call me emily dickinson

At this point in my life, I only write when I feeling depressed. So here’s a poem.

the sky is the same as the sea and sand—
as if it could all fit in the palm of your hand.

It’s the same as my brain and even your heart,
Like a spider crawling up your arm in the middle of the dark.

White kitchens and blue houses to set the stage just right,
For all the plates to fall down in the middle of the night.

Tears down my cheeks because he broke another promise,
When will I learn to never trust men except my father

Quit Your Job

…and start your own company. That’s what I did! It’s really not as complicated as one might think—it’s only $51 to start your own LLC online. The hardest thing to come up with is the name; everything good is already taken, or a cliché.

Controlling your own schedule is key, as is dating a Canadian man long distance who keeps things interesting. I’m headed to Vancouver on Sunday to visit him (the Venezuelan didn’t make the cut). He loves cannabis too and everything is great la-de-da.

JK life is still hard and the world will always have awful people doing awful things, but I’m just over here trying to destigmatize cannabis use and show people that cannabis is medicine, not a drug. <3

p.s. check me out in High Times!

Keep your mouth shut

Why the fuck can’t I say something without being ridiculed? I consult on social media strategy yet clients question every decision I make on the ‘gram. I call my mother to ask advice on my current job and all I remember her saying is “keep your mouth shut.” I used to know a thing about creative writing but even this blog has gone to shit (sorry, y’all).

What is life? I ask myself this everyday, at least. Usually once in the morning when I’m putting on my face, and again during the day when my life feels utterly exhausting and mundane at my office job. Feeling guilty asking to work from home, and utterly ashamed to take time off. Is any of this worth it?

Even when I achieve what I want—a cannabis marketing and influencing job with all the weed you could dream—I’ll never have it all. I’ll never control everything. Something will always go wrong and I’ll always get hurt. I live in the most beautiful place on earth, but I’ll always suffer from depression. I make friends everywhere I go but I don’t have my family. I pinch the mountains with my fingers but long for my feet at the ocean. I have time but I don’t have love. 

Terp sluts and the value of a dollar

When I'm high, which is more often than not, I think every clever phrase that goes through my brain should be a blog post. And I only write while high. Edit sober though. When I get lonely, I facetime my sisters and closest friends. I'm sure some of them screen my calls, which is fine—I know I'm an acquired taste. One has to be in the right state of mind and time / place in order for a facetime from me to not be interrupting their entire day. Usually, I'll have just rolled up a baseball batt-sized joint, ready to absorb whatever criticism of my life they have for me. Today, one of them asked me if I knew how to cook an artichoke. I outwardly laughed in her face at how absurd she sounded—of course I knew how to cook an artichoke. I boiled it in water for a good 30 minutes. Or maybe it was 40. I'll never tell her it came out soggy, though. We'll see if she reads this and ever finds out I lied. It is just an artichoke.

Often I'm criticized about money, and my lack thereof. I don't think I'll ever understand what money is. I spend $90 at the salon on my nails, do the day job that keeps promising to pay me salary, then make $42 in tips at Dominos that same night. At least my nails will last a month while this cash will barely get me through Friday night. My father bitches about our family's $350 monthly Verizon bill, yet he charges his clients the same per hour. Don't even get me started about Bitcoin and trust-fund babies.

Time is money, right? Or so they say... In present I spend about three plus hours a day on Instagram posting social media for my agency and our clients. Recently, I've been researching potential cannabis influencers—who are basically white bitches (like myself) who have somehow bamboozled their way into insta-fame. Most of them boast their new glass and shatter, while some craft smoky scenery in their frames, like a vampire scene in the movie Twilight if they all smoked vape pens and joints. Things got much more interesting after the first few PG-13 pages, I came across a blonde bimbo hitting a bong wearing nothing but what looked like some saran-wrap holding her nipples from bursting into the flame. A good friend later informed me that this is what we call a 'terp slut.' Showing off her brown eye more than her two eyes. Maybe she's lonely. Aren't we all though? She should try facetime.

_____

Things to Not say on a first date (I've said them all)

Dating is terrible. Awful, even. Now I get why people are alone at age 45—because people will ultimately fail you. I've said many things while on dates with countless men, a lot of their names I don't even remember. 

"Are you making any money from that?" I asked Mitchell* (not his real name because I can't remember, and you know, ethics). He had just told me his profession was dance therapy, and he had recently founded his own company—although he seemed desperate for clients. But I was high off my vape pen from my walk to the coffee shop and I don't have a filter on my mouth. He explained his dance-therapy business for a full 35 minutes while I shoveled an egg sandwich down my throat. He didn't even order anything on our 10 a.m. "date."

Later when Mitchell offered to drive me home, I came face to face with the all-black Jeep two-door that screams 'I have a pencil dick.' I've known this Jeep before, from another one of my exes. "I used to bang a guy in my apartment building with this same Jeep," I said, just to see what his reaction would be. It didn't go well. Luckily I already knew this guy wasn't worth my time—his pick-up line was telling me that I looked exactly like Emma Stone, his favorite actress. I chalk this one up as a learning experience.

"You were hotter in your ID picture," I said this during that awkward exchange of IDs when you order a drink at a bar. This guy's name I actually forget, the only thing notable about him was that he was Pisces. So you can imagine how sensitive he got.

"I don't like people who don't smoke weed," I proclaimed to Dillion (I know, not even spelled the way of the rock legend—Dylan). He was a 25-year old mechanical engineer finishing up his Ph.D. or some shit. I thought this relationship might actually go somewhere since he's a Cancer, a sign that I'm drawn to. He looked like your average, pretty boy with brown hair and pearly teeth like the chipmunks have in animation films. I convinced myself that I needed to wait for five dates to sleep with him—make him work for it, earn it. I made it to date four and gave myself a pat on the back. Five days later (and only three days since my unicorn-removal), he sends me a novel-long text about how "he doesn't think he can be himself around me" and some other excuses I won't bore you with here. What a waste of time he was.

Any "That's what she said" response, even if you must hold your tongue, by GOD. I let one of these fly on my first and only date with Jon. I thought he'd be more mature due to his age and income—29 and making into six digits. Thinking, maybe he won't fuck me over. WRONG. The day of our long-overdue second date, he tells me he just bought a house and just found out he has to do a walk-through. The timing is impeccable. Mind you, this guy is still riding my Instagram dick, watching my every move.

Bottom line is Fuck them all, or rather, fuck whoever you want because nothing matters in the game of dating.

H is for Harry Potter

Since my horn-removal procedure, the pain has lessened with each weed-induced passing day. But even now, a full week later, I can't laugh without a sharp pain shooting across my scar. With each outburst it feels like I'm going to pop a stitch. It's kind of like how Harry Potter reaches for his scar when Voldemordt comes around, except it's humor for me, which is my favorite thing aside from weed...painfully ironic (in more ways than one). I get my stitches out next week but until then I'll be attempting to restrain my facial expressions and laughter.

Whenever I tell people I drive for Dominos, they tell me to be safe. Like obviously, what else would I be doing? But recently, my friend who got me the job got his car stolen when out for delivery. It sounds bad, but what type of idiot leaves his new car running outside of a gas station on Main Street at 10 p.m. in Longmont, Colorado — an area where homeless people crossing the street with their grocery carts of possessions is as common as a squirrel running in front of your car. He got it back after all, but said it still smells like sweaty feet. He also got fired from Dominos, and had to pay them back for the money that got stollen. A real lose-lose all around.

I made $110 in tips last night. The highlight was when a white dude in a dirty white t-shirt came in to pick up his friend's pizza. I saw his crazy eyes and scattered tongue and knew this would be a fun conversation. He asked about my tattoo (the typical pick up line now), and told me his name was Cobain. His mama named him after the legend, he said. What I do for a living he asks. I write, I tell him. What does he do? This is where it goes downhill. "I steal people's faces," Cobain says with a crooked smile. I ask what that means. "You ever dropped acid?" he whispers. I nod. "You ever done it without knowing?" he asks. "No," I say back, trying not to make eye contact. "I put it on their tongue and steal their faces," Cobain says as he makes a hand with his motion like he was putting some change in his jeans pocket. My horn started hurting and I knew it wasn't from the humor, it was from Voldemordt.

In Cannabis We Trust

This is my new slogan, maybe America should adopt it too. I honestly believe cannabis will save the world... more on that later. But now — my horn is gone. I've told many people that I'm no longer a unicorn. It was a "fatty-tumor" and they are checking it for cancer cells, but it should be just fat. The fat was blueberry sized. And not just a normal blueberry, one of those hormone induced large-ass ones. A good chunk right out of my head. I asked my nurse, Gerri if I could keep it and she declined. I did get a photo, but when I look at it in hindsight it just looks like zombie cum.

Jeffrey, a fellow driver at Domino's, yelled at me for rightfully telling him to not sweep up the cheese with his feet. I already had the broom in-hand... Jeffrey is a 55 year old white man with a witch-like ponytail, he rocks his cell phone in a pouch dangling from his neck. His main excitement is screeching out of his customer's driveway when they don't tip to his standards. We had two people call last week to complain. You can tell he's pleased because he hops around the store making sure everyone has heard the news. A lunge of joy, somehow saying, 'I succeeded. I caused you extra time and frustration. If you would have tipped me the typical $4-8 from the beginning, this whole thing could have been avoided.' But instead, he barrels out of neighborhoods leaving black skid marks as a reminder of their ingratitude towards the delivery driver profession.

Tonight I sternly and aggressively had an old man point and shake his finger at my from the safety of his mid-sized Lexis, the ones suburban moms drive. He told me I was a reckless driver, and that he has my license number, and though he won't this time, he will report me next time. To whom I don't know, but the way he pointed his index finger made me giggle, as it looked like a slightly curved pencil dick, one I've encountered before. I laughed at the man, which only made him shake his finger harder at me. 

But we're all just trying to feel alive, to feel free, to get high and be loved, unicorn horns or not.

You're Now Watching My TV

I'm getting my horn removed on Tuesday. The coin-sized lump at the base of my hairline and beginning of my forehead. I tell people it's remnants from my past life as a unicorn. I then tell people it's actually a "pilar cyst" filled with dead skin cells from one time when I bumped my head badly as a child and the skin folded under itself (which, honestly, could have occurred on countless occasions). It's been slowly growing ever since... Fucking disgusting is what that is. I want no part in that, and I'm sick of always touching it wondering if it's actually a cancerous tumor that's just waiting to take over my brain rendering me useless. That's why I'm getting the surgery. To know once and for all.

In the "real world," I started working for a cannabis PR firm, aka getting closer to my dream of being a  badass woman in the weed industry. In the mean time though, I'm still working at the big D (Domino's) driving pizza deliveries. I know that it sounds absolutely ridiculous, and that's because it is. The irony comes out especially when I forget to take off my $600 David Yurman ring (another gift from my parents) when I'm delivering two medium pizzas and a marble cookie-brownie with a 2 liter of Sprite to a guy missing two of his front teeth. The front range of Colorado can be interesting in that way — a brand new housing development built up next to the grungy, notorious Bar L motel-apartments offering rooms by the week and month. The tips are quite lovely though, I made $120 cash last night. To make things even better, the new online delivery system allows customers to submit feedback, say, if anything were wrong with their order. With the amount of stoners in our client base, we tend to get some interesting notes. And last night, we got feedback submitted to the store saying, "Emily was cute." The entire flock of employees was howling, from the make-line boy Drew to the manager Brenen. One of them compliments me with a dab later that same night. I'm looking for someone to give me all that and more. But right now, I go home and roll a joint.

Smoking in the Big Apple

New York, I actually love you now. The times we’ve spent together have been tumultuous, noisy and not very lovely. But this trip has been quite lovely. Besides seeing two of my dearest friends, Emily and Nettie, I feel I have connected greatly to the people of New York, unsurprisingly, with cannabis (among other things).

In an early morning Uber ride, I met Sajanpesdka… He told me to call him SP because his name is too long. I assume he was Pakistani but I can never really tell and does it really even matter? After I smoked my last joint on the stoop of Emily’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen at a brisk 6:30 a.m., aka hell because it’s two blocks from Time’s Square, SP picked me up in his Hyundai. For the first ten or so minutes I had to get in the grove of my high, get my SZA in my ears. Once we exited Manhattan and came over a bridge to the rising sun over the city’s boroughs, I thought now was a good time to see what this guy’s all about. I initiated with how beautiful the city was and how sad I was to be leaving. After a few minutes pause, he asked me where I was from, or traveling back to.

I told him I was traveling back to Colorado where I live and work in the cannabis industry. We had the usual ‘do you consume marijuana in any way’ conversation in which I tell him my love for cannabis, both smoking weed and the restorative qualities of CBD Hemp oil. I tell him he must come visit and I’ll show him the way of my lifestyle. He spoke of friends who have moved West to Denver and discovered a lifestyle similar to mine. It’s a lovely one — marijuana is a democratic drug, I tell him. He smirks back to me in the rearview mirror. I’ve made a friend. I give him my card and tell him to text me, Facebook me, we will stay in contact — which I fully intend to do. A similar thing actually happened to me in my uber ride into New York city, another youngish uber driver from Georgia the country. I told him of my good friend Ia who is also from Georgia, and show her picture from Facebook (fucking amazing technology is good god), and he says she has a Georgian face. Another lady I met in a restaurant wanted to hear all about the CBD hemp oil I was using. Cannabis for all.

Besides making new friends, I was here to see the old friends, from college. That sounds old, but I only graduated a year ago. Nettie and I frolicked around the city like I had lived there the last two years with her — another version of Abbi and Ilana from Broad City, the OG queens. I smoked joints on the streets of New York like I was visiting my former homeland.

When I get back to Colorado, I meet a new man in my apartment building who asks me to smoke with him. He loves fishing trout, snowboarding and his cat Mr. Kitty. He offers to show me how to fly fish at the creek and I make the mistake of agreeing. Those are 10 minutes I'll never get back.

Budgeting is hard, smoking is easy

My goal this year is to become self sufficient. I had an excuse while I was in school, but now I look like just another white bitch mooching off her parent's money (which I still am, no shame). But since college, it’s like my parents have switched roles. My mother went from the caring one to threatening to cancel my credit card every time I max it out at two and a half grand. My father went from the one who always told me ‘no’ to the ever-supporting father figure — “we just want you to be happy” he says to me now. That was after I took him to therapy because we didn’t know how to communicate. Or maybe it was because one time in a fit of rage I screamed that he was the reason I wanted to kill myself. Middle school is a rough time for everyone though. 

I look to the mountains for advice. I’m committed to never working a conventional 9-5 job. I’m committed to being honest — blunt, as most call it. Which is fine because I love blunts. Right now I’m supposed to be writing a story for Westword magazine about a mobile cannabis bus company called Loopr. I rode on the bus on 420, met the owner and smoked about 15 joints and 4 blunts. Met people from Chicago, Dallas, Alabama and Atlanta. All in Denver for the weed-tourism. Canna-tourism. Dankism, dopism, hehe.

I spent about $126 on cannabis that day, which was more than necessary. Especially when I have a $1,000 budget set for the month. But I ran out this month, on 4/21, a Saturday, when the banks are closed and my sister can’t save me this time. Luckily, I surround myself with amazing friends who will spot me the money while I try and actually learn how to budget my own money. In an effort to attain some more cash flow aside from my stipend, I started driving Domino's pizza delivery. When people ask me why, I tell them it was that or stripping, which I still haven't ruled out (read my Amsterdam sex show piece). It's ideal, though — I made $67 in cash tips last night. That's about two week's worth of weed money, which makes me happier than any real job would. 

Not Just Another White Girl

This whole “journal entry” is an illusion that I can’t yet grapple with and totally understand. I’m doing it to capture my thoughts and observations at this point in time in my 23rd year of privileged white girl living, imitating that of David Sedaris, but in that structure it’s ultimately flawed. He wrote entries as mere expression of his own thoughts not at all thinking these diary entries would one day be published — when the element that keeps me going in writing (besides further self-exploration and discovery) is to hopefully one day be published to the length and status of David Sedaris. This all goes back to the fact that my life and everything I do is a paradox. Knowing all this from the beginning, please read carefully. This is your warning. No children, please.

SZA continues to be my idol. She understands me. — wish I was the type of girl I know my daddy he’d be proud of. Normal girl, I wish I was a normal girl. I texted a guy I'm sleeping with today. Besides having a normal conversation to make plans, I told him that I really just wanted to fuck him, and of course, I got hit with that no response. I knew it was coming, it always does. It just shows that I’m too much, once again. No one can ever handle me. When will this ever end... will it? I dare someone to tame me. Ugh unintentional Miley Cyrus reference.

Snap-chat-sexting this fucker who’s name doesn’t matter used to thrill me. Seeing his perfectly proportional pink dick used to get me excited, but now I just want someone real. I’m sick of all the virtual shit. Fuck Bumble. And FUCK Tinder. If it’s not real I don’t want it. Fuck all these boys. I want love but I feel like I don’t deserve it. We don’t really deserve anything out of this life. Do we? Do any of us deserve anything? What is this life? Time to smoke a joint.

"You would look good with a pit bull" said my semi creepy yet weirdly attractive neighbor. He owns the worst trained doberman I've ever encountered, going in one second for my crotch then the next has me in a headlock bearhug.

The Verizon Wireless guy on the phone named Justin also told me to "be careful and grab a glass of water" when I apologized for coughing profusely — I was smoking a roach. I am the self-pronounced Roach Queen of the West.