I was 18, cowl-necked and wispy-haired. I had felt continuously in flight from my own senses, which were overwhelmed by the lighting and the unfamiliarity of the environment, and at times I wished to leave despite my simultaneous desire for a drink. When I saw him, those qualms vanished.

He was handsome. Tanned skin, sharp eyes, and toned limbs, an intricate tattoo sleeve running down his right forearm. Time seemed to suspend for just that moment. I imagined myself looking into some sort of reflection and seeing myself in him, drawing out of his body a part of myself. It was a feeling I had only just now uncovered, numbed by my years of suffering and lying dormant in my psyche, until today.

I began returning to the bar every day, if not to drink then to catch a glimpse of him. In those months I was intolerable, I couldn’t comprehend my situation without maudlin sentiments, I refused to hear out any of my friends, any form of heed, or, especially, the conviction in the repeated nagging of my parents.

As it turns out, he had a secret of his own, one that threatened to shatter my worldview as I knew it. We stayed friends, but I often had the impression that he used the uncertainty of our past to make the tumultuous present normal, and I hated myself for not being strong enough to leave. Him, or the bar, I didn’t know.

What was my plan anyway? To declare my love for him, to ruin myself for him, throw away everything that had ever been advantageous to me just to sink into the deep end with him, change into a different person for him and lose my head, only because in a man like any other I convinced myself to have seen something extraordinary.

Love,

Sennett

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

Putting on makeup, taking it off, combing my hair, uncombing it, changing into a dress, then another.

The entire process of it calmed me, allowed me to achieve a refinement of my own, though the habit really kicked off as an effort to make a good impression on the social stage, a cachet I coveted.

I was dull-looking as a child, which was how I understood myself then: tanned in a way that resisted the traditional Chinese ideal, with puffy monolidded eyes that looked as if I had been bitten by mosquitoes. Strangers often said I resembled my father. They meant it kindly, I think, but instead their comments indicated a sort of pity that I hadn’t turned out resembling my mother, a consolation that at least I looked like one of my parents.

My mother’s face was the one I had wanted, the one that turned heads and demanded double-takes. I longed for her refinement, the grace with which she seemed to belong to the world. Beside her, I felt like a small indistinguishable critter, something that had attached itself to a swan.

All that struggle, all that time spent readying myself to venture out into the streets to be sized up and broken down into my vestigial parts, came to a head at a high school reunion in 2023, where I found myself preparing not for the event itself, but for the possibility of being witnessed by someone who had once made me feel terribly plain.

My mind spun through vivid possibilities: what I would say if I saw them again, how effortlessly I might respond, how casually I’d flirt with them and how hopefully they’d flirt back.

When the time came, they complimented me, and it seemed to me that the flow of the universe’s fabric ceased to function in the realms of the internal and the external. What I had fantasised about and what had happened, who was the pursuer and who the pursued? Had I dressed to be desired or had desire merely arrived to confirm my outward appearance? Was I transformed or only finally realised in my becoming?

As a young girl, I felt torn between the need to be seen in a seductive light and the anguish of not succeeding. I felt inclined to reduce myself to my feminine qualities, a meal prepared for the male appetite, something arranged to present a sort of mouthwatering fragility. It was a lengthy preparation, a paintwork camouflaging myself with the taste of ripeness.

At the same time, I felt clownish, like some creature with lipstick painted over its mouth and heavy rouge on its cheeks, performing a poor imitation of beauty, trying and failing to disguise its vulgarity, imperfection, and inadequacy.

I had wanted to show them that I was different, that I had blossomed, hatched from the chrysalis. I was no longer the child in slacks, loud and aggressive, no longer the student in high school, dumpy and depressive, and not even the naive girl clinging to her mother, as I must have appeared throughout my formative years.

Part of me resented other people’s eyes for having such a hold on me. The other part of me revelled in the grips of a desire for chaos, in the fantasy I felt myself immersed in. Finally matured, I had begun to feel pretty again, and I wanted to read the proof in their eyes. As if saying: Look, I learned how to be looked at.

Love,

Sennett <3

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

I’d like to tell you about one of my past fixations, someone I felt for deeply, someone I wrote poetry for.

They say the closest humans can come to God is through creation. I have always tried to conquer my prose, yet it veers rhapsodic; it purples. There are no words adequate enough to describe the gravity of my emotions, the sheer depth of my feeling.

Our correspondence lasted for a season, existed in letter form, his words often finding me in moments of anguish, absolving me of the shame I had no language for. I was loathsomely laconic in my disposition, but his passages often brought a brief euphoria, a liveliness I hadn’t considered myself capable of.

His letters I savoured like rare delicacies, as if I were a small child licking powdered sugar from a slice of lemon bar, holding herself back from consuming the entire thing in one go so the sweetness might last a little longer.

I would spend frantic hours crafting my response, wondering how I might sew the letters of the alphabet together to provoke a most thoughtful reaction. It was an essential part of my ecosystem, though it unsettled my friends, this inability to be hasty and assured.

The following days, I pictured him reading and re-reading my words, laughing fondly at a witty joke I had made, brows furrowed thoughtfully in response to an insightful observation or argument.

When his letter finally arrived, I longed to wick the anticipation into thread, tugging on it until it gave way to an explosion of colour. His words seemed to unfold within me a private intelligence, never asking permission to form new pathways, as I searched for evidence that my words had lingered in him, that they stitched into his mind.

I liked writing him. I liked reading him more.

Love,

Sennett <3

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

The days spun by in a blur, yet I could barely register their passing. Time tasted bland and utterly unappealing. When my eyes peeled open in the mornings, dread jostled through me, forcing me into an examination of my own thoughts. I feared what I might find there as I mentally cranked the gear that gave me just enough energy to function through another day. Wind her up, watch her go.

I would lie motionless under the covers, inert and flat as postage. I felt tethered to the ground; each step I took, more strenuous than the last. The very thought of being at school was nauseating: the same routine, the same torturous eight hours, the same crowd of blank faces parroting my defects back to me. Breakfast was mechanical, reduced to an act of sustenance, forcing dry, scratchy cereal down my throat as I tuned out my mother’s slighting comments about my appearance.

The world I knew of had vanished into chaos, and I couldn’t find within myself the pleasure for life with which I once had, to put things into order again. I was constantly on edge, desperate to do my best and keep everyone pleased so I wouldn’t lose the financial assistance. Still, it felt as if the entire world were disappointed in me.

At school, I was often afraid: afraid of saying the wrong things, of adopting a demeanour too difficult for others to accept, of using an unsuitable tone, of revealing feelings too rude, of not having interesting enough insights during class. My very existence seemed juxtapositary, deep down yearning for the freedom to be myself yet appalled at the possibility of what that might unleash, as if allowing myself merely a slip in performance would cause everything to lose its outlines and crash, engulfing me.

When I climbed the stairs to class, I often fantasised about continuing all the way up to the rooftop and stepping from the ledge. In Chinese mythology, it was believed that life was moulded from yellow soil, and it seemed an inevitable cycle of life to lose myself to gravity and return to nature. While my classmates raised their hands and answered questions, I stared out the window at the bleeding violet sky, contemplating the terrible beauty of falling into an endless sleep.

#

During this time, I experienced my first panic attack. It happened during class, in the period before lunchtime. The feeling coursed through me like a tidal wave, lacing my airways into a corset and pulling tight. I could no longer breathe; the room around me turned to static, as if the world had withdrawn behind glass and left me alone inside my body. I was trapped. I thought I was going to die.

My fear at that moment was so very great, and I had hoped that everything would come to an end. I wanted whatever dark force had seized my heart to reveal itself and consume me whole. I imagined that from this darkness, hordes of beasts would appear, wolves, serpents, scorpions. I imagined, while I sat there in the classroom, gasping for breath, killers descending from the ceiling to snap my neck. Yes, yes, let me face the consequences of my inadequacy. Let the worst happen. Let something so devastating occur that it would spare me from ever feeling this again, something that would finally prove, with certainty, that I had not been built correctly for this world. Thoughts like that I had, the frenzied ramblings of a girl’s horrific disentanglement.

Finally I sprinted from my seat and to the bathroom, locking myself in the stall furthest from the door. I sat on the closed lid with my knees pulled to my chin and dropped my head between my arms. What’s happening to me? I asked, to any universal force willing to listen. I need help. I need help.

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

That curiosity led me to the concept of ultra-processed foods (UPFs). But before that, it helps to understand the NOVA classification system, a framework that categorizes foods based on the extent and purpose of their processing1:

1. Unprocessed / minimally processed foods: foods directly found in nature like meat, fruit and vegetables, and also things like nuts and wheat.

2. Processed culinary ingredients: Ingredients primarily used in kitchens, including oils, butter, sugar, salt, and honey.

3. Processed foods: Ready-made mixtures of Group 1 and Group 2, mainly processed for preservation. Think cheese, wine, salted nuts, smoked meat, or tinned vegetables.

4. Ultra-processed foods: Foods that have one or more ingredients that wouldn’t be found in a kitchen, like chemical-based preservatives, emulsifiers, sweeteners, and artificial colors and flavors. They undergo industrial processing techniques and chemical alterations that are designed to create highly profitable, convenient, and hyperpalatable products.

So why does this matter?

Well, research has shown that increased UPF intake is strongly associated with an increased risk of:2

• high blood pressure

• cardiovascular diseases

• all types of cancer

• type 2 diabetes

• inflammatory bowel disease

• fatty liver disease

• depression

• frailty

• irritable bowel syndrome and dyspepsia

• dementia

• death

Diets dominated by UPFs tend to be energy‑dense yet comparatively low in fiber, protein quality, and most micronutrients. They reduce our diets to the point of malnutrition even as they cause obesity.3

In 2018, Schrempft and colleagues conducted a cohort study of 925 pairs of twins, demonstrating that BMI heritability is dependent on home/food environments.4 In families with secure incomes and high levels of security, the heritability hovered at 39%, whereas in households with low incomes and high food insecurity, heritability jumped to 86%. Although the genes for obesity were also found equally in both high-income and low-income households, being born into a lower-income household can actually double, even triple, the risk of obesity because of the environment it places you in.5

But why is that? Since UPFs are typically the only foods that are readily available (long shelf life) and affordable (appear better value for money because of regular promotions and multi-buy deals), low-income households have little option but to buy them, even when they want to make healthier purchases.6 Could UPFs be a proxy for poverty?

And it isn’t only low‑income households that are affected. The prevalence of UPFs has steadily increased across the food supply as a whole, becoming embedded in mainstream dietary patterns.

The term “food desert” was introduced by the US Departments of Agriculture, Treasury, and Health and Human Services. They are places where shops don’t sell nutritious, fresh food and groceries. Estimates suggest that approximately 39.5 million people in the United States live in food deserts, while in the UK, it is roughly 1.2 million individuals.

For eight years now, I have believed that food was within my control, and that as long as I had exerted enough willpower and discipline, I would master my hunger. I tried quitting sugar, cutting my carbs, weighing my food, spending hours on the treadmill—calories in, calories out. Perhaps if I suffered enough, I could transcend biology.

But the modern age of eating does not tip the scales in our favour; it is engineered.

“You can’t exert willpower over the system of weight regulation produced by the half a billion years of the second age of eating, any more than you can exert it over your long-term oxygen or water intake.”—Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People

UPFs are designed to be irresistible through industrial processing, salt, sweeteners, emulsifiers, and flavour enhancers that are calibrated to amplify taste and override our satiety signals. They are consistently scored higher on food addiction scales when compared to real food.7 They are formulated to hit a “bliss point,” which spikes our dopamine and delays fullness.8 They are marketed to us relentlessly, priced competitively, and made shelf-stable so they can outlast fresh alternatives.

When our appetites have been primed, conditioned, and optimized for more, how free is that choice?

Love,

Sennett <3

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

Throughout history, women have faced greater societal pressure than men to find a partner and form a relationship,1 with those who remain single or unmarried into their thirties derogatorily referred to as ‘spinsters’ or ‘old maids.’2 Navigating a patriarchal, heternormative world with rigid gender structures in place, it is no surprise that many women fall into the trap of becoming male-centred (androcentrism)—the tendency to prioritise men’s opinions, desires, and needs over oneself.3

Referencing a phenomenon that one Substacker dubbed “Boyfriend Land,” Chanté points out androcentrism among female content creators on social media, with many trends revolving around showing off one’s boyfriends or husbands. In one trend, female content creators are encouraged to showcase text conversations with their male partners or friends in which the creator is heavily disrespected in response. Engagers in the comments reinforce such harmful behaviour that society tolerates from men, stating, “He’s just like that,” or “Boys will be boys.”

And that’s when Chanté, along with thousands of other social media users, would hit the mute button. Chanté states, “Women were rewarded for their ability to find and keep a man, with elevated social status and praise. It became even more suffocating when this could be leveraged on social media for engagement and, if you were serious enough, financial gain.”

A new trend has emerged in which, instead of proudly flaunting their boyfriends or husbands on social media, women now opt for a much more subtle alternative: “a hand on a steering wheel, clinking glasses at dinner, or the back of someone’s head.” Subtle cues that allow a (straight) woman to signal partnership without appearing “boyfriend-obsessed”. Chanté writes that “it feels like the result of women wanting to straddle two worlds: one where they can receive the social benefits of having a partner, but also not appear so boyfriend-obsessed that they come across quite culturally loser-ish.”

Some avoid posting their partners out of superstition (“evil eye”), whereas some women fear the potential social cost of posting their boyfriends, stating it could lead to a decrease in followers and engagement or being regarded as “lame” or “uncool”. This emerging trend is agreed on by both single and partnered women alike: “regardless of the relationship, being with a man was an almost guilty thing to do”.

Ultimately, Chanté argues that being partnered no longer affirms womanhood the way it used to; people are becoming more open to re-thinking heteronormativity, and singlehood is being reclaimed and even romanticised as desirable rather than pitiable. Single life is becoming an increasingly coveted status.

Chanté’s article focuses on women deliberately managing how they present relationships on social media, from androcentrism to deliberately cropping them out of photos, obscuring their faces, “soft-launching”/“hinting” at relationships, or avoiding boyfriend content entirely.

Let’s take a deeper look through the lens of the late-modernist approach. Well-known late-modernists such as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck characterise this approach by heightened mobility and deep reflexivity, which together transform social institutions and personal identities.4 Regarding “heightened mobility,” Giddens asserts that social life is “no longer confined to local places or traditional statuses,” and explains why traditional, fixed life scripts, such as marriages as a signal of womanhood for women, have weakened and why people treat relationship displays as contingent, transferable resources in an attention economy.5 Deep reflexivity—the continual re‑examination and revision of social practices in light of new information—explains the intensive self‑monitoring Joseph describes: social media users anticipate reputational and emotional risks (loss of followers, the “evil eye,” future embarrassment after a breakup) and therefore carefully curate whether and how to reveal partners. Together, these dynamics show why relationship disclosures are now strategic acts of identity work: individuals are “self‑creating, self‑defining” agents6, who craft public biographies under conditions of mobility and uncertainty rather than enacting inherited heteronormative scripts.

Late-modernists perceive traditional, heteronormative models of relationships and gender as reinforcing power dynamics and social inequalities. They focus on opening up pathways for the possibilities of same-sex relationships, polygamy, being single, and the empowerment and diversity of individuals as a distinct and positive aspect. Individuals can hence create and develop their own relationships, if they choose to, in line with their own desires and needs. This theoretical stance helps explain the cultural revaluation Chanté documents: many modern women are re‑evaluating their historical allegiance to heterosexuality and the social rewards attached to coupling. Part of this revaluation is an explicit shift toward embracing single identity as a site of empowerment: singlehood is increasingly romanticised and presented as a valid, even desirable, life project that can confer autonomy, cultural capital, and social status.

As an interviewee in her article exclaims, “Being single gives you this ultimate freedom to say and do what you want. It is absolutely not every woman, but I do notice that we can become more beige and watered-down online when in a relationship – myself included.” This shift, in a late‑modern frame, reflects how individuals now focus much more on satisfying emotional fulfillment and happiness of the self, rather than satisfying other societal expectations and conditions, such as marriage. Chanté’s closing note that “a wave of women [are] reclaiming and romanticising their single life” exemplifies this revaluation: singlehood is no longer merely a deficit to be corrected but a positively framed identity that can offer autonomy, cultural capital, and narrative coherence in a mediated, attention‑driven public sphere.

Another theoretical idea would be the theories of mate selection—social exchange theory and equity theory as a possible explanation for the emerging trend of the celebration of singlehood. In social exchange theory, people are attracted to prospective partners whom they believe will provide them with the best possible ‘deal’ in a relationship, and will begin (and remain in) a relationship if the rewards are higher than the costs.7 Whereas in equity theory, an intimate relationship is satisfying and stable if both partners see it as equitable and mutually beneficial—the greater the perceived equity, the happier the relationship.

Building on these theories, mate‑selection frameworks offer a concise micro‑level explanation for the celebration of singlehood and the concealment of partners in Chanté’s article. Social exchange theory can predict why women choose to stay single: if staying single or keeping your relationship private preserves your autonomy, creative control, and follower engagement—while showing off your boyfriend or husband risks losing you followers, reduced monetization, or future embarrassment (“Even though I am a romantic, I still feel like men will embarrass you even 12 years in, so claiming them feels so lame.”)—then the comparison level for alternatives favours singlehood or selective disclosure. This does not take into account the existing relationship science factors that state how a woman typically invests more (emotional labor, time, housework, and career sacrifices) into a heterosexual relationship than she receives in return (companionship, financial support, stability), which leads to an inequitable partnership.8

Equity theory complements this by showing that publicising a relationship can create perceived imbalances (one partner gains status or income while the other sacrifices privacy); to avoid inequity and its negative effects on satisfaction, couples may withhold partner visibility. (In the article, Chanté writes, “Sophie Milner, a content creator, also experienced people unfollowing her when she shared a romantic relationship. She admits that her content perhaps becomes less exciting when she is in a relationship.”) Together, these theories explain why many women find the costs of visible coupling now outweigh the benefits, making singlehood—or strategic concealment—a rational interpersonal strategy.

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

Since 2022, I’ve been making seasonal (and yearly!) bucket lists for myself, a way for me to participate in life without sweating the small stuff. Here’s a small collection of things I’d like to do, written on my way to work.

I’m determined to make the most of the three months between finishing my final semester and walking across the stage at graduation.

sennett’s autumn 2026 bucket list

1. visit every museum in the city

2. make breakfast with box pancake mix

3. cross-stitch a bouquet of sunflowers

4. finish writing my memoir

5. get a perm or a new hairstyle

6. create my own mocktail

7. buy some second-hand vintage

8. build up an emergency fund

9. complete my psychology degree

10. compliment 20 strangers

11. watch three movies in theatres alone

12. remove instagram from my phone

13. learn how to read tarot

14. spend an afternoon at the library

15. make a list of lists i’d like to write

16. pet a dog

17. meet up with an old friend

18. wake up to watch the sunrise

19. drink a really crisp sparkling tea

20. pick up the ukelele again

21. celebrate my 22nd birthday

22. rewatch my favourite show

23. go to beijing or shanghai

24. write letters to a penpal

25. try a tasting menu from any italian restaurant

26. wear a ballgown

27. buy and read a magazine from cover to cover

28. picnic in the park with loved one(s) - bonus points for homemade tiramisu

29. go on a date (with someone or just take myself on one)

30. spend more time with my pet bird

I think that’s it for now. Send me your bucket lists, too, if you wrote one.

Love,

Sennett <3

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

Not metaphorically. I wanted to be identical to the plastic bone sets that hide out in science classrooms, pelvis hinged, jaw slack, ribs curved like a birdcage. That way, I would have no body, no features. Leave not so much as a hair anywhere in this world but an architecture of osseous tissue.

My fantasy was like a snap, a bark, a lethal bite. And there was nothing rational left that acted as a corrective.

If I became a literal skeleton, there would be nothing left for society to evaluate. I wouldn’t be told I was too thin or too fat, too promiscuous or too prudish. The overdose of outward perception would simply cease to apply.

If I became a literal skeleton, I wouldn’t have to eat. The diligent duty of measuring every scrap of food, every calorie, every gram that flickered upward on the scale, would be lifted from me. The obsession with numbers that appear trivial to anyone else would lose its purchase on the muddy ground I stood on.

If I became a literal skeleton, I could relinquish control. I would have no brain shrieking like a smoke alarm at the slightest pang of hunger, no gut to contradict every intention. The lurid cycle of swallow and dispose would no longer have a name. Nothing would claw its way back up. Nothing would run down the cistern like a lava of rainwater.

But fantasies never come true. Or at least, mine didn’t.

When I entered outpatient recovery, I felt like a fledgling bird, abruptly pushed from the nest and left to find out how gravity worked on the way down. Years of micromanaging portions and arithmetic had carved a neural pathway that veered miles off anything resembling mindfulness.

I asked myself questions I never dared to say out loud. What, exactly, constitutes a “proper” meal? How much is enough? How could I possibly stop counting calories when numbers became my signal? How do other people know how much to eat? How do they know when to stop? And how- really- could I ever eat again without the burden of my disorder? I didn’t know how to eat like a normal person. Incognizant, instinctual, and content.

The first time I attended a twelve‑step meeting, they told me something that lodged itself under my skin: you can still go out and drink, but you will never drink obliviously again- the way you used to- once you know you’re an alcoholic. Knowledge ruins innocence.

My eating disorder marked me in much the same way. The difference is that as an alcoholic, I can choose sobriety- and I did. Food, I cannot quit. I still have to eat every day to stay alive. The option of controlling my intake is always there, resting in my palm like a small, insidious leech. Sucking the life out of me until I am forced to take matters into my own hands.

So I wonder whether I can ever eat like a normal person again, having known the depths of bulimia so intimately. Can a ravenous appetite and the reflex to restrict dampen back into intuition? Or has my experience permanently altered the act of sustenance itself? You tell me.

💙 You are not alone. Visit https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/ if you need help.

Love,

Sennett <3

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

I’m a Virgo for a reason, fall-born and Machiavellian. There is solace in rituals and perfecting what lacks. Step on the scale and pout regardless of what number I’m shown. How many calories can I spend today? Beauty is a token economy, and I’ve been collecting chips for eight years. Waiting to cash them in for 20/20 vision- a mirror that reflects instead of distorts. Funhouse body-checking.

Iced americano. No milk, no sugar. The austerity of it feels earned. Nose wrinkles as I walk past the smoking section, forgetting the times when I went through packs with the zeal of a child preacher. We convert so easily.

Ten thousand steps at the outlet mall. As it turns out, that number was invented somewhere between corporate boardrooms and a pedometer. We are always encouraged to want. Leaner, richer, faster, better. More, more, more. Satiety is intolerable. I am insatiable. And I hate myself. Wait—can’t say that. My therapist wouldn’t approve.

I love myself.

Do I?

Does it matter as long as everyone else loves me? I think that might be the answer to all my problems. Wound cauterized with steaming Cellotape. Functional enough for public viewing. Just feeling chronic and obtrusive, if I’m being honest. It shouldn’t be this hard to locate my sanity, but the path is cluttered with fallen trees and greige debris. Waterlogged. The calm after the storm, except nothing feels washed clean. Just humid and disgustingly hot. Waiting for something else to break. Last week it was my heart. Next week it might be someone else’s. Fingers crossed I won’t mess it up this time.

I know devotion but I have yet to find a tender place to lay it down. How long before the coat of varnish dulls to rust? Before the novelty wears thin and I no longer feel new in their hands. People love what gleams. They are less generous with what smells familiar. That being said, I can’t afford to build a nest in only one place. Like starlings, I might as well keep moving. Murmurate across skylines, turn in startling grace, never still long enough to be claimed by time.

Sun dips below the horizon, and I am drunk in the amber glow. Wrote a thousand words, but I am still no good with them. Pity. They skim the surface and call it depth. Someday I will rearrange them like alphabet soup and see what floats to the top. There, I’ll find my answer.

Steaming up the bathroom. Holding myself for a minute.

Kiss the mirror goodnight. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Love,

Sennett <3

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

Imagine you’re at a concert and someone wants to get a better view of the stage. They stand up, forcing the people behind them to stand so they, too, can get a better view. Ultimately, everyone in the stadium is forced to stand up, leaving them worse off, and nobody feels any more comfortable. This is the logic of escalation. This is Moloch.

In March 2023, the Future of Life Institute published an open letter titled “Pause Giant AI Experiments,” calling on all AI labs to pause, for at least 6 months, the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. The letter cited risks such as AI-generated propaganda, increases in unemployment, grave environmental consequences, and a society-wide loss of control.1

Here, Moloch resurfaces. Companies, entrepreneurs, and CEOs insist that the “era of AI is inevitable.2” Yet, if any of these tech leaders find that AI development has become behemoth-like and want to pause it for six months, as seen in the Open Letter, they would receive pressure not just from other competitors but also from shareholders. Demanding growth. Rewarding speed. Even those who harbor doubts are strapped into the same race. Regardless of personal caution, pausing becomes irrational. So why would anyone be the first to stop?

Technically, everyone senses the instability. But no one wants to be the only one who sits down.

“If it’s all so inevitable, and if no one can stand up to the invisible force of it, what can be done? Do we just give in to the game?” — Sarah Wilson

The tragedy is that humans are complicit in their own subjugation. Social media operates on the same logic. Everyone optimizes for impressions and clicks. Metrics that pay for advertising dollars. Virality becomes sought after. Whether it’s your local celebrity influencer or a multinational fast-food chain, they’ve all got a bad incentive to use worse and worse strategies to win the attention game.

Climate change is another example. No single nation can afford to decarbonize unilaterally if others continue extracting and emitting. Our leaders did not stick to the Paris Agreement, and now, global temperatures are likely to breach 1.5°C around 2030.3

“I call Moloch the God of Negative-Sum Games.” — Liv Boeree

“Don’t hate the player; hate the game.” Is that what this is? And how do we beat it?

In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari argues that, unlike other animals, the reason why we humans are the apex predators of the food chain is due to our unmatched capability for large-scale coordination, collaboration, and compassion. This is our only antidote to Moloch—through agreements, norms, and developing a recognition of these systems so we can recoil from them accordingly.

Escaping destructive equilibria requires norms strong enough to make cooperation the solution. It requires institutions that reward rationality instead of punishing it. Above all, it requires trust. And trust is slow, fragile, and politically inconvenient.

There are always solutions. The harder question is whether we are willing to choose them. We have to ask: are we steering the system, or is Moloch steering us?

Humans are exceptional at acceleration. We are far less practiced at agreement.

Love,

Sennett <3

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

Read more

Nine and bird-boned, I treated God like a friend I only called when I needed a favour. Please, please, please- let me have this, and I’ll never be a bad girl again.

Well, God finally found me at twenty. Told me I was burned for the better. The last time I faced His transience, I stood faithless by the bridge, ready to fall. There was no shame, I thought, in yielding to something as natural as gravity- where one does not leap, but is drawn, blameless, toward the pavement. Instead of kissing concrete, He sent an angel after me. Even now, the thought alone is enough to make my nose sting.

“So, are you religious now?” My friend twittered, her tacit amusement shining through like latte art on foam.

“No, not really.” I bit my cheek. “Spiritual, maybe?”

Because a part of me believes that there is something greater than myself, a force so inimitable it refuses to be operationalised. Where I once thought of the universe as a dark amorphous mass, shifting and stirring diamonds through the Milky Way, I now see that it buries its meaning in plain sight: a penny on the ocean floor I long to uncover, holding my breath longer each time I dive.

The other day, I made a Sisyphean effort to look you in the eye, but it was difficult, almost as if you were the sun itself. Are you masquerading as my higher power? Or was that just a glimpse of your image at golden hour? Perhaps that is all faith is- the willingness to kneel before what moves you. And so I lay beside your invisible feet like the faithful hound I am, praying for salvation.

At night, I dream of you returning in fine clothing, watching matinees in black and white. When it comes to love, I exist in the grey, my composure discoloured like hardened candlewax.

It would be easier to swallow if I’d just believed that God had sent you. That the road was paved with divine intentions. Kismet is kinder than chance.

Love,

Sennett <3

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

We talked of childhood, about the voices and songs that raised us. I told you about the symphonies of my formative years- the choir that got me up in the mornings, the bowstrings that smelled of amber and rosin. I found myself fitting you into that soundtrack, as though you had always existed between the scores. Even before I knew you, I could almost hear you. You see, you had been finding me in perfect places before we had even met. I was here all along, waiting for the downbeat.

My love of birdsong and bedroom pop was gradually rivaled by my love for the sound of your half-suppressed amusement, always skeptical and self-effacing in a way that teetered between a brief exhale and a bitter laugh. Part of me resented you for having such a hold on me. Part of me still does.

But maybe this is what being young is for. I’m twenty‑one and set ablaze. Living and dying to your every whim, spilling my guts in serif, emotionally drunk on the idea of you and hungover on your absence. These are gorgeous problems to have.

And yet, what is opera without spectacle? How many theatrics do we stage to give our pain a shape? Perhaps I’ll dress for the crowd, show you what true sacrifice looks like. But I have never believed in bloodshed. It is tears that I draw, every time.

So when I lie awake at night, I wonder if you are also lying awake, unable to dream. I run my tongue over my teeth, tasting all the things I would say to you if only I had the guts: “I’m vindictive and selfish, and I cannot bear the thought of you with anyone else.” Why can’t I write something that could undo us- or commence us? That kind of brazen pursuit is what aches most fiercely. Not rejection, but the surefire audacity required to risk it.

Perhaps someday, when I cease to be and my body runs its patient race, the avians and maggots will come to my mouth one by one and devour the words I never had the courage to say. Let them feed on what I withheld. Let them inherit my silence.

Love,

Sennett

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

I used to spend every Sunday morning stepping out into the gimlet dawn, buildings pointing accusatory fingers at the stony sky, last night’s bravado painted red and chrome. Drunk and young, I ran from any reflective surface I passed, lest the mirror point me toward the fairest of them all, and expose how quickly I had given myself away.

Then things changed, as they so often do.

A butterfly flapped its wings in Mallorca, a train stalled somewhere in Northern Ireland, and the kismetic syzygy of the universe rearranged itself. For all your reclusive lustre, you turned out to be a well-hidden raconteur. You live like a maverick, stubborn in your devotion to the bohemian, intent on preserving a kind of infinite disorder. I was charmed. I didn’t want to be, but I was.

And that’s how I found myself pacing the city with my thoughts scrambled, some cerebral switch seemingly having been flicked. The passersby felt complicit. It was a big, not‑so‑secret thing I held dear to my heart, a symptomatic infatuation masquerading as composure. My friends would roll their eyes before I even finished saying your name.

I certainly made a spectacle of myself—Dorian Gray‑ing behind closed doors and praying that this too shall pass. But I have to say, this doesn’t seem to be going away.

If possible, I would live our minutest moments over and over. The half-smiles, the car rides, the off-hand remarks, the silent stretches that make me want to say everything I don’t dare to say. It is said that cats are granted nine lives. I would spend every one of mine revisiting a single afternoon with you.

You know I’m a poet, a writer, an amorist. But when it comes to you, I’m suddenly no good with words. If I must, I feel as though I were Icarus’ waxen wings and you were the sun. I’m the dog‑eared book on your nightstand, the diffident passenger when I ride shotgun, staring at you across the dash before looking away. I’m the film reel come undone, the flicker of a streetlight caught in your periphery. Everything in me feels unravelled, unmoored.

I can dress it up in metaphor all I like, but the truth is simpler—and I can’t even say it out loud.

Love,

Sennett <3

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

By then, I was already holding consciousness at an arm’s length, my asi…

Read more

My mind was grey and fuming with embitteredness, bleached of the fanatical devotion that had once inspired me to rearrange my evenings, skip school, and cancel plans. The fervor was gone. In its place was a raging pit of shame and ire, hot ash spreading malady through every corner of me.

It was a physical sickness that rolled through me in great waves, that shame. It would retreat into static and leave me limp as a sopping sheet of paper and prickling all over before I would feel it creeping in again, contaminating memory after memory of my would’ve, could’ve, should’ve.

Every late night was grotesque in retrospect. Every inside joke made at my expense radiated through my head and squeezed me to bits. I pressed my palms against my eyes as if that would suppress the flashbacks bubbling to the surface. I envisioned my drinking career—supposedly the time of my life—reduced to a miniature trophy on a dusty mantle. A teeny gold cup, disproportionate to the mythology I had built around it, with a date engraved on it like a tombstone.

How could I have not seen it then? All the times those people had asked me for money and favors, and I’d run in circles of infinite elliptical loops to stay in their good graces. Now you’ve done it, Sennett. You finally fucked it all up. Great work. I observed our friendship as one observes flightless birds: breathtakingly impassive, evolutionarily confused. They had wings, yes: a scapular trace that vowed to lift. Pinky promises to name a drink after me. Lending me sweaters when I’d spill wine on myself. Rituals, secrets. But the musculature for flight was never there. Everything was, at its core, vestigial.

Bloodlust aside, I knew with primal brevity that I could never show my face at those bars again. My race had run its course, the sparkling coat of resin I’d been lacquered in had dulled to something akin to tawdriness and intrusiveness. I could already picture it: the off-color smiles, the tight-lipped niceties that merited Tonys. After all, I had told myself from the very beginning that they would eventually tire of me. There was something vindicating about being the one to walk away.

Love,

Sennett <3

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

i. salt air and rainbow tiles

The clubhouse swimming pool was guileless as a frosted wedding cake, pool foam escaping into the filters in a facsimile of childplay. The air tasted of chlorine and rubber, bright cerulean stretching into crystalline waters. Everything felt incandescent there, glittering with serendipitous amity.

I would dip into the deep end and wade through the clear, my feet kicking in cyclical loops. The pool’s floor glittered in an iridescent rainbow, a mosaic of seahorses and dolphins holding me in the cathartic grip of pubescent narrative. In the evenings, when it was only myself and a lone lifeguard, I’d swim to the very centre, floating on my back, and stare up at the vast, endless sky as music played from an underwater speaker. It was a muffled jingling, as if it were coming from inside a dream. In those moments, I felt invincible.

As I marvelled at the never-ending stretch of night, letting the ripples lap at my limbs and hearing the sanguine rush of the pool jets, it felt like a stark reminder that, despite the billions of beings inhabiting this planet, I felt all on my own, different from everyone I knew. Tracing lines connecting the glittering stars, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something greater than myself—some source of power out there that could guide me in the right direction. Maybe if I squinted hard enough, or managed to make out a particular pattern among the cosmos, I could discover an arrow of constellations pointing me toward where I was meant to go. I could spend hours adrift in the depths of the clouds, trying to empty the sky with my eyes.

ii. a panopticon of knowledge

Although my parents didn’t speak a lick of English, I begged them to take me to the library every weekend. Reading was my personal matinee, an interlude from the outside world. I would dive into story after story and lose myself amongst the spidery letters and ellipses; nothing else seemed to matter. Our local library had soft couches with peeling foam and plastic animal decor in bright primary colours that slowly faded to Easter hues as I grew up. The ground floor was the children’s section, where I spent my most impressionable years, settling into dark corners with short novels and picture books, dropping like a final consonant.

The upper floor was accessed via a spiral staircase leading to the adults’ section, where the bookcases seemed to loom with reservation, and the air was tinged with an insensate stillness. Often, men would be watching X-rated videos with their shoes off at the upstairs desktops, so I preferred to stay on the ground floor. Hoping to bring as many books home with me as possible, I signed my parents up for library cards as well, so that I could shelve out novels on all three of our accounts and wheel my precious haul home in a child-sized trolley. I brought these books with me to school, to lunch, and even to the bathroom.

iii. concrete courtyards at golden hour

Every evening at six, the amber light would slip like white lies between the mountaintops, sun hanging idly in the trailing sky. It pooled in the town square, waxing gibbous on to the concrete of the fountain, turning its showers into molten glass.

Children were left untramelled, running headlong into flurries of sparrows and lauding in their startled ascent. Here, people refused to be dull—everyone briefly burnished, everyone briefly seen.

iv. baristas who know my order

“Hey, Miss Iced Americano is here.”

They said it before I even reached the counter, already fishing a paper straw from its jar and sliding it across in tandem with my cup of morning fuel. The baristas grinned in conspiratorial fashion. There was a softness to it.

From being a chary anachronism, the girl who kept her head down, to being expected. The recognition seeded my day with life, and I was charmed. I didn’t want to be, but I was.

v. runway lights at midnight

I used to think I could spot Canada from my parents’ bedroom window. We had a relative who lived in Toronto, and every summer she would arrive at the airport—first a plane jetting through the clouds, then a double-decker humming its way into Tung Chung, carrying her toward us. As a child, I had no quintessential grasp on geography or time zones, only what was in front of me.

My finger would press against the window like faded impressions on glass plates, tracing the runway lights blinking like high rollers in the dark, and I would announce with full conviction, “That’s Canada over there!”

My starry eyes took in the Picasso-blue shadows of the terminal, asinine in their certainty, reverent in their subversiveness. To me, the lights were not merely markers for landing, but a border. A glowing velveteen seam between home and elsewhere. If they blinked brightly enough, surely they could carry an entire country on their backs.

Love,

Sennett <3

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

This is your guide to navigating the month: a small, curated syllabus of rituals, readings, playlists, and pleasures to carry you through all thirty days. June, honey-lit and unhurried.

“Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly.” — Pablo Neruda

Your Soundtrack for June:

An upbeat and vivacious playlist to introduce you to the scene. Opening dynamically and bubbly with DuaLipa and Hearts2Hearts, before turning the spotlight to queer icons Britney Spears and Kylie Minogue for that electric pop, bringing the club to the bedroom energy. Then we close out our listening sesh with our modern pop girls, including but not limited to Chappell Roan and Addison Rae.

For dance parties, confetti cakes, and skyscraper views.

Your Reading List for June:

Love and Addiction: desire, dependency, and the things we do to feel that high

• Blue Sisters — Coco Mellors

• The Ten Year Affair — Erin Somers

Human Nature: how we connect, conflict, and cope

• Conversations on Love: Lovers, Strangers, Parents, Friends, Endings, Beginnings — Natasha Lunn

• You Didn’t Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip — Kelsey McKinney

Information Extravaganza: big events, bigger questions

• The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz — Erik Larson

• Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers — Caroline Fraser

Read according to mood, dog-earing without guilt, and annotating aggressively along the way.

30 Journal Prompts for June:

1. How are you waiting for life to change before you change?

2. Who are you blaming for something that’s actually your choice to change?

3. What does your version of freedom look and feel like?

4. How do you want people to describe you when you’re not in the room?

5. What’s one belief about yourself that you are ready to let go of and change?

6. How does the way you speak about yourself shape your reality?

7. When you feel triggered or insulted, what version of you takes over? Does this version feel like you or separate from you?

8. What role does anger play in your life? Is it protecting you? Suppressing you? Motivating you? Distracting you?

9. How do you soothe yourself when no one else is available? Can you

   think of a time you were able to calm yourself down? What helped?

10. What habits reflect a version of you that you are ready to outgrow?

11. Are you stuck in any unhelpful or harmful cycles? What small, daily action could disrupt it?

12. What decisions have you already made but haven’t acted on?

13. Think of something you’re indecisive about. Now, imagine you’ve made the decision you’re leaning toward, but are afraid to take. Write a letter from that version of you to you today.

14. Who in your life brings out the most authentic version of you?

15. Name 2 times you confused intensity with intimacy. What was going on in your emotional state that may have led you to conflate the two?

16. Describe exactly what financial freedom looks and feels like for you. Then write the top three identity shifts required to become that person.

17. Think about all of the skills you use daily and list them, including ones you may not think of as valuable and difficult skills.

18. What does success look like for you? (Not society’s version, but yours.)

19. Where have you been unfairly hard on yourself?

20. What are you proud of that very few people know about?

21. How does your inner child still try to get your needs met?

22. What’s one way you can show up for yourself today that your younger self craved?

23. How does your highest self walk into a room full of people? What are they thinking when they walk in? How do they feel about themselves?

24. How would you live if you truly believed closure isn’t required?

25. How is trying to “be loyal” or “keep the peace” causing you to ignore your needs?

26. What payoff do you get from holding on to old stories that are keeping you stuck?

27. When have you experienced being “in flow,” and what conditions created that experience?

28. Recall a time when something worked out better than you expected.

29. What is a basic comfort you often overlook but would miss if it were gone?

30. What’s something about your body you’re thankful it can do?

On a final note, June asks very little of us beyond attention. It carries a steady, focused energy that tells us to stay in the present moment and emphasizes the value of refining what already has potential. The aim is to tend to our surroundings, to feel balance and create a quietly elegant energy that uplifts our steadiness.

Love,

Sennett <3

Creating and sharing my writing for free is important to me, but it does take time. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be honoured if you considered buying me a coffee! It would mean the world to me xx

Buy Me A Coffee

Read more

Read more