No — I’m actually approaching 40, which is unrelated to me quitting my freelance copywriting business and resurrecting my ‘02 LiveJournal voice on a very hip, very new platform called LinkedIn. Totally unrelated. Please do not connect those dots.

Once upon a time I was a cute little dreamer who fell in love with reading and therefore accidentally became a writer. Like many good dreamers, I took the scenic route — music school, liberal arts degree, the millennial-marketer pipeline — plus a divorce, eating disorder recovery, becoming a first-time mom during a global pandemic, and a few other fun things, for, you know, the plot. Character development. Spice.

Somewhere between optimizing brands and optimizing survival, I optimized myself into someone I barely recognized and got very, very tired of hitting KPIs for narratives that weren’t mine.

All I’ve wanted since is to talk like mahself. For mahself. As mahself.

The higher-self-as-a-toucan detail? That’s real. Or metaphorical. Or both. Touks is less a mascot and more the bright and vibrant part of me that refuses to go gentle into that good night. He squawked incessantly until I could no longer ignore the thing deep in mah chest demanding to be put to the page.

So here we are.

Ah. Anywoo. A few bullet points below.