There’s an unspoken requisite requiring all writers to carry around a tiny journal for jotting down sudden inspirations and story ideas while they’re in public. I’m nothing if not a blind follower, so I carry three of these special journals in my purse wherever I go. I’ll say this—they are not full of sudden inspirations and story ideas. I mean, sure, there’s some of that stuff, but mostly these journals are full of weird observations and confessions. I paged through these little bundles while eating at a restaurant by myself and thought I’d share the golden-est of nuggets, verbatim, as I originally wrote them.

DISCLAIMER: Don’t judge me… Ah, what the hell? Go ahead.

1. “Jenny’s granddaddy isn’t doing well… he’s close to expiring.” - Mama
I thought this expression was weird. Why use the word “expiring”? Like he’s a package of yogurt.”

2. “4 a.m. I’m sexually attracted to Doug Stamper on House of Cards. He’s so effective. He takes care of business and leaves no room for failure or debate. I just found out that he dies eventually. I’m devastated."

3. “You don’t have to be nice if you’ll never see them again.”

4. “Hiding is worse than being naked and rejected.” - Mama to Ma”

5. *hastily drawn doodle of overalls*

“Libel vs. Slander

Defamation – area of law

Libel – written or published

Slander – spoken”

6. “Even Death has a mother.”

7. “Time is the only enemy in the garden.”

8. “I don’t like her eyebrows. She has pointy eyebrows.” - Pizza Shop Nerd”

9. “If the right hemisphere is utilized, it expands to include thoughts that once would have been impossible.”

10. “I am so tired. I am so alive.”

11. “Even the truths feel like lies, so you find your honesty in silence.”

12. “Me: self-love = nuclear fusion (self-sustaining)”

13. “It was a sad world. Everyone had glowing monitors where they should have had heaving chests. And on these monitors, a person’s worst moment played over and over again. Susan once had a conversation about the weather with a young woman checking her out at the grocery store and had to politely ignore a scene of the girl’s mother dying. “Do you want the milk in a bag?” “Oh, no. Thank you,” she answered as the girl’s face appeared on screen, covered in tears.”

14. “Death in a white mask, the blast blows loud and breaks the glass, no way to escape, dead-locked in an unlucky fate, what a waste. You kneel to pray and on your knees a soft “please” escapes your lips, vitality dips and you die, crystallized and wide-eyed.”

15. “The worthiness—that’s the thing. If you think you don’t deserve a certain type of love, you’ll block that love from coming to you. And if somehow, the Universe manages to push past your defenses, you’ll be so mistrustful, suspicious, and insecure, so as to not receive the gift entirely. In fact, you’ll resent the gift because it illuminates what is unsolved in you.”

16. “Slower” in the lower frequencies. All things happen at once as one. So everything is always happening. ●~ Like the center of the thing which expands. The point and the line. The particle and the wave. The peak and the trough. The Big Bang. An assortment of moments which we attempt to quantify. We think if we can label a moment with time then it makes the moment quantifiable. The moment is infinite and indistinct. It has no beginning or end. It is not like a picture or even a frame of a video. The moment—and there is only one—is universal, but it is not constant.”

17. “I don’t want to stand in the way of my happiness anymore.”