It has only been a few months since I walked away from a two-year relationship. While I was in it, the sentence I heard most frequently was how I had managed to stay with someone for so long “in this day and age.” What was truly bizarre was this: aside from my therapist, not a single person ever asked whether I was actually happy in that relationship. Everyone was hyper-focused on my “success” in sustaining a long-term bond, observing me as though I were some kind of endanger

The Tumblr generation did not disappear, it grew up and became the people creating culture. The photographers, creative directors, and visual architects behind the images shaping fashion, music, beauty, and internet aesthetics today. Anna Koblish is one of them. With a visual language rooted in Tumblr-era romanticism, Hollywood glamour, pop culture, makeup artistry, and the hyper-curated aesthetics that raised an online generation, Koblish has built a world distinctly her own

I have been thinking about the way I am with others and the way I am with myself. I feel like I can never be truly myself with others. Like I have to suppress a little of myself to fit in with their personalities. Then, I realized that it might not be a bad thing after all. Maybe I’d like to keep some of my interests only to myself. Everyone has their own hobbies, their own obsessions, and their own small ideas. We all have rituals and habits that make us who we are, that mak

When platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn put everyone’s success on display, it seems like it’s only the girls with thousands of followers, the guy with a dad in the industry, and the folks with enough money to spare who are making their dreams happen. If they’re the ones dominating, is there room for the rest of us to succeed? Absolutely, yes. But the key to personal success includes a secret ingredient: “delusional” confidence. Confidence is home-grown. Your confidence is

There’s a beginning. There must be an end. This episode of Euphoria focused on reconciling one’s past with one’s present and future. It also focused on judgement, whether from others or from God. Making mistakes in one’s life is inevitable, but what separates bad from evil? All of the characters are faced with the reality that their betrayals, self-deceptions, and pursuits of fame and fortune have destroyed their lives. The hopes and dreams each character had for their future

This thought process began when I was watching Clueless in my Romantic Writers class. I grew up loving every part of that movie, but the house party scene in the Valley has had a grip on me for the past decade. From the outfits to the dancing and music, the vocabulary, everything was so quintessentially ‘90s. Of course, I mainly thought that because of the setting. Julia Stiles became the icon she is largely because of her dancing scene in 10 Things I Hate About You, where sh

The world is buzzing with the startling percentage of Gen Z who have never been in a romantic relationship (44%, to be exact). As a twenty-two-year-old who’s never changed her relationship status from single, the term in love feels like a forbidden phrase. It’s a bottle placed on a shelf I can’t quite reach. I’ve seen my friends grow tall enough to reach their bottles, popping them open and sipping the bubbly drink with stars in their eyes. I’ve also seen them drunk on the sw

After several years of liberal brainwashing and complete Europeanisation, I developed a very specific strategy for dating and dealing with men. I never sleep with a guy on the first date if I genuinely like him. But I can very easily “go over to check out his architecture book collection” with a guy who didn’t emotionally move me at all, but who seems hot, cute, and not particularly intelligent. My personal experience shows that if you sleep with someone actually worthy after

Where do I even begin? I have always strived to be an intentional and integral woman. For the ten years prior to my celibacy, I moved through long-term relationships with care, presence, and a genuine belief that what I was building with someone mattered. That it was ours. That it wasn't something to be careless with. For a long time, I held onto that belief, and I still do. But if I'm honest, I stayed even when I knew I should have left. I began to quietly notice something s