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.

I’m still in Michigan this week, but within hours of first arriving on Saturday, May 2, I’d already put a fork into a Sanders Bumpy Cake and cracked open a Vernors ginger ale. It’s part of the laws and statutes for all current and former Michiganders, under chapter somethingoranother, code thingamajiggy. My qualifications on this topic speak for themselves: I spent my first 22 years in the state shaped like a mitten (save month zero to month six of my life, which took place in the suburbs of Chicago). Either way, my foundation is about as midwest as it gets. I’ve also watched all 590+ episodes of Law & Order: SVU, which means I’m an attorney (and a detective), so don’t ask questions, just trust me on this.

There’s much I miss about Michigan. Not the winters. And not the constant construction on I-94, I-75, or I-696. I do miss the people, specifically their accents, their hardworking, not afraid to get their hands dirty gusto, and their genuine give-you-the-shirt-off-their-back charm. I miss the summers on the lakes and up north, and the turning of the leaves in the fall. I miss being in a place with undying love (and an endless sea of merchandise) for every college and national team we lay claim to: Spartans, Wolverines, Tigers, Lions, Red Wings, Pistons, whether we are at the top of our game or the worst in the league.

But by far, what I miss the most are the regional delicacies. Because in Michigan, there are food tenets that must be followed, and while my Leo sun sign might be all, “No one tells ME what to do!” it’s my Virgo rising that rules the roost. And she’s a real by-the-book type of gal, so every time I step off the plane in the McNamara terminal at DTW, whether I’m going to be in town for 24 hours or two weeks, I’m calculating my strategy for how and when I’m going to hit every item on that food and beverage checklist. And that list has not changed since I was old enough to have opinions, which, if you know me, was approximately since birth.

Roll call…

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Sanders Bumpy Cake

Let’s start with the (butter)cream of the crop: Sanders Bumpy Cake.

A little history: Sanders was founded in 1875 by a German immigrant named Frederick Sanders Schmidt, who opened his first candy store on the (still) legendary Woodward Avenue in Detroit after his Chicago shop was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire. By the mid-20th century, the company had 57 retail locations, including the original Grosse Pointe, Michigan location on Kerchevel Avenue in the heart of the Village shopping area. It was part store, part cafe, with a counter top serving not just bumpy cake but also their infamous hot fudge cream puffs.

That original GP location closed by the 1990s, though for a brief time, there was a new Sanders Chocolate & Ice Cream Shop outpost that opened further down the street on Kerchevel. That one has also shuttered its doors (as of 2020), but there are a few Sanders retail locations still open, and the good news is you can also buy Bumpy Cakes at most Kroger grocery stores (now available in three different sizes and a few different flavor variations!).

You’ll usually find them in the bakery section, where they have a smaller cooler or freezer for certain desserts. While it now often comes frozen, it’s imperative you allow the cake to get to room temperature before diving into this masterpiece: a devil’s food cake topped with thick ridges (aka the bumps) of ganache-covered buttercream and finished with fudge icing.

Fun fact: Henry Ford, before he was thee Henry Ford and still just a young mechanic getting called in for repairs, used to fix the electric motors at Sanders. I didn’t know the venn diagram of that little bit of Michigan history until this week.

Vernors

Another official legend brought to you accidentally by Detroit pharmacist James Vernor, who was experimenting with a spiced ginger tonic before the Civil War. He got called to serve, sealed the concentrate in an oak barrel, and came home four years later to find that whatever the wood had done to it was something entirely new. He declared it, “deliciously different,” which has been the slogan ever since.

The unofficial truth: his own son admitted in 1936 that the timeline was a little embellished.

The actual truth: none of this matters, because Vernors is not a ginger ale in the casual sense of the word. It is golden, faintly vanilla, and aggressively carbonated in the best way possible. In Michigan, we drink it like water (but not like Flint water). Aretha Franklin used to glaze her Christmas ham with it (you can find the recipe here), and there is also the Boston Cooler rendition, aka Vernors over vanilla ice cream, though why this wasn’t called the Detroit Cooler, I’ll never know.

Sure, I can get Vernors in other areas of the country now, including Las Vegas where I live, but it just hits different when consumed in the 313. Every time, after that first sip, my nervous system is all, “There you are!” and I’m all, “I know, I know.”

Buddy’s Pizza aka Detroit-Style Pizza

Small but important caveat before we begin the pizza TEDtalk: I grew up eating Buddy’s. Or Mr. C’s. I did not grow up eating “Detroit-style pizza.” We never called it that, or if we did, I certainly don’t remember it as such. I first heard that phrase maybe five or six years ago, when I was still living in Portland, Oregon. Don’t get me wrong - happy to see Detroit get some brand billing on this, and all for this particular regional obsession becoming a trend, because that means outposts in cities across the country. Now, whether or not these outposts actually get it RIGHT is up for debate, but I’m happy to report we have at least two spots in the Las Vegas area that have knocked it out of the park (Pizza Rock and Good Pie).

The “it” is a rectangular pan pizza with a chewy, almost focaccia-like crust, Wisconsin brick cheese caramelized against the edges of a blue steel pan, and sauce on top of the cheese instead of under it, which sounds like chaos and is in fact the only acceptable way to exist.

Buddy’s has been doing this since 1946, though truth be told, the current execution is a mixed bag depending on location (the downtown outpost near Grand Circus Park did nail it last time I was there). Word has it that Grandma Bob’s and Michigan&Trumbell, both in the Corktown area of Detroit, are on the current shiz-nitz list. Checking it out tonight in the name of science… I’ll report back.

Better Made Potato Chips

In 1930, Cross Moceri and Peter Cipriano bought a small potato-chip operation in east Detroit, with their sights set on, “How can we do this better?” And perhaps that’s exactly what inspired the Better Made (talk about straightforward) brand name, which officially launched in 1934. They have now outlasted more than twenty competitors and are still headquartered in the D with a product line that includes plain and flavored potato chips (over 60 million pounds produced annually!), corn chips, cheese puffs and curls, popcorn, pretzels, dips, and pork rinds (hard pass for me on that last one). Their tagline is “Everything’s made better with better made,” which quite frankly is just good life advice that goes well beyond snacks.

Faygo

In 1907, two Russian immigrant brothers named Ben and Perry Feigenson started a bottling company in Detroit, taking up residence in the space above the plant and delivering their goods by horse-drawn wagon. Their first flavors (fruit punch, strawberry, grape) were based on cake frosting recipes they’d brought from Russia. In 1921, they decided “Feigenson Brothers” was too long and renamed it Faygo.

Apparently the brand now offers 57 flavors, but my go-to has always been Rock & Rye. I’ve never known what inspired that name, but the University of Google tells me it was named after a Prohibition-era cocktail (a rye whiskey softened with rock candy). I’d describe the taste along the lines of cream soda’s “cool” aunt or uncle, the one who shows up to family parties with the best presents. Outside of Michigan, my guess pretty much nobody knows what the hell Faygo or Rock & Rye is, but inside the lower and upper peninsulas, we know what’s what.

Coney Island

There’s a famous rivalry between two Detroit establishments, American Coney Island and Lafayette Coney Island, two legendary neighboring downtown spots that have been competing since the early 1900s and about which people have deeply held, non-negotiable feelings.

Mad respect for this, but it’s a dog fight I’ve never been in, because my actual Coney formation happened at one of the several National Coney Island locations, specifically the one near the corner of 7 Mile and Mack Avenue, right on the Grosse Pointe/Detroit border. I might petition for a plaque to be made and affixed to one of the booths, commemorating the years I spent ordering chili and cheese fries (back when my metabolism could still handle such things).

The Detroit Coney dog is also its own specific thing – chili, mustard, onions, beef hot dog in a steamed bun – but never MY thing. Sorry (not sorry), but I don’t do mustard, or raw onions… or white creamy curdly (cottage cheese and mayo are grounds for justifiable homicide), red chunky, green chunky, or condiments. Period.

Now you.

That’s my list. The gold, silver, and bronze plus three honorable mentions that constitute a homing signal for me. But I want yours. What’s the food (or foods) that you make a beeline for the second you land somewhere you once called home? The regional thing that doesn’t exist anywhere else, or exists elsewhere but isn’t the same? The thing that takes you back to a specific time, place, version of you? Drop it in the comments. And if you grew up in Metro Detroit and I’ve left something off what would be your list, let’s hear it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I still have half of a Bumpy Cake left to slay.

xo,
SG

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

The signs of graduation season are in full bloom. I’m currently in Michigan at my mom’s house, and on my walks with my dog Gilda, we pass dozens of suburban lawn signs in the neighborhood, congratulating members of the class of 2026. Fancy, personalized signs. Meagan. William. Tyler. Sophia. So maybe it’s no accident that I also just came across a box of artifacts related to my own graduation in my mom’s basement. Things she has absolutely no business still having.

I may or may not have similar time capsules in my own home. The apple does not fall far from the tree.

Among the contents: several copies of The Tower student newspaper from my alma mater, Grosse Pointe South High School. I served as Deputy Editor, but in Vol. 64, No. 30, dated Thursday, May 28, 1992 (thirty-four years ago this month, whoa), I was not the journalist, but rather part of the story. On the front page of this issue, an illustrated biplane trailing a banner reads, “INTO THE MYSTIC,” (why we chose a 1970 Van Morrison song for our 1992 class song, I’ll never remember), and, “SENIORS TAKE FLIGHTS.”

My senior photo is also on the front page. I’m wearing a very… earnest blouse. And pearls. It’s giving major Tracy Flick vibes. You’d definitely hire me as a temp.

I was one of two commencement speakers selected from an audition pool of eight candidates. Fortunately, the other slot went to my dear friend Heather King (who bore absolutely no resemblance, behavioral or otherwise, to any character from Heathers). Our speeches, according to the article, “recall memories of the past and dreams of what the future might hold.”

When asked about my speech, I told the reporter (who was also a classmate and newspaper staff colleague, but let’s make it sound more like Bob Woodward and less like the guy whose locker was next to mine): “It is an analogy to the Wizard of Oz. If I told any more, it would defeat the purpose of the speech.”

I was seventeen and 10 months old, and already committed to the bit.

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I’m fairly certain there’s a full, printed copy of my speech sitting in one of my artifact boxes somewhere in my Las Vegas home. I remember coming across it when I was packing to move from Oregon last year. I’m also almost certain there is a VHS tape of the actual ceremony. For those under 40, VHS stands for Video Home System, and a VHS tape is another phrase for what we called videotapes in the 1900s. We would play them on these magic little machines called VCRs, which stood for Video Cassette Recorder. None of these things came with Instagram or Tiktok.

What I do have on hand are slightly fictionalized fragments of the speech and moment, forever memorialized in my first novel (which, of course, my mom also ha sin her house), Grosse Pointe Girl: Tales from a Suburban Adolescence, published by Simon & Schuster. Getting published by one of what we now refer to as the “Big 5” was a dream come true, and my early books will always be like dear, lifelong friends. Grosse Pointe Girl is more closely inspired by my own upbringing in a very affluent suburb of Detroit. My second novel, The Girl I Wanted to Be, is not at all ripped from my personal headlines, but inspired by that moment we all have where we stopped seeing things as a kid and clicked into acute awareness of the adult world.

Both books are paperback originals and stand-alone novels published under the adult division of S&S. As both are narrated from a teen POV (which I’ve always loved), I’ve also had a lot of teen readers (which also delights me to no end). 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. Pretty incredible, right?

My first book also featured not only a cover but also interior spot illustrations by wonderful artist Christine Norrie, including the infamous commencement speech moment.

Here are some of the related excerpts, featuring the narrator Emma and her will-they-won’t-they best guy friend Billy.

***

By Tuesday, the hallway buzz has turned from prom to graduation, just a week or so away. I’m thankful for the subject change, hoping to avoid shared details of Billy’s prom night. We’ve reinstated our traditional third-period smoke break in his car. This week, the hall monitors don’t even bother asking us for passes when we saunter into class fifteen minutes late.

“Are you ready?” Billy asks me, rolling down the window. “Do you know what you’re going to say?”

I’ve earned the distinction of commencement speaker after auditioning with twelve other students. My speech, “The Road to Oz,” is packed with analogies and lessons: the yellow brick road being the path ahead of us; the quest for a brain, a heart, and courage; ruby-red shoes that gave you the power to control your own destiny the entire time.

I had no idea what I was talking about. The administrators ate it up.

“Sure. I’m going to tell three hundred and fourteen people what to do with their lives.”

***

The night before graduation, Billy Crandall and I drive over to the school grounds around midnight. The front lawn has been set up for the event, and if the weather holds, tomorrow at seven p.m. we will begin our walk across the stage in front of the blue-and-gold banners and accept our diplomas and wonder what comes next.

Billy parks around the corner and we crouch low as we sneak across the lawn to the stage. He takes a seat in the front row while I practice.

“You are headed for a place called Oz,” I say in a politician’s voice.

“When Dorothy began, her intention was to find a way home again. Is that how you feel now? Do you really want to leave the security and comfort of Grosse Pointe South?” I ask a sea of nearly empty folding chairs.

Billy stands up and begins to clap.

“Wait,” I say. “I’m not finished yet.”

***

Reader, I was never finished yet. This has not changed.

What has changed is everything I would actually say. Now.

The Road to Oz, Take Two: 2026 Remix

Distinguished faculty, beloved parents, family, and friends, and fellow members of the Grosse Pointe South High School Class of 1992:

Welcome, and good evening.

I had a whole speech prepared. A real banger with some deeply sincere, frequently clichéd, on-the-nose analogies to the Wizard of Oz. Creative but also largely predictable. Primarily cheerful. Controversy free. Safe.

But I’m setting it aside tonight, because I have some things to tell you that seventeen-year-old me could never have known to say.

Consider this a dispatch from the future. Pay attention.

First things first: put down the cigs and the booze. The Benson & Hedges, the Salem Menthols, the Camel Lights, the Marlboro Lights, and definitely the Marlboro Reds. Also the martinis, the seabreezes, and all our training wheel versions: Boone’s Farm, Sun Country Wine Coolers, Mickeys 40’s. I know: most of our parents always had one in each hand. As did their parents. It’s practically a love language in this zip code. But here’s what nobody is saying out loud in Grosse Pointe, and probably won’t for another decade or two, if ever: none of these things are taking the edge off. They are the edge. We learned very young in this town that you don’t talk about the hard things. You numb them, you mask them, you serve them in a crystal glass at six o’clock and call it unwinding. Some of you will figure out a different way to cope. Do that sooner rather than later.

To the women in this class: you are also allowed to want more than what this town has historically suggested is the appropriate ceiling for your ambitions. You can get married. You can have children. You can be a devoted partner and an incredible mother… and also, you do not have to. You are allowed to want a career, a creative life, a path that looks nothing like the blueprint. You are allowed to want that without apology and without explanation. (And if someone does eventually greenlight The Real Housewives of Grosse Pointe, I want it on record that I called it.) Oh and PS? Your outward appearance, no matter how tight, taut, tucked you fight to keep it? It’s the least interesting thing about you. And anyone who ever suggested otherwise does not deserve another second of your time. And if your own voice in your head has been the loudest in this choir, the time to bid them adieu is right now.

To the men in this class: you are allowed to have feelings. I’m fairly certain no one has ever told you that. What many of you have likely heard and felt in your bones since birth is the weight of expectation. Follow your father into the firm. Become the executive, the lawyer, the doctor. Do it without complaint, without visible struggle, without ever once admitting that this might not be what YOU want. Some of you will carry that weight and quietly suffocate under it. Some of you will realize years from now that tonight was your peak. Not because you weren’t capable of more, but because no one ever gave you permission to find out what more looked like. You are more than what you’re being handed. You are allowed to want something different. You are allowed to need things. That is not a weakness. That is, in fact, your greatest superpower.

And to everyone in this class who has spent the last four years hiding who you actually are because this was not a place, nor was 1992 a time that made it easy or safe to be anything other than what you were told to be… I see you. It gets so much better. The world you’re walking into will change in ways that would astonish you right now, and you will be able to exhale, and be the real you, out loud, in public, without apology. I won’t lie to you and tell you the fight is over. But you will not be alone in that fight, and you will be more loved than you currently believe possible. Hold on.

Now, let’s circle back for a minute on that Oz story. The Scarecrow’s whole crisis was that he thought he didn’t have a brain. And he was so focused on the brain in his head, he forgot that we actually have two: the other one that lives in your gut. The one that’s been trying to tell you things for years. The one that operates on truth rather than fear. Start listening to it.

The Cowardly Lion thought he lacked courage, but what he actually lacked was permission to try and fail. So here’s your permission: make mistakes. Enormous ones. Embarrassing ones. The kind you’ll be telling stories about in thirty years. Failure is not the opposite of success. It’s the actual mechanism of how success happens. The detours are not the problem. The detours are a critical part of the entire story. The detours are where all the growth lives.

The Tin Man was convinced he had no heart. He was wrong. He was the most feeling one of all of them, and it terrified him. So: check on your people. Not the performative check-in, not the how are you said while already walking away. The real one. Some of the people on this lawn tonight will not make the whole journey, and the grief of that does not have an expiration date. Say the things that need saying before you need to say them. Be someone’s Tin Man.

Spoiler alert: the ruby slippers were on your feet the whole time. I’m keeping that part from the original speech. What I failed to mention is that nobody else gets to decide when you click your heels. Not your parents, not your partner, not your job or your title. Stop equating your worth to whether or not someone else chooses you. Choose yourself. Also, the good witch knew about the slippers the entire time, but if she’d told you earlier on, would you have believed her? No. But that was intentional - she knew you had to figure certain things out on your own. So go figure them out.

It’s also okay to not know what comes next. It’s okay to leave this very white, very wealthy, very specific bubble and fall apart a little and put yourself back together differently. Grosse Pointe is a beautiful place to be from in many ways, and it also carries a history of deep dysfunction. One of my favorite phrases is, “Both can be true,” and that is certainly the case here. Be proud of where you’re from. And don’t let it entirely define where you’re going.

Be kind. Give grace. But have boundaries. Reinforce them. Protect them. Maintain them. Kindness without limits is not a virtue, it’s an open door, and not everyone who walks through it deserves to be there.

And finally: if I told you who is president by the time we all turn 50, you would not believe me. And if I could go back and change the course of history in any single way, that would be the one. But I can’t. So instead I’ll just say this: pay attention. Participate. Exercise and protect your rights. Take nothing for granted. And remember this: the man behind the curtain is always, always, smaller than he appears.

Congratulations, Class of 1992.

The road is yours.

I’ll see you out there.

xo,
SG

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

I think the first time I ever used the term “infinity,” it was in relation to feelings. As in, “I love you times infinity.” I don’t know if I said it to a family member, a fleeting teen love, or maybe it was a situation of, “I love this times infinity,” not a you, and the this was the best cupcake I’d ever had. I do know I’ve always loved the hyperbole of it, and that I understood that infinity meant endlessness, rather than any specific number.

But if you take the number 8, and turn it on its side, you get the infinity symbol. Is that ironic? That a symbol meant to represent an unbounded quantity does, in fact, look like a number, depending on the tilt?

Yesterday marked the 8th year of my sobriety, but I also realized that 8s have always been built into that major life change moment: April 28, 2018. I often get asked about how that came to be, and if you know me, you know I’m very open about addressing any and all related questions.

If you don’t know me yet, I shared a very brief answer to that question in my first Substack post, but there’s always more story behind the story.

Eight years ago, I didn’t realize it was day one of anything.

Certainly nothing that was going to be longer than 30 days max.

I was, however, acutely and painfully aware that I was drowning in some of the most excruciating heartbreak and grief of my life. My decades of numb out choices had reached a point of maximum tilt, to the extent that for the first time in my life, I did not feel safe with myself. And trust me, no one was more shocked — or more terrified — by that than yours truly.

Thankfully, I was still of the mind to have an awareness that I’d reached Defcon 1 and needed to do SOMETHING, immediately. So I decided to take a “break.” And maybe I told myself it was a “break,” because committing (or admitting) to anything beyond that would have simply been too much to swallow.

Three months in, as I was approaching my come-into-this world birthday at the end of July, someone asked if I was going to celebrate my “break” and count it as a “success” by bringing it to a close with birthday cocktails. I heard myself say no before I even thought about it. Not a reluctant no. Just: no. Which of course I now know was really a yes — to me, to life. And an understanding, an acceptance, a rush of gratitude with the realization that this “break” was becoming something else entirely. Something without a finish line. A continuous loop, moving, returning to itself, beginning again.

I always do something special on my Soberversary. In the past, it’s often been a one or two day trip with my dog daughter Gilda to somewhere within a three to four hour driving distance. This year, I decided to stick close to home and take in the perfect 77 degree, sunny Las Vegas day, sitting poolside and losing myself in Mary Laura Wilcott’s magnificent memoir, Bomb Shelter. Took an epic nap with my dog babies that deserved its own award. Enjoyed a phenomenal dinner with my partner at Delilah’s, an absolutely beautiful, pretty-impossible-to-get-in-to restaurant that serves as an homage to the glamorous age of Hollywood and Las Vegas. Toasted with a truly lovely non-alcoholic sparkling wine (this is harder to find than you might imagine). Topped it off with a salted caramel chocolate cupcake (that I, of course, love times infinity), adorned with a silver 8 candle crown.

Each year, I also source a single marble representing a year of sobriety, a practice I was inspired to start years ago by Brené Brown. The first three marbles came from my dear friend Katie. Some I’ve found on my own, at various vintage and thrift shops. Years 7 and 8 have come from my partner, and they have been, as he tends to be, several levels above what past me, pre-sober me, would have picked for myself.

This year’s marble is made of amethyst. And while I have been woo-woo for a very, very long time, and my house is a crystal palace, including a few different amethyst pieces, it was only over the last year that I discovered this stone is associated with sobriety. In fact, the word amethyst comes from the Greek word amethystos, meaning: not intoxicated.

He was extremely intentional in choosing amethyst for this year’s marble, which was also crafted to be UV reactive under black light. He also created and designed a handmade card for me (dude knows me and the way to my heart), with one side explaining the origin story behind the stone, and the other containing a personal message that I’m going to keep private. But let’s just say I cried in public. No shame in that statement, and besides, Delilah’s does not allow photography inside the establishment (though I did sneak one of the marble under the black light wand he got me to go with it, and as you can see, the result is otherworldly).

I also seem to always spot the respective number in the wild day of, or maybe I’m just more acutely aware of it. But sure enough, 8s were winking all over the place, including the first slot machine we saw after dinner, with a grand jackpot of $88,888.88.

I didn’t win that jackpot. But for the past 2,920 days, I have been reaping the rewards of another jackpot. One I love times infinity.

xo,
SG

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

What I’m not obligated to tell you (but will, because Overshare is my jam) is that some of those early poems were absolutely, magnificently, catastrophically dramatic.

Exhibit A:

That is “We Live on Baker Street,” written by one Sarah McCandless, age 14, freshman at Grosse Pointe South High School, class of 1992. It won an honorable mention in the 1989 National Scholastic Writing Awards, chosen from 24,000 entries.

Honorable Mention.

The Grosse Pointe News ran my picture as though I had won a gold medal.

(props to my mamma for keeping the clipping)

To be clear: I have never experienced a single thing described in that poem. But at 14, channeling every dramatic thing I had ever read or watched or imagined into twenty lines about a life I had not lived felt like the most honest thing I could do.

Inspiration source materials included but were not limited to:

• Every ABC Afterschool Special, particularly that really bleak one trying to be a modern day Romeo & Juliet starring Molly Ringwald.

• The entire V.C. Andrews Flowers in the Attic canon, yes, all the way through Seeds of Yesterday.

• The oh-so-hetero, girl-has-yet-to-find-her-own-agency, waiting-to-be-chosen blueprint of “boy realizes girl was always the one.” See: Jake Ryan showing up for Sam at the end of Sixteen Candles, Blane showing up for Andie at the end of Pretty in Pink.

• Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume (I think this is also what started my love affair with New Mexico).

• Beverly Hills, 90210: more Brenda-Dylan-Kelly storylines, less Donna Martin Graduates or David Thinks He Can Sing.

I desperately craved something dramatic, or at least something interesting, to happen to me, primarily so I could enter (and win) Sassy magazine’s Sassiest Girl in America contest (and then be asked to join the editorial team, permanently).

In the meantime, I channeled all that had NOT happened to me into make believe short stories and poems.

Which are, of course, now extremely funny in retrospect.

Here’s another story behind the story in that newspaper photo: the outfit I’m wearing. It was a deliberate recreation of a look worn by Cindy Mancini in Can’t Buy Me Love, specifically the airplane graveyard scene.

Cindy Mancini, for those who need a refresher, was the most popular girl in school, but her secret shame was that she wrote poetry. Because DUH you can’t be a popular girl AND write poetry. GROSS.

Let’s just say me and Cindy were also two peas in a pod when it came to the “quality” of our work. A line from her pièce de résistance (that Ronny / Ronald later co-opts and uses as his own to get in another girl’s pants):

Someday my wish is for him to hold me in his arms,
in a sea of deep blue,
together at last,
together as two.

Maybe Cindy should have received the honorable mention?

Regardless, I was dressing like a secret poet… while winning a national poetry award. Make of that what you will.

The teacher in that newspaper photo, the woman beaming as she hands me what appears to be an award or a certificate, is Mrs. Koch. Eva Koch, though she was always Mrs. Koch to me (pronounced Cook).

She was my first true mentor.

I was one of maybe three freshmen who landed a spot in her Creative Writing class. I don’t know exactly how I got in, but I know what it felt like: like someone had seen something in me before I had fully seen it in myself. She had thick reddish brown hair and she was always so put together. She had handwriting I loved, cursive (a lost art), beautiful in both presentation and content, script that made you want to be the person whose work she was writing on. I still have drafts with her notes tucked away somewhere. I have never been able to throw them out.

She also created Imprints, the literary journal at Grosse Pointe South that gave student writers, photographers, and artists a home for their work. I appeared in every single issue during my four years there, and I was the editor my senior year.

She built the thing that built me.

Mrs. Koch passed away in January 2022. She was 88 years old and she had spent most of her life in service of other people’s language. When I found her obituary in, where else, the Grosse Pointe News, I sat with it for a long time.

I don’t think I would be a writer without her. I know I wouldn’t be the writer I am.

The poetry got better. That’s not a brag, that’s just the truth of what happens with more time and dedication to the craft, including immersing myself in the greats, the true gold medalists: Nikki Giovanni, Margaret Atwood, Kwame Alexander, Carolyn Forché, Anita Skeen, Pablo Neruda, Mary Oliver, Mindy Netifee.

Here’s something I wrote more recently. Not about a life I hadn’t lived, but about one I had lived, was living, and paying attention to:

In Solstice, Winter

I have never relied on vision
to see my way through your dark.
There are always clues when you’ve reached
maximum tilt away from the sun.
The waft of mildew upon discovery
of damp clothes left behind
in the washer. Toast served
burnt and dry.
Weak and bitter
coffee. How your body remains
a frozen tundra
because there is never enough warmth
from my touch.

Here is what I know to be true:
This is how you spin.
And when you enter
your most distant, southern point,
your shortest day and longest night,
what appears might be your final standstill,
I will continue to orbit around your orbit,
gazing at the possibility
of our rebirth.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about this April, during this particular National Poetry Month, in this particular moment in the world:

Poetry is not only what lives on the page.

I see it in the desert sunrises and sunsets in Las Vegas. The kind of sky that stops you mid-sentence, that demands you look up and stay looking. There is no other word for what those skies are doing except poem.

I see it in my significant other in a thousand ways, including how he makes me coffee every morning and brings it to me without being asked. That’s not a small gesture. That’s a sonnet.

And I saw it last weekend at the Boston Marathon, in a video that has now been seen by millions: two strangers helping a runner who was struggling to stand and cross the finish line. Just reaching out. Holding someone up. Making sure they got there.

If that’s not poetry, I don’t know what is.

April is the month we officially designate for it, which I appreciate. But poetry doesn’t wait for April. It shows up in handwriting on a draft. In a sky that won’t let you look away. In a partner who thinks about your needs before you’ve even thought about them yourself. In two people at mile 26.2 who decided that finishing together mattered more than finishing first.

And it showed up in a ninth grader wearing her best cobbled together Cindy Mancini outfit, writing about a life she hadn’t lived yet, reaching for language.

Because reaching for language was the only thing that made sense.

And still is.

xo,
SG

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

I’ve been trying to find the right word for what this moment feels like.

The specific, physical, cellular feeling of living inside this particular chapter of American history. The one where you wake up and reach for your phone and something new has been broken or threatened or taken, and you haven’t even had coffee yet.

The word is tax.

Not the filing deadline kind, which is today, BTW… hope yours was less painful than the country’s. I mean the other definition. The one that doesn’t get enough airtime:

A strain. A heavy demand. A burden.

That’s what this is. That’s what this administration is. An endless, relentless, deliberate tax on our attention, our energy, our nervous systems, our ability to think clearly about anything else. And I believe that’s not accidental. Overwhelm is a strategy. Paralysis is the point.

I refuse to be paralyzed. But some days, it’s a close call.

I moved to the Las Vegas area last March, which means my activism looks different than it did in Portland, Oregon, where I lived for years. Portland has always had a certain infrastructure for resistance. You knew where to show up, who would be there, what the drill was, and the drills were frequent and large (though often blown way out of proportion or completely misrepresented in the media, but that’s another story).

Las Vegas is different. It’s not a place commonly thought of as Protest Central. We’re not really on anyone’s radar, and if we are, it’s more as a place to strike (as in a target), not a place TO strike (as in protest). But Nevada IS similar to Oregon in the sense that, like Multnomah County that houses the Portland metro area, Clark County, which consists of Las Vegas and its surrounding entities (Henderson, Summerlin, etc.), is also still mostly blue, while the rest of the state of Nevada, much like Oregon… is not.

But the other thing that’s different is the desert, at times, has its own particular way of making you feel like you’re shouting into a void.

And yet.

I found Indivisible Las Vegas. I show up to protests. I call representatives, mine and sometimes ones who aren’t mine, because at this point we are all in each other’s districts when it comes to what’s at stake. I use whatever platform I have to amplify what’s happening, to make sure the people in my life can’t look away, to be a person who does not let the enormity of this become normalized.

And still. Still. I always feel like I’m not doing enough.

That feeling, that chronic insufficiency, that sense that no matter what you do the scale of it dwarfs you, is also a tax. It’s what they’re counting on. The gap between the size of the problem and the size of what any one person can do is designed to exhaust you into giving up.

I’m not giving up. I don’t know how many seasons we have ahead of us of whatever this “Handmaid’s Tale The Last of Us Walking Dead Civil War” real life spin off we’re living in, but I’m not giving up.

Not willingly. Not ever.

Here’s what I keep coming back to: what does fight even mean right now?

It used to feel clearer. Show up. Vote. Donate. March. Call. And yes, all of that still matters, all of that is still necessary. But there’s something else being asked of us now that doesn’t have a clean verb attached to it. Something about staying awake without being consumed. About bearing witness without being destroyed by what you’re seeing. About finding a way to hold both the urgency and the long game simultaneously.

I worry we won’t ever have a fair election again. About what this country looks like a year from now. I think he is going to get people killed. Let me rephrase: he is already getting people killed. And that number, that toll, that tax, is going to skyrocket.

What I also know is this: silence is a tax too. The kind you pay with your integrity.

So I'll keep showing up. I'll keep calling. I'll keep writing, here, and everywhere else I can. ”Make art in the face of fuck,” as Lidia Yuknavitch has said, including in her remarkable conversation with the luminous Jane Ratcliffe.

Because the opposite of paralysis isn’t certainty. It’s motion. It’s the next right thing, even when the next right thing feels impossibly small against the scale of what we’re up against.

Tax. Toil. Strain. Heavy demand.

Yeah. That’s the word.

xo,
SG

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

P.S. I made my graphic today from a selfie with my Nope hat — my girlfriend makes these and a bunch of other great ones (FCK ICE!), find her on IG to get one for yourself.

Last Saturday, I was twenty-something writers deep into a Zoom workshop with the supernova Lidia Yuknavitch when it hit me.

We had introduced ourselves: name, where we were sitting in the world, and a word on our minds, dropped into the chat as we took our turn.

Mine was:

sober

(That word gets its own dispatch later this month when I hit my eighth Soberversary on April 28… stay tuned)

Then Lidia started talking about narrative fragments. Creating in bursts and chunks. About what happens when we let go of linearity and the perceived obligation to follow straight lines. How a different kind of meaning accumulates when we move by juxtaposition and arrangement of said bursts and chunks. About asking ourselves…

What story is trying to emerge from the fragments?

We then moved to a writing exercise, using our first shared word as the starting point. I’m not going to walk through details on the prompt, as those are her methods, and you should experience them yourself by taking her workshop. What I will say is that she gave us a structure, and as I was writing that first piece, I felt a full body shift.

As in that, “Holy shit, wait a second…” moment. As in A-ha on steroids.

Four days earlier, I’d launched the Hopeless Semantic Substack with my first post: The Word Was the Door. Here’s What Was on the Other Side. I shared what the Hopeless Semantic project originally started as: a word as a jumping-off point, a single definition cracking something open.

And here I was, just days after reshaping that idea as the foundation for my Substack, sitting in a virtual room with one of the writers who most profoundly shaped me, doing exactly that.

Using words as doors. Watching what walks through.

I don’t call that a coincidence. I call it a nod from the universe.

Label me woo-woo all you want. I take it as a compliment.

It’s not the first time such nods have occurred. And listen up, buttercup, because it won’t be the last.

Lidia Yuknavitch has been in my life for over a decade. The first time I experienced her orbit was in Port Townsend, Washington, where she was paired with my longtime mentor Pam Houston for a two-day weekend workshop. So while Pam was my North Star for heading that way in the first place, I’d always been drawn to Lidia as well. We had a ton of friends in common in Portland, where we were both living at the time, and I was actually surprised we’d not yet crossed paths.

But we hadn’t. And I know this for a fact because when we finally did? The phrase I used to describe it was, “She rearranged my DNA.”

And I am still using that phrase whenever I am blessed with breathing the same air as this phenomenal human (even if that air is through a Zoom screen). Lidia has this gift for really seeing and hearing you, often in ways you’re not quite yet capable of doing yourself, while simultaneously introducing new architecture for how you think about language and story.

She’s been doing that to me for twelve years.

I know the exact number because after last Saturday’s workshop ended, I opened Facebook (which I rarely do) only to find one of those “On This Day” memories waiting for me.

April 4, 2014. Port Townsend. Pam. Lidia. A photo of sailboats on the water and my own caption: Destination: writing weekend. Yeah, I think this will do.

Twelve years to the day.

Woo-woo to the core.

Later in the workshop, Lidia asked us to shift our focus to another word. Something else that was speaking to us. It was 1:23pm. I’d gone to hot yoga in the morning and my post-class pit stop to Pressed for Juice for my favorite Field of Greens smoothie was not cutting it. So the word came quickly.

Again, I won’t get into the details of how Lidia guided us next, other than to say I wrote three fragments, each approaching the word from a completely different angle and entry point, in two to three minute sprints.

Here’s what emerged:

Hunger

I.
On rare occasions, my mother tucks a pint of Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream in the freezer. I wait until no one is home and scrape a few small spoonfuls off the top, just enough to not be noticed, then add a dollop of nut butter to the most basic of ice creams. I wash all spoon and bowl evidence away and lick toothpaste to erase my breath before she gets home. There is no way to water down a pint of ice cream like a bottle of booze. It’s a routine I can only pull off if the pint is at least half full.

II.
When dating a GLP-1, your relationship really never goes beyond the same set of questions.

How often do you find yourself hungry?
How often do you find yourself thinking about the next meal?
How often do you find yourself pushing thoughts of food out of your mind?
How often do you find yourself…

Your choices for response are limited. All the time. Some of the time. Seldom. Never.

Always say some of the time. Or seldom. Never say never. That’s how you keep the relationship going. Anything else could provoke a breakup.

III.
Here’s what I never understood about Goldilocks: if the first bowl of porridge was too hot, wouldn’t she have burned her tongue and skipped the other options? Wouldn’t she have learned her lesson? Why did she keep wanting more?

Well look at that. Turns out there’s more than one way to get from here to there when you play with words.

Part two of the workshop, Reading the Waves: Nonlinear Nonfiction Practice and Play, is next Saturday, April 11. I am certain the universe will be right there with me, nodding. She always has her camera on in Zoom, so there’s no chance I’ll miss it.

And if you don’t know Lidia’s work, go find it: The Chronology of Water, Thrust, Verge, Reading the Waves. And take her classes. Immediately. Let her rearrange your DNA the way she rearranged mine. You will be reborn. That’s a promise.

xo,
SG

P.S. I'd love to know if you've had one of these. A nod. A moment where the universe seemed to be paying attention. Drop yours in the comments if you’re willing to share.

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

In the summer of 2017, I started a project called Hopeless Semantic.

The premise was simple: spot a word in the wild — on a street sign, a billboard, a menu — photograph it, look up its official definition, and write a short piece inspired by what I found. The word was the door. The story was whatever was on the other side.

I loved it immediately. I also had no idea what it was actually doing.

On April 28, 2018, I got sober.

I won’t bury the lede on that, because it’s not something I’m interested in burying. Sobriety is central to who I am now: how I work, how I write, how I show up. But truth be told (and truth will always be told), I didn’t even know at first that it was permanent. I thought I was taking a break. Three months in to said “break,” as I was approaching my come-out-of-my-mother’s-womb July birthday, someone asked me if I was going to celebrate with cocktails.

And without pause, I replied, “Uh…no. No, I am not.”

And that’s when I knew: sobriety was the only way forward. The only way to actually live the life I kept writing about wanting. The only way to actually STAY alive.

That summer, I also went back to the pieces I’d originally written for Hopeless Semantic over the past year. Some from before I kicked the Bota Box of wine to the curb. Some from those first tender months of early sobriety, when my heart was broken to a level I have never experienced, from a relationship that imploded in ways that brought me to my knees and nearly took me out completely. And yet, somehow, even without lubrication to numb that pain, I realized I was paying attention to language and meaning in a way I hadn’t in years, maybe ever. I gathered about a dozen of my pieces, shaped them into something, and used that work to apply for my first writing residency.

I got it. The Writing by Writers Mill House Residency, November 2018.

I remember thinking: Would this have ever happened had I not turned towards sobriety?

Let me be clear: just because I got sober did NOT mean I suddenly started making the most awesome choices ever. In fact, my first year of sobriety was an absolute shit show at times, especially in the romance department, to the point that you might have been inclined to give me a breathalyzer to confirm I was, in fact, making such choices stone cold sober.

So what followed after unlocking my first writing residency was not a straight line (it never is), but it was movement, and it was mine. I adapted my second novel into a screenplay. I produced things that mattered to me. I kept saying yes to creative work and slowly, deliberately, started saying no to everything else. By 2022, I’d left full-time corporate life. By October 2024, I was working entirely on my own writing and producing. The thing I’d been circling for years, finally landed.

Hopeless Semantic didn’t go dormant during all of that. It became the foundation. And since then, we’ve been building and renovating.

And now it’s time for a house warming party. So here we are.

Let me tell you what “here” is: “Hopeless Romantic” describes a person in love with love. I am a Hopeless Semantic. A person in love with meaning. With language and subtext and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, how we got here, and what we’re going to do about it.

This is where those stories live.

Dispatches from the intersection of humor and heartbreak: the writing life, my sobriety, why dogs are better than humans, pop culture (the good, the great, AND the gross), WTF is going on in the world (no really… what the F IS going on in the world), and whatever else is currently lighting me up. Funny ha-ha and funny strange and funny-not-funny. We will not shy away from politics, because silence isn’t an option. We will absolutely get personal, because good writing has to be. Some weeks short; some weeks longer and harder-won. Occasionally, a word spotted in the wild that cracked something open and I had to tell you about it.

My name is Sarah Grace McCandless. My friends call me SG. I am a novelist, screenwriter, producer, workshop teacher, Poshmarker, and the dog mom of Gilda Radner, my corgi-terrier rescue and best decision I’ve ever made. I was born in Chicago, raised in the suburbs of Detroit, served time in Portland (Oregon), DC and NYC, but now living the life of a showgirl in Las Vegas with frequent jaunts to Los Angeles.

And I’m a Hopeless Semantic. I have been for a while.

Welcome. Let’s go.

xo,
SG

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