “This number represents prosperity, abundance, and growth.” Yay! What a great number! My higher consciousness or whatever you call it is totes aligned with my desires right now!

Well, I dug around and found a site with less generically flattering insights, at least for the number 121.

Things that drain my energy…hmmm….hmmm…OH YOU MEAN LIKE BERATING CLAUDE OR CHATGPT UNTIL IT COMES UP WITH A SATISFACTORY VERSION OF AN IMAGE NOBODY NEEDED?

(Never mind that I took yet more time, our most precious resource, to add that yellow highlighter accent to my screenshot. So I hope it really pops for you!)

As for the “angels” business: I dunno. Let’s not forget, I’m woo-adjacent. I’ve gone deeper into the woo than I ever expected — look at me, geeking out over numbers from my dream and even spotting them out in the wild — and I’m open to the idea of angels? Ish? But you probably won’t hear me talking about them like they’re a real thing any time soon. “Guess what my angels guided me to buy on sale at Zara!” Nope. I’m going to need to see wings and a halo on that ID, bub.

Now onto 343. My AI results tell me it “symbolizes balance, creativity, self-expression, and change.” Oh, cool, those are all things I’m into! (You see why I’m a little skeptical of these interpretations.)

But OK, neat.

In another dream, I heard a voice say “847 is something to smell bullshit about.” The AI overview gave me this:

In numerology, angel number 847 combines the energies of abundance (8), stability/hard work (4), and spiritual wisdom (7). It signifies that your diligent efforts, balanced with spiritual awareness, are bringing positive changes, financial security, and personal growth.

Well that sounds like it should be my number, all right. It’s what I’m all about with this whole woo journey! So why bullshit?

I asked my intuition coach, Deb*, who invites me to Voxer any time I have a question. (Love that!) She had an immediate answer:

“The bullshit is in the “hard work” part. That’s not what you’re about. You’re here to show it can be done a different way.”

True! As a card-carrying lazy fuck, I don’t like hard work. I like going hard at work that’s easy. I said so in my book Tough Titties. And, I’ve been calling bullshit on hustle culture since before it had the name “hustle culture” and it was just Gary V. yelling at us all to stop watching "Lost." I was like, Beat it, hustlers, nobody likes you. Go take a cold plunge...and stay there.

Well, I counted and up till this paragraph, my post contained 659 words. Might change when I edit it, but according to the AI overview, the Biblical Greek interpretation of 659 means “to lay aside.” (It’s also an Alabama area code and a “fair credit score.”) So, a good place to end.

*PS - You can sign up for a free 20 minutes of magic with Deb here.

Warning: this post contains dreams. There’s nothing more boring than listening to someone telling their dream. No worse scene in a show or movie than a dream sequence. I even hated Tony’s dreams in The Sopranos. They were objectively some of the smartest TV moments ever made. Still, dreams. Snore. I can understand why my dad, a psychoanalyst, often nodded off on his patients.

If you’re into psychic stuff and freaky coincidences, though, stick with me.

I got into this woo stuff and started working with Deb Driscoll, my coach, to develop my intuition. That was it. I wanted “gut hits” and “downloads” like other people talk about getting. “My gut told me to go all in on Instagram in 2010.” “I got a download to write this book — it came out effortlessly, didn’t even occur to me that it would be a #1 NYT bestseller.” Yadda yadda.

I was also looking for that state they call “alignment.” I love the idea of it — I can visualize it: two identical offset layers of myself in Photoshop snapping into the same outline. Everything clicking into place. The life I say I want and the way I actually live matching up exactly, with no uneven edges.

But I didn’t need a spiritual awakening, whatever that even meant. I didn’t need to speak with the dead. I didn’t need to be psychic. Didn’t need the astrology stuff or the symbols. I just wanted that all-knowing inner guidance system that would direct me to my easy hundreds of millions — which, according to woo wisdom, is “already in escrow.”

And YET. Once I started getting into my new routine of staying off the socials, meditating (with questionable success, but consistent effort), and writing down my dreams whenever I remembered them, I was like, You know what? Let’s do the whole package. Especially after I had a prophetic dream. Before that, I’d only had two in my life (that I remembered).

Both prophetic (AKA clairvoyant) dreams happened in the ‘90s, when I was twenty-something.

One was about a lamp I’d bought at the 26th Street flea market that had stopped working in real life and I kept meaning to get fixed. In the dream, it burst into flames. The next day — I kid you not — it burst into actual flames. Right from the socket. Don’t ask me how I put out the fire. I guess I unplugged it? I panic just thinking about it. I’m so terrified of fire, I won’t even light a match.

In the second dream, I came home and found my apartment had been robbed. They’d taken everything, including my laptop. I took it as a message to start locking my door (though that lasted about a week). The next day, my friend Jillian told me her apartment had been robbed. “They took everything — including my laptop.” When her boyfriend broke up with her soon after, he said he wanted to be with someone who locks her door.

That was all I got for decades. Then, right after I started working with Deb, I dreamt about my mom and wrote it down in my 750 Words:

“Last night I dreamt about my mom’s walker going missing, and then she showed up at the table with little crutches, said she liked to switch it up. It was there one minute by the elevators, then it was gone.”

The elevators in the dream were institutional. A bank of them along a hallway.

The next night, my mom texted that she was on her way to the ER because her doctor suspected a growing, hot, red patch on her leg was cellulitis. It was. That was a scary one. They treated it, and she’s better now.

I know the dream wasn’t a specific diagnosis, but it was about her leg. And the hospital elevators matched the ones in my dream. Weird, right?

After that, I was like, Okay, maybe we are all psychic. And if I have a little of that, maybe I want more. Not enough to do professional readings — though how fun would that be — but enough to just…know things. Which, I guess, is no different from what I was looking for in the first place: downloads, gut hits.

Deb’s been giving me exercises to sharpen my clairvoyance. Visualization meditations, observation drills (walk without looking at my phone or even listening to a podcast, and actually watch where I’m going — WUT), etc.

There are four “clairs”: clairvoyance (seeing); clairaudience (hearing); clairsentience (physically feeling); and claircognizance (knowing). Clairvoyance is my strongest. Or, the only one I’m aware of, because of the dreams. I’d love to be clairaudient. It would make sense, since I’m word-oriented and never want to watch the podcasts that now have video. I like to listen. Preferably, walk and listen. I’m that friend who leaves voice messages. I know some people hate them, but I live for them. I have hours-long Voxer conversations, with one friend or a few at once, on my walks. That’s my format, so I don’t know why it isn’t my strongest clair. I want to hear messages. Overt instructions. Creative ideas — like the perfect name for a course or title for a book.

Maybe I do get those messages, come to think of it. The title for my blockbuster course on story-based email marketing, Inbox Hero, just came to me. Same with the title for my book, Tough Titties. But I didn’t hear them. I’ve never had a “still, small voice inside.” Nor a booming one. I’ve never heard a “whisper” from my soul. Fine, I don’t like whispers, anyway. I have a friend who whispers in the morning because her voice hasn’t woken up. I won’t talk to her until it does.

I can sharpen all my clairs, according to Deb. For now, the -voyance shit is popping off because I just had another cuckoo dream. In it, my friend and book mentor Suzanne Kingsbury was voxering me — we were talking about books, which we do a lot. When I woke from this dream, I opened my iPad to see the time (4:30 am) and to write down the dream. On the screen? Voxer notifications: Suzanne Kingsbury is talking. I’d had sounds off on my iPad and phone. Not a chance I could have heard the voxers in my sleep. And I sure couldn’t have seen who was sending them.

That morning on my walk, I played Suzanne’s messages. She was talking about dreams. The guy she’s seeing had told her his father and brother, both dead, visit him in his dreams and point the way when he has questions, noting, “That’s so weird, because when you’re dead, you’re dead.” Suzanne went on to describe their difference of opinion on that stuff.

So, two things: One, the obvious WTF of me dreaming about Suzanne Voxering me while she was actually Voxering me…about dreams. Two, this went down during vacation with my mom and sis. My mom had been saying it gives her the creeps when someone dies and people say the deceased has been reunited with their spouse. “She’s with Morty now.” Mom’s not having it. My sister, meanwhile, pointed to a hummingbird who showed up at our breakfast and said, “Look, it’s Dad.” So, another connection. Once you start noticing these coincidences and synchronicities, they show up more and more. I’m digging it.

To top it all off, I got a Voxer at the beginning of my trip and chose to keep it unopened till after vacation because it was from someone I’d met at a business event and I figured it was work-related. No work on vacay.

The day after I got back, walking down University and telling a friend about the whole dream-cident, I decided it was time to open the Voxer. I expected it to be a referral for someone to help with my ads funnel, which I’d told this person about back in November, or some other business I’d need to deal with.

Instead, she said, “This is gonna be the strangest Voxer ever, but I felt the need to send it to you. For some reason, I have been dreaming about you the past two nights.” She added, “I know you’re woo-adjacent, so hopefully you don’t think I’m completely off my rocker, but totally cool if you do.”

In both dreams, she said, I was living in very bougie places, and there was a pool in my office. At the exact time she left the message, I was at a luxe (as in, bougie) resort, sitting down to breakfast overlooking the sea and right by the pool, ready to type my 750 words and thinking how that setting was my ideal office.

Lemme get this straight:

The same week I dreamt about Voxering with my friend who was actually Voxering me about dreams, someone else was Voxering to say they’d dreamt about me? And in her dream, I was basically in the same setting as I was in real life when she Voxered me about the dream?

Hey, Dionne Warwick — who’s in the Psychic Friends Network now?

Dionne’s dead, but maybe someone can tell her anyway. Anything’s possible. And Deb says I’m just getting started, so maybe I’ll tell her myself.

EDIT: Dionne is not dead. She’s 85. Turns out budding intuition is no substitute for fact checking before hitting Publish.

PS - You can sign up for 20 minutes of practical magic with Deb here.

The very first thing Deb invited me to do was ditch my insidious morning habit. “When you wake up, no reaching for your phone. You can lie there and check in with yourself. You can journal. You can stretch. But no phone, no checking social media.” I said Oh yeah, social media is a huge problem for me. It was eating up hours and hours. Collapsing time so 3pm and 4pm were ten seconds apart, especially on the toilet. Steven, my husband, would say “What are you doing in there?” Me: “Just peeing, leave me alone!” Thanks to Instagram and Threads (diabolically linked at the top of Instagram), “just peeing” was now a thirty-minute activity, if not more.

When you’re scrolling or posting, it’s like you’re frozen. In a K-hole. I’d say “Bye, I’m going for my walk!” and then stand by the door in coat, hat, scarf, and fingerless gloves, answering comments under my latest post for twenty solid minutes. Steven: “Did you just come back, or were you standing there the whole time?”

So Deb broadened the scope of this restriction: “OK, you’re going to limit social media throughout the day, too.”

Yes. I got excited. I could do this. I reported the plan to Steven, who always tells me, “C’mon, get off your media, it’s not good for you,” and sometimes knocks my ipad over or off the bed. He said, “I’ve been telling you to do that for ages! You and your media. It’s not good for you, especially first thing.”

“I know,” I told him. “But I needed to hear it from someone I’m giving money to.” Nix what I said about not liking authority. I dig it when I’m paying for it. Makes me feel like I’ll get results. When I invest money, I invest trust.

I’m also far more motivated to do something that’ll be tangibly good for me — in this case, by sharpening my intuition, among other things — than to stop doing something that’s bad for me. I’m hardly alone in that. In copywriting, “Do this to get X” outperforms “stop doing this or else.” Bonuses convert better than warnings. “Save up for a trip to Capri” is more enticing than “Stop wasting money at Zara.”

I reinstalled the Refocus app, which I call “my blocker.” I’d used it a few years ago and found it effective at first, but before long, it became like a baby gate that the baby learns how to unlatch. I found myself unlocking it without even knowing I was doing it. This time, I was determined not to.

Right away, I shaped a new morning routine. I’ve long made fun of bros sharing their morning routines — 5 am wakeup, cold plunge, draining of sinuses, expression of anal glands, you know the drill — and mocked my own because it was so unproductive, as I did in this 2016 post:

So it’s a little embarrassing to now share this evolved version:

• Wake up when I wake up, no alarm, turn off rain sounds on my iPad.

• Glance at texts only to make sure there’s no emergency one from or about my 88-year-old mom.

• Raise blackout shades.

• Go to bathroom, brush teeth, sneak up on and torture Steven (who gets up first) by taking a sip of his coffee. He complains, “No! No sips. This is the worst morning ever. Go away!” I announce I’m meditating and go back in the bedroom, where I do, indeed, meditate for twenty minutes. Or attempt to. It’s a new thing for me, and I’m fairly self-taught.

• Get dressed, actually leave the house right away because no scrolling, and go for my walk. Optimally, three miles (I do six a day, minimum.)

• On walk, keep phone in pocket. No opening the socials, no dashing off an email or Voxer message because I just remembered some work thing I have to take care of. No admin, no checking. I don’t even open and answer texts. Instead, I listen to a podcast, an audiobook, or Abraham Hicks on Youtube — the last one being super woo. (Abraham is the…spirit? Collection of spirits? channeled by a woman named Esther Hicks as she coaches audience members at her live events in a slightly odd, clipped voice. I find her/them/it brilliant. Listening is what first made me believe in the idea of channeling and say, “I wish I could do that.” I don’t want to channel any spirits but my own, though. I love the idea of my own genius coming through me as if I’m wearing an earpiece and it’s in another room, feeding me the words and ideas. I think my vision here is what others call “flow state.” It’s not like I never experience flow state, but I want to receive it in this form, and on command.)

• Return, nice up my iced coffee (Grady’s Cold Brew with ice, whole milk, and a little Splenda, don’t come at me for loving real dairy).

• Sit at my laptop with said iced coffee, maybe plus a croissant from Librae Bakery or L’Appartament*, and “do my words” on 750words.com.

Once I’ve done all that, I’m allowed to open email and get to work work. I can check socials, but I try not to until 3pm.

I’m not sure why I consider myself an undisciplined person. I actually love a routine. I love the rigor. I love a streak! Four months after starting work with Deb and launching my new regimen, I’ve now completed Day 122 in a row on 750words.com, which is over four times my previous record (30 days) since joining in 2010 and using it regularly in 2017.

So, still going strong (ish). At the outset of my “new era,” I enjoyed a euphoria I’ve heard AA members call the “pink cloud.” I felt liberated. Grounded. When anyone asked “What’s new with you?” I’d tell them about my social media diet. They’d say “I should do that,” and I’d agree.

They should! Life is so much better not knowing what the Orange Turd said this time, how many times he fell asleep during a press conference, how badly and obviously he’s shit his pants. I love feeling smug on the street, my phone tucked away in my pocket while the zombies pass me scrolling or texting on theirs. Me: superior. If anyone bumps into me, it’s their fault. I get to say “Heads up!” to anyone about to. I raise my judgy eyebrows at them.

Has the pink cloud worn off? A little. Or, my aversion to social media has. It’s like when you get a stomach bug and, even after you feel better, think you’ll never want food again. It’s easy to pass on the ice cream, because ew. It just doesn’t appeal anymore. And, you think, this is the new you! But that phase doesn’t last. So I’ve slipped a bit lately, exceeding my self-imposed 30 minutes a day; sometimes by a lot. Never during my morning routine, though. I haven’t breached it once.

Haven’t channeled yet, either. I’m being patient. Doing the other homework Deb gives me, and remembering that you don’t get ripped the first time you show up at the gym. Which is annoying, but fair. Enjoy the “journey,” right?

And I object to everything being a journey. Weight loss journey, menopause journey, trauma-healing journey, recovery journey, fertility journey, publishing journey, facelift journey, mouth-taping journey, peptides journey, mullet journey, counterfeit-Birkin journey. Let’s lose the earnest spin and go back to the more honest “ordeal” or “hell." “Experiment,” maybe. Why not “menopause safari”? That seems fitting. Or how about good ol’ “fuckery”? Tap the link in my bio and follow along with my hormone replacement fuckery! Yep. That works.

So here’s how this particular fuckery started:

In October, 2025, I got a newsletter email from my friend Frenchie Ferenczi, who’s a fellow skeptical New Yorker. Rare in the squishy online space. The subject line, “I’ve gone woo-ish,” was a must-open for me, as I’ve long identified as Woo-Adjacent. Adjacent being fancy for “-ish.” She said she’s always been a logical, pragmatic thinker, great at strategy but not as skilled at trusting her gut and listening to her intuition — so she’d been working with a coach, Deb Driscoll, to develop and tune in to it.

She’d seen real progress and was planning to keep working with Deb. That’s all the endorsement I needed, and from the right source. I’ve always had intuition envy. In the online space for over 15 years, I’ve been surrounded by people who have “gut hits,” are led by an “inner guidance system,” hear life-changing messages from a “still, small voice inside,” and — most droolworthy of all for a writer — “channel” ideas or receive “downloads.”

I’ve heard one #1 New York Times bestselling author (many times over) say, “I don’t consider myself a writer because I don’t write so much as I receive downloads and type them as the words come through me.” To that, I say, FUUUUUCK YOU but also MEEEE WAAAAANT! Wow, would that have come in handy when I was pacing, crying, and avoiding writing my book, Tough Titties. I don’t know what my next book is, but I’d really like to “receive a download” telling me the perfect topic or story and title, and then feed it to me as I take dictation. I want to channel myself. I want to be a vessel and have brilliance pour through me.

I’d also love to get an “inner guidance system” telling me exactly what to do to make many bazillions of dollars doing only what feels perfectly “aligned.” Alignment is very appealing. I want to feel 100% like my true self in every single thing I do in my life and business. And I’d like to easily distinguish between unaligned and uncomfortable/scary/a big fucking hassle. Apologists for procrastination often say it’s a sign something isn’t aligned or “in integrity.” So I’m constantly wondering, “Am I putting off committing to this speaking gig because it’s not aligned, or because I know I’m going to second-guess my entire keynote and dread packing?”

While we’re at it, I also wouldn’t mind being psychic. Just a little would be nice, and in positive form. For instance, the clear vision (that later comes true, of course) of myself receiving an obscene sum for TV rights to a book I haven’t even written yet. I only get what I think are dark premonitions — like when Steven’s driving somewhere by himself and I have the horrible feeling he’s going to glance at his phone to pick a podcast and get hit by an oncoming truck in the wrong lane — but they always turn out to be plain old fear.

And you know what? I want to be spiritual. I didn’t used to know wtf that meant, but then someone pointed out that I say I want to be inspired, which I do, and that inspired means “in spirit” at its root. Huh. Well, pass the sage, I guess.

I clicked the link in Frenchie’s email to book a free session with Deb and took the first available slot. Met with her, loved her, trusted her, felt seen by her. Didn’t hesitate for a second about plunking down $5k to work with her.

At this point in the story, you’d probably expect a plot twist where I never hear from her again and discover that she’s changed her name five times, hosted high-ticket events that turned out to be Fyre Festival-esque hellscapes with no speakers or food, or been kicked out of several business masterminds for not paying and then sued the leaders for discrimination, harassment, and/or fraud.

Nothing of the sort. I guess my intuition was right. How about that — I do have one, after all. I’ve been working with Deb for four months and it’s been kinda transformative. First thing she told me to do, not reach for my phone in the morning, was common sense but it made a big impact. I also decided to limit my social media use with help from a blocking app called Refocus and 86 my habit of scrolling endlessly and checking in a loop. Instagram, Threads, email. Instagram, Threads, email. (I’ll talk about my whole new morning routine in my next Substack. Spoiler: does not contain cold plunges, which are for sickos.) The month we started was my biggest income month in years. Maybe coincidence, maybe a result. I’m not mad at it. I stopped torturing Steven by reading aloud what 🍊🤡 said or did this time. I’ve been picking up on more little synchronicities, which I love. You know, like when you were just thinking of someone you haven’t seen in forever and they call…or when you’re talking to a colleague about your upcoming writing retreat and its theme of making attendees’ writing addictive to read and to write, and at that moment you spot a baggie of either cocaine or heroin on the floor of your building’s garage. That happened.

I’m not yet getting “downloads” or seeing the future, nor do I suddenly feel the sense of ease I’m hoping will wash over everything I do like a fresh coat of paint, but I do feel galvanized. Because I get so much (painful, expensive) stuff done now at the dermatologist that doesn’t show results for 3 months, I know some shifts take time.

First things first: I made up the term “Woo-Adjacent” back around 2018. On occasion, I’ve heard someone in my circles call themselves that, and I’m like, “Hey. That’s MINE. Cite me.” I’m territorial. Not my favorite trait.

I never trademarked it, though I probably should — and if I’m considering it, I should also probably not announce that I don’t legally own it. And now, as I write this, I’m thinking I should ask my lawyer friend Lisa Fraley, who specializes in the online space, whether it would be at all worth putting down money to do that when I’m not planning on “monetizing” it, per se. But what if I want to one day? What if I decide to offer a Woo-Adjacent “Tarot Deck,” or Woo-Adjacent “Meditations”? Everything in the product line would have big ol’ skeptical airquotes. See, now my wheels are turning. BRB while I purchase a domain I should have bought long ago.

Anyway.

Last November, after insisting for decades that I didn’t relate to spirituality and had no desire to be spiritual, I, of all people, got started on a “spiritual journey.” I trace part of my shift to a conversation I had with Gabby Bernstein a few years ago. I said I don’t consider myself spiritual, and she said, “But you do want to be inspired, right?” Correct, I said. She pointed out that the word “inspired” means “in spirit.” Oh. Huh. OK, maybe I should look into this shit. Eventually, in my own slow fashion, I did. I’ll talk more about that; it’s one reason I started this Substack.

So, a few friends who are fully woo, whom I’ve been extra pulled toward since I’m now playing in their hocus-pocus sandbox, have said, “I don’t know if you’re ‘woo-adjacent’ anymore. You might be full-on woo.”

In fact, one said that yesterday. I wondered, is it true? Do I have to rethink my woo-adjacent identity?

So I looked up my own blog post from 2021:

I reviewed it, and check, check, check. Still me. Especially the part about the aesthetics.

Here’s my definition, or manifesto. (And no, it’s not lost on me that manifesto and manifesting are practically the same word.)

The Woo-Adjacent Manifesto

We are the woo-curious, the closet woo, the woo-adjacent.

We’re not normally the types to believe in all that magical/spiritual shit.
(AKA “woo-woo.”)
But we secretly, grudgingly allow that some of it might be real, and we’re open to it if it is.
We might even be into it.

That said, we don’t like the aesthetics of woo:
The caftans in floaty fabrics, the patchouli, the wind chimes and whale sounds.
The soft, breathy voice telling us to breathe innnn, 2, 3, and ouuuuut, 2, 3.
The purple, the script font, the light bursts that are supposed to indicate God or Universe or Being or Source or whatever you call it (but it’s the same as saying God, which = religion, which is fine but let’s not pretend it’s not).

We don’t like the culty language — “Holding space to catalyze your full embodiment of the sacred and divine;” “Shift into a new paradigm of alignment;” “Welcome to my high-vibe tribe,” etc.—not just because it’s a hornet’s nest of cultural appropriation, but because it’s corny-ass buzzword soup.

We cringe when woo talk doesn’t take privilege into account. For instance, “It’s all mindset” or “It’s all about a state of abundance” when, no, it’s also privilege. But sure, that other stuff helps.

We do like a little “mindset” talk.
We agree, mindset is important.
If not, how do you explain so many mediocre, seemingly talentless people being absurdly successful?
(Make no mistake: thinking you’re talented when you’re not, AKA not knowing you have no talent, is absolutely a talent.)
Anyway, “mindset” isn’t really woo, it’s psychology.

We like the idea of manifesting, because who doesn’t?
However, it’s hard not to give side-eye if you say you “manifested an office space” when, actually, you found and rented an office space; or “manifested a boyfriend” when you went on an app, dated a lot of scumbags and losers, finally found someone you liked, stalked him, discovered he was a serial killer, stayed anyway, helped him hide a body, worked through his commitment issues, and are now officially a couple.
“I manifested a peeled banana.”
No, you bought a banana and peeled it.
Still, manifesting: neat!

We like the idea of a muse, the notion that genius can be channeled—and would very much like to have that function on demand.

We know, we know: We should meditate. It’s not that woo an idea anymore. Everyone does it on the show “Billions.” Makes ‘em rich, if not better people.

We believe that whatever works for you, works for you, and is worth paying for.

We like when stuff is put in scientific terms, like “brain plasticity.”

We’re willing to agree that vision boards can actually be effective—but if so, it’s because you’ve made the idea feel possible, which motivates you to take forward-moving action and behave in a way consistent with making the idea a reality…and not because some Greater Power has agreed to partner with you and make things happen so that you get to meet Oprah.

We’re open to things that are “impossible” in physical, practical terms—like psychic powers and contact with the spiritual world—if only because wifi is an equally crazy idea and yet the world now runs on it. If I can instantaneously send someone in China a cat gif without mail or a pigeon, maybe a few extraordinarily intuitive people can see the future or talk to my dead grandparents.

…And so, we might book a psychic reading if we hear someone’s really good and has a 6-month waitlist. But we don’t want them to have any info about us beforehand, because we’re not convinced they won’t cheat.

We love ease.
If it makes life easier, we’re willing to try it, even if we have to hide the receipts.

To that end, when our partner looks over the Amex statement and asks, “WTF is this fifteen hundred dollars to ‘Third Eye Crystal Corp, is that some woo-woo shit?” we will say, “Oh, ha, no, it’s an optometrist. Getting new lenses.”

Because we’re not woo—we’re woo-adjacent.

Rereading it again just now after I copy-pasted it, I see one main inconsistency with 2026 me:

The part about meditating. I’ve been doing it! Or, attempting it! I started in November and was experimenting, on and off. But I declared in January at an event in Mexico where I was the keynote speaker* that, starting that day, I was going to meditate every single day and make it a non-negotiable.

So far, so good. That was three weeks ago. I’m just one week shy of that 28 days it takes to cement a habit, so seven days from today, expect me to be a rigidly disciplined meditator. Sitting in silence for 15 minutes and trying to focus only on my breath and not the conversion rate of my automated webinar will soon be as second-nature as brushing my teeth. Watch this space.

xoLaura

PS - *I shoehorned in that mention of my speaking gig in Mexico not because it was relevant but because I’m “putting it out into the universe” that I really like speaking gigs in Mexico (ideally in January, February, or March). Because that’s how you “manifest.”

PPS - See those air quotes above? Didn’t even know I was typing them. That’s how woo-adjacent I am.

I’ve been “toying with starting a Substack” for a good five years. How sad. Why not just start? It’s free. There’s like, zero tech involved. It’s not like I had to raise a bunch of capital or take lessons before trying it out. It’s not scuba diving. It’s not a motorcycle or chainsaw. It’s not even pilates — every time I say to a friend that I keep thinking I should get into pilates, they say “Definitely start with a few privates first.”

As an email marketing expert, I always recommend Substack (without having tried it) to people who ask me how they should get started building a list. I love the discoverability it offers, even if it’s now probably showing diminishing returns in that department.

I have a “real” email list, one I’ve been building for over 16 years. (Currently on Kit, FKA Convertkit, which was a better name.) But list growth has gotten tough. Lordy, when I started in 2009, you could say “Sign up for my free newsletter” and people were like, “Did you say FREE newsletter? No catch?” You’d think I was handing out cupcakes or bars of gold. Now, we’re all, “Fly me private to Eden Roc and put me up for a week, and maybe then we can discuss whether I let you in my inbox.”

So I’m interested in that perk of Substack, myself — she says, after waiting till people started saying it’s gotten harder here. Typical Belgray. People used to say Facebook ads were like putting a dollar into a machine and getting back five dollars. Then it was two dollars. Then it was thirty cents. Sold! That’s when I jumped on the ads bandwagon.

Wanna know the one thing I jumped on early? CLUBHOUSE. What an asshat. I still have PTSD from that platform, with its overt hierarchy and sweatiness. Oooh, a chance to be in the “room” with millionaires wearing bowties in their profile pics and learn from their success! Hooray, someone has made me a mod! It’s like Courtney Cox getting pulled up onstage by Bruce Springstein! Thank you, good sir!

What’s taken me so long with Substack? Mostly that every time I think about it, this is the conversation I have:

Maybe Substack is where I do my “just for fun” writing. It’s a place for writers and readers, as in people who actually like to read, where you have more permission to write longform. Not that I don’t have “permission” to write any form I fucking want in my emails, because really my ideal subscriber, AKA “Shrimper,” is someone who likes my writing, but attention span is just different over on Substack and the longer I make my regular subscriber emails, the more unsubscribes I get. Also, in my emails, I put pressure on myself to tie every story up with a neat little “call to action” bow. Pressure to teach. Pressure to sell, because that’s how I make a living from my emails. God, if I won the lottery (157 million is what I’m looking for, thanks), I’d never sell again — except for my book. Selling that isn’t about the money, because what money? That’s about pride and connection. As for all my products, I’d price them at $0 or “pay what you can” and have that go to charity — NPR, PBS, Planned Parenthood, cancer research, all the good things bad people have yanked funding from — and go back to writing my rando stuff, unsubscribes be damned.

But I just know I’m going to start writing and think, “Wait, should this just be a Substack or a regular email? Or both, and duplicate it? I’ve made a bigass point of writing emails that are fun to read and fun to write, so my JFF (just for fun) writing should go in my regular emails. Otherwise, what am I even doing?

Also, they say Substack pushes your content out more when you have paid subscribers, but do I really want to construct everything I write to tease them into subscribing? Then again, that’s what good writing does, right? It lures you into reading the next paragraph, and then the next after that. But I don’t want to think so hard. I thought this was going to be just for fun!

And do I import my email list over to Substack and tell them they can always opt out of those? Or do I offer my email list the option to join my Substack? And if so, how do I differentiate it from the emails they already get? Should I make my Substack about a specific topic? Maybe my recent “spiritual journey” as a woo-adjacent person? And call it Woo-Adjacent? Maybe my midlife adventures in the land of wildly expensive dermatology procedures? Could that fit under the umbrella of Woo-Adjacent? Will that make me feel too locked in? And it feels too late to start a Substack. But when Marie Forleo told me in 2009 that I needed a blog, I asked, “Isn’t it too late to start a blog?” LOL. It was still the dawn of blogging. Grateful I listened, because that’s the whole reason I now have a business.

Wow, do I have lengthy conversations with myself about starting a thing instead of just starting the thing. I think that’s called “overthinking.” I did that with podcasting, too. Do you listen to my podcast? No? That’s because I don’t have one — but you can bet I’ve been “toying” with starting it. Also since 2021. Just hit my 5-year anniversary of overthinking starting a podcast and a Substack! Cracking that champagne.

Anyhoo, welcome to Woo-Adjacent. Fuck it, why not call it that? I can always change it, it’s not a tattoo. Though maybe it should be.

Warning: If you subscribe to my emails, you just might see this twice. But you’ll see other stuff that’s not here. And vice versa. Best practice is to follow me everywhere.