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Howdy! Thank you again for signing up for my newsletter. It means a lot to me, and it really helps me out since I'm now only on social media one day a month. (Mostly to "show face" and leave.)

What a ride this past month (technically a little over a month, but it's not a two-year delay like last time haha) has been!

Here's a quick list of highlights:

• Am published in the PRINT version of Bon Appetit, October issue on newsstands now! I was kinda waiting for them to put it online, but they haven't yet. I guess they wait til they have moved to the next print issue. Which makes perfect sense.
• Was awarded 2024 Established Artist in Literary Arts and Humanities by the New Orleans Tourism and Cultural Fund.
• Got my first ever op-ed published in The Times-Picayune. It's about drug harm reduction. I have another op-ed in me right now, so it won't be the last. Clearly I'm a fussy old lady now oh my God.
• Attended The Revival at New Orleans African American Museum and had the most perfect time!
• Have been walking and taking the bus pretty much everywhere since my car's battery is dead dead and I can't afford a new one right now. I'm getting back fine though, and this is perfect weather for it.
• Much thanks to St. Monica and St. Therese Little Flower, my neighbor bought my house and not only saved it from foreclosure, but she also has gotten everything fixed in there that was broken. Which was quite a bit, since I had the world's worst contractors of all time. I won't go into detail about them, since we are hoping to do a lil something with that.

More About Digital Minimalism

I have so much more time and I enjoy everything so much more. Getting to enjoy things for me has been great, and something I haven't experienced in years. Since 2013ish.

The biggest thing is that I thought I needed social media because of my work. Which yeah, it feels that way. Our editors (and other folks' bosses and just all the self-proclaimed gurus and stuff online) say we need to be on there. At NOLA.com, we were taught to "get in the comments early and often." We were encouraged to share our work. But, who does that help? It just helps your employers and makes you prone to boundary bending.

I've learned that everything I thought I needed social media for, I don't. The only downside is that I'm not as up on pop culture. But I could if I wanted to. However, having fun observing everything I see in real life and knowing that my decisions are all mine -- not a sneaky algorithm on a site designed to be like a slot machine -- makes it all worth it.

I highly prescribe digital minimalism to everyone, and honestly I feel like it's the wave of the future. People getting sick of all this and are seeing the longterm effects. Especially with a presidential election coming soon.

That cool leaf is something I would've neither noticed nor appreciated before digital minimalism. One of the books I read about this, I wanna say Dopamine Nation, says that people who are online a lot -- and that's most people -- become so used to getting dopamine from things that aren't real, that they can't really get it anymore from things that are. Plants aren't gonna validate you by liking your photos. There's no algorithm in roses to hold back their fragrance so that you keep going back again and again to see if they smell good.

What's Next?

You may notice I only shared one new blog post here. Oops. My plan was to post at least weekly, but I guess I was getting my life together or whatever. I'd like to give you a little list of what I plan on improving on this site during the next 30ish days.

• Actually remembering to post regularly. When you're online daily, you can share any post immediately. Since I'm not, I need to share them all at once here in this newsletter. Kinda can't do that if the posts don't exist smh.
• Now I'm thinking, I'll make some posts permanent pages instead. And I can just keep updating them, so the link will just always be there. Like a page with favorite articles I read, a page with stuff I want to buy, a page with cool events I think are important.
• Speaking of updating permanent pages, Lord knows I've had some pages here since I made this website, and I haven't put anything there yet. It's coming, chile.

As my uncle Eric Dominguez used to say in his prison letters, "Imma do like a rose and come to a close." Thank you again for reading! Please encourage your friends to visit my website and sign up too!