Hey everyone,

Spring is for hitting reset: clearing clutter, reassessing what still serves you, and letting go of what doesn’t—digitally, emotionally, editorially, existentially.

Maybe it’s cleaning out your inbox, rewriting your LinkedIn bio, kicking bad habits, or unapologetically unfollowing a bunch of people. Maybe it’s revamping your wellness routine, making a giant pitcher of iced tea and two pounds of salted compound butter from the farmers’ market, only to realize none of it fixes the existential dread (though it helps). Or just taking stock of the media you consume, the voices you trust, and the emails you actually open (maybe keep this one). Whatever it is—something’s gotta give (unless you’re aiming for hoarder-core?).

For me, that’s meant looking outward for inspiration to evolve my work, while grappling with the slow fade of a career shaped by a publishing era that was never built to last—something I always knew, but still stings every time I’m asked what I “do” for a living. You’d think I’d have that elevator pitch in the bag by now, but now that corporations are people and everyone is a brand, I can barely keep track of my own.

The silver lining is that it’s been reassuring to reconnect with the outside world and the writers, artists, and other well-wishers who inspire me to keep on truckin’. It’s an uplifting reminder that we’re all works in progress with plenty of time to make a debut, a comeback, or just a new friend at any age. After all, who says your "it girl" moment has to end at 28 except those who fear irrelevance?

Case in point: last week I helped celebrate the launch of Carla Sosenko’s debut memoir, I’ll Look So Hot In A Coffin (And Other Thoughts I Used to Have About My Body)—a brutally honest, funny, and deeply self-aware reflection on her journey with Klippel-Trenaunay syndrome, a rare vascular disorder resulting in limbs and appendages of different sizes.

While the book mostly captures the art of self-acceptance in the face of diagnostic uncertainty, it also pushes the conversation forward on what body positivity looks like for people who don't fit into the "one-size-fits-all" mold. More than that, it’s a reminder that writers like Carla—like many of us—are stepping into a new era, telling our own stories outside the glossy lifestyle frameworks we once helped build. She's not just looking back; she’s rewriting what visibility looks like now through a new set of eyes and the wisdom of someone who has done some serious self-work.

At the party, I finally met Carla in person after being digitally connected as two longtime lifestyle editorial vets. We got to talking about this newsletter, which reminded me that I am now forever known as “The Weed Witch” and must always be at the ready to explain how it’s “not about weed or witches—but also not-not about it.” (I never quite sell this newsletter or its intentions well, but I guess it’s catchier than being a "generalist").

When I started this newsletter five years ago, it felt like another medium for a Live Journal-meets-Medium-type publication, but with a shittier profit model and better lead generation. Today, it’s now a marketing essential for any writer—something I've found myself strangely ahead of the curve while also falling behind.

I am well-aware that this publication is so niche, and oftentimes downright navel-gazing, that it's just not going to generate the same level of interest as a more predictable, algorithm-friendly, one-note newsletter centered on trend hunting, recipes, movie reviews, advice columns, or poetry—despite often encompassing a mix of all the above.

And don’t get me wrong, this newsletter and podcast wouldn’t be what it is without all of the amazing folks who have helped and inspired me along the way by sharing their incredible stories of chasing pipe dreams, too. I just can’t help but feel a little bit of shame for not giving them the larger platform they deserve, even if it’s mostly a content strategy issue during a time when information overload has veered into content fatigue.

I still kind of cringe at the idea of being known as “the weed girl” forever (particularly since I spent two decades covering restaurants and travel), mainly because I think this newsletter is about hidden gems—the people, places, and ideas that get overlooked or buried by the algorithm. I always figured that if someone was cool with the words "weed" or "witch" (both socially maligned terms) and even gravitated toward them, they might be down with whatever I had to say. And that’s why people like Carla—and others I’ve featured here who don’t even partake in weed—still feel like Weed Witches to me: they’re just carving out their own path.

Maybe that’s also what feels so strange about this current era I’m in as a writer trying to articulate what I "do" while being untethered to a beat or publication—though I’m competent enough to speak on a number of subjects. I’ve embodied a lot of industry archetypes over the years: the food writer, the weed girl, the travel expert. And there’s a weird grief that comes when those once-marketable identities lose cultural relevance, when who you were professionally stops meaning anything to the culture at large. Who gets to be seen and what kind of writer matters?

There's an emotional toll to being made obsolete by an industry you helped build, and trying to figure out who you are without it—even with all the freedom that comes with taking creative control over your own identity and doing your own thing. This is now the norm for creatives over 35 who may suddenly feel discarded by the same algorithm culture that may have rewarded them in the past.

It’s weird having a James Beard nomination but no longer covering restaurants. Having a travel book about the Hudson Valley and Catskills but rarely being tapped as the go-to expert. Being a former weed astrologer and Snoop Dogg’s edibles columnist, which now just feels like a quirky party trick more than a specialty. And five years in, I have a Substack that’s still under 1,000 subscribers. There’s virtually no engagement, but nearly a 50% open rate. How does she do it?

Both Substack and memoirs are having a moment, especially from lifestyle industry vets revealing the hidden parts of themselves while trying to navigate their place in an industry that often left them behind. In food, Laurie Woolever and Hannah Selinger just released their toxic restaurant industry confessionals, Care and Feeding and Cellar Rat. (I most likely won’t be reading either, mainly because I already lived that life and can’t watch “The Bear” for that reason, even if it’s a perfectly good (even great) show). But it’s been so many years that I sometimes feel disconnected from the idea that my voice ever mattered in those spaces—a kind of cultural disorientation that comes from witnessing a brief moment of authenticity reduced to pure aesthetics.

Journalists are trained specifically not to have personalities because our writing isn't really supposed to be about us, so I've always struggled with self-branding which is now a requirement for any writer who wants to succeed long-term. I also struggle with visibility as someone who was told very young that I had "a face for radio," and teased about my teeth, my weight, my nose—anything that felt like a cheap shot about my appearance.

Realizing that my looks weren't going to serve me ever, I stopped prioritizing them. Filming myself gives me a lot of anxiety for that reason and a little bit of resentment. I get really touchy when people try to coerce me into starting TikToks and YouTube videos, especially when they’ve never liked my content or read my writing anyway, I'm working on it, it just doesn’t come naturally to me. Ultimately, I wrestle between asserting my expertise and staying visible; being right and being relevant. It’s not hard to see why many tap out after awhile.

I’m not someone people think of as a face of food or travel—one of the reasons I dipped into cannabis to begin with. Mainly, I saw an opportunity—necessity, even—to elevate a low-caliber space ripe for innovation by highlighting people with the creative vision to raise the bar with sustainability in mind. That meant being an outlier among an industry of outsiders who’ve since become corporate insiders. It's also meant struggling with defining what my persona is as someone who never really fit in, but could easily blend in to the point of erasure.

One of the things that was cool about restaurants is that it is an industry of misfits, transients, and outside thinkers. Sometimes you just end up in foodservice as an in-between gig; other times it’s a calling and a lifeline. The entire notion of "food people" was built within an industry made of professionals skilled in the art of caretaking, including taking care of one another, with a mission to show up and "do the work."

Similarly, working editorial felt like an extension of that: doing the research that could empower everyone from the C-suite to the line cook and dishwasher to feel good about what they’re doing and offer ways to do it even better. I liked working both sides of the fence in trade and consumer because it's a passion and pain point that keeps businesses alive as the backbones of communities. Consumer offers a bit more creative flexibility and bite than trade, but getting your foot in the door with a meaty byline feels as rare and delicious as the perfect steak.

Yes, there has always been a disconnect between working-class realities of the kitchen and aspirational content that gets us through the doors. But that culture has been changing, split between vapid marketing ploys and unrealistic expectations of moralistic purity that I don't think are helping the industry as much as people would like. Without the perspective of different generations who have watched this transformation through the trenches, a lot of things get lost in translation—including the good stuff overshadowed by the shortcomings.

I made it to this weird point of being orphaned as a writer after two decades in food writing—something I’ve felt deeply disconnected from since the pandemic, when legacy and trade media made it clear I was no longer needed. Succession planning hasn’t fared well in either space, especially for the highly specialized writers who have been forced to pivot in a publishing economy that demands we think like marketers. Writers hate this, for good reason. We were taught to be artists, activists, and truth-tellers, not salespeople.

So, how do you keep showing up in a culture that forgets you while building itself from your labor?

Thanks to the chronic erasure of my work and efforts (not an exclusive problem, but one that I have been very vocal about), trying to dip back into criticism now often feels like over explaining myself. And frankly, I never wanted to be a food critic anyway—the idea that anyone would think that's a lifetime position is laughable to me even without the proliferation of user-generated opinions.

Erasure is now a shared experience among many Xennials who worked in digital publishing between 2002 and 2020—including self-erasure—and why many of us can’t stand amateur influencers who are now complaining about the same burnout we endured as exploited experts.

Over the weekend, Eater editor Nadia Chaudhury posted a very straightforward thread that instantly pissed a lot of people off: “~~~~food/restaurant influencers are not food writers/journalists~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.” True. There can be overlap, sure. But her point was about the difference between in-depth reporting backed by an editorial team and legal standards versus a glorified restaurant promoter on Instagram or a holistic tradwife hawking raw milk in a prairie dress.

Naturally, she got backlash from countless butthurt influencers who couldn’t grasp that part of their success came from absorbing ten people’s jobs in an obliterated media ecosystem. I took no joy in defending legacy media—an institution that’s burned me so many times—but I couldn’t resist pointing out the entitlement of people who refuse to see that their platforms were built on the graveyard of underpaid writers who just wanted a shot at doing meaningful work.

Then, two days later, Alicia Kennedy sent out a newsletter criticizing food media for pandering to readers, which struck me as tone-deaf in a different way. I respect her ethics and her commitment to sustainable food systems—we have a lot in common there. But cultural criticism without geographic context is where a lot of these conversations fall apart. Her tone often feels more focused on appealing to academic legitimacy than to the average reader. And unfortunately, to reach people, that does require dumbing things down a bit to meet them where they’re at.

The problem isn’t that people are dumb (though, let’s face it: many are). It’s that most working-class folks don’t want a lecture after a 14-hour shift. They want a sandwich. Maybe even a vegan one! But they don’t want it to feel like homework. There’s a reason most academics were men for so long—someone else was managing the household—and this is why lifestyle magazines were created: to provide aspirational ideas for stay-at-home moms and working-class families.

There’s also the matter of food access. Many East Coast writers forget that in places like the Midwest, food deserts exist alongside farmland. Factory farming depletes communities, but so does cultural isolation. Accessing a cabinet of niche ingredients that adequately honors the authenticity of a globally connected culture is still a nascent idea rooted in privilege—one that puts more strain on the supply chain and the environment, making it harder to eat seasonally.

Even conscious consumption has its costs. Kennedy’s lens is even more niche as a Puerto Rico transplant bearing witness to the strains of living in an import economy built almost entirely on tourism. That’s not exactly relevant to someone on food stamps living in Nowhere, U.S.A. whose only grocery option is a Save-A-Lot stocked with generic brands. Their problems and perspective are entirely different. But they’re exactly the kind of person in desperate need of food education and resources because their consumption is mainstream, overlooked, and deeply impacted. And the hard truth is, many of them simply do not care about adjusting those habits, let alone doing a deep dive into the effects of colonialism.

If her frustration about not making an impact feels familiar it’s because a lot of writers feel this way. We want to shape culture and influence systems, but most people just want dinner. That’s not a failure of intellect; it’s a reflection of reality. So when legacy media simplifies, it’s not just pandering—it’s often strategy. Not everyone has the time or energy to sit down with a thesis on supply chains after a full day of work. A good editor knows how to thread the needle: speak to the moment, honor the work, and make it accessible. The real problem is, we’re doing it without the infrastructure or support we used to have. The team is gone.

Ultimately, I think success in a digitally dispensable world hinges on a combination of limited expectations, resilience, and the ability to reflect and adapt. Some of that is talent; a lot of it is being savvy. Unfortunately, these jobs barely exist anymore and most don’t pay a livable wage. People just don't consume media this way and that means a lot of this work is unforgiving and unpaid.

Case in point: this newsletter is my third job. And now that it's demonetized, I make nothing off of it except the barely community-supported “exposure.” I mostly keep updating it so frequently because I just can’t help myself! Kennedy herself frequently admits that even with a following that dwarfs my own, she still doesn’t make much off her newsletter either.

To Kennedy's point, a lot of content is stupid because legacy magazines laid off their specialized staff who spent years paying their dues only to get replaced by someone 15 years younger with their finger on the pulse of something wholly uninteresting. There’s a quiet grief in no longer seeing yourself in media, even though it never fully spoke to you in the first place.

And to be clear, I agree with many of her points. But urgency without accessibility rarely lands and that’s the tension I’m naming here. The reality is, food media needs both kinds of voices: hers pushes for systemic reckoning; others speak to the lived exhaustion of those who’ve already fought through that reckoning, got erased, and are still writing anyway. A more grounded perspective considers the people trying to stay engaged without drowning, even if it frequently feels like screaming into the void.

While I understand magazines aren’t obligated to cater to their 40-plus audience and are more interested in gaining future loyalty from younger readers, there were two articles this week in New York Times Cooking and New York Magazine that underscored this massive shift in cultural artifice that’s been grating at me for a while.

First, in the Times: a timeline of significant modern Millennial food culture. It runs from Magnolia Bakery’s iconic “Sex and the City” cupcake cameo, the debut of Yelp, Momofuku Ssam, Smorgasburg, and the rise of froyo (raise your hand if you were personally victimized by the froyo craze), to the beginning of the end—Gourmet Magazine folds, the launch of Resy and venture capitalist–owned restaurants (hi Ben!), The Spotted Pig rape room, Salt Bae’s gimmicky bullshit, E-Bikes and lockdowns, shed restaurants, and, eventually, the critical emptiness of late capitalism: TikTok and beans on the menu.

The other: New York Magazine ushering in the next wave of “West Village girl”—a basic 25-year-old archetype copy-pasted from a premature nostalgia for "Sex and the City," bringing very little to the neighborhood except lines and superficiality. In both cases, New York is presented as a lifeless caricature of capitalist-driven Disneyland— experiential-based to drive community but ultimately empty and disingenuous.

For the record, I live in the West Village. It’s strange to watch a place that once represented eccentricity and weird creative energy become a curated movie set for nostalgia cosplay and digital postcards. What’s frustrating isn’t just the caricature, it’s how quickly people forget the substance that used to be here (and just before Pride Month, too!). From the ashes of the pandemic has risen a Pinterest mood board with a waitlist and I, for one, am just not feeling this forced cultural moment.

So, what now? The industry has changed, and I’ve already unpacked why many writers will inevitably be erased while trying to “make it.” We’re aging in a culture obsessed with youth, turnover, and trendspotting—but we’re still here. It’s a question of how we keep moving forward.

And the answer is: to keep going anyway. To evolve, to be messy, to be non-prescriptive, to remain open to new ideas, new people, new places, and revisiting the old ones while carving your own path. Is that not a spring awakening?

Lately, I’ve been using Imprint, a visually driven Duolingo-style learning app that breaks big topics into bite-sized pathways. I’m working through one on smarter decision-making—it encourages thinking like a scientist: asking open-ended questions, relying on data, testing ideas. It’s pushed me to rethink how I communicate—something I recognize as both a strength and a liability. My style is often chaotic and a little meandering, but also uniquely mine. Through this newsletter, I’ve test-driven new content, floated open-ended questions, and paid attention to what resonates. I’m still figuring it out, but I’m open to trying new things, or hitting that reset button when I need to.

Maybe I don’t need to pick a beat or write the same thinkpiece every week. Maybe the point is not to be the expert, but to stay curious. Maybe the point isn't to stay relevant, but to outlast the bullshit and keep telling the truth anyway. Or maybe I just rename the whole thing and start from scratch. Either way, I'm still me: a work in progress.

This isn’t a newsletter about weed or witches. It’s about what doesn’t get optimized and what’s still worth paying attention to. What remains when the feed moves on. And who built the thing before it was made to disappear. Maybe I’m not algorithm-friendly, but I’m not disappearing either. Still here. Still writing. Still not optimized.

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