week three stuff and things

I really love an earnest party. Some events I've been to lately make me want to kill myself. Kidding, therapist and anyone else reading!

These last few weeks, I haven’t done much besides getting dragged out of my studio apartment to some Bay Area gathering. In the past three weeks, I’ve met Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rob Lowe, and Matthew McConaughey. I don’t know why. That’s just San Francisco, I guess.

Here’s the difference between an event that makes me want to walk backward into the ocean and one that makes me a little gleeful: Kiwi clout party? Respectfully, I want to die. Shoeless, AGI-pilled necromancy rituals? I’ll stay out past my bedtime.

The reason I met JGL (everyone started calling him Joe, like we knew the guy) was at The Curve, an AI conference I promise to write about soon. In a wooden, fae-trap-looking structure, I watched him eat cold noodles while I pounded my third Coke Zero of the day. I obviously know who he is. I watched his Married... with Children episode as a kid. I had a massive crush on him. What simple girl with bangs didn’t pine for him in 500 Days of Summer?

My friend sitting next to me asked what Joe did for a living. I screamed internally. Media and entertainment, he said casually.

That’s the kind of event I love. It was about AI in the “we might die” way, not the “agentic workflows” way. And look, I’m not totally sure AI will grow into some disastrous technology that kills us all. I just really love how passionate people are. They’re smart. They care. Those two traits don’t always overlap.

An event I hate — and probably won’t be invited to again after this — is one where it’s a clear show of status. Every major city has its version. My imaginary Los Angeles party is one where people only talk to you if you have over a measly million followers.

The Bay Area is no different. Can this person get on that person’s podcast? If I tweet a photo of this X user’s profile from the party, will they retweet it so I get a few thousand likes? It’s exhausting, performative, and fucking booooooring.

The reason I met the other two super-famous people was at an event I guess I’m not allowed to write about. Whatever. There’s not much to say anyway. Everyone took selfies with them, so it’s safe to say they existed in San Francisco this week. They were both totally nice, as famous people tend to be. That event, was of course, for status. I guess I'm giving into it by name dropping. Again, whatever!

So where’s the Week 3 of Unemployment blog, Weinberger and others shout at me? I guess this is it. I’ve done a lot of things lately I want to write about, some of which I’ve promised to. The thing is — after working so hard, for so long, all I want to do is rot.

You can imagine a high-stress career like journalism burning someone out. I had a weirdly fast rise. I got poached, got raises, got scoops. It’s not common for someone to get the contents of executive meetings at a publicly traded company as a 23-year-old junior reporter. I was good at it, which is why so many people keep telling me I should keep doing it.

That’s fair! I’ve received no shortage of career advice since getting let go. Start a podcast. Make the newsletter huge. Get into comms, chase the bag. YouTube? TikTok? For the love of God, Kylie, use your youthful face for some sort of profit!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That all makes me want to die too. Not really — it’s just so fucking mundane. I love writing. I love technology. I’ll figure out how to pair those things into something that pays rent soon enough. But right now, I just want to lie in a beautiful park and do nothing.

The lack of motivation is such a strange feeling. I’ve spent my entire adult life chasing the next scoop, the next promotion, the next big break. I haven’t rotted in a good long while. My dad suggested I do “that Don Draper thing,” which means a meditation retreat. I thought it’d be funnier to visit a psychic on Haight. We all have our versions of rock bottom, don’t we?

I promised early on that this newsletter probably wouldn’t be much good, but it’d always be me. That’s the weird thing about writing without a corporate structure — no one yelling, no editors cutting my stupid jokes. It’s totally awesome and completely daunting at the same time.

So instead of thinking too hard about perfecting a blog for you all, I haven’t done much at all. I’m still reading Rising Sun. I’m pondering my Halloween costume (Paddington Bear or sexy clown). I’m seeing friends — or rather, they’re coming to me, because I cannot do another round of $12 beers this week. It’s simple, fun, relaxing. The perfect antidote to the burnout that decimated my nervous system.

I am, most of all, filled with a disgusting level of gratitude. Thankful that I saved enough money to play pretend for a little bit. Thankful that you all put up with my weird blogs. Thankful for the hundreds of unread texts, and the patience of all those people. Most of all, I love you, reader! More to come soon, etc. Time for me to go lay in the park.