What If This Were Enough?: Essays

I've been a fan of Heather Havrilesky since the prehistoric days of the internet when she was writing for Suck.com. An ancient past when my pre-work routine would consist of reading long form stories called blogs, back when paragraphs weren't so intimidating. Thankfully our modern era, sensitive to our time constraints, has since concentrated my mornings to scrolling memes, instagram pics and 140 character tweets.

Heather is smart and acerbic and I love her voice - she writes like I imagine I one day could, wry observations heaped with the gloss of 10 dollar words. Unfortunately I fear I've started with the wrong book. It's still her erudite and cutting wit applied to the mundanity of everyday life, but it veers too close to earnest screed. It's easy pickings decrying the capitalist fantasies of Fifty Shades or the insufferability of foodies, Disneyland and Crossfitters. To claim we need to get out more, and online less.

But unfettered by the constraints of blogging and fleeting online attention - free to truly flex in book form, the chapters can tend to the baggy. Things used to have to be tighter, or maybe my attention has just shrunk. Maybe in this environment I need my reasonable edicts to be delivered as precise, ranting screeds, eviscerating polemics that point and laugh at the misguided other in 1000 words or less. ...insert appropriate gif meme here.