Emily Brooks

It’s all she knows. She’s only 5 after all. And nine, and twelve, and all the ages when I still felt that ‘here’ was home. But not every part of me is welcome in the place I came from. So I will tell her no, and it breaks my heart. Is this how my dad felt? When he had to look me in the eyes and tell me to be a big girl, I thought he was being mean.... See more

A part of me will always be 12, wrapped in four blankets on my parents’ floor. My siblings next to me, eagerly watching the TV in front of us, popcorn and candy in hand. Every Friday, we had the same routine: gather up all the blankets we could find, pop 3 bags of popcorn, and pour the candy into bowls. Our parents wanted to give us the same TGIF... See more

A part of me will always be here. A part of me will always be 5, sitting in the backseat, eyes squeezed shut. I would purposely slump my neck, and if I really wanted to sell it, make a little snoring noise. All this, just so my dad would come and carry me inside the house. I knew full well if I was awake, he’d tell me that my legs worked just fine... See more

As a whole, yes, it can produce things that will rival Katy Perry’s greatest hits. It can produce books that will rival James Patterson’s greatest novels. But I don’t think it will ever produce something like Merzbow, Japanese noise music made from the sounds of seals and distorted drill bits. It won’t make that because it’s not what most people... See more

I think part of it is a deep existential fear of being replaced. For creatives—writers, designers, music producers—who have spent the last 30 years having their work devalued by a lot of folks in tech, this makes a lot of sense. People aren’t afraid of being replaced in a vacuum. They’re afraid of being replaced because a lot of folks in tech have... See more

Whatever we do with our work, the things we create with each other, we have to make sure we keep as much of our humanity in the loop as possible. Because if we don’t, I’m not sure what the point of any of this actually is.

Yeah, it was my essay on deleting my second brain and moving away from knowledge management systems. It hit a nerve for people because a lot of folks feel like they’re failures just because they don’t have a perfect second brain knowledge management graph. That’s an awful way to feel about yourself—to feel like you’re getting your life wrong... See more