Netflix and No Chill

My most striking memory of discussing racism in high school is from my freshman English class. We read To Kill A Mockingbird. We talked about racial prejudice in the context of the book. We left feeling like we were better people for it.

There are two problems here.

First, we learned about racism in a class with no black students and very few people of color, with a white teacher, from a book written by a white woman. On some level the demographics of the class can’t be helped, but the point here is that nobody involved in this discussion had any actual experience being a black person in America. Basically, this is the equivalent of trying to learn to drive a car from someone who’s never actually driven one, but have watched a couple YouTube tutorials on how to do it.

The second issue of concern is that all three of the books I read in K12 that dealt with racism (To Kill a Mockingbird, Things Fall Apart, and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry– the latter two are excellent books and also actually written by black authors) were dated. Is it important to understand the history of anti-black racism in our country? Absolutely. Is learning about these books enough to understand what racism looks like today? Absolutely not. We could have been reading Walter Dean Myers or Jacqueline Wilson for a more modern perspective, which honestly, probably would have been more educational than reading yet another white male classic.

I think about this in a lot of the conversations I overhear or am part of about current race issues. Quite frequently, these conversations are occurring between white participants who likely had similar educations to mine. People who never learned to recognize much less talk about modern manifestations of racism. People who have certainly never experienced it first hand. People who I’d like to assume are, for the most part, well-intentioned and nice. People whose niceness and well-intentionedness doesn’t make them automatically knowledgable or right about race issues.

Any time a discussion involving race comes up, those of us who are white need to ask ourselves, do I know enough about this to actually talk about it? No really, do I have any idea what I’m talking about?

Probably we don’t. Because we haven’t learned how to identify modern racism, we haven’t talked to black people about their lives, and we haven’t learned how to have real conversations or how to resist the urge to be defensive about race. And even if we have, none of us have actually lived as a black person.

So why do we think our opinions on racism are so important?

I want you to think. When was the last time you read a book by a black author? When was the last time you watched a movie with a black lead or a black director?

We can’t keep having conversations about race issues if we’re not even doing the work to listen to the people who live those experiences. It costs you nothing to listen. Listening won’t solve everything, but we can’t solve problems we don’t recognize or understand. Which makes listening to black perspectives the best place to start.

We need to do better. It is literally a matter of life and death. Start by listening.

Books to Read

Movies to Watch

Documentaries to Watch

I think it’s time to finally release the archive of #ThrowbackThursday posts that I wrote for awhile. Most people use the hashtag to post cute pics of themselves from yesteryear. I used it to…well, you’ll see.

The Official Kyra #ThrowbackThursday Collection:

#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time my siblings all decided to start calling my brother Crouton instead of his real name and my mom didn’t question it like whatevs, they’ve done weirder things.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time Paige wanted me to turn on a show for her but I didn’t feel like it so I told her “Black Bear in a Cave” was on and it was just a blank tv, but apparently she believed me because I came back an hour later and she was still watching it.

#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time I knocked Miranda‘s front teeth out in a freak reclining chair accident and she was crying and bleeding everywhere and my parents weren’t home and the whole situation really freaked out the friend I was supposed to be having a slumber party with.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time Morina knocked out my front teeth while we were pretending to be cats and playing tug-of-war with a jump rope in our mouths and I was crying and bleeding everywhere and my mom wasn’t home so my dad had me watch televised rodeo to calm me down (because everyone knows televised rodeo calms kids down) and the whole thing really freaked out me and the cousin I was supposed to be having a sleepover with.

‪#‎ThrowBackThursday‬ to that time in high school I thought it would be cool to wear jeans with a sundress and I did that for like two years and none of my friends ever bothered to tell me how stupid that looked and that was the last time I tried to make a fashion statement except that time in college I thought it would be cool to wear shorts with tights and this is mostly why I still let my mom pick out my clothes for me.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time in elementary school I dressed up as John Paul Jones and gave a speech in which the highlight was me stabbing some kid in the front row with my tinfoil sword while screaming “I have not yet begun to fight!” and then I did it again my senior year of college during a class presentation, just to make my whole education feel like it had really come full circle.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time Morina and I decided that real pets were too mainstream so we started raising a colony of water balloon pets which all had very alliterative names (Olga Orange, Patty Pink, Bob Blue) and we were having a grand time of it until our younger cousins brutally murdered all of them and left their plastic carcasses strewn all across grandma’s lawn, except there was one we’d hidden in the freezer so he survived the massacre and had to live knowing he was the sole remaining member of his clan.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to when I created a fake city called Kids Town and appointed myself mayor because I could and also because it was my natural born right as oldest child and I had a clear understanding of how democracy works.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that Thanksgiving when we decided to see how many people we could fit on my parents bed and we got up to sixteen or so before we started worrying the bed would break and we all jumped off and my dad’s cousin’s boyfriend said he’d never seen sober people act so weird.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time I stumbled upon a hedgehog in my grandma’s basement and apparently it had been lost down there for like a week before I found it crawling up the stairs in the middle of the night and this was one of the most traumatic experiences of my childhood and my parents don’t even remember it.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to when I was five and loved to eat Spaghetti O’s until my dad told me the meatballs were made out of kangaroo meat and I literally have not eaten any since, not even the ones without meatballs and my mom stopped buying them because I wouldn’t eat them so none of my siblings had ever tried them until a few years ago but now they’re really into them.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time we got homemade milkshakes and Miranda decided to put some salt in hers and so I ran and told my parents that Miranda was ruining her milkshake and she got mad at me and dumped an entire shaker of salt in my milkshake while I was telling them and that’s how I learned not to tattle except I’m still kind of sad she ruined that milkshake and I think she still owes me another one.

#throwbackthursday to when I made my theatrical debut as Girl in Car #3 and I had to stick hangers in my hair to make it look windswept and the braid hurt and I was also bitter that I was couldn’t be Girl in Car #1 and I think this picture really captures the essence of that bitterness.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time Colton went to Build a Bear to make a turtle and my mom asked what he wanted to name it and he said “Sump” and my mom said “You mean Stump?” because apparently “Sump” isn’t a real turtle name (unlike Stump which is a totally normal turtle name) and Colton said “sure” and that’s how we ended up with a stuffed turtle named Stump.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to when some kid tried to buy Corn Nuts from a vending machine and they got stuck and this chivalrous guy tried to help out by shaking the machine but it wasn’t working so the guy went to the other side of the hall and got a running start and slammed his body up against the machine but it still didn’t work so he admitted his defeat and bought another bag of Corn Nuts so they could get the first one out and I just watched because I already know that vending machines are tougher than I am.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time we went to LA and drove to four different Marriotts before finding the one we were supposed to stay at and I in my infinite four-year-old wisdom proclaimed “Oh! So that’s why they call it Lost Angeles.”

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time my dad decided that it was really fun to sew custom made dog diapers.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to when Miranda liked to write jokes and no matter what the joke was, the punchline was always “two pillows” which made sense pretty much never, but somehow that was funnier than most of the jokes she comes up with now. Life is rough when your sense of humor peaks at age six.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time I was playing salon with Miranda and I got the brush super stuck in her hair and decided the only way to fix it was to cut it out of her hair and then she had a big chunk of hair missing for months and that’s how I became one of the youngest ever beauty school dropouts.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time Miranda tried to get Crouton to do something for her by threatening to dump his stuffed turtle in water and then he started crying so she tried to dry the turtle off with a blow dryer but accidentally set him (the turtle, not Crouton) on fire instead.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time I was listening to a guy give a speech and he wanted to make a point so he did a backflip in the middle of his speech and I was too surprised by the sudden backflip to notice what he was actually trying to make a point about, but it was probably a pretty solid point.

#ThrowbackThursday to when I had to spend the night in my great grandma’s scary basement and I crawled under the covers and felt something cold against my foot and freaked out because I’d just seen a giant spider and I thought it was a spider even though I know spiders are not cold and metallic, but it was actually just a spoon. That was in the bed for some reason.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time the Vivint guy was asking my dad about our home security and he asked who had access to our house in case of an emergency and my dad said he had a brother who lived in town and the Vivint guy asked if my uncle had a key to our house and my dad told him no, but he did have a chainsaw and could definitely get in if he wanted and then the Vivint guy was just kinda quiet because that response wasn’t in his script.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time my friend and I decided to pull an all nighter where we’d stay up all night and go to bed the next morning except the next day one of our friends had an all day birthday party that we decided to go to instead. As it turned out, the all-day party had a scheduled two hour nap break but instead of sleeping we went to the dollar store (because why not) and I made my friend drive because even though we were both delusional she was only hearing things that didn’t exist while I on the other hand was seeing nonexistant moths.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to when my third grade class was watching the Rugrats movie for our class party and I made my mom sign a note saying I wasn’t allowed to watch it and she told me that I was allowed to watch it and I said no I wasn’t because I didn’t think it was appropriate and I apparently just liked to self censor my cartoons.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time my dad made the whole family play Rescue Heroes with Crouton and I got to be Billy Blazes (the fireman) which was pretty great because the Rescue Heroes were putting out a fire and everyone who wasn’t Billy Blazes had to help by peeing on the fire except for Matt Medic who took care of all the guys who burned themselves while peeing on the fire.

‪#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time I planned a dance and my parents forgot to tell me we were going to a family reunion that weekend and they wouldn’t let me stay to go to the dance I planned and so I spent the whole weekend protesting the injustice by wearing a hard hat which was sort of relevant since the dance was construction themed, for some reason.

#‎ThrowbackThursday‬ to that time I was angrily lying on a beach in a hard hat and this little girl walking by told her mom she saw Bob the Builder and her mom said not to bother me because Bob the Builder was sleeping. So yeah. I’ve been told I look like Bob the Builder.

#ThrowbackThursday to that time I found a bunny stuck in the window well and I spent 40 minutes chasing him with a shovel and trying to catch him so I could free him and I finally got him and released him onto the lawn where he nibbled on the grass tentatively for a moment before he saw me, panicked, and ran straight into a mouse trap.

#ThrowbackThursday to the time Miranda decided that the uniform she was supposed to wear for her school choir concert was stupid so she just wore the family Tony the Tiger costume (our family has a Tony the Tiger costume that gets used on a surprisingly regular basis) and the girl sitting in front of me spent the whole concert saying “But what does the dancing tiger have to do with anything?”

#ThrowbackThursday to the time my family went to the La Brea Tar Pits and had an awkward tour guide who said he hated when people called it “The La Brea Tar Pits” because la means the and brea means tar so it’s like saying “the the tar tar pits” and apparently it’s not technically tar and according to the tour guide, the name is “wrong, inaccurate, and redundant.”

#ThrowbackThursday to when I was a kid and we had to fill out this questionnaire about ourselves and it asked what we were afraid of and I wrote that my greatest fear was eyelashes and my mom asked why I was scared of that and I said one could fall in my eye and when I tried to get it out I would scratch my eye and go blind.

#ThrowbackThursday to that time my dad went to our church youth camp as the medical supervisor and the camp director locked him inside the camp after everyone else had left so my dad had to break out of church camp with a chainsaw.

#ThrowbackThursday to the time my roommate and I were on a double date and locked ourselves out of our apartment and had to break in through the second story window and apparently our dates were not that impressed with our climbing skills because we never went out with them again.

#ThrowbackThursday to when my brother went through a phase where he fell asleep random places and this phase unfortunately corresponded with his phase where he liked to run around the house naked so he spent a lot of time sleeping in weird places while totally nude. It was always like “Where is Colton?” and “Oh he’s asleep in a suitcase. Naked.”

#ThrowbackThursday to that time I was rear-ended by a guy who worked for our insurance company. While he was driving a company car. And when my mom came to pick me up she asked if I called the insurance company and I said no, they were already here.

#ThrowbackThursday to that time Miranda and I went Christmas shopping and we saw our cousin and instead of saying hi to him like normal people we decided to see how long we could follow him without him noticing us and he shopped for like twenty minutes before leaving and he never saw us.

#ThrowbackThursday to that time I got an email saying I’d won a raffle I entered for a book and the book was about a vampire rockstar and I’m pretty sure I never entered any raffle for a book with the tagline “blood, sex, and rock’n roll” but I’m now the proud owner of a copy.

#ThrowbackThursday to that time at church where we were supposed to draw pictures of our moms and my mom had worn this really pretty floral dress that day and I wanted to capture the essence of that dress in my picture but the dress-essence capturing took too long and I didn’t have time to finish my picture but the teacher hung it up anyway and then kids laughed at me and asked why my mom didn’t have a head. For the record, my mom does have a head. A very nice one.

#FlashbackFriday to that time we found a picture of Miranda in middle school and she was wearing a hat with ducks and a leopard print scarf and I kind of laughed at her before remembering she took both of those items out of my closet.

#ThrowbackThursday to that time I accidentally scheduled back-to-back dates with two different guys and I thought it would work out okay because I had scheduled a fifteen minute grace period between the two dates. It did not work out okay.

#ThrowbackThursday to that time that my dad decided we should all go roll around in the grass in our back yard as an activity and we had a grand time of it but remembered sort of belatedly that we’re all allergic to grass.

#ThrowbackThursday to when I was seven and I decided I wanted a pet bunny so I went into the back yard and caught a bunny and tried to keep it in a box but my parents said no I couldn’t do that even though I put it in a Capri Sun box so that it could have the little holes to breathe through but my parents said I had to let the bunny go back to its bunny family and also questioned how I’d caught a bunny in the first place but anyway that’s the story of how I had a pet bunny for like five minutes.

#throwbackthursday to that time I was with Joe party of six waiting for a seat at Rainforest Cafe and we’d been waiting forever and we finally got hopeful because they called for Joe but it was Joe party of four and I got mad and said they should have called our group because we were “cooler, better looking, and more smarter.” And then the rest of Joe party of six disowned me and became Joe party of five.

#throwbackthursday to that time I was on an airplane and the guy next to me asked how old I was and I said seventeen but I realized that was wrong so I corrected myself and said I was twenty-one. I was actually twenty-two.

#ThrowbackThursday to when I was in middle school and decided to write a book and I based a character off of Morina and she asked if her character could have a super hot boyfriend so I gave her character a super hot boyfriend but then she (Morina, not the character) did something that made me mad so I killed her character’s boyfriend because I’m petty like that.

 

There has been a lot said about the recent film adaptation of cats, despite the fact that very few people have seen it. I know that not very many people have seen it because it was a complete and utter flop at the box office.

Since you, like most movie-goers probably haven’t seen it, here’s everything I think you should know about Cats.

The Plot

Discussions of Cats often feature comments like “what even was the plot” and “I have no idea what’s going on.”

The short answer to the question “What is the plot of Cats?” is that the plot is that cats exist and act like cats.

But I will provide you with a more in depth summary.

On the streets of London live a tribe of cats known amongst themselves as the Jellicles. Into their midst is tossed an abandoned cat named Victoria. Her appearance is useful from a narrative standpoint because everything is weird af but the audience is able to more or less learn what is going on as a cat whose name is probably Munkuskrut or something equally ridiculous explains it to Victoria.

Munkrustrat tells Victoria that it is the night of the Jellicle ball and that one lucky cat will be chosen by Old Deuteronomy (a heckin old cat) to ascend to a new life. Victoria asks how the cat will be chosen and Munerskatur tells her that obviously they will have a sing off and Victoria is like, yeah that makes sense.

A bunch of cats sing songs about themselves for roughly an hour.

Meanwhile, Macavity, the criminal cat, is lurking in the shadows and abducting each cat competing to be the Jellicle choice. Once he has removed all of the other contestants, he makes his own bid to be the Jellicle choice. But he’s not even willing to sing his own song so his femme fatale cat minion sings a song about how everyone knows he’s bad but he never gets caught. McCavity demands that he be named the Jellicle choice but Old Deuteronomy is like nah, there was literally just a whole song about how bad you are.

In a fit of rage, Macavity teleports himself and Old Deuteronomy away, because naturally cats have literal magic. Mukrususkrukutut bemoans the loss of the old cat but Victoria suggests that Mister Mistoffolees bring her back using his magic. And Mister Mistoffolees is like, shoot I only know like one card trick I just said I was magic to impress this fine feline named Victoria. But the cats all sing about how great Mister Mistoffolees is to pump him up and he eventually is able to teleport Old Deuteronomy back.

At that point Grizabella, a former glamor cat, is invited to sing her song about how her life used to be great but sucks now. She becomes the Jellicle choice and is carried away to cat heaven(?) in a hot air balloon.

Then Old Deuteronomy breaks the forth wall and at that point you’re like, this might as well happen. She tells you about how you should talk to your cat. Then all the cats run off back into the streets and continue to be cats.

The Graphics

Also much maligned is the way the film’s CGI turns the cast into creatures that are not actually cats or humans and which might give viewers with weaker constitutions nausea. Here’s the thing, if you’re going the live action route, your options are either weird CGI or fur coats that don’t actually look like coats, so we’re just going to have to accept that suspension of disbelief will be required.

After returning from the movie, I spent half the day holding various objects up to my cat because I’m not convinced the set makers actually knew how big cats were. The have cats holding silverware at two different points and I don’t even think the silverware is the same size between scenes.

But I kinda liked when train tracks randomly appeared and all the cats started dancing on them, so the visuals have that going for them.

Overall experience and takeaways

I was on heavy cold medication one night which is mostly why I bought tickets to Cats in the first place. I was surprised when my dad informed me that he wanted to see it. So we went. We watched it. As soon as the credits rolled, our entire row started laughing.

Perhaps the weirdest part of Cats is that my dad absolutely and unironically loves it. He’s telling everyone who will listen that the critics are wrong. He’s playing the soundtrack on repeat. Mister Mistoffolees is his favorite cat.

When we got home, he told my mom that “at the end we all just started laughing because it was just that much fun.”

I wasn’t aware that that was why we were laughing.

Here’s the kicker, I think I agree with him. I’m not sure that Cats is so much a film as a cult, and I think I joined. I very genuinely enjoyed the film. Probably my hottest take about any film ever is that Cats 2019 is actually a phenomenal adaptation of the musical.

The cast is phenomenal and the music is catchy. So I basically saw a bunch of celebrities I like singing songs about all the goofy things cats do and putting on a pretty solid string of performances.

Shimbleshank’s tap number? Slaps. Taylor Swift’s stage presence? Sultry. James Corden’s humor? Entertaining. Jason Derulo’s dancing? Electrifying. Jennifer Hudson’s vocals? Slays.

The CGI is bad enough that I don’t feel too weird about thinking Mister Mistofolees is cute. Maybe.

I can’t believe I just wrote like 900 words of a review defending Cats the movie.

Anyway, I had fun and I felt things. Weird things mostly, but I definitely felt them. Apparently Cats was just the sort of chaotic energy I need in my life.

Dear Readers and Friends,

There are 600 million blogs on the internet, give or take. Most of these blogs are never read, and it’s easy to see how writing a blog can feel like screaming into the void. Which is why I never cease to be amazed that people (a handful of them) actually read my blog. As I finish out my Love Letters series, I want to thank you for joining me on the journey.

Some months ago I was in a church lesson where the teacher had everyone in class write down what they felt they were struggling with the most. These notes were anonymous and we posted them on the white board at the front of the class. I would not be exaggerating if I said that at least half of the people in the class said that their current deepest struggle was loneliness.

At least half the people in that room felt that loneliness was their primary struggle. To me, that’s pretty revealing. It also made me wonder why, if we’re all so lonely, it isn’t easier to just connect with all the other people who are lonely.

Connection shouldn’t be hard. Not when it’s something we so mutually desire. Not when there’s so much in our human experience that we share. And yet time and again we find ourselves screaming into the void. Because connection requires vulnerability, and vulernability is scary.

Sometimes I say things people probably don’t want to hear. It means the world to me when they listen anyway.

Thank you to everyone who walks with me on this crazy journey called life. Thank you to people who choose to believe me. Thanks to those of you who’ve chosen to connect yourself to the chaos that is me.

Thank you for listening. It means the world.

Love, Kyra

 

Dear Geeks,

I have been talking about the new Taylor Swift album non-stop for at least two weeks. Which is impressive considering it came out two days ago.

I particularly love the album’s closing line, “You are what you love.”

Typically, geek has been a word used to describe people who were passionate about certain not-exactly mainstream things. For me, being a geek is something we all do at least sometimes. We have things we’re passionate about, all of us. We’re defined by what we love.

There’s something utterly brilliant about a person unabashedly loving something, especially if it’s something other people don’t quite get. I love to see people being passionate about the weirdest things.

I’ve loved watching people obsess over mac and cheese, possums, ping pong, knitting, Korean poetry, roller derby, limited edition M&Ms, and Broadway set pieces— to name a few.

I have my own set of things I geek out about. Pokémon Go, The 1960s Batman television series, corn on the cob, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and footie pajamas. I don’t believe in “guilty pleasures.” I don’t think we should be embarrassed by the things that make us happy.

The ability to obsess over goofy things feels like such fundamentally human trait. Geeking out over something captures all the best parts of being human.

So here’s to the geeks of this world. May you always be able to surround yourself with the things you love.

Love, Kyra

Dear Creative Types

Sometimes life is boring. You wake up at the same time everyday and go to work and do all the same things and have all the same conversations day in and day out. On days like this, it’s good to have the creations of out of the box thinkers to break up the monotony.

It’s nice to escape to a new world for a bit and it’s nice to be able to talk about when you come back to the real world.

Actually, though, more often than not, life is boring. It’s the opposite of boring, which I guess is overwhelming. It’s actually in these times that I appreciate creative endeavors the most because art helps me navigate the world I live in. It helps me make sense of my life.

I process my feelings through (Taylor Swift) lyrics. I draw strength from the heroines in the comic books I read. I relax by reading novels. I get inspired by the art I see. I was theatric from the musicals I see.

If you’re thinking that I’m only talking about famous full-time creators here, that’s not the case. Can I tell you about my favorite piece of art I’ve ever seen?

It wasn’t a Degas or a da Vinci or a Monet or a Raphael or a Renior or a David, though I’ve seen works by all those artists in person. The piece was called Windswept and it was an installation piece in a tiny museum in Helena, Montana. It’s kind of random chance that I saw it at all, but I went as part of a short tour I took while at Girls State after my junior year of high school.

Like I said, it was an installation piece, installed in a room that was painted all white and had a high ceiling. The wall to my left was covered in these wings made of pastel colored glass that ascended up the wall. The wall to my right was covered in gnarled tumbleweed made from leather.

While we were there, the tour guide spontaneously asked one of the girls in my group, an opera singer, to sing a song as we stood in the room. The song was both harsh and beautiful, and it fit the tone of the room perfectly.

I think of that piece often, the way that it conveyed how a force could be both beautiful and treacherous. I haven’t seen it since. I can’t even find pictures. I can’t even find a record of it in the museums archives. As far as the internet is concerned, it might as well have never existed.

Sometimes we portray art as this cute, whimsical sort of business. It usually isn’t acutally like that in process. It’s usually frustrating and hard and painstaking.

Most art is created in ways that aren’t glamorous, by people who will never be famous. It still matters.

Art is the way we express the things that matter most to us as humans, whether we’re creating it ourselves or sharing it with others.

Art has helped me find my place in the world, so thank you to all those who make it. You’re the real masterpieces.

Kyra

Dear Extroverts,

I have a fairly extensive collection of wax melts. It’s because I like them but it’s also because sometimes when I don’t want to be alone and all my friends are busy, I wander around WalMart just to be around people. And I feel awkward going and not getting anything, so usually I buy a wax melt or two.

To be honest, I think of introversion and extroversion on more of a spectrum than as a binary. I’m definitely pretty far on the extroversion end of the scale, though. I don’t just like being around people, I have an emotional need to be around people. A lot. Otherwise I get irrationally angsty and end up wandering around WalMart at weird hours of the day.

It’s not that I don’t like introverts, of course. The vast majority of my friends are fairly introverted. I’m not writing this letter because I don’t love them. I’m writing this letter because there are things about being an extrovert that I’ve only recently begun to understand and be able to articulate.

When I think about being an extrovert, often the first thought I have is that I’m a burden to my introvert friends. I’m clingy. I’m attention-needy. I talk non-stop. I overshare. I’m constantly worried about driving my introvert friends crazy.

If I had the choice, I don’t think I’d choose to be as extroverted as I am. I don’t like needing so much interaction. I don’t like feeling like I’m draining or overbearing.

I guess that’s one of the reasons my extrovert friends are important to me. They’re validating. They remind me that needing human interaction isn’t bad, kind of like needing food or sleep isn’t bad. Also, it’s nice to have friends who are as constantly down to hang as I am.

To my extrovert friends, I love you. You don’t take up too much space. You aren’t a burden.

Connection can be everything.

Love, Kyra.

Dear Teachers,

I was in school for twenty-two years. Needless to say, I’ve had a lot of teachers.

I’ve also been a teacher. Up until recently I had planned to teach as a career. So I know first hand that being a teacher is stupid hard.

When I was a teacher, I was tired. All the time.

My students asked me dumb questions and I had to pretend like they were not dumb questions.

The technology always broke on the days when I needed it most.

The students complained about everything, like that the class was on the third floor (I was not in control of this) and that the class was four days a week (I was not in control of this either) or that they didn’t think they should have to take freshman comp (I was definitely not in control of this) or that the topic for the collaborative research project was boring (they chose their own topics for that paper).

And so help me, if I ever have to read another paper arguing for why the legal drinking age should be lowered, I will throw up.

Also, teachers only get paid like $5, which is stupid and ridiculous.

All in all, being a teacher is a thankless job in many ways. But it’s also an incredibly profound job. I don’t think anyone leaves their education without being shaped by the teachers. Students learn more from teachers than just the subjects that are taught.

Good teachers taught me more than the course material. They taught me how to think. They taught me how to apply. They taught me how to grow. They taught me to communicate. They taught me how to question. They taught me how to live life better.

To all the wonderful teachers in my life, you deserve an A+. Also a major salary increase (I (unfortunately) am not in control of this).

Love, Kyra

Dear Forever Alone Club,

Five-ish years ago I accidentally joined a Forever Alone Club because I (ironically) liked the boy who invited me. Also somewhat ironically, I’m the only member of the original club who is not now married, which I think makes me the de facto president. I feel qualified for this position given that I haven’t had a boyfriend in like seven years.

If it’s possible to be accomplished at being single, I am. Fortunately for me, I have a solid set of friends who are also in the perpetually-single boat.

This letter could get pretty long if actually gave all my thoughts on being a long-term loner, so I’ll have to pick and choose what I say. There are a few things I knew from the start I wasn’t going to say.

I’m not going to tell you that you’ll meet someone someday because I don’t know that and also it seems like a statistically inaccurate thing to say.

I’m not going to tell you that you’re perfect the way you are because nobody’s perfect and perfection isn’t a prerequisite of finding love.

And I’m definitely not going to try and convince you that being single is all sunshine and roses, because sometimes it really, really sucks.

Mostly what I want to do is celebrate you. You’re someone worth celebrating. You definitely make my life better.

Being single sucks, but you don’t.

I tend to feel stupid in the face of unrequited love. I feel like I should have known better than to pursue whoever the guy is or to get my hopes up that things would be different this time. But loving anyone is an act of bravery, and perhaps even more so when they don’t love you back.

Learning to love yourself is an act of bravery too. Being single sucks, but it sucks a lot less if you at least like being with yourself. There’s a lot of romance in life that you can enjoy all by yourself, romance in nature and art and platonic relationships. (Although I often find myself wishing I had someone special to share those sort of moments with).

Thanks to all my always-single friends for your solidarity and for always knowing how to make me laugh. Thanks for going on adventures with me and telling me how I awesome I am. Thanks just for existing, because you’re whole and complete, just the way you are.

Being alone is a lot better when we do it together.

Love, Kyra

Dear Questioners,

In Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke advises his correspondent to “Try to be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…Live the questions now.”

I’ve been thinking about these words since I first read them several months ago. I spend a lot of time having questions, but I don’t know that that’s the same thing as living questions. Rilke’s quote sounds nice on paper; it’s exactly what we would expect of a poet. Words that make us feel good.

Reality is harder. Or at least it feels harder. We live in a world that demands answers. We encounter people who want answers so often that the act of embracing ambiguity feels like a rebellion.

Sometimes life itself demands answers in the form of action. Whether or not we do have answers, we sometimes have to make choices as if we do. For me, this is where living questions becomes particularly tricky. I don’t want to be someone who is inactive because I don’t have all the information. I have to act on the information I do have, and making these choices are where the questions become difficult to live.

I want my questions to make me better, not hold me back.

People who have answers—and worse, people who think they have answers when they really don’t—will usually try to pull you in some direction or the other. It’s nice to meet people who let you have your questions. It’s nice to meet people who have questions of their own.

Ask me your questions. I’ll ask you mine. We’ll laugh and talk and wonder and probably end the day with more questions than we started with.

To all the ones who never outgrew the phase of perpetually why-ing, I love you. I love the opportunity you create with your uncertainty. I love the power in your vulnerability. I love the way you don’t demand answers from me, because I don’t have them either.

I hope you learn to live your questions, whatever that looks like to you. I hope you find a home in ambiguity. I hope other people see you seeking and join in you in searching rather than explaining.

Mostly, I hope you’re living it all. As Rilke reminds us, that is the point, to live everything. So why not live it all?

Love, Kyra