Setting: Fall, suburban Detroit, Michigan. At best, temps in the 40s once the sun goes down. At worst, dip below freezing. Cue coat over costume, more often than not, year after year after year, and yet, Halloween has always been, and remains, my favorite holiday.

Sure, at first it was the lure of the free Reese’s and Milky Ways, though as a Gen X’er, I also lived through the Tylenol tampering scare that also ginned up urban legends of the razor blade variety. Needless to say, bags were INSPECTED.

But it wasn’t just the candy. It was the opportunity to dress up as anything you wanted to be, even if just for one night. A practice that could not only be enjoyed by kids, but grown ups as well – though with the latter, MUST female costumes continue to focus on “Sexy (Fill in the Blank Here)”?

My adult selections have tended to be more pop culture influenced, from the ‘90s (Nancy Kerrigan, Courtney Love) to the 2010s (Lucy Van Pelt, Wilma Flintstone) and beyond. My childhood iterations also ran the gamut, of course with more parental influence and styling, from the sweet (Little Bo Peep) to the scary, including this number from… I’m gonna say circa age three for me, brother age five.

This is also what we might now call “foreshadowing.”

(For me. Far as I know, my brother is not a bloodsucker.)

Don’t worry: I’m a good witch.

Today is September 30, or as I like to call it, October Eve. The next 31 days put me square in not only my favorite month but on a countdown to figure out what I’m going to be this year. Right now, the frontrunner is my old fave: Witch. But this time, the Perimenopausal Woman Fucking Done With Men* Getting Away With Horrid Shit version.

As I said, I’m a GOOD witch.

XO,
SG

*Love-of-my-life partner and previously mentioned brother excluded. We all know what, and who, I’m speaking of… more on this next week.

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I’ve held a lot of titles in my life. Some lifelong, like Daughter. Some temporary, like Wife (twice). Some as a result of my own efforts, from nabbing First Place (with an actual blue ribbon!) in the fourth grade St. Paul’s Science Fair (okay, that was more a result of mom’s efforts on my presentation about clouds) to Writing by Writers residency recipient (that one was 100% me). But by far, the title I hold most proud, most near and dear to my heart, is Dog Mom.

I didn’t step into this role until my 30s, with my first dog, a Pembroke Corgi we adopted at six months old, named Awesome-O by my South Park-loving first husband.

I felt a heart swell with my little dude in a way I’d never experienced before, only to have that followed far too quickly by heartbreak, when he passed away from a condition called IMHA when he was just over two years old. In this case, the decision was made for us (we believe he passed from an aneurysm related to his condition), and to this day, it remains one of the most devastating experiences of my life. I was non-functional, to the point that my vet at the time suggested (gently) that sometimes the only way to move forward was to pay it forward.

A few weeks later, that’s exactly what we did, adopting a 12-week-old Catahoula mix I named Nancy Drew. My first baby girl, one brown eye, one blue, a total nervous nelly, barky as all hell with strangers, but boy when she decided to trust you and let you in her inner circle, it was nonstop wiggle waggle kisses.

I was blessed with her for eight years – oddly enough, she also developed IMHA, but this time, I had to make the decision. They say when you have a sick dog, you will know when the time is right, and I just… did. And it hurt just as much as when the decision was made for me.

After Nancy passed, I took a good year off from the Dog Mom role, being more of a Dog Aunt, babysitting dogs of friends. About a year after the anniversary of Nancy’s death, I decided it was time again, and went to Petfinder, typing “Corgi” and “over one year old” into the search parameters. A single result emerged: a little black and white Corgi-Terrier mix (more clever marketing than accurate, though the Terrier part is spot on), with bright blue eyes, tagged as just over a year old, currently being fostered in Houston, Texas.

I was ten months into my sobriety when Mila-renamed-Gilda Radner came into my life. She’s my only sober dog and in related news, she is also my first service dog. She’s traveled with me everywhere. She’s well known and loved by Alaska and Delta pilots and crew, as well as TSA staff at PDX and now LAS. Without fail, every time we fly somewhere, I get stopped by passengers who remark on how absolutely in awe they are of how wonderful she is in flight. She loves everybody from kids to adults, gets along great with other dogs, and REALLY loves cats (most of them don’t reciprocate, but some do).

And now, Gilda has brothers, because courtesy of my beloved partner in life, I’m a Dog Stepmom to two boys, a 10-year-old all-black Goldendoodle named Lobo (think Will Ferrell as a dog) and an almost 12-year-old Shih Tzu mix named Grady (think Ralph Wiggum as a dog). The three have been in lockstep since day one of meeting, and she is, without question, living her best life. She’s obsessed with my partner and loves her brothers.

She also finally has a fully closed-in backyard. That girl would sit outside all day and night if I let her, and you’d never know she spent the bulk of her life in the rainy Pacific Northwest because my goodness has she acclimated to desert life (just like her momma).

About a year ago, Gilda was diagnosed with an immune condition – not the same as Awesome-O and Nancy Drew, thankfully, but a different type that causes inflammation in her mouth. We started seeing an animal dental specialist, Dr. Brian Hewitt, earlier this year to help explore treatment options, and he is the most phenomenal doctor I’ve ever met, animal, human or otherwise. I’ve even asked him, multiple times, if he can also be MY doctor, but so far, no dice.

As part of her care plan, Gilda had surgery yesterday, with new biopsies taken from four different areas inside her mouth. She did very well during the procedure, and no surprise here, it was a five-star experience from start to finish with Dr. Hewitt and the entire team. Her sutures are inside her mouth, which means soft foods for the next ten to fourteen days, but no external stitches means no cone time, so that’s a big win. Results from the biopsies will take two to three weeks, but no matter what the outcome is, I know she is in the best hands possible.

And I also know all too well from my earlier Dog Mom experiences that every day is a gift: with Gilda, with Lobo, with Grady. Every single day. Every single hour. Every single minute. I know we don’t get them forever. I know that’s part of the deal: experiencing the most profound love possible will, at some point, come with the most profound heartbreak.

But that day is not today. Today I will sing-talk made-up songs to all of them (a go-to banger is the one about me giving birth to Gilda). I will accompany them outside to the backyard and report back to my partner on their respective pooping accomplishments (a favorite topic of mine). We will take our daily group nap around 2pm. I will sneak them bites of apple cider donuts from Trader Joe’s, and hold Grady up in front of the mirror to do his affirmations (“You can be anything you want to be!”), and remind Lobo that “Doodling Hours” are over at 9pm (and he will ignore me, as always). I will say good girl and good boys a thousand times, and hug and kiss all my babies about a thousand times more.

XO,
SG

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The Emmys celebration starts well before the televised ceremony, and this year, that included Celebrating Women of Emmy Season, an event that took place the Thursday prior, honoring every woman nominated this season. Presented by TheWrap, the Geena Davis Institute and the Midlife Collective, the gathering included actresses like Sepideh Moafi (The Pitt), Dale Dickey (Widow’s Bay) and Lauren Weedman (Hacks), writer Brittani Nichols (Abbott Elementary), EP Courtney Storer (The Bear), author and EP Rufi Thorpe (Margo’s Got Money Troubles), and nominated directors Mary Lou Belli, Salli Richardson-Whitfield and Hanelle M. Culpepper, among others.

At the core of the celebration? Uniting nominees to champion and reframe the cultural narrative around women in midlife and beyond. Constance Zimmer, Emmy nominee for Supporting Actress in a Limited Series (Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette), proved to be a real-life exclamation point on that sentiment, with her PSA, “Women in their 50s are fucking badass!” followed by a fully-clothed dive into the rooftop pool.

Days later at the actual ceremony, Zimmer was interviewed on the red carpet by the Hollywood Reporter, and for once, the questions went deeper than Who are you wearing?

The journalist asked, “...you told one of our writers just about the need for more stories for women over 50 in Hollywood. Do you feel hopeful that that will happen?”

Her response?

“I would like to say yes. I have to be hopeful. Look at how many amazing actors are out of work that are over 50 and they’re women. That’s not okay. Like I’m just… I’m a better actor than I am now than I was five years ago. And so if you want to judge anything, judge the fact that I’m bringing it more than I’ve ever brought it. So then you guys need to bring it too.”

Then she was asked if the scripts were coming.

And without hesitation, Zimmer said:

“No. Scripts are not coming. The opportunities are not there. And you know, I just think that has to change… 70% of the female nominees were women over 45. So, we’re doing something right and we need to show those stories.”

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Throughout the ceremony, we watched so many of those age 45+ nominees also take home the win. Jean Smart, 75, for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series (Hacks). Allison Janney, 66, for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (The Diplomat). Rhea Seehorn, 54, for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Pluribus). Linda Cardellini, 51, for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited/Anthology Series or Movie (DTF St. Louis). Kate O’Flynn, 40 (okay, a few years shy of 45), for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (Widow’s Bay). Not to mention that Katie Dippold, 46, is the creator and now Emmy Award-winner behind Widow’s Bay, which won the most Emmys overall, securing a total of 14 awards and setting a new record for the most wins ever for a single season of a comedy series.

And the entire ceremony was hosted and led by my beloved girl crush Mariska Hargitay, 62. The first woman to do it in fifteen years, in the same week she picked up two Emmys of her own for her documentary, My Mom Jayne.

Shit, even the Emmy ceremony herself turned 78 this year.

All night long, we saw a room full of women who’d been told, at some point in the last two decades, that their most interesting years were behind them.

And all night long, we saw proof positive that this is a load of crap.

But here’s what a good night at the Emmys doesn’t fix: we want more. We NEED more. We HAVE more to give. The industry has not run out of women of a certain age who can carry a show in front of the screen or fuel its success behind the scenes. And one historic ceremony is proof of appetite, not proof of supply.

I’m laser focused on being part of the solution that continues to fill that void. Not only as the co-creator and head writer for a dark comedy scripted series, but as a writer who very intentionally anchored this show with two female leads, both over the age of 40. Not somebody’s mother, girlfriend, wife, or sidekick bestie. Juicy roles with real depth and complexity.

We’re currently shopping the series now, so more when I can say more, but let’s just say I fully intend to be on that Emmy stage for the 80th annual event in 2028 (2027 will of course be when we premiere).

In the meantime, cannonball in, everybody. The water’s warm.

XO,
SG

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When I still worked full-time in corporate, even early on in my career, I would often try to bundle in a few personal days, if my business travels took me anywhere near family or friends. My Virgo rising, aka the rule follower, also always made sure this was not at any extra expense to the given company I was employed by at the time. I spent my mid-to-late twenties serving as Marketing Director for Dark Horse Comics, based just outside of Portland, Oregon. During my five year tenure, my role required fairly consistent travel, from comic book conventions to book industry events and direct market retailer summits.

One summer-into-fall, I led our engagement at the latter in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, a stone’s throw from my suburban Detroit childhood stomping grounds. Adding a FWA to DTW leg to the tail end of that trip actually made my flight cheaper, but the weather had different plans on the Sunday I was scheduled to fly. Massive thunderstorms and tornado watches-turned-warnings grounded the small commuter flights, but I was determined to get a day or two in my hometown, and rented a car instead. Out of pocket, of course. Seemed like a small fortune at the time, but I bet it was less than $100, gas included.

Joke was on me, though, because those very same storms and tornados stayed on a parallel path with me the entire drive. Why I didn’t just pause or abort the entire plan, I don’t recall. And I made it to my dad’s house in Grosse Pointe in one piece, of course, but to this day, I don’t think I’ve ever had a more stressful experience in a car.

I had the next day off, but what I did on that Monday in the Detroit suburbs, I don’t completely recall. I’m sure a Sanders Bumpy Cake was involved. I was also still drinking then, so there was probably a Tap Room visit with an old friend.

My return flight to Portland was scheduled for around noon the next day, a Tuesday. My dad woke me up a bit before 9:00am, and mentioned there had been a plane accident in New York. There weren’t many concrete details yet as it had just happened maybe 10 minutes prior. But my dad was a seasoned flyer, and knew from experience that even one accident in a different city could cause a domino effect in other hubs.

He suggested we get going sooner than later.

Just to be safe.

So I was up, in front of the television, when I saw what I thought was a replay of the plane accident.

But now both World Trade Center towers had massive gashes in them.

Not one. Two.

And realized what I had just witnessed, live.

And that “accident” was not even remotely the correct description. And that nothing would ever be quite the same again.

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The minutes and hours that followed were a blur. The Pentagon. The first tower collapsing. The crash in Shanksville. The second tower down. Each update was more surreal than the last one, and like many others, there were personal connections unfolding with them. My dad, a retired Navy captain, knows the Pentagon well enough to know the side that had been hit was exactly where some of his closest friends were located. He got real, real quiet for a very long time until we got official word of who was safe, and who was not. My brother had also just come back to the D.C. area maybe a month prior, after two years at the embassy in Indonesia. I worried about him and his wife constantly when they were overseas, even more so when they shared the amazing news that they were expecting their first child that December. That relief I felt when they came back stateside evaporated very quickly when we had a hard time tracking my brother down. His role took him to multiple locations in the D.C. area, everything from the Pentagon to the State Department to even the White House. He never stepped foot in any of these buildings that day. Had accidentally left his phone at home, and been stuck in snarled, redirected traffic trying to make his way back to the house once all shit broke loose.

The television coverage was 24/7, including replaying and replaying and replaying the moments of impact that had been captured on camera - so basically every plane except Shanksville. The networks did not seem to consider how re-traumatizing the impact footage was, especially for those with loved ones on board or in the buildings that were struck. I remember stepping outside and sitting on a wooden bench swing in my dad’s backyard on that Tuesday, trying to breathe. How blue the sky was. And how empty, with the exception of a cluster of Air Force jets zooming past overhead. Days later, I tried to disconnect again with a bike ride, but completely defeated my own purpose by bringing a Walkman with me so I could listen to NPR updates the entire time.

My stepmother was a travel agent, back when that was still a job people needed. All flights had been grounded, and when they started up again, I swear she booked me on three separate airlines back to Portland. I think at this point six days had passed. The plan was just to go to the airport and see which, if any, actually left. One did. I don’t remember much about the flight except being very quiet, and wondering the entire time whether there were air marshals on board.

Years later, a colleague and close friend and I were talking about where we’d each been that morning, the way people do every September. Trading our “where were you when” stories. And he questioned mine. Suggested I may have unintentionally rewritten the moment into something different than what actually happened. I was taken off guard, adamant, then defensive, and it quickly spiraled into a heated argument, the kind where you both dig in, including him citing a study where psychologists had surveyed people’s 9/11 memories starting the very next day, then checked back over the following years. Consistency for flashbulb memories didn’t hold up any better than consistency for an ordinary control memory from the same week. What stayed different was confidence: people’s belief in their own accuracy stayed high for the 9/11 memory while it declined for the mundane one.

My friend and I got past the argument, the way friends who truly care about each other do. But I still think about it every year around this time, and honestly at other times too, whenever I catch myself being completely sure I remember something exactly as it happened. These days, I often struggle to remember what I was doing 25 minutes ago, let alone 25 years. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long. Half of my lifetime ago…how is that possible?

I was blessed not with just one but three nieces during this time, who are all grown now. For them, 9/11 is a moment of learned history, not lived, though they certainly have their own “Where were you when” stories, including COVID which rocked their formative years.

We’re all going to have our own collective markers of moments, many tragic, some hopefully triumphant. Memories we stand certain about. But perhaps it’s not the specific details that matter or what’s worth debating in terms of accuracy.

What I do remember, what I will always remember, what I am absolutely certain of, is the shift that occurred in my soul that day. The realization of how temporary this all is. And what might have been the first (but not the last) time I truly tasted that bittersweet recipe of profound grief and tremendous gratitude. No study required.

XO,
SG

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Every city has its pros and cons. I was born in the Chicago area, raised in the Detroit suburbs, and have since lived in Portland (Oregon, twice), Washington DC, northern Virginia, and the New York City area. I have always made it a practice to lean into the pros of any place I call home, and while I never had Las Vegas on my bingo card, life and love took me here a year and a half ago. I’ve acclimated to desert life more quickly than I would have ever predicted, and also in the plus column of living here is how incredibly easy it is for me to get to Los Angeles for any and all things related to my career.

It’s an up/down, barely 40 minute flight, but I almost always drive, with my pup Gilda Radner in tow 98% of the time. It’s usually four hours door to door, but sometimes it takes longer by choice – aka leveraging my proactively scoped out thrift stores as pit stops along the way (not to mention the ones I’ve curated in LA proper). I’m also fortunate enough to have many dear friends and former colleagues who live in the LA area, so it’s very easy for me to fill my dance card, whether I’m in town for 48 hours or four days.

My latest jaunt to LA last week was primarily driven around the Hollywood Radio and Television Society’s (HRTS) third annual joint summer mixer with the Television Academy writers, documentary, and reality peer groups. I’ve been an Associate Member of HRTS since last July and it’s an incredible organization that focuses on networking, education, and mentorship in the entertainment industry. I first learned about it through their CEO… who also happens to be a dear friend since high school.

Since joining, I’ve had the opportunity to attend a number of HRTS events in Los Angeles. This includes larger gatherings of 100+, like my very first HRTS event which took place on the Warner Brothers lot featuring a panel on resilience in storytelling, where I got to meet R. Scott Gemmill, creator and showrunner of one of my most beloved series, The Pitt. I’ve also had access to more intimate discussions, like sitting in a board room right next to Erin Underhill, President of Universal Television, with maybe a dozen other people in attendance.

My excursion to LA last week took place right in the middle of a pretty nasty heat wave (let me tell you: 95+ in Hollywood is WAY different from 95+ in Vegas). Thankfully, the HRTS event was to be held inside at the Aster, a boutique hotel and private members club (with an impressive zero proof menu I might add, including N/A wine by the glass, a rarity!).

I planned as though I would be just hopping from one safely air conditioned environment (my car) to another (the venue), but oooooweeeeee that room was still hotter than a biscuit and LOUD. The kind of loud where you have to stand an inch away from someone just to (maybe) hear what they are saying. But I did exactly that, seeing some familiar faces and meeting many new ones. Of course, “What part of town do you live in?” is par for the course in conversation. And it’s also a question I’ve come to love answering, because my response is never what people expect.

I live in Vegas, and come to LA on a regular basis.

The first reaction is usually a pause, often paired with, “Come again?” Then a small tilt of the head, like they’re doing math. And then, nine times out of ten, there is a shift, and what comes out is some version of: you know, that’s actually a really great setup. Followed immediately by an out loud realization that most of their meetings happen over Zoom anyway, so what does it matter where anyone actually sleeps. And I can tell you with great authority that Vegas traffic, even during rush hour, is a blip compared to the daily LA grind, not to mention our property taxes feel like loose change.

Don’t get me wrong. No shade to LA whatsoever. I love it. The good, the bad, and the ugly. All of it. I even subleased a friend’s apartment in Koreatown in September 2021 and relocated there for a month with Gilda, just to mix things up during the COVID doldrums. I know the area very well, from the Santa Monica pier to the bougie Calabasas hills. And I now try out different neighborhoods during each LA visit, anchored by whatever makes the most sense in terms of proximity to my main meeting or event.

Last week, I returned to what’s become a go-to Airbnb in one of my favorite neighborhoods, Atwater Village.

It gives me major Portland vibes (with less rain), feels safe, is super dog friendly, and it’s also extremely walkable with tons of great restaurants and shops (including my favorite area thrift store, which is where I was when I got hit with the Dolly news). I also love any neighborhood where I get to see a WRDSMTH piece in person.

I logged 16,000+ steps every day during my trip, despite the heat wave…I know a thing or two about navigating early morning and late evenings for such things.

Somewhere during the last year, the trips to LA have stopped feeling like visits and started feeling like second nature. Not a place I’m passing through, but a place I keep returning to on purpose. My partner and I have even talked about what it would look like to also have a spot in LA that is permanent instead of borrowed. And as conversations continue to deepen with regards to my scripted dark comedy series and other projects in development, I wouldn’t be surprised if that time comes sooner than later.

But for now, I love my commute.

XO,
SG

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I’m standing in my favorite Los Angeles thrift store in the Atwater Village neighborhood with my pup Gilda Radner in tow, filling my cart with jewels. A pristine pair of linen blend Vince pants in my size for $3.25. A rare (and new with tags) Strata x Holy Ship collab gray denim jacket, valued at $250+ for $12. A darling and what I assume to be a one-of-a-kind tee with a minimalist line drawing of a guitar and the sentence “I Wrote a Song for You” for a dollar. I’m hanging up my treasures on an empty rack near a full-length mirror, assessing my haul piece by piece. My phone is in hand to Google Lens the items I want a deeper dive on when the alert pops up. And without even clicking through, I can immediately tell what it’s about by the way it’s worded.

Leading with the name, the age.

I audibly gasp in a way that makes other shoppers’ heads turn.

It is 10:54am pacific, and Dolly Parton has passed away.

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I did what I’m sure many people did: furiously searched for proof that this was false, just an internet rumor, but the video from her nephew on her official Instagram page confirmed it. I start texting family and friends like we’ve just lost our favorite aunt, sister, grandmother, teacher, best friend. Because we have. And then I sit on the floor next to Gilda for a good 20 minutes.

No one in the store asks me why. No one has to. The tsunami of collective grief is starting to make its way around the globe.

I’ve mourned the loss of famous people before. Haven’t we all? George Michael flattened me for a week. Prince was even worse. But nothing prepared me for how hard Dolly Parton’s death landed. I can’t think of another human being so universally loved. Not just admired and respected (those things, too). But truly LOVED, including by and between people who agree on literally nothing else. That kind of consensus doesn’t happen by accident, and it definitely doesn’t happen to someone who plays it safe.

Dolly didn’t play it safe. She just played it kind.

She stood tall (usually on 6” heels) in the face of being underestimated. The wigs, the rhinestones, the eyeshadow, and yes, the boobs. And then spent six decades proving every person who laughed at the packaging wrong, by becoming easily the MOST talented and gifted songwriter of all time. She wrote her first song at age six, performed regularly on TV by age 10, made her first recording at 11, and became a professional songwriter at 16. At the time of her passing, she had over 3,000 songs in her canon, and released 49 studio albums, winning every award there ever was to be won. And she knew the value of her own work from day one. When Elvis approached her to record “I Will Always Love You,” she turned him down because the contract terms weren’t fair to her, including surrendering the rights to the song, at a time where that potential payout was desperately needed. But she trusted her gut, protected her work, and then she went on to make more money than most of the men who mocked her for her bust line ever will.

And she gave SO MUCH of it away. Not in a press-release way. In a 330-million-books-mailed-to-kids-for-free way. In a funded-the-research-that-helped-get-us-the-COVID-vaccine way. She also showed multiple generations of people raised in the church what actually following its teachings looks like. Not the version that hands out conditions. The version that says everyone gets a seat, no asterisk. And she meant it, said it out loud throughout her entire life, regardless of the potential cost to her career.

Eventually, I stand back up in the thrift store, and look to my left at a shelf of books I’ve yet to comb through. And swear to God, the first thing I spy is Dolly’s beaming smile and big hair on a hardcover copy of Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, the gold letters catching the light with the sparkle and shine she exuded throughout her entire life. The book came out in 1994, so of course she had unfinished business then, but it’s a sentiment that fueled her drive up until the very end. Days before her passing, she had shared a health update by way of a video message online, and said, “I still have so many things I want to achieve, so I’m gonna keep on working as long as I can to see everything come to life.”

I grab the book (obviously). When I’m checking out and placing things on the counter to be rung up, I hold it in one hand, and the “I Wrote a Song for You” tee in my other. And I realize that among the many, many brilliant songs written by this absolute global treasure, she also gave us, in her own words, the anthem for exactly how millions of us feel about her right now. Or rather, always. The kind of love that remains eternal through continuing to live out everything she stood for.

XO,
SG

Hopeless Semantic lands in your inbox on Wednesdays. If someone in your life belongs here, send them this way.

If it were up to me, summer would run from Memorial Day to Labor Day with no extensions, never breach 82 degrees, and maintain as close to 0% humidity as possible, and then we’d roll right into September sweater weather. A few weeks ago, I shared how August and Everything After is not only the name of an album I still hold near and dear, but also an expression I’ve adopted for that last full swing of summer before everything tips toward fall, my favorite season. But my urge to fast forward to said season really starts in mid-July and picks up a fever pitch by the time I hit my July 29 birthday, and apparently I’m not the only one getting antsy for autumn.

HomeGoods went full fall monty by August 1 with an eruption of skeletons wearing overalls, pumpkin-shaped welcome mats stacked twenty deep, cauldron candy dishes and maple leaf photo frames. Spirit Halloween pop-ups came right on their heels, rising from the dead in the graves of Toys “R” Us and Party City and Bed Bath & Beyond. Starbucks’ iconic (and polarizing) Pumpkin Spice Latte (aka PSL) was first test-marketed on October 10, 2003, but since 2018, that release date has lived in August, and moved forward earlier and earlier in said month. This year, PSL fans can get their fix as of next Tuesday, August 25, but that’s going to be a hard pass for me — I still have PTSD from working on that account during my modern day Mad Men agency days. And to be honest, I think that latte tastes like:

It also wasn’t terribly unusual to experience brisk temperature blips as early as August during my formative years in Michigan and my two tenures in Oregon. Hell, I even got the occasional early teases of sweater weather to come during my residencies in the DC and New York areas. But since moving to Sin City in March 2025, my seasonal score card has been completely revamped. A “fall” sneak peek in August is now more like, “Wow, it’s only 97!” (For the record, we’re headed for 110 degrees today, which is business as usual).

I’m not complaining – I am, against all odds, more of a desert girl than I would have ever bet on (all Vegas puns intended). Yes, we have a good two, maybe three months where stepping foot outside feels like opening an oven door to check on dinner. But for the other nine to ten months, it’s pretty glorious to hardly ever think about umbrellas or water damage to the killer pair of Corral cowboy boots I just thrift-scored. And when an overcast or rainy day does come, it’s like having VIP tickets to a special limited-time residency.

The thermometer here also doesn’t have any weight on any of those retail industry markers. I am inundated with all things harvest and Halloween, just like I would have been in Portland or North Bergen or Falls Church or Grosse Pointe. And I’ve already started this year’s stockpile: witch silhouette mugs and skull dishtowels. I even bought my first bag of candy corn today. And I’ve already worn my new favorite fall sweater, an oversized tiger-adorned Pilcro cardigan I recently picked up on Poshmark (though of course this while I was standing inside the safety of my 68-73 degree Nest regulated home).

And perhaps now that I live in a place where the temps aren’t going to match my falls of yesteryears for quite some time is also a good reminder. It’s perfectly wonderful to anticipate. And it’s also quite lovely to remain in the present. I can easily occupy the majority of my brain space thinking about what just happened and what’s to come, and often lose sight of the gift of just being right here, right now.

Something to meditate on over my nine dollar Windswept Leaves and fourteen dollar Thunder Storm candles. I’d send you one, but it would melt before the package even got scanned in at my post office.

XO,
SG

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By the time I entered ninth grade, I’d been to seven schools in the greater Metro Detroit area. Pre-K in Grosse Pointe (where my dad grew up), then downriver to Trenton (where my mom grew up) for Kindergarten through second grade. A quick jaunt in Farmington Hills for grade 3, then back to Grosse Pointe, popcorning from St. Paul’s Catholic School for fourth grade to University Liggett private school for fifth grade, and then finally some longer, more static stretches, courtesy of the Grosse Pointe public school system: Brownell for middle and Grosse Pointe South for high. Of course, just as the school path got more stable, the home life dismantled, with my parents delivering the “We’re getting divorced” news in the spring of sixth grade. I went from bouncing between schools to bouncing between homes. I got away with a LOT more at my Dad’s house(s), that’s for sure.

But fall was always my favorite, regardless of the address changes (at school or home). I loved – and still love – everything about the season: the colors and flavors, the drop in temperature, and of course, the best holiday ever, Halloween. The kickoff to this glorious time of year was always the trip for back-to-school supplies, and no matter how anxious and angsty things got with a carousel of life changes, a fresh batch of tools somehow always took the edge off. The velcro kiss from opening and closing a new Trapper Keeper, a stack of unscathed wide-then-college-ruled Mead notebooks, Elmer glue sticks (god forbid you mistake one for chapstick), pristine Papermate Pink Pearl erasers, Ticonderoga sunflower yellow pencils with bracelets of emerald green that had yet to ever be sharpened. These weren’t just supplies, they were beacons of possibility. Hope. Fresh starts.

The list itself got more sophisticated each year – as to whether I did as well is a different story for another time – but the love affair with supplies has never ended. I don’t have any (human) kids, and it’s been a hot minute since I’ve been in an actual classroom, as student or teacher, but I still can’t walk past a back-to-school in-store display without stopping. And by stopping, I mean shopping. And stocking up on hope.

XO,
SG

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Back in the 1900s – May 1994 to be exact – before smartphones, before iPods, at the cusp of a more widespread birth of email and “the interwebs,” we consumed our music through what was played on the radio (Google it) and or primarily by way of cassette tapes and compact discs aka CDs. Independent shops selling both new and used CDs were also common at that time, particularly in college towns. Like the one in Eugene, Oregon, home to University of Oregon, where I procured my very own copy of Counting Crows’ August and Everything After.

U of O was not where I was earning my degree – that would be Michigan State University – but where my sister-from-another-mister Carey was earning hers, and it’s also where I kicked off my first summer living anywhere but Michigan. I’d known Carey my entire life. Literally. Our dads had been best friends since they were five years old, growing up together in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, which is also where I spent most of my formative years. Carey never lived there, but she would come back with her dad and siblings to visit her paternal grandmother. She was one year older than me and we started a pen pal relationship around the time I was ten. I took my first trip to visit her on her side of the world in my early teens.

Carey lived with her mother in Leaburg, Oregon, on the McKenzie River approximately twenty-two miles east of Eugene, and it looked nothing like the Detroit suburbs. Lush green forests, snow capped mountains in the distance, gray skies that felt like hugs transitioning into glorious sun breaks no one took for granted. I fell in both enchantment and love, and my trips to the Pacific Northwest became an annual event, then transitioned to the setting for “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” the year between my sophomore and junior year of college.

I arrived in Oregon in early May, when my term at MSU ended. Carey was on a different academic calendar at U of O, and still had a good month left of classes, so I found a job I knew I’d quit three weeks later when we headed to our real summer job destination in central Oregon. That short term gig was my first and last telemarketing role, where I’d run down a call list primarily of vulnerable elders to inform them they’d won a cash prize. The point of the call was to use this EXCITING news as a lure to con them into buying a water filter system with a price tag of hundreds of dollars (that probably costs $1.56 to make in China). Our call script never disclosed the amount of the cash prize ($20), and if memory serves, we were only legally required to do so if the person said something along the lines of, “I do not want to buy anything, I just want the cash prize.” You’d be shocked by how many people NEVER asked about the amount, let alone coupled it with the “do not want” part of the statement. Even so, I only closed one sale in three and a half weeks. As part of my absolution, I called my grandparents and coached them on what to do if they ever received such a call, but I still carried guilt from that one sale for years.

Let’s just say when the time came to pull the plug, it was a very, very easy job to quit. And no, giving two weeks notice was not part of the package.

During this time, we also saw the Grateful Dead at Autzen Stadium in Eugene, which turned out to be just about a year before Jerry Garcia died. I knew maybe two songs. People kept walking past us going “Dose? Dose?” and I spent an embarrassingly long time thinking they were asking if there were two of something, in Spanish, before I understood what I was actually being offered.

Then we headed to central Oregon, and the real summer started.

Carey had already worked two seasons as a server at the Provision Company at Sunriver Resort, just south of Bend. This was the more casual restaurant in the main lodge, as opposed to the Meadows, which had fancy cloth napkins and an actual wine list. She was sure she could get me a job there too, and she was right. I hosted. She served. My boss was a guy named Bob Cannon, who I was positive at the time was a fully formed much older adult, not because he looked older (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but he just seemed to have his shit together. I’ve since done the math and realized he was maybe 26 to my 19 going on 20. I would later have the pleasure of breaking bread with him in Portland as true adults in our 30s and 40s and we’re still in touch through the socials. He remains one of the best bosses I’ve ever had.

Four (or was it five or six?) others plus me and Carey lived in a house on the resort property and split rent that came out to just under two hundred dollars a month each. I couldn’t have been making more than five bucks an hour if that (and no tips for the hostess), and for a few weeks I also worked at the grocery store on the property, but that was short-lived. Having a morning-into-day second job didn’t bode well with the restaurant life schedule. We started mid-afternoon, ran until nine or ten at night, partied until two or three in the morning, slept until noon, then back to the restaurant by two p.m. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. I smoked constantly. I drank a lot of bad beer and cheap booze. Carey and I kept a journal that summer, passing it back and forth, taking turns scribbling and pasting in mementos. There is a particularly accurate drawing she did of me throwing up after a deadly combination of Sun Country wine coolers and Chicken in a Biscuit crackers. There is a lot of orange in said drawing. Today me loves that 1994 us documented our adventures, when we were certain about both everything and nothing.

August and Everything After played through all of it. It had actually come out the previous fall, but I didn’t have my own copy until the beginning of that summer. This was also a time when you still primarily listened to an entire album from start to finish, so I knew every song, not just the released singles. Sure, you could skip tracks on a CD player, but there was never the urge to do so with that particular album. And yes, we were making mixtapes back then, but that was a different art that took a lot more time and care than the immediacy of making a playlist today.

That album was about the only thing I made out with all summer long, from, “Oh lord, I’m not ready for this sort of thing,” and “I am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me,” to, “There’s things I remember and things I forget, I miss you, I guess that I should,” and, “It’s almost everything I need.” Adam Duritz gave the finger to pitch-perfect traditional singing standards and leaned hard into a vocal style that was loose, raw, achy, and emotional. He made no apologies for it – or for wearing dreadlocks at the time, which absolutely no one was having a conversation about in 1994, but sure as hell would now.

Thirty plus years later, I no longer smoke, drink, or pay $197 a month in rent. Both restaurants at Sunriver are now gone and have evolved into something else, and what used to be my end-of-shift time is now my bedtime (if not earlier). But that album has always remained in my top ten and in heavy rotation, regardless of who the Counting Crows have become since.

August and Everything After also stopped being just the title of a favorite album. It’s a phrase I reach for to describe any hinge point, including that last full swing of summer before everything tips toward fall (my favorite season). But even more broadly and beyond that, those moments when we experience a necessary (if at times painful) shift to make room for what’s to come.

And maybe it’s no mistake that the last song on the album closes out on this sentiment, too.

“Change, change, change, change… change.”

XO,
SG

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I’ve never been a big New Year’s Eve or Day person. There’s a lot of pressure to get real, real drunk and then wake up to a laundry list of mostly empty promises largely driven by industries looking to make a buck by hammering you with messages that you are less than and not good enough as is. Yeah, hard pass on all of that.

My New Year’s Day has always been my birthday, which is today, July 29. And this year, the universe has also delivered a full moon on the same day – a Buck Moon in Aquarius to be exact – talk about the ultimate birthday gift. This particular moon arrives on what is said to be one of the most cosmically concentrated days of the entire year. It’s a full moon rooted in pivotal change, asking us to release beliefs, habits, stories, and patterns that have been taking up space in our lives, and step into a bolder, truer version of ourselves to receive what’s been waiting for us. Throw in that 2026 was also declared as a stellar year for Leos in particular and my woo-woo brain is basically levitating today.

Everyone always asks how you’re going to spend your day, which got me thinking about previous celebrations. One of my favorite birthday parties came early on, my tenth to be exact, which fell two days after the release of the film “Purple Rain.” My bedroom was predominately purple at the time, as were my glasses, so I was already on brand. The soundtrack had come out a month earlier, though I didn’t actually own it at first, and therefore mostly lived in what was played on the radio as early singles, like “When Doves Cry” and “I Would Die 4 U.”

I asked my parents for a party that would culminate in taking me and my friends (and my older brother) to a screening of the film. Because you know, R-rated is 100% appropriate for a 10-year-old, but then again, I’d also seen “48 Hours” with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy in the theaters with my parents when I was in third grade. Gen X baby! We were raised differently, ‘kay?

That said, once I actually saw the movie, that opened up a LOT of questions for me. Such as, “Who exactly was Nikki, and what was she doing with a magazine?”

ANYHOO, back to my birthday being my true New Year’s Day. One tradition I do hold from the universal January 1 date is reflecting where I’ve been and where I’m headed.

My gratitude list is long, and at the top is Gilda Radner. At this time last year, she was very, very ill, and we had no idea what the cause was, with the possibilities getting about as bleak as it could get. After multiple tests and the blessing of an amazing vet, we discovered she had an immune condition. Lifelong, but not immediately life-threatening. I know I don’t get her forever. But I get her right now, thriving, and I’m taking it – she’s improved greatly over the past year and is truly living her best life. She loves having two dog brothers, she is obsessed with my partner, and she LOVES being outside in our backyard, even when it’s far too hot for her to do so.

She also had her first real grown-up groomer’s appointment about a week and a half ago. When we lived in Portland, her terrier-forward coat stayed pretty consistent. She had baths and brushings and nail trims, but never had been to the beauty parlor - never needed it. When we moved to the Las Vegas area, her coat grew like CRAZY and the tips became very white. She also packed on some lbs due to medication, and speaking of Nick Nolte, she was really starting to look like his mug shot.

The boys had been to regular groomer appointments, but not Gilda. I found a new mobile groomer (so I could helicopter parent) with five-star reviews, and they knocked it out of the park. The before and after for Gilda in particular has brought me endless laughter over the past few weeks… she looks like she went to rehab. And/or that she went to Kris Jenner’s person and had work done.

Tied with Gilda at the top of my gratitude list is my partner, who shows up for me over and over and over again, emotionally, mentally, physically, all of the above, in ways no one ever has in my life. He is also responsible for me finally taking the leap and putting 100% of my time and focus into my own creative endeavors, including writing and producing. No day job holding the door open behind me. I don’t know that I would have cut that perceived safety cord completely had he not encouraged me to do so.

And he shows up not just for the smooth sailing, but the really tough shit too, including being hands-on during a family health crisis in May. Last year, he’d also built me a raised garden bed but I hadn’t put it to use until this year, and if you think the way my basil is thriving is too on-the-nose a metaphor for the way we continue to grow together… well, so be it.

Here’s a few other key takeaways from the past year, in no particular order:

State your boundaries. Then state them again. And again. It won’t be a one and done. This is territory that bears repeating. Turns out it’s a critical part of how you hold said boundaries, especially when someone else’s whole dynamic with you depended on you never having them. The pushback will be hard and it will be constant. Hold your ground anyway.

On a related note, not everyone gets your time. Not everyone gets access to you. It’s your greatest currency and should be spent more wisely than whatever dollar bills you have in the bank.

Retire the people pleaser. It won’t happen overnight, but it becomes easier if you practice pausing to ask yourself, “Am I doing ____ because it’s really what’s in MY best interest?” It’s not selfish to ask that question. It’s self-love. Also, this may be breaking news to some, but turns out “No” is a complete sentence. I did not know this at nine. Or 29. Or possibly even 49. But I know it now.

That all said, feel your feelings. I’m ALL for it. Let them move through you. But ride out the reaction before you act on it, and be selective about who’s in the room while you do so. The version of you on the other side of that ride is where the response lives, and in my experience, that will serve you far, far better as a foundation for making choices vs. the emotionally-fueled reaction state.

And on the choices front? If it’s not a hell yeah, it’s a hell no. Your gut knows. It always has. Trust it.

In the “looking ahead” department, as woo woo as I am, it turns out I don’t have a reliable crystal ball – not yet (birthday gifts accepted year round, hint hint). But there IS a new partnership in the works related to my scripted series. Keeping details close to the vest for now, but let’s just say the possibilities are very real and extremely exciting.

What I can tell you is this: name your dreams out loud and be very specific with what you want. You’ll be blown away at how powerful this can be when it comes to making them true.

Come to think of it, that sounds like the perfect guiding force for the year to come.

XO,
SG

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I live in Las Vegas, where it’s still not only common to stroll past someone standing outside taking an actual, no shame smoke break, but also legal in many places to light up INSIDE. Granted, there’s usually a bright, shiny, bing bing bing slot machine involved in the latter, but it’s one of those things I’m getting used to seeing again. You know, the way it became just another typical Wednesday walking past Secret Service when I lived in Washington, DC, or how I would turn the corner to find the Law & Order crew setting up to film a scene when I lived in the New York City area, or how nine out of ten cars were a Subaru when I lived in Portland, Oregon.

But back to the smoking. Today, I was running errands and stopped to check out a Vuori outlet I’d recently learned about from a dear Poshmark friend (spoiler alert: even at the outlet is still expensive as shit). While snaking my way through outdoor Las Vegas North Premium Outlets Mall to find said Vuori outpost, I spied at least three people taking drags.

That used to be me.

I smoked all through high school. Mostly Marlboro Lights, because somewhere I’d absorbed the idea that “light” meant “less bad.” I blame diet culture. In college, I graduated to the yellow pack of American Spirits and also doubled down from time to time with cloves, because nothing says main character energy like a cigarette that tastes like a candle.

In my early adulthood, approaching Y2K and entering the aughts, it was still very socially acceptable and I continued to take my cues from pop culture, especially from a certain Miss Carrie Bradshaw.

I eventually stepped down to mostly just the occasional bummed cigarette at 2 AM, the kind you smoke standing six inches outside a bar door after last call, insisting to yourself this doesn’t count. And then to nothing at all. Having significant others who were non-smokers, and non-tolerable of said heathens, also helped curb the habit.

When I stopped drinking and got sober over eight years ago, to my surprise cigarettes came roaring back in for a brief period (transference, anyone?). I knew it was temporary, but for about four to six months, I would literally get up with enough time before my first work call to go for a drive to a local Starbucks drive-through that was just far enough away for me to smoke one cig on the way there, and one on the way back. God, how I LOVED to smoke while driving back in the day.

I really have no desire to become a smoker again. I know all too well what these sticks do to your inner and outer body, and honestly, if I could go back in time, I’d tell my younger self, “Girl NO! Put it DOWN! You will save SO MUCH in skincare products alone!” But lately my corner of the internet has been serving me up content related to, “The Rise of the Cigarette” and smoking being en vouge again, and I have to admit, after watching all nine episodes of Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, I wanted to go blonde and grab a pack, paired with a vintage Calvin Klein chic black turtleneck.

The algorithm also floods me with those who are mulling the idea of having just ONE cigarette, especially considering the ongoing shit show state of affairs. This content is mostly from my fellow Gen Xers or adjacent millennials (like the wonderful Stephanie Wittels Wachs, co-founder and CEO of Lemonada Media and acclaimed author), and oh my GOD, I have never felt more seen.

But I also know me. And if moderation with substances was something I excelled at, we wouldn’t be celebrating soberversaries, now, would we?

So no. I’m not REALLY bumming a cigarette from anyone ever again.

But if you see me, and you’re carrying, ask me if I want one anyway.

For old times’ sake.

xo,
SG

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When people learn that I’m a writer with two published novels, I always get questions about how that came to be, and what my experience was like. My trajectory was an unusual one: I first published a flash memoir version of Grosse Pointe Girl through a small press run by a friend in Portland, Oregon, where I was living at the time. This got me a legit ISBN, placement in the extremely well-curated small press section at iconic Powell’s City of Books, a reading and signing there, and distribution support through Last Gasp, a San Francisco-based company primarily dedicated to championing underground books and comics. I handled the rest myself: layout, printing, marketing, direct sales, additional distribution, and other events.

This was back in 2001. Social media was not in play and self-publishing was also not really a thing back then, not to the extent it is now. I found my printer through an ad in the back of Poets & Writers magazine and invested what seemed like a small fortune to me at the time (maybe a grand?) to get the initial stock printed. My book was just long enough to warrant an actual book spine too, though too thin to print anything on it. But it looked (mostly) like a real book. I called in a favor with a designer I was friends with through my job at the time (Marketing Director for Dark Horse Comics). I could only afford a two-color cover and my designer friend did a great job making it look intentional.

It was my version of a demo tape. Back then, to get an agent you needed to already be published, and to get published, at least by what we now call the Big Five, you needed an agent. My logic was that a small press credit might be enough to break the loop. It worked better than I expected. If memory serves, the flash memoir sold over 1,500 copies over several months, and better yet, when I started querying agents with my proof-of-concept, I heard back from all of them. Only one had a different idea: rewrite Grosse Pointe Girl as a full-length novel, and shop that instead.

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That agent was Jenny Bent, who’s since built her own agency empire (of course she did!). I’d never considered turning the demo tape into the real thing, but I trusted her instinct completely. My demo tape became my first novel. My first novel became my second. Both went to Simon & Schuster. I’m no longer represented by Jenny, but I’ll always be grateful to her for taking my career into the big leagues.

As an author, you forge many relationships – agent, publisher, editor, publicist, the list goes on – all critical to your success. Another thing I will always be grateful to Jenny for is who she sold my books to: Denise Roy. Denise actually had a personal tie to Grosse Pointe, through her father’s career (he had a short stint at one of the private schools in Grosse Pointe), but beyond that, Denise had already made a name for herself as an extremely well-respected and successful editor. We were just a year or so apart in age and had all the same pop culture points of reference (which shows up in spades in both of my books – my first one takes place from the late 80s to early 2000s, my second one takes place from September 1991 through April 1992).

We clicked immediately, and on top of being an incredible editor, she became a dear friend. I’d also relocated from my first tour of duty in Portland, Oregon to Washington, DC in 2004, just months before Grosse Pointe Girl (the novel) came out. I had frequent jaunts to New York, and Denise’s apartment was one of the first I actually stepped foot in vs. seeing on TV or in a movie. When I relocated to the New York area from 2007 to 2010, I got to upgrade my face-to-face time with Denise into a regular thing. We had many a late night all over Manhattan, from Columbus Circle to the West Village and back to the Upper West Side. I was still drinking then, often heavy and hard, and she loved me through all of it. We’re both July babies – hers is today, July 15 – and we’ve been through the kind of stuff you don’t put in an acknowledgments page. Love (marriage), loss (divorce), grief (including the sudden and unexpected passing of her second husband and my first dog baby).

I moved back to Oregon in 2010, but Denise has never disappeared. We’ve stayed in touch and any time I’m back in New York, we pick up exactly where we left off (except for the copious amounts of wine I used to guzzle). She’s at Hachette now, as Editorial Director for this little real “up and coming” author, James Patterson. Uh, YEAH. Ya’ heard of him? Say less, right?

Much has changed in my life since these first came out, including the voice and tone of my writing, but when I revisit these books now, I also see some serious foreshadowing of experiences I would later have in my adult life that I never could have known at the time I originally wrote these novels. In recent years, I’ve shifted my focus from novels to scripted, including adapting my second novel into a feature film screenplay and pouring my heart and soul into co-creating and writing a new dark comedy series inspired by my own sobriety (eight years as of April 28).

When I get asked about my experience as an author, and think about what I have loved the most, it’s not having a great agent or getting a deal with one of the Big Five or being featured in People magazine or the countless, incredibly touching letters and emails I received from readers. All of that matters, and my early books will always be like dear, lifelong friends, but it’s all because of the editor behind them… who became one too.

Happy birthday, Denise. And thank you for never once billing me for the therapy.

xo,
SG

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Spoiler alert: I did not attend “The Great American State Fair” over July 4th weekend (I think a tumbleweed did, though). Instead, I plucked my oldest niece Anna Grace from where she lives in the DC area and brought her to me in Vegas, a trip I gifted to her for her birthday – which, incidentally, is December 25th. Yup, that’s right, a Christmas baby, my little Capricorn queen. And for the record, I have NEVER double gifted her aka “This is your birthday AND Christmas present” – not ONCE.

This was Anna’s first trip to Sin City, but not her first trip to visit me. She’s always been down to travel. I brought her out to see me in Portland twice, first in July 2019, the summer before her senior year of high school (which got wrecked by COVID, including no prom and no graduation), and again in May 2024 after she graduated college. She’s 24 now, or 24 and a half to be precise. I wasn’t much older than that when she was born, 27 and a half to be precise, living over 2800 miles away, so I didn’t hold her for the first time until she was around three months old. She screamed at me for two hours straight on night one, but the next day, if memory serves, I had her solo and under my charge for a spell, and put all my babysitting experience from ages 11 (!) to 16 to good use. During this time, she somehow managed to poop UP her neck, but hey, nothing will bond you more quickly than helping someone deal with their shit.

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Anna is an avid, passionate WNBA fan, and the Las Vegas Aces just happen to be her favorite team, so we planned the timing of her trip around their schedule. I scored good seats for the July 3rd game, Aces v. Chicago Sky at T-Mobile Arena, and we made sure to get there when doors opened to snag one of the Aces Bang-a-Banners being handed out to the first 7,500 fans inside. I’d never been to a WNBA game before and it was ELECTRIC, including a game that went into overtime and a challenge from the Aces coach Becky Hammon, resulting in the initial call being overturned and changing the entire trajectory of the game.

Anna’s in-depth knowledge of the WNBA across all teams also made the experience all the more special. She’s always been an athlete, including swimming and volleyball, and she’s currently working as a volleyball coach for high school regional teams and working as admin at the same facility. On the drive back to the house after the game, I thought about what I was doing for work at her age. My mid 20s landed in the late 1990s on the cusp of Y2K, when temping was all the rage. My first temp-to-perm role was as a Marketing Assistant with IKON Office Solutions. Picture The Office before The Office (UK or US version), but instead of paper sales, it was copiers. I was somewhere between a Pam Beesley and a Kelly Kapoor.

Around the same time, my lifelong bestie Carey had scored a temp-to-perm role at a much larger (though also much more loathed at the time) company, Louisiana-Pacific, but hey, it was like at least a dollar more an hour, maybe two. I think she pulled some strings with HR to get me an interview, and I ended up at L-P in a coordinator role with Corporate Communications, under the direction of a brand new department head. When I would get bored at IKON (which was daily), I taught myself how to use the MS Office suite, so at L-P, I somehow talked my new boss into letting me handle creating PowerPoint presentations for the C-suite. This is how a 23-turning-24 year old ends up on the company’s private corporate jets headed to places like Boston and Atlanta with the sole responsibility of hitting the next slide button for the CEO presenting to a conference room full of suits, ties, pantyhose, and pumps.

My corporate jet setting life came to a close when I asked for a raise. I remember preparing my pitch, doing the math, presenting the ask as to how it broke down per day. It was something like six dollars, or maybe it was just four dollars. I do remember it was the exact amount I paid for my daily parking, thinking I was so brilliant for framing it this way. I’d also become pretty tight with my boss, even babysitting his kids from time to time (perhaps that experience is the most valuable from my life resume?). So SURELY he would not say NO. After all, I was 24. I had paid my DUES (I was, what, maybe a year at that point with that company, at best? TENURED!). I had PROVEN myself. I was OWED.

Apparently, I was the only one who felt this way, because he said NOPE and I countered that with a BYE-BYE and gave notice the next day (exhibit A of being a Leo sun sign). Three weeks notice, but even so, I quit with nothing else lined up, which was real, real risky for someone quite literally living paycheck to paycheck. As my days left countdown began, the vibe between me and my boss was extremely contentious for the first few days. But maybe it was my Virgo rising sign or my Sagittarius moon that instinctively knew burning bridges was generally never a good idea. Or maybe I just didn’t like the idea of anyone being mad at me. I asked for another one-on-one meeting and surprised myself with how directly (and respectfully) I spoke to him about the tension, and how I didn’t want things to end like this. We had a good heart to heart that lifted any negativity right out of the air, and we are still in touch to this day. He and his lovely wife even came to my 40th birthday party (I threw myself a prom, ripping off that idea from Kevin Smith). We’ve had many laughs about the raise, the denial of my request (he has no recollection as to why he said no), and my bravado with quitting in response.

And it all worked out, of course. I managed to scrounge up some freelance marketing for a few different organizations while working part-time at Borders bookstore for about six months, then landed a full-time gig as Marketing Manager for Dark Horse Comics, where I would go on to become Marketing Director during my five year tenure (a story for another time).

When I think back to the SG mid-twentysomething years, it’s not about the temping or the corporate jets or demanding a raise or eating a lot of ramen or praying my rent check wouldn’t bounce. What I remember the most is this pervasive feeling like I should have known more, or had it all figured out… whatever that means. I’m over twice that age now, with my next birthday coming up at the end of this month, and what I’ve learned is that the “not knowing” never ends. There’s no expiration date or finish line. It’s a part of life. It comes and goes. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. And quite frankly, it’s almost always where the magic happens.

Anna’s living her own cycle of that right now, and she’s figuring it out one season at a time. I have no idea what her version of the PowerPoint “next slide” job is going to be, or what she’ll be doing on her own 40th birthday, or what she’ll know by then that she can’t see from here. But I do know she’s doing GREAT. And that I’m incredibly proud of this thoughtful, wicked funny, beautiful, intelligent, kind young woman. I also know she’s exactly where she’s supposed to be. And best of all, I know what her face looks like when her favorite team goes into overtime and wins the game.

xo,
SG

Hopeless Semantic lands in your inbox on Wednesdays. If someone in your life belongs here, send them this way.

I taught myself to read by asking my mom, “What does that say?” Stop signs, cereal boxes, the back of shampoo bottles. That’s the actual story, not the family lore version where I never learned how to read, I just “knew.” As much as I love how “born a good witch” that sounds, the truth is I was just enamored with words and relentless about understanding them. By kindergarten I was reading to the class. By first grade I was tutoring kindergartners, and in second grade, I did the same for the first graders. Reading was the key that unlocked the doorway to the world of stories, and I couldn’t stand the idea of others being left out of the magic.

By third or fourth grade, I’d figured out that the glow from my clock radio was just bright enough to read by after lights out. I devoured everything in the Beverly Cleary canon and Peggy Parish’s Amelia Bedelia series book. I graduated to the world of Judy Blume, starting with Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Otherwise Known as Shelia the Great, moving quickly on to Deenie, Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself, and then of course Tiger Eyes and Forever. If that girl only knew that years and years later, this would happen…

A story for another time.

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Lois Lowry was in heavy rotation, too (I think I’ve read A Summer to Die over a dozen times). And yes, I’ll admit it, loads of V.C. Andrews — I was a sucker for those dang peephole covers! I did ALL the summer reading challenges at my library, every single year, straight through middle school, and I still have some of my certificates earned. Reading was my Olympic sport, and these were my gold medals. In middle and high school, I read in the bathtub until the water went cold and the pages warped, and I’d just refill the tub and keep going. Some might claim I ruined a lot of books that way. I’d argue it’s the greatest sign of love.

I don’t know exactly when that kid disappeared. There wasn’t a specific day or incident, but by the time I was graduating from college, the internet was already becoming a thing, and when we moved from slow-ass loading web pages on Netscape and those free AOL dial-up discs to the explosion of websites, smartphones, wifi everywhere, and social media, attention spans became obliterated. Simultaneously, as my corporate titles got bigger, creative time for both reading and writing got smaller and smaller with the go-go-go of life. Somewhere in there, reading turned into something I meant to do instead of something I actually did, and a phone that pretended to fill the gap with memes and reels that were fleeting and temporary, leaving me mostly empty.

I left corporate years ago to focus on creative full time, but the books have primarily remained in pretty stacks. So this summer I’m in search of that girl who not only knew how to slow down and immerse herself in story… she coveted it.

The stack happens to be almost entirely secondhand. Don’t get me wrong, I do my fair share of placing pre-orders and buying new to support fellow authors. But there’s also something special about a book that’s already been somewhere before it gets to me. I recently came across Nora Ephron’s Heartburn at a thrift store and nearly passed out when I realized it was a first edition. Jesmyn Ward’s Let Us Descend and Michelle Tea’s How to Grow Up came from the same thrift haul. Ward is a two-time National Book Award winner and has been at the top of my reading list for years. Finding this gem felt like a nod from the universe to get going. And on a related woo-woo note, I’ve carried Tea’s Modern Tarot book around religiously for years – her take on what all 78 cards mean goes well beyond any typical guide book – so I can’t wait to dive into her memoir about figuring out adulthood on your own unconventional terms. Sobriety and creativity and making a life that actually fits you? Me thinks I’ll relate.

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht and Ann Packer’s Songs Without Words arrived via Poshmark (yes, you can buy books on Poshmark!). Obreht’s debut won the Orange Prize and came highly recommended by the Posh seller (I’m guessing because pretty much everyone on Posh knows I’m obsessed with tigers?). It’s set in the Balkans and follows a woman piecing together her grandfather’s mysterious life through myth and folktale, including a tiger that escaped from a zoo during wartime.

Packer’s novel is about two women whose lifelong friendship fractures when one’s teenage daughter falls into crisis. Have a strong feeling that one’s going to wreck me in the most beautiful of ways, based on previous experience with her work.

I also scored a brand new copy of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere at a different local thrift store. I’ve never read any of her books yet, but I saw her speak at last year’s Las Vegas Book Festival. The room was absolutely packed and after about fifteen seconds of hearing her talk, I understood why. The one new book I bought on purpose, no secondhand version to hunt for, is Nine Persimmons, the latest poetry collection by Kerry James Evans. I had the pleasure of meeting him in person at the 2025 AWP in Los Angeles, where he spoke about sobriety in a way that hasn’t left me since.

There’s a signed copy of David Sedaris’ A Carnival of Snackery on the stack, which deserves its own footnote. I had tickets to see him at the Smith Center in Vegas in May, but a family emergency in Michigan pulled me away at the last minute. My partner, who had not yet joined me in the midwest, went with his aunt instead, and surprised me with an autographed copy. Because yes, he’s that good.

I’ve got two recent pick ups from my local library: Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, a biography built on 150 interviews that makes the case that Miranda’s success wasn’t about prodigy or lightning in a bottle, but about relentless curiosity, collaboration, and the willingness to keep learning from everyone around him. As someone deep in my own creative endeavors right now, this feels… timely.

I also snagged a copy of Parks and Rec: The Underdog TV Show That Lit’rally Inspired a Vision for a Better America by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, which is doing double duty as pure joy reading and actual research. I’m currently in the process of shopping my own scripted series, and the behind-the-scenes story of how an underdog show survives a rough first season, finds its voice, and becomes a cultural touchstone? That’s not just a good read. That’s a road map.

And yes, I prefer printed and bound books. I’ll never read on a Kindle. To each their own, but just not my jam. Sometimes I’ll go with an audiobook depending on who’s narrating and mostly for nonfiction, but even then, I often get the hard copy or paperback as well. I want it in my hands. I want the weight of it. I want to see how far I’ve gotten just by looking at which side is thicker.

My stack, she a mighty start, ain’t she? And that’s just a partial listing! Updates to follow.

Now I want to hear from you. Have you read any of these? What’s on your summer reading stack? Drop it in the comments, and consider this your official certificate of participation.

xo,
SG

Hopeless Semantic lands in your inbox on Wednesdays. If someone in your life belongs here, send them this way.

Disclosure: This photo was actually taken in my 30s, in the parking lot of a Bon Jovi concert I went to with my fabulous friend and bestselling author Karyn Bosnak. If y’all are not yet subscribed to her Meet the Mess Substack that she does with her bestie and fellow bestselling author, my lovebug Jen Lancaster, please go fix that, ASAP.

ANYHOO (damn this ADHD be making it hard to stay FOCUSED), one rule from those improv years that has never left my body is the guiding principle of Yes, and. You don’t shut a scene down because you can’t envision where it’s going, or if it can go anywhere. You take what’s offered and you build on it, even when… no, make that especially when you have no idea what you just agreed to.

I bring this up because that Yes, and mentality might be the greatest tool in my How to Live Life box. One of my latest examples…

Ten days. That’s how much runway I had between finding out a funding grant directly tied to a project I’m a producer on was accepting applications, and the deadline to submit it. And I’m not talking about just any grant. A truly prestigious one, the kind that comes from a place when the name is said, no further explanation required.

I’d run this gauntlet before with the same funding source years ago. It was for a different program related to a screenwriters lab opportunity. At the time, I’d just finished adapting my second novel into a feature film script (honestly, I’d always envisioned on the screen vs. on the page). That time, I made it through the first (and only) round of cuts before the final twelve were announced. Didn’t earn one of those spots, but even getting down-selected was something to celebrate, especially for my first time out, and my first time writing in that format.

But when I saw this new deadline for a fund that was right in the wheelhouse of another project, with just ten days until the deadline, my first thought was: We could never pull this off in time.

Aka It’ll never work. Aka No. Not even No, but… just No. The furthest thing away from Yes, and.

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Based on my experience with my previous application to this organization, I also knew the process was arduous and lengthy. No ten question true / false questionnaire here. Makes sense, considering the tens of thousands of dollars funding. We’re talking topic summary, artistic approach, comps (and why), connection and point of view, audience consideration, intended impact, team bios, a detailed production budget, and more.

But instead of saying the impossible sentence to my producing partners, or not bothering to mention it at all, I brought it to their attention and said something closer to What if we just tried. Because some old improv reflex in me still knows the difference between a scene-ending line and a scene-building one.

They said Yes, and. We split up the application. And put in a boat load of work. Collaborating, asking for help and feedback, editing, fine tuning. Supporting. Believing.

And ten days later, several hours before the final-final deadline… it was in. And it’s GOOD y’all, if I do say so myself (and I just did).

We’ll find out by the end of the year if we got down-selected, and then by early spring if we’re one of the funded projects. But we already won: everything that went into putting this application together helped us further refine our mission, what this project is, and why it matters. We came out the other side with sharper language about the work and unbridled momentum.

I’m not saying the I could nevers (and all its variations) have been successfully eradicated from existence. They pesky, persistent lil’ things, aren’t they? I’m just suggesting the next time one shows up, no matter how reasonable it sounds, might be worth trying the other line first… just to see where the scene goes.

xo,
SG

Hopeless Semantic lands in your inbox on Wednesdays. If someone in your life belongs here, send them this way.

We are early risers in this house. My better half leads the charge on that front, usually up no later than 4:45am daily, with work calls starting shortly after. The dogs always get up with him to have their “coffee” (aka morning treats), then come back into bed with me for another hour or so, because 4:45am is obscene but 5:45-6:00am? Far more reasonable.

Today, we were all up at 4:45am, and as it’s mid-June, the first signs of twilight started to appear minutes later. At first, it was just a thin strip of ember peeking from the eastern horizon line, like someone had bumped the dimmer switch to the lowest setting. Within ten minutes, the sky was brushed in swatches of rust and pink, palm trees appearing like black construction paper cut outs against it, the Vegas strip sparkling in the distance from the North.

Some early birds get the worm. And some get the most stunning sky.

This will be my second summer in the desert. Last June, I didn’t know what to expect or what was coming. Not with the skies, but with the heat. I’d heard the warnings. Vegas summers are brutal. You don’t know what 114 feels like until you’ve lived it. Good time to plan a vacation to… anywhere else. My past fifteen years had been spent in Oregon, where many people still didn’t even have air conditioning. Prior to that, I’d lived but long forgotten the wet blanket of humidity from my tenures in the New York City area, Washington DC (by far the worst of bunch - a true swamp), and my Michigan childhood. Also, keep in mind I’ve always been the kind of person who prefers to sleep with the thermostat set at 66 degrees. So if my math was mathing, 100, 105, 110+ was nearly twice that, and I had no idea what I was in for.

I also didn’t really know what “dry heat” meant, but I clung on to that phrase like it was my only lifeline through my first desert summer. And yes, two months (or more) of 100+ days was hot AF… but turned out dry heat WAS different. IS different. And for me, way, way, way easier – and remarkably more pleasant – that the humid hells I’d endured in the past. So I did not flee for cooler lands, but instead adjusted, moving our dog walks to dawn, limiting my outdoor activities and errands, particularly between 11:00am and 3:00pm. Outside of that, not only was it not nearly as horrific or hard as I imagined it to be, it was actually…kind of lovely, particularly in the evenings when the sun starts to tuck in for the night. And the absence of any humidity brings for a certain kind of weightlessness and freedom. The heat here is honest. It tells you what it is and doesn’t hide anything in the air.

I think about how much of that bracing I did last summer, not just with my body but also in my head. The way I’d catch myself holding my breath every time I left the house, got in the car, parked and walked to the front door of my yoga studio, Trader Joe’s, the post office, my favorite local thrift store. How religious I was about using my sunshield. How I packed extra water bottles for even a five-minute errand like I was prepping for the apocalypse (because two 16 ounce Fijis will get you through at least seven minutes of survival).

But none of that came as a response to the actual heat. It came from the idea of the heat, the version I’d built out of other people’s warnings and my own worst-case imagination, months before the thermometer ever had a chance to prove me right or wrong. That’s the cruelest part of anticipatory dread: it charges you in advance for a bill that may never come due. And sometimes the thing you feared IS worse than you thought. But sometimes, it’s nothing at all. Either way, you already paid for it once, in the waiting. And that, my friends, is exhausting and something I actively work on no longer putting my time or attention towards.

In the meantime, who would have believed I’d become the kind of person to say things like, “Wow, it’s only going to be in the 90s today!” Though actually, today’s high is going to be 107, but trust me, it’s truly nowhere near as bad as it might sound.

xo,
SG

Hopeless Semantic lands in your inbox on Wednesdays. If someone in your life belongs here, send them this way.

Ever get that nagging feeling like you forgot to do something really important? I’m not talking about my daily, hourly, ADHD-infused rotations of, “Wait, why did I come in here again?” I mean one of those much deeper UH-OH moments. Because I did, yesterday, around 5:14pm PT. At first, I thought it might be the belly full of China Mama I had just inhaled (courtesy of the new location soft opening in Henderson this week). But then I remembered the date – Tuesday, June 9 – and realized that big UH OH was me forgetting to mail in my ballot for the Nevada primaries.

My first reaction (and I’m not proud of this) was straight out of the shrug, oh well department. It’s a primary. It’s June. It’s Nevada. Is anybody really watching?

Those thoughts lasted for about 10 seconds, because shrug is just not my brand, and neither is oh well.

I grabbed my ballot and instructions, still sitting out in full view with the best intentions on my home office deskw, and discovered I had until 7:00pm PT to drop off my mail-in ballot in person at a designated voting site. A quick online search revealed the closest one to me was just seven minutes away at Coronado High School, home of the Cougars. A high school I had driven past dozens of times since moving to Henderson in March 2025 without ever having a reason to go inside. I mean, besides wanting some Cougar-branded school gear, because animal print IS my brand.

Yesterday I had an even better reason. Because voting is my brand, too.

I sat down, confirmed that a blue ballpoint pen was on the approved list (Virgo rising rule follower in the house!), and made my final decisions. Then I got in my car and before I could even confirm if my bluetooth was connecting properly, I was pulling into the high school parking lot.

The voting site was set up in the school gymnasium, located more in the center of the campus, with direction signs clearly marking the way through a courtyard. Volunteers wearing yellow t-shirts (not blue, not red) were also stationed throughout to help guide and inform. One said to me, “You’re almost there!” and I laughed and said, “It’s good, I’m getting my steps,” trying to remember what yellow symbolizes. In some cultures, joy and optimism. In other settings, caution. Perhaps all of the above were appropriate in the given setting.

When I reached the gymnasium, there was a line for those voting in person, but for drop-offs, there was no wait. A female volunteer verified I had signed my envelope and pointed me to a silver box with a smile. I asked if I needed to do anything else and she said I was all set. I told her this was my first time voting in Nevada, almost as if I were apologizing for not knowing exactly how it worked here. She welcomed and congratulated me, then handed me an “I Voted” sticker - no apology necessary, just celebration.

I made my way back through the courtyard, passing another volunteer talking to a man who was also leaving, and the only part of their conversation I caught was her calling out to him:

“The key word you said there was blessed.”

I had no idea what they were talking about.

And yet, I had every idea what they were talking about.

Primary elections can be easy to dismiss. Low turnout. Closed ballot if you’re registered with a party. Races that feel local and small and seemingly far from the things that actually keeps you up at night.

But what does keep me up at night is this: protecting and maintaining our rights to safe and fair elections, particularly as we head towards the November midterms, which are redefining what critical means. And local and small are the exact places to start to make a meaningful, larger impact.

So when you realize it is not, in fact, too late – that you’ve got a good hour plus to still have your say – you count your blessings. You mark your ballot. You get in your car. And you make the seven-minute drive. Because not doing so, even now, even here, even in a June primary, is exactly how we lose the right to do it at all.

xo,
SG

Hopeless Semantic lands in your inbox on Wednesdays. If someone in your life belongs here, send them this way.

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6:08 AM.

I’m going to get SO much done today

Yikes only a 72 sleep score?

Ok, 52 minutes until my production call, plenty of time.

WHO’S THE BESTEST LITTLE GIRL?!?

“Gilda, are you my BABY? Yes you ARE… I gave birth to you… yes I did… I carried you in my womb for NINE MONTHS…”

That Hacks series finale might have been the best series finale of all time.

What was the name of that new Netflix show I just read about, the one that’s like The Villages in Florida meets Stranger Things?

I really need to get to New York to see Mariska on Broadway.

Where the F are my readers?

(feels top of head)

Oh.

80,729 emails in my inbox… cool cool.

(Cough) … do I have cancer?

Ooooh look, [INSERT POSH SELLER NAME HERE] is live!

(Bid)

(Bid)

(Bid)

(Bid)

Shit, I need to mail my orders out today.

Shit, I need to list new items today.

Delete delete delete delete delete delete delete

80,722 emails in my inbox… progress!

WHO’S THE BESTEST LITTLE BOY?

“My name is Grady…and I’m made of potatoes…and stuffed with cheesssseeeeeee…”

I need to eat something before my call.

How many grams of protein am I supposed to eat every day? Is it one gram per pound?

(Googles) “how many grams of protein should you eat in a day”

Adults should generally consume .5 to .7 grams of protein per pound of body weight daily.

If I’d done more drugs - or any drugs - I’d probably know what a gram is.

Was Robert Downey Jr. just playing himself at the time in Less Than Zero?

“Time time time… see what’s become of me…”

(Googles) “how much is a gram?”

One gram is a very small and lightweight amount. To visualize it, it is roughly equal to the weight of one standard paperclip, a U.S. dollar bill, or a single raisin.

Ok raisin raisin I can get my head around that… so I need… 70 grams? Per DAY?

70 raisins doesn’t seem like a lot.

70 paper clips seems like more.

70 dollar bills seems like the most.

How can those three be the same?

And why a dollar bill? Aren’t all bills the same size, shape and weight?

Do we have raisins?

(Runs to kitchen cupboards, locates raisins, leaves cupboard open)

(Runs back upstairs to home office, grabs jar of paper clips)

(Runs to bedroom closet, opens safe, grabs stash of cash)

(Makes pile of raisins, paperclips, and bills)

There’s no WAY these can be the same.

I still can’t believe I did better on the math portion of my SATs than my verbal.

I wonder if I really graduated high school.

I wonder if I really graduated college.

Does anybody ever CHECK?

I should tell people I went to Harvard.

No, not Harvard - NYU. Way cooler.

I mean, I DID spend a lot of time on West 4th.

WHO’S THE BESTEST BIG BOY?

“My name is Lobo… and I’m a doodle… and I’m the doodle-iest doodle that ever wasssss…”

Doodle… Wordle… Don’t forget to do Wordle - it helps you focus.

Shit, how do I only now have seven minutes before my call?

Ok need to get dressed, need to get dressed, at least from waist up…

Why can I NEVER FIND A BRA?!?

It’s not like they’re going to know I slept in this Nirvana tee.

If I knew how to sew, I could upcycle concert tees and sell them on Posh.

I made a decent duffle bag and a pillow shaped like a telephone in 6th grade Home Ec… how hard could it be?

How long does it take to air fry egg white bites again?

14 minutes?!?!

Cheese stick it is.

REALLY, Macbook? You gonna crash on me and force a restart RIGHT now?

What, suddenly you can’t handle 37 tabs open at once? GROW UP.

(texts) “be right there”

ANYTIME THIS YEAR, MACBOOK

Everything went to shit when Steve Jobs died.

“Heyyyyyyy everyone!...sorry, I think there was a Zoom update…”

Am I on mute? Goddamnit…

“Heyyyyyyy everyone!...sorry, I think there was a Zoom update… okay, pulling up the pilot script... Oh thank you! That means a lot to me. I love it, too.”

It’s gonna get made. I can just FEEL it.

7:03am.

I’m going to get SO much done tomorrow…

xo,
SG

Hopeless Semantic lands in your inbox on Wednesdays. If someone in your life belongs here, send them this way.

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The first time I was fortunate enough to be in the same room with the supernova known as Stephen Colbert was at a 2009 taping of The Colbert Report, I was living in the NYC area, right on the Hudson River on the Jersey side, just across from the Upper West Side. My brother Matt had come up from Washington, DC for a visit, and I knew he was a die-hard Colbert fan. I managed to score three audience tickets and invited my childhood-turned-NYC-based friend Terry to join us. It was a rare episode, one where the musical guest, TV on the Radio, was also the main and only guest. We didn’t get a one-on-one moment with Stephen, but when they reconfigured the studio for the band performance, they brought the audience out of their seats and we got prime real estate: standing directly behind Stephen when he introduced the band. I decided being that close in proximity basically meant we were now besties.

That’s really how you feel when you’re in the same room with him: like he’s a close friend you’ve known for years, like he’s talking just to you and yet also inclusive of everyone. And there is absolutely no question he was born to do exactly this. It’s effortless, truly a gift that can’t be taught, and one of the best parts is he not only seems genuinely delighted but grateful to be in your company. When, let’s be honest, we are the ones blessed to be in his.

In 2015, Colbert was handed what might be the most pressure-filled set of keys in late night television: the Late Show desk at the Ed Sullivan Theater. The same stage where The Beatles made their American television debut in 1964, and where David Letterman held court for twenty-two years before him. The cultural weight of that alone would have buckled most people. Colbert treated it like a homecoming. He brought the full force of his wit, his warmth, and his willingness to say the quiet part loud. Every. Single. Night. He built something that became essential viewing for millions of people trying to make sense of a world actively resisting sense-making.

And the Late Show was exactly where I was the second time I was in the same room as Stephen Colbert. Not as an audience member, but backstage this time, with Kwame Alexander — poet extraordinaire, New York Times bestselling author of 45+ books, and Emmy Award-winning producer — for Kwame’s first appearance on the show. At the time, I was serving as Kwame’s Chief Strategy Officer and Creative Producer, which was exactly how it sounds: a total blast and thrill. One of the many aspects I loved about my role was developing and managing relationships, including with publishing, entertainment, institutions, nonprofit organizations, and media. That included engaging with Colbert’s team at the Late Show leading up to the appearance, and what an absolute rockstar group, from start to finish. Also, I have been in a lot of green rooms at this point in my career, but this one was to die for.

Of course, the best part was getting to meet Stephen one on one. And what I had experienced a taste of at The Colbert Report years before was now supersized: genuine and generous, warm and joyful, present in a way that feels almost radical in this particular moment of time. Stephen’s love of reading and for authors is also quite well documented, and he used to write poetry for his lovely wife Evie when they were first courting, so his connection with Kwame was something you simply cannot manufacture.

This tracks, because Colbert has always led with his whole heart. It’s his through-line with everything.

And then in July 2025, everything changed. And let’s be real crystal clear on the why behind that: because a corrupt narcissist sociopath threw a tantrum after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for agreeing to a $16 million settlement with said corrupt narcissist sociopath, in response to one of his plethora of blackmailing lawsuits, this one over a 2024 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. A lawsuit widely viewed by First Amendment experts as completely frivolous and without merit.

So why did Paramount settle for such a staggering amount? Because at the same time, they were also pursuing a merger with Skydance, owned by corrupt narcissist sociopath-aligned billionaire David Ellison, and they needed approval from the current administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for it to go through.

As Colbert said on his show on July 14, 2025: “I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles: it’s ‘big, fat bribe.’”

Three days later, CBS decided not to renew the Late Show citing “financial reasons.”

The number one late night show for nine consecutive seasons. One of the most iconic shows in television history.

“Financial reasons.”

The merger was approved on July 25.

Welcome to a real life episode of Succession.

The outcry following the news was loud, widespread, and consistent, but it didn’t change the course of events. The Late Show aired its final episode last week, and if you haven’t watched it yet, stop what you’re doing right now and do so, because it was the definition of chef’s kiss.

I also love what Stephen said to People magazine after the last Late Show aired: “The ending of the show aside, which people can speculate about all they want, and I can’t argue with their speculations, but… we’re clowns. How much does it diminish the office of the presidency to even notice what we say?”

Indeed.

So yes, the show has ended. But if you think this is the end of the man known as Stephen Colbert, not a chance.

This is a man who learned resilience at a very, very young age, after the extremely tragic loss of his father and two brothers in a plane crash when Stephen was just ten years old. He has talked about it publicly, most memorably in two extraordinary conversations with Anderson Cooper: a CNN interview that first aired in August 2019 and then again in 2022 on Anderson’s All There Is podcast. Segments from both went viral because two people sat down and told the truth about grief, in a way that was luminous and almost unbearably beautiful. And again, if you haven’t given yourself the gift of watching these conversations, do so immediately.

Among the many things I can’t stop thinking about: Stephen talking about arriving at gratitude for his grief. About how suffering cracked him open in ways that let him see other people’s suffering, connect with it, love more deeply because of it.

This moment, specifically.

Anderson, who has had his own fair share of grief, said to Stephen, “You told an interviewer that you have learned, in your words, ‘Love the thing that I most wish had not happened.’” He choked up, but continued with, “You went on to say, ‘What punishments of God are not gifts.’ Do you really believe that?”

Stephen paused thoughtfully, and then said, sound and sure, “Yes.” After beat, he continued, saying, “It’s a gift to exist. And with existence comes suffering. There is no escaping that. I guess I’m either a Catholic or a Buddhist when I say those things. I’ve heard those from both traditions. But I did not learn it… that I was grateful for the thing I most wish hadn’t happened.. is that I realized it. And it is an oddly guilty feeling.”

Anderson offered “It doesn’t mean you’re happy about it.”

Stephen went on to say, “I don’t want it to have happened. I want it to not have happened. But if you are grateful for your life, which I think is a positive thing to do, not everybody is and I’m not always. But it is the most positive thing to do. Then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can’t pick and choose what you’re grateful for.”

Later, Stephen would clarify that “What punishments of God are not gifts?” was him quoting his favorite author, J. R. R. Tolkien (he might be the world’s biggest Lord of the Rings fan).

Regardless, this entire exchange will forever live rent free in my mind.

Stephen also said in his conversations with Anderson that he realized after his mother died in 2013 that he had been doing comedy for her all along. That underneath the desk and the monologue and the audience of millions, the secret was that he was trying to make her laugh. She had wanted to be an actress, but life had other plans, and she poured that passion for the stage into raising eleven children. Her youngest absorbed it and carried it and built something extraordinary out of it.

He made millions of people laugh instead.

Comedy as love letter. I mean, come on.

I have several photos from that day at the Late Show. Kwame and our crew behind Stephen’s desk after the taping…

Stephen and Kwame in the green room, Kwame holding his Emmy, Stephen pointing like a proud father…

And my makeup room selfie, snapped in front of a lighted mirror and an iconic Late Show with Stephen Colbert director’s chair, daydreaming about when I would have my own appearance on the show talking about my scripted series.

I still believe that. The name on the director’s chair will be different, as this particular show is over, but Stephen Colbert is not. You cannot cancel the passion that drives a person to show up, five nights a week, and try to make sense of the world by finding what’s funny and true and worth holding onto in it. That doesn’t live in a time slot. It doesn’t require a desk or a band or a studio audience. It lives in the person.

You cannot cancel heart. And I have no doubt that what Stephen Colbert’s heart beats out next will once again lift the hearts of millions.

xo,
SG

Hopeless Semantic lands in your inbox on Wednesdays. If someone in your life belongs here, send them this way.

I’ve spent the past two weeks at my mom’s house in Michigan, attending to a family health crisis with all hands on deck, including my amazing brother as well as my incredible partner who flew in to help support during week two. We’re still in the thick of it, so I’m keeping the details close to the vest for now, but can share that we’d reach enough of a steady(ish) state point to feel comfortable booking our return flight this past Saturday, May 16, from the place I first called home to the place I now call home (Las Vegas).

We needed to be at DTW by 8:30am ET. Our pre-ordered Uber pick up was scheduled for 7:30am, and around 7:28am, I got an alert on my Uber app that our driver was going to be a good 20+ minutes late, just as a massive early morning thunderstorm erupted. We cancelled the Uber and pivoted: my partner loaded our bags into my mom’s 2017 Lexus SUV and got behind the wheel, my mom riding shotgun so she could drive herself back after drop-off.

I slipped into the backseat with my dog daughter Gilda, who in addition to being ridiculously adorable, is also a trained and certified service animal that travels with me most of the time. I’m pretty sure her biggest gripe that morning was lamenting about the Metro Detroit suburban wildlife she would no longer have access to via the backyard views through the windows of my mom’s house.

Fortunately, the thunderstorms had taken a smoke break during our drive, but about 16 minutes before we were due to pull into the departures drop-off at McNamara terminal, my mom’s tire light decided to wish us a good morning. We defaulted to, “Tire pressure probably needs to be re-balanced,” and continued along our way.

We were 12 minutes out from the airport when we heard what we hoped was “freeway noise” and changed lanes. Less than 30 seconds later, it became real, real clear that it was not.

My partner calmly eased the car to the far right shoulder (with the added protection of an underpass no less), threw on the hazards, hopped out and laid eyes on the culprit. Not a flat that comes from the random nail on the road or hitting one of the plentiful potholes decorating the Michigan freeways.

Nawwww.

This was a full-on tire BLOW OUT.

A tire that had been on borrowed time, which turned out to expire at approximately 8:18am eastern on I-275 South and put a new timer in play: the “will we-won’t we make our flight” clock.

My first thought, for about three seconds, was: We’re SO screwed.

And then I remembered who I was with, turned to my visibly panicked mother, and said, “There is literally no one else you would want to have with you in this situation other than him.”

By the time I finished that sentence, my partner already had the suitcases out of the trunk and the spare in hand.

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Early in our relationship, when I still lived in Portland, Oregon, but was making regular visits to see my partner in Las Vegas (in what would soon become our home), he was showing me via video call a light wall in the house that wasn’t functioning properly. It’s a massive art installation of hexagonal LED panels that was already part of the home when he bought it. Located in one of the main sitting rooms, it remains one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen and it’s always a go-to conversation piece when we have guests over. He was troubleshooting the issue out loud while I watched via his smartphone tour, confident he knew the source of the malfunction and could fix it himself.

As a professional worry wart, my first response was, “Okay, well be careful… I mean, you’re not an electrician.”

Because of course my brain had already jumped to an accidental self-electrocution scenario. Look, I’ve watched a LOT of TV and movies, so perhaps a reasonable fear to have about oneself.

It was not a reasonable fear to have about him.

We got off the call. Maybe ten minutes later, my phone buzzed. He’d sent a video of the light wall, now fully operational, glowing magnificently, every panel firing perfectly (you can even set it to time with whatever music you are playing). His text caption read:

“NOT an electrician?!?”

It’s been our inside joke ever since. Every time he fixes or solves something (which is always, and everything), one of us says it.

Not an electrician.

Back to I-275.

My partner had the blown tire off and the spare on in thirteen minutes, unscathed except for one bloody knuckle. I like to think our recent viewing of the F1 movie helped with this training, but the truth is, he’s probably been able to do such things since age eight. Or six. Or four.

Needless to say, we not only made the flight, we had time to spare (pun intended). And because he is who he is, before we boarded, my partner used that time to research the best new tires for my mom’s car, find a shop ten minutes from her house, and track down two rebates she could apply to the service, sending her all the details via text. By the time we landed in Las Vegas, my mom was at Belle Tire and getting a full new set.

I did not ask him to do this. It would also not have occurred to me to do this. He just did it, the way he does everything: thoughtfully, lovingly, completely, without being asked.

There’s no question that the tire was going to blow at some point on that particular Saturday. For days, we’ve remarked how grateful we are that it didn’t happen when my mother was alone. Had our Uber not been late, this story could have played out much differently, and much worse.

The past two weeks have been filled with highs and lows, but one thing I’ve been reminded of is this: no matter how in control you’d like to believe you are, or how prepared you try to be, at some point, shit is going to go sideways. In big ways, small ways, and everything in between. It’s not a question of if, but when. And how one shows up when it does.

And what I also know is this: in these moments, even if I forget how to put one foot front of the other, I will always get through to the other side. Because I’ve got Not an Electrician as my ride or die.

xo,
SG

Hopeless Semantic lands in your inbox on Wednesdays. If someone in your life belongs here, send them this way.