Pocket Notes

You can tell I’m getting ready to go on “Meg Tries to Launch Digital Writing Career 2.0” because I’m starting to fight in Reddit comments under my own name.(The OP was about how Denver restaurateur Johnny Curiel appears to be MAGA adjacent, based on his wife/business partner’s social media) 

Yes, breast cancer is so difficult that suddenly “reclaim your career after abandoning all platforms and hope” seems easy! Like? Why was I spinning out? I’m just trying to subvert the entire creator economy architecture! Nothing compared to trying to destroy swiftly replicating killer cells. Let’s gooooo. 

If you’re writing about the trad wife movement without writing about white supremacy…you’re not writing about the trad wife movement. You MIGHT be writing about a space that’s merely adjacent to the trad wife ~aesthetic. Maybe! But even then. Probably not.

If you think this is about that buzzy new thing you just read, it probably is.

The dad of one of the new Secret Lives of Mormon Wives taught one of my childhood Sunday school classes. I babysat her and her siblings when I was in middle school. My non-Mormon teens are losing their minds over this and calling it an “epic lore drop.” 

This new show is probs ummm not for me. But! A well done documentary about Orange County Mormons would be FASCINATING and if you ever decide to make one, I’ll be your consultant! There’s a lottttt to unpack. 

Just had to completely deflate my right tissue expander because I start radiation in a couple weeks and this is decidedly not it. I think I’ve been verrrry chill about having both breasts amputated! Taken the breast cancer and all its physical impacts in stride even! But now one half of my chest looks like one of those vacuum sealed travel bags? But after it’s been overpacked and then thorougly vacuumed? And like made of flesh instead of plastic? This is testing me! If I’m being honest!

They’re starting a study at my local hospital looking into how/if v low doses of GLP1-1s can help prevent cancer reoccurrence. I’m probably not eligible to join. But I kept thinking about that study while reading this essay in The Cut. Imagine if I got into the study, quietly started taking the drug, a friend found the meds in my fridge and was like, “oh! I have been betrayed!” And then wrote an essay in The Cut about it? It’s all so very 2015!

Roxane Gay (@roxanegay74) on Threads

I just read that Wegovy/friend break up essay in The Cut. Quite confounding. I can’t understand ending a friendship with someone for this reason, in this manner, but even more perplexing is publishing this essay that will make the writer internet fodder for the week.

Threads

Some of my Mormon family members think my cancer will bring my husband, my kids and me back to the church. Today, I gently told one of them that I feel boundless RELIEF that we got our kids out of the church before I was diagnosed. That I’m so grateful this sorrow will not help bind them to false and limiting certainties. She smiled and asked if I’d like our names added to the LDS temple prayer roll. And honestly, you gotta admire her persistence. (I told her I never turn down prayers. 😇) 

When we left the LDS church I was most afraid of this very moment! What do I say to my kids they say, “mom, what happens when you die?” I was leaving behind all my certain Mormon answers! Turns out, the actual answer is expansive and easy to remember: “It’s a Mystery. I wish it wasn’t! I wish I knew everything so you could know everything. Here’s what I do know. Love is at the center of the mystery. And I trust love. So whatever happens, we’ll all be okay.” 

My chemo brain is too broken to write prose but it’s not too broken to program. Today, it let me work on developing an ontology for my pretty large writing archive. One feature I’m very excited about? Readers will be able to enter my essays through everyday objects that recur in my writing.

Leaving Substack years ago derailed what was left of my scraped together career. It was also the right thing to do. Sometimes that’s how it goes. (I’m working on scraping together another career. Please hold.)

Hey, look at Substack promoting Andrew Tate as the #1 new bestseller. The company's amoral leadership & backers will platform anyone, even ludicrously toxic rapists & human traffickers.

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— kottke.org (@kottke.org) April 13, 2026 at 2:06 PM