Somewhere along the way, I stopped counting.

Not because it wasn’t important.

Because something more important happened.

The attic stopped being a place where I talked…

…and started becoming a place that talked back.

When I started writing, I thought I was documenting politics.

I wasn’t.

I was documenting how people think.

Including myself.

For most of my life, I’ve had a habit that gets me into trouble.

If something doesn’t make sense, I keep asking questions until it does.

Not because I need to be right.

Because I genuinely want to understand.

That’s expensive.

Honesty IS Expensive🎶

I’ve learned that many people don’t hear questions as curiosity.

They hear them as criticism.

They don’t hear, “Help me understand.”

They hear, “You’re a bad person.”

Those aren’t the same conversation.

I’ve spent years wondering why those two ideas became so tangled together.

Maybe it’s because we’ve attached our character to every opinion we hold.

If someone challenges an idea, we feel like they’re challenging us.

But ideas should be challenged.

That’s how they get stronger.

Or fall apart.

Either outcome has value.

The attic kept reminding me of that.

Slow down.

One reaction at a time.

One headline at a time.

One opinion at a time.

Somewhere along the way we became addicted to instant certainty.

Everything has to be judged before we’ve even had time to think about it.

I’ve discovered that’s just not my personality.

I’m not a news journalist.

I’m not a headline chaser.

Breaking news has never interested me as much as what survives a week later.

Or a month later.

Or six months later.

Patterns 🎶 interest me.

Watching how people respond over time interests me.

Watching how I respond over time interests me even more.

That’s probably the biggest thing the attic gave back to me.

Patience.

Not silence.

Not indifference.

Patience.

Enough patience to ask one more question before forming one more opinion.

Enough patience to admit when I don’t know something yet.

Enough patience to let evidence finish speaking before I decide what I think.

That has changed me.

While Everyone Kept Talking 🎶

Another thing surprised me.

I’ve never criticized people because I thought I could do their job better.

Quite the opposite.

I criticize because I usually see something in them that they don’t seem to recognize themselves.

Potential.

Talent.

Responsibility.

Whether it’s a journalist, an artist, a politician, or someone posting online, I’m often reacting because I think they’re capable of more.

Constructive criticism isn’t rejection.

It’s encouragement.

It’s saying, “I think you’re better than this.”

I wish more people heard it that way.

Because none of us is equal in every way.

Someone will always have strengths I don’t have.

I’ll have strengths someone else doesn’t have.

That isn’t competition.

That’s community.

Just Be You🎶

We’re supposed to help each other see what we can’t always see ourselves.

The attic taught me something else too.

It doesn’t matter whether ten people read these words or ten thousand.

The practice matters.

Showing up matters.

Leaving an honest record matters.

I’ve changed my mind more than once over these past months.

I’m not embarrassed by that.

I’m proud of it.

Changing your mind because you’ve learned something isn’t weakness.

Pretending you’ve never changed your mind is.

So maybe that’s what the attic has been trying to tell me all along.

Keep asking.

Keep listening.

Keep leaving room for the possibility that tomorrow’s version of you understands something today’s version doesn’t.

Nine months.

Maybe ten.

I honestly lost track of the days.

But somewhere in all those pages, I stopped trying to have the last word.

And started trying to ask the next honest question.

So for now, I’m Steady Heading North 🎶

Adia in the Attic
Aware through the arts

If my writing, music, or artwork has been meaningful to you and you’d like to support my work, you can buy me a coffee here:

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/adiaintheap

I’m still here.

Still writing.

Definitely still observing.

The other day I said I felt like the experienced journalists were starting to use the microphone with confidence again.

I’ll take credit. 😂😂😂

Okay… that’s just journal ego and humor.

But I have noticed something else.

A lot of us seem to be in the same pause phase.

We’re paying attention. We’re watching. We’re catching our breath before the next stretch.

One thing I won’t stop saying is this:

Please vote.

Voting is the only way to make sure you don’t hand your voice to someone else.

I don’t feel the need to say “vote blue” here because most people reading this already understand where I stand. But I will always remind people that voting matters—especially now.

What still disappoints me is how many people don’t see the danger that’s right in front of us.

I’m equally disappointed watching some inexperienced content creators who genuinely want change but seem convinced that insults and name-calling are the way to get there.

May I ask a favor?

Spend one post talking to us.

Talk to the people who already have no intention of voting for this GOP.

We’re here.

We don’t need another social media feed full of “I told you so,” “you’re stupid,” or “come at me, bro.”

Most of us already have people in our own lives we’re trying to reach. We don’t need more practice arguing with strangers.

I’m not saying don’t be honest.

Be honest.

Be passionate.

Call out bad ideas.

I enjoy a lot of the comedy, and many of the subjects you tackle are exactly right.

But if I want to spend my afternoon reading MAGA arguments, I’ll open the comments. I might even ask a question.

You have the microphone.

You have the opportunity to change the tone instead of reinforcing it.

Maybe fewer people will click just to argue.

So I’ll ask the question:

Is that what matters most?

If it is, then be you. What do I know?

But what if the thing we’ve been looking for isn’t louder voices…

What if change starts with delivery?

What if it starts with approach?

—

Adia in the Attic

Aware through the arts.

If my writing, music, or artwork has been meaningful to you and you’d like to support my work, you can buy me a coffee here:

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/adiaintheap

🥰❤️🥰

They tell us

A body can be broken

Metal

Time

Fate

Can steal a heartbeat

Maybe

But no one explains

How love

Is supposed to die

Because

It doesn't

A mother spends years

Growing a soul

Not losing one

In a single afternoon

She loses the hands

The voice

The footsteps

The laughter

But the soul

The soul is harder

To bury

It's still there

In the kindness

He left behind

The stories

That still make people smile

The habits

Someone else now carries

The eyes

I knew he was yours

Not because of a face

Not because of a name

Because something deeper

Still shines through

Love leaves fingerprints

On a soul

Souls don't obey

The rules

Of human form

A mother never stops

Looking

Until one day

She isn't searching

She's noticing

A breeze

A song

A memory

A quiet whisper

I'm still here

Maybe that's

What eternity means

Not that we never leave

But that

The truest parts of us

Never really do

Eyes don't lie

Lately I’ve been asking myself a strange question.

When did all of this start feeling normal?

Not one event.

Not one election.

Not one headline.

Just… all of it.

The constant outrage.

The endless commentary.

The certainty.

The assumption that every disagreement has to become a battle.

I’ve spent months writing this journal thinking I was documenting politics.

I’m starting to think I’ve been documenting adaptation.

How people slowly adjust to almost anything.

Not because they agree with it.

Because they wake up, go to work, pay the bills, walk the dog, make dinner, check the headlines, and do it all again tomorrow.

Life doesn’t stop while history is happening.

That’s probably why history is so hard to recognize while you’re living inside it.

We don’t notice the moment something becomes normal.

We notice it months later when we accidentally say,

“I guess that’s just how things are now.”

That sentence scares me more than almost anything.

Because every generation has one.

Every generation has something they quietly accepted because it arrived one small piece at a time.

Maybe that’s why I write.

Not because I think I’m smarter.

Not because I think I’m right.

Because journals don’t argue.

They remember.

They don’t care who wins.

They care what happened.

I’ve changed my mind more than once in these pages.

I’ve admitted when I overreacted.

I’ve written things I later outgrew.

Oddly enough, I’m proud of that.

Changing your mind isn’t weakness.

Pretending you never had to is.

One thing about me has never changed, though.

Not conforming is part of my soul.

I’ve never been very good at joining teams just because everyone else did.

But somewhere along the way I realized something that still makes me laugh.

Some people tell me they don’t vote because they “don’t play the game.”

I usually just stare at them and say…

What the hell good does that do?

To me, not voting isn’t refusing to conform.

It’s conforming to silence.

It’s handing your voice to someone else before the conversation even starts.

By that logic, I suppose they don’t believe in traffic laws either.

Maybe they should just drive down the middle of the highway because rules aren’t for them.

Please.

We’re all human.

We share the same roads.

The same schools.

The same hospitals.

The same economy.

The same country.

Whether we like it or not, we’re participating.

The only question is whether we’ll participate on purpose or let someone else decide for us.

I’ve also realized something else.

The loudest people aren’t always the ones paying the closest attention.

Some of the wisest people I’ve met lately don’t spend all day talking.

They spend most of their time watching.

Listening.

Connecting dots.

They’re comfortable saying,

“I don’t know yet.”

That’s becoming one of my favorite sentences.

Not because it ends a conversation.

Because it leaves room for one.

Maybe that’s what this attic has really become.

Not a place to hide from the world.

A place to slow the world down long enough to notice it.

If this journal leaves behind anything worth reading years from now, I hope it isn’t that I predicted something correctly.

I hope it’s that I noticed something before it felt ordinary.

Because the biggest changes in our lives rarely arrive with sirens.

Most of them knock quietly…

…then ask if they can stay.

And before long, we stop hearing the knock at all.

Adia in the Attic
Aware through the arts
Soft power within

#AdiaInTheAttic

Not because I’m ashamed of Oklahoma. Quite the opposite.

It’s because I’ve only lived here a few years.

Ironically, I probably needed to.

Before moving here, I probably sounded just as ignorant as the people who judge Oklahoma by election maps and assume everyone here is a Trump supporter.

Fair enough.

But maybe read a book.

Here’s one fact that surprised me:

Los Angeles County alone had more Trump voters than the entire state of Oklahoma.

Yet many people looked at Oklahoma and blamed the people instead of recognizing the voices who have been fighting here all along.

The truth is, they didn’t just show up after the last election.

They’ve been doing this work for years.

Long before many of us in blue states—even me—were paying attention.

They’ve been showing up every day without national attention, without giant audiences, and without paid microphones.

That’s why I don’t need to become an Oklahoma expert.

I can listen to the people who already are.

Today I simply want to say thank you to two of those voices:

• Leftist Lezzies
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeftistLezzies

• Mickey Jane
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091436197405

These are only two. There are many more I hope to recognize.

Sometimes the strongest voices aren’t the loudest.

They’re the ones who never stopped speaking—even when nobody outside their state was listening.

#AdiaInTheAttic

One unexpected perk of keeping this journal is finally being able to prove I wasn’t just yelling at the television. 😂

I don’t think I approach politics any differently now.

I’ve been reading the room for years.

I’d say to a friend or family member, “Wait. They’re doing this because this is what’s going to happen next.”

They’d argue with me like I was saying I wanted it to happen.

I didn’t.

I was saying I could see where it was going.

Those are two completely different things.

The difference now is that I have the journal.

Now I can say, “Remember when I wrote that they were doing this because this would happen?”

It did.

Not always exactly the way I thought it would.

Politics likes to add unnecessary chaos for dramatic effect.

But close enough that I knew I hadn’t imagined the pattern.

The journal didn’t teach me how to read politics.

It gave me somewhere to leave the receipt.

At first, I thought the point of this journal was to keep up.

Every headline.

Every hearing.

Every outrageous quote.

Every new rabbit hole.

I thought paying attention meant carrying all of it.

Apparently, I nominated myself.

No campaign.

No salary.

No benefits.

Just arthritis and Wi-Fi. 😂

I kept reading.

I kept writing.

I kept pulling at every loose thread because I thought somewhere underneath all the noise there had to be one clean answer.

There isn’t.

There are facts.

There are lies.

There are crimes.

There are patterns.

And there are egos.

The people trying to get through another workday aren’t who concern me most.

They’re trying to raise kids, care for aging parents, pay bills, and make sense of a world that suddenly feels unfamiliar.

They’re allowed to be overwhelmed.

The people with the titles, influence, access, and decades of experience had a different responsibility.

Many of them saw the same patterns.

They knew where this was heading.

Some stayed quiet because honesty would’ve cost them influence.

Some softened the truth because their audience preferred comfort.

Some waited until the danger was impossible to ignore before suddenly discovering the courage ordinary citizens had been showing all along.

Then they arrived with a podcast.

A book.

A paid newsletter.

A television special.

A panel discussion.

As though the rest of us hadn’t been standing here pointing at the same problems for years.

That isn’t wisdom.

That’s ego.

It’s believing the warning only matters after someone important repeats it.

It’s protecting your seat in the room while the room fills with smoke, then writing a bestseller explaining why the building burned down.

But the one thing that disappointed me most wasn’t only watching them.

It was watching “our” team start sounding like the orange dude.

The name-calling.

The insults.

The need to embarrass people instead of reaching them.

Then I watched those same people call anyone who disagreed with them a bot or a troll.

At first, I did it too.

I saw disagreement and assumed bad intent.

I saw a strange reply and decided it couldn’t possibly be a real person.

It took me about a week of posting to realize that was wrong.

Some of them probably were bots.

Some were probably trolls.

But some were just people who didn’t agree with me.

People who had reached a different conclusion.

People who were angry, scared, confused, stubborn, or simply having a bad day.

Calling everyone fake made it easier not to listen.

It also made us sound exactly like the people we claimed we were better than.

That bothered me.

It still does.

We can’t spend years saying his cruelty is dangerous and then copy the cruelty because we’ve decided our target deserves it.

We can’t say citizens are being manipulated and then dismiss every citizen who questions us as fake.

And we definitely can’t build trust by insulting people and then acting shocked when they don’t trust us.

That’s not strength.

That’s ego wearing the correct team color.

The journal made me catch that in myself.

Not months later.

Not after someone else pointed it out.

Within the first week.

That matters.

Because this journal was never supposed to prove I’m always right.

It was supposed to keep me honest.

I don’t need to solve every mystery.

I don’t need to win every argument.

I don’t need to chase every conspiracy or convince every stranger.

Some people honestly don’t want to know.

Some people do.

Learning the difference has probably saved my sanity.

I still believe people matter more than parties.

I still believe public service comes with responsibility.

I still believe power should be questioned, records should be kept, and citizens shouldn’t be treated like props that only matter every election cycle.

I still believe silence from people who know better can be more dangerous than noise from people who don’t.

But I also know my responsibility isn’t only to notice what the other side is doing.

It’s to notice when my own side starts doing it too.

Especially then.

My job isn’t to carry the entire weight of what’s happening.

My job is to witness it honestly.

To leave a record.

To write what I see while I see it.

Including the parts that don’t make my team look good.

Including the parts that don’t make me look good.

Because memory changes.

Receipts don’t.

Maybe that’s the quiet shift.

Not becoming less aware.

Not becoming less honest.

Not becoming quieter.

Just understanding that truth doesn’t become true because someone famous finally says it.

Sometimes an ordinary citizen wrote it down months earlier.

Sometimes that same citizen also had to write down, “I was wrong.”

The journal simply made sure both receipts stayed in the record.

Adia in the Attic
Aware through the arts
Soft power within

When The Student Becomes The Teacher 🎶

Fear Found Another Way 🎶

Today, more than anything, I was really struggling with what good my voice can actually do.

I have no fame. No fortune. No special skills or material possessions that seem to prove a life means much these days.

Then I glanced at my son’s page. He’s allowing me to share this.

And honestly, maybe I don’t need to reach anyone else.

My second-born wrote this over the weekend, and my firstborn bought a book on tyranny.

That’s my proof and my heart.

I raised white men who think.

I Trumped the orange dude on family values. 😂

Here is what my second-born wrote:

“Sometimes the greatest catalyst for becoming your best self is not love that stays, but love that leaves. The loss of someone who once brought comfort can create an emptiness that forces you to confront parts of yourself you’ve ignored, revealing wounds that affection alone could never heal. In that ache, many realize they have been searching for fulfillment in another person instead of within themselves. Walking away is rarely an act of hatred—it is often an act of survival, a decision to stop repeating painful cycles and rediscover an identity that existed before the relationship. Though heartbreak can feel unbearable, it has a way of stripping away illusions, building resilience, and teaching self-worth. In time, the absence of love from another can become the beginning of learning how to truly love yourself, and from that foundation, the strongest version of who you are can finally emerge.”

Adia in the Attic
Aware through the arts
Soft power within

#AdiaInTheAttic @AdiaInTheAttic • 07/2026

There is something about all of this that simply doesn’t sit well with me.

In normal times, would paying for information bother me?

Absolutely not.

Professionals deserve to be paid. I pay monthly subscriptions myself just for a hobby, and that doesn’t even count my time. I don’t expect anyone to work for free.

But these aren’t normal times.

We keep saying people need to educate themselves. Read more. Dig deeper. Understand what’s happening.

But understanding now requires money.

The fuller reporting costs money. The deeper analysis costs money. The experts explaining what the headlines leave out cost money.

So are we really trying to educate people?

Or are we isolating the people who can’t afford admission?

Not everyone can add another monthly subscription. That doesn’t mean they don’t care. It doesn’t mean they’re lazy or unwilling to learn.

It means the information they’re being told they need is sitting behind a bill they can’t pay.

Again, I’m not saying professionals shouldn’t be paid. They absolutely should.

I’m just wondering if we’ve reached a point where, during a moment this important, we should at least be having the conversation.

Because if our goal is to help people understand what’s happening, we have to ask whether we’ve accidentally built a system that makes understanding a luxury.

That part doesn’t sit right with me.

#AdiaInTheAttic

I’ve been questioning this journal lately.

Questioning whether I’m helping.

Questioning whether I’m just adding more noise to a room already full of people explaining things most of us never imagined we’d need to understand.

Then I watched elected officials argue that telling the fuller story of racism is what divides America.

And something in me went still.

Not shocked.

Just tired.

The kind of tired that makes you stop arguing and start writing things down.

Because maybe this journal was never meant for the people saying it now.

Maybe it’s for the children who’ll come later.

The ones who may someday ask whether we really didn’t know.

We knew.

We knew racism didn’t disappear because politicians stopped saying the word.

We knew people were still trying to explain what happened to them while others complained that the explanation made them uncomfortable.

We knew history was being cleaned up while the mess was still sitting in the room.

We knew.

I’m a white woman. I don’t get to declare someone else’s pain finished.

I don’t get to look at a life I haven’t lived and announce that what happened before no longer matters now.

I don’t even understand how anyone says that out loud without hearing themselves.

Maybe that’s the part I want the children to know.

Not everyone believed it.

Not everyone looked away.

Not everyone needed racism to happen directly to them before they cared.

Some of us listened.

Some of us believed people when they told us what they were living through.

Some of us understood that loving a country didn’t require lying about it.

America’s history includes courage, sacrifice and progress.

It also includes slavery, segregation, stolen opportunity and generations of people forced to fight for rights the country had already promised them.

Those truths don’t cancel each other out.

They belong to the same story.

That’s what history is.

The whole damn story!

I don’t know what this journal changes.

Most days, I’m not sure it changes anything.

But I know silence leaves a blank space.

And blank spaces are easy for powerful people to fill later.

They can say nobody objected.

Nobody noticed.

Nobody understood what was happening.

They can say racism was over and everyone agreed.

So this is me not agreeing.

Quietly, maybe.

Imperfectly, definitely.

But clearly.

Racism wasn’t over.

They were tired of being asked to look at it.

Those are not the same thing.

And children, should you ever find this page, please know some of us understood the difference. 😭

Maybe that’s why I keep writing.

Not because I think I’m the answer.

Because I refuse to help them erase the question.

Enough.

Source: July 21, 2026, congressional hearing, Rewriting American History: Examining the Smithsonian’s Efforts to Reshape the Past, with reporting from Reuters and the Associated Press. (Oversight Committee⁠)

Adia in the Attic
Aware through the arts
Soft power within

Every Citizen is a Witness.

#AdiaInTheAttic @AdiaInTheAttic • July 24, 2026

Not because I don’t know the point.

I know the point.

I just notice that the point connects to another point, which reminds me of something somebody said in 1995, which suddenly explains something happening today, which makes me remember a song, which makes me mad, which makes me laugh, which makes me open another tab.

Three hours later, I have seventeen pages and no idea why I originally sat down.

That’s not low confidence.

That’s knowing my own mind.

She wanders.

She connects everything.

She also believes every connection deserves its own paragraph.

So no, a book probably isn’t my best assignment. At least not without an editor willing to follow me through the attic asking, “Do we really need this box?”

Yes.

Obviously.

I saved it for a reason. 😂

I know my strengths, and I recognize my weaknesses.

Details are not my strong point.

I care about the details. I understand that they matter. I’m simply not the person you want reporting live while trying to remember seven names, four dates, two court cases, a committee title, and which person said what before the commercial break.

I’m not a news reporter.

I’m not trying to become one.

The same goes for becoming a podcast personality, although not because I think podcasts are the problem.

Some of the best voices I listen to are podcasters. They slow the story down. They bring in people who actually know what they’re talking about. They give an issue more than six minutes before someone announces we’ll have to leave it there.

That matters.

But I also remember the kind of reporting that helps get us here.

The chase for conflict.

The same people saying the same things.

The dramatic clip becoming more important than whether anyone learns anything.

The person creating the damage getting hours of coverage while the people living with it receive a sentence.

I remember all of that.

Moving the same habits to a podcast doesn’t magically make them better.

That doesn’t mean all podcasters are doing that. Plenty of them are correcting it.

I’m just not trying to become one.

Mostly because I know myself.

Someone asks one question, I answer it, connect it to three other questions, interrupt my own answer, forget the name of the person I’m discussing, remember exactly how they make me feel, then circle back forty minutes later and ask, “Wait, what was the question?”

Excellent content.

Terrible scheduling. 😂

My strength is different.

I can hear something and know there’s more underneath it.

I can listen to someone explain a complicated issue and catch the one sentence that finally makes the whole thing click.

I can notice when a voice deserves more attention, even when that person isn’t famous, polished, loud, dramatic, or particularly interested in becoming an internet personality.

Sometimes the most important person in the conversation is the one who isn’t trying to win it.

I notice those people.

Then I want other people to notice them too.

That part makes sense to me.

The part I’m realizing now is that I can’t just keep posting voices and assume everyone understands why I trust them.

People don’t know me.

They don’t know what I value.

They don’t know how much I listen before I share something.

They don’t know whether I agree with every word, whether I have questions, whether I’m changing my mind, or whether one sentence simply stops me long enough to make me think.

They just see a post.

So I’m realizing that if I want to bring awareness to important voices, I have to bring some awareness to me.

Well, that’s inconvenient.

I want people to understand why I’m pointing without spending too much time looking at the person doing the pointing.

Apparently, the internet doesn’t accept, “Trust me, I have reasons,” as a complete biography. 😂

I have no interest in going on camera.

I’ve lived enough life without needing to watch my own face react to it.

So I’m trying live writing.

That feels more like me.

I can write the thought while I’m still having it.

I can catch myself changing my mind.

I can say, “I don’t know enough about this yet.”

I can admit when something irritates me before I even understand why.

I can make the connection, tell the story, add the joke, lose the point, find it again, and leave the whole trail behind.

It lets people see me without requiring me to perform myself.

Or so I think.

Because putting your actual thoughts in public is still a performance of sorts, even when you’re not pretending.

You hit publish.

People read it.

Some understand you.

Some absolutely do not.

Some read half of it, decide what the rest probably says, and respond to the article they write in their own head.

That’s always fun. 😂

This process isn’t making me discover my values.

I already know my values.

It isn’t helping me find myself.

I know her.

Very well.

She never shuts up. 🤣

The challenge is letting other people meet her without allowing their opinion of her to become more important than my own.

That’s new.

I’ve never lacked confidence.

I know what I believe.

I know what I bring.

I also know what I don’t bring, which is why I’m not applying to anchor the evening news or host a three-hour daily podcast.

You’re welcome. 🤣

But confidence in private is easy.

You can think you’re brilliant all day long in your own house.

The dog rarely challenges the argument.

Public confidence is different.

It has to survive being misunderstood.

It has to survive correction.

It has to survive someone disliking you without turning that into a full investigation of your worth.

That’s where ego walks in.

Ego is funny because we talk about it like it only belongs to loud people.

The person taking every ounce of attention is ego.

The person demanding praise is ego.

The person who somehow turns every tragedy into a story about their own worth is definitely ego.

Those people don’t impress me.

But ego can also hide.

It can say, “I don’t need anyone to know me.”

Sometimes that’s true.

Sometimes it means, “I don’t want anyone to have the chance to misunderstand me.”

That’s the part I have to challenge in myself.

I’m not afraid I have nothing to offer.

I’m annoyed that offering it means I can’t control how it lands.

Very different problem. 😂

I want to share important voices without becoming one more person fighting to be the important voice.

I want people to know enough about me to trust my intentions, but not so much that everything becomes about me.

I want to be visible without becoming obsessed with being seen.

That’s a narrow little path.

Some days I walk it well.

Some days I post something and immediately wonder whether I explained too much, not enough, or somehow both.

Some days the ego wants applause.

Other days it wants to delete everything and return to quietly judging the internet from a safe distance.

Both are ego.

One wants the stage.

The other wants the exit.

Neither gets to make every decision.

That may be the real assignment.

Not becoming a reporter.

Not becoming a podcaster.

Not writing the perfectly disciplined book.

Not pretending I’m an expert because I read enough to recognize one.

The assignment is learning how to use my own voice without confusing it for the only voice that matters.

I can say, “Listen to this person.”

I can also explain why I’m listening.

I can say, “This changes how I understand something.”

I don’t have to pretend I discovered the subject.

I can say, “Details are not my strong point.”

Then I can point toward the person who knows them.

That doesn’t make my contribution smaller.

It makes it honest.

I’m good at connection.

I’m good at hearing the sentence underneath the sentence.

I’m good at recognizing when something matters before I fully know what I want to say about it.

I’m good at humor when everything feels too heavy.

I’m good at heart.

I’m also good at wandering fifty pages beyond the point.

We all have a range. 😂

Maybe I’ll write the book someday.

It’ll need an editor, a map, snacks, and a firm page limit.

For now, I’m writing live.

I’m showing enough of myself that when I point toward someone else, people understand why.

Not because I need to be the center.

Because trust doesn’t appear out of nowhere.

Sometimes I have to let people see the person behind the finger saying:

Wait.

Don’t scroll yet.

That voice matters.

Adia in the Attic
Aware through the arts
Soft power within

#AdiaInTheAttic
@AdiaInTheAttic • 07/2026

The map said the other route was faster. Not much faster. Nine minutes. But apparently nine minutes is enough for a grown woman to abandon every road she knows and follow a blue line into what looked increasingly like the opening scene of a documentary where the narrator already knows she made a poor decision.

I followed it anyway because the screen said faster. It knew my destination, the traffic, the road closures and exactly how long I’d been ignoring its repeated requests to make a legal U-turn. Clearly, it was the expert in the relationship.

At first, the new route looked promising. Wide road. Good pavement. A few normal businesses. Then the businesses disappeared. The pavement narrowed. The road developed the kind of curves that suggest the engineer had been paid by the turn.

Still, the map remained confident.

“Continue for nine miles.”

Nine miles where?

There was nothing ahead but trees, one leaning mailbox and a handmade sign that said EGGS. No price. No phone number. Just EGGS.

It felt less like advertising and more like a warning from the local economy.

I kept driving. The road got smaller. The trees got closer. My signal weakened, which seemed rude considering the phone was the one who brought me there.

Then the screen proudly announced, “You are on the fastest route.”

Well, that was comforting. I may have been missing, but at least I was making excellent time.

The map only promised faster.

I’m the one who added better.

That’s how easily one word can become a whole conclusion. We hear safe, popular, experienced or recommended, then fill in the rest without noticing we’ve done it.

The information may be accurate.

Our interpretation is where the story changes.

I pressed the button that morning. I chose the route. But I didn’t stop to think about what faster actually measured or what it left out.

Maybe the main road was nine minutes slower because it had traffic lights, gas stations and other signs that civilization remained operational. Maybe saving nine minutes wasn’t worth spending twenty wondering whether I’d have to explain my last known location as somewhere after the eggs.

The map wasn’t wrong.

That’s what makes it interesting.

I arrived nine minutes early. It fulfilled the promise exactly. I had simply assumed faster also meant easier, safer, smarter and better.

That part was mine.

We do this constantly. We hear one word and let it carry the weight of ten.

Experienced becomes trustworthy. Popular becomes good. Different becomes dangerous. Confident becomes informed. Quiet becomes weak. Angry becomes honest. Average becomes unimportant.

Once the first word lands, the rest of the story starts filling itself in.

Sometimes the label is accurate. The person really is experienced. The product really is popular. The route really is faster.

But accurate isn’t the same as complete.

A fact can be true and still leave most of the story untold.

That doesn’t mean we reject every recommendation or treat every piece of information like it’s hiding a secret tunnel underneath it. It just means we should notice when we’ve added meaning that wasn’t actually there.

That’s the part we own.

We’re the ones who decide what matters.

Time may matter one day. Safety may matter more the next. Familiarity may be worth nine minutes.

So might a bathroom.

Nobody puts that in the route summary, but after a certain age it belongs in the top three. 😂

The point isn’t that the route failed me.

It didn’t.

The point is that I asked one word to make the whole decision.

Faster.

That was enough.

Until it wasn’t.

I eventually reached the main road again. The trees opened. My signal returned. A gas station appeared in the distance like a major diplomatic achievement.

I pulled in, bought a snack and looked at the map.

Nine minutes saved.

No disaster. No dramatic rescue. Just one small reminder that information can be correct without making the decision for us.

The map can tell me which road is faster.

I still have to decide which road is better for me.

Also, next time I’m taking the route with more traffic.

The eggs can remain a mystery.

Adia in the Attic
Aware through the arts
Soft power within
#AdiaInTheAttic @AdiaInTheAttic • 07/2026

I’ve been writing about pieces of this separately for the last week, so some of it may sound familiar. Consider this the summary of where my head is today.

A few days ago, someone asked me an excellent question offline: What happens when you regularly follow or share a group, and then that group endorses someone you wouldn’t vote for?

That isn’t a small question. It’s about trust, association and what people may assume your support means. It’s probably one of the biggest reasons people hesitate to invest too deeply in online communities.

You share the work. You recommend the voices. Then one day they endorse somebody, and suddenly everyone assumes you signed the paperwork too.

I wrote then that I try to follow voices that broaden my current view, so I fully expect this to happen. Probably often.

I’m not convinced I know better on every issue. I’m confident I’ll approach their reasoning with an open mind, but I’m not clueless either.

I’ll listen. I’ll look. Maybe they know something I don’t. Maybe they don’t. Maybe I’ll change my mind. Maybe I’ll dig deeper and become even more confident that I disagree.

That’s the point.

They’re my fellow citizens. We don’t have to reach the same conclusion to respect the work that got us there.

We end the debate by voting, not by arguing endlessly until everyone has blocked everyone and declared democracy saved. 😂

Then Steady State announced that it would begin endorsing candidates who demonstrate a consistent commitment to the rule of law, support nonpartisan oversight of the executive branch and understand the security challenges facing this country.

Well.

The hypothetical may not stay hypothetical for very long. 😂

I’ve shared Steady State because I believe the group is doing important work. I’ve encouraged people to follow the voices involved because they bring knowledge, experience and perspective that the rest of us should hear.

That doesn’t mean I handed them my vote.

It doesn’t mean every candidate they endorse automatically becomes my candidate.

And it certainly doesn’t mean I’m surrendering my judgment because serious people made a nice graphic and used the word endorsement.

I’m still me.

God help everybody involved. 😂

There’s also a difference between an endorsement and a recommendation.

An endorsement is a conclusion.

A recommendation can simply mean: look here, read the record, notice the strengths, notice the concerns and keep watching.

I’m not going to break down every recommendation that crosses my screen. Most won’t need a full journal entry.

But the last two practically begged to be placed under:

Let’s follow the story.

I’m not predicting anything for you. I’m not telling you how the story ends.

I’m saying I’m here, I’m listening, and here’s my first thought.

Because apparently I’m the kind of idiot who puts the first thought on the internet while the second thought is still upstairs looking for its shoes.

Bennie Thompson

The most obvious concern people will raise with Bennie Thompson is his age.

That conversation is coming in the next election, and it’s going to be real.

Age can be something we consider. Health can be something we consider. Energy, judgment and the ability to perform the job absolutely matter.

But simply pointing to a birth year isn’t an evaluation.

That’s where age discrimination starts dressing itself up as political analysis.

Bennie Thompson has decades of public service, homeland-security experience and institutional knowledge.

He chaired the House committee investigating January 6. He has been a national voice from Mississippi, a small, deeply red state that doesn’t have an endless supply of Democratic power or national attention.

That matters.

We absolutely need younger leaders moving forward.

We also need experienced leaders willing to stand beside them, guide them and tell them which doors are real before they spend six months negotiating with a coat closet. 😂

Experience isn’t automatically wisdom.

But youth isn’t automatically courage, competence or change either.

A younger candidate shouldn’t receive the job simply for arriving later, and an older candidate shouldn’t keep it merely for arriving first.

Look at the work.

Look at the strength.

Look at whether the person still meets the moment.

With Bennie Thompson, I see the age concern.

I also see experience, courage, seniority and a national voice from a state that needs one.

His age deserves consideration.

It doesn’t deserve the entire page.

Joaquin Castro

The most obvious concern with Joaquin Castro is different.

It’s funding.

Texas still feels like home to me, so I pay attention there differently.

Not more than Oklahoma.

Differently.

Some places remain part of how you understand the country long after you stop living there.

Joaquin Castro has real strengths.

He served in the Texas House before entering Congress. He has substantial experience in foreign affairs, intelligence, immigration and oversight.

He knows Texas.

He understands Congress.

He understands how government actually works.

He isn’t learning the machinery while asking us to trust him with it.

That matters.

We keep saying we want serious people who understand institutions and know how to defend them.

Then somebody actually has years of experience, and suddenly the experience itself becomes suspicious.

Too established.

Too connected.

Been there too long.

Part of the system.

Apparently, we want experience with no evidence the person has ever been anywhere. 😂

The funding concern is legitimate.

Castro has accepted money connected to pro-Israel political groups. People are allowed to ask whether that money influenced earlier decisions. People are allowed to question the timing of stronger positions. People are allowed to compare the donations with the votes and examine the full record.

That isn’t an attack.

That’s citizenship.

Follow the money. Check the votes. Question the timing.

Then keep looking.

A concern should make us look closer.

It shouldn’t automatically make us throw the entire person away.

One donation isn’t the entire record. One vote isn’t the entire record. One birthday isn’t the entire record.

One position we like doesn’t erase every concern, and one concern doesn’t erase every strength.

That’s what these two recommendations have in common.

Bennie Thompson asks whether we can discuss age without reducing experience to an expiration date.

Joaquin Castro asks whether we can discuss funding without reducing an entire record to one donor category.

Both conversations matter.

Neither should be avoided.

But neither issue should be allowed to do all our thinking for us.

We don’t apply these standards evenly either.

When someone we like changes a position, we call it growth.

When someone we dislike changes a position, we call it calculation.

When our person has served for decades, we call it leadership.

When their person has served for decades, we call it clinging to power.

When our candidate accepts questionable funding, we explain the political reality.

When their candidate accepts it, we act like one receipt solved the entire case.

Sometimes it is growth.

Sometimes it is calculation.

Sometimes age really has affected someone’s performance.

Sometimes money really has purchased obedience.

That’s why the concern should begin the examination instead of ending it.

No candidate is going to be a perfect match.

No single issue should replace an entire record.

No recommendation should be treated like a command.

And no endorsement should require the rest of us to stop thinking.

When Steady State endorses someone, I’ll pay attention.

Not obey.

Pay attention.

When someone recommends a candidate to me, I’ll look.

Not pledge allegiance.

Look.

Their endorsement tells me where their judgment landed.

My vote tells you where mine landed.

Those aren’t the same thing.

I’m not going to break down every recommendation.

I’m basically homeschooled in politics myself. 😂

But these two deserved a place in the journal because each revealed something bigger than one candidate.

With Bennie Thompson, I see the age concern.

I also see experience, courage, seniority and a proven willingness to stand up when the moment required it.

With Joaquin Castro, I see the funding concern.

I also see substantial ability, institutional knowledge and a record strong enough that one label shouldn’t be allowed to swallow it.

If I lived in either district, both would have my vote based on what I know today.

That isn’t me telling you how to vote.

It isn’t a prediction.

It isn’t a loyalty oath.

It’s simply my first judgment, based on the information I have now.

And yes, Steady State endorsed both of them.

But I’d already had the opportunity to see what these men have shown through their work, their records and the moments that mattered.

So neither candidate really answers the original question:

What happens when a group I trust endorses someone I wouldn’t vote for?

At least not yet.

Actually, these two endorsements added confidence to my own understanding.

And let’s be honest, I formed mine with far fewer facts than Steady State probably had sitting in front of them. 😂

That doesn’t mean they’ll always land where I do.

Eventually, they may endorse someone I strongly disagree with.

Maybe then this experiment will feel very different.

Maybe I’ll question their reasoning.

Maybe I’ll change my mind.

Maybe I’ll become even more certain that I disagree.

But that’s exactly why I keep a live journal.

Not so I can pretend I was always right.

So I can’t quietly rewrite what I thought after the story changes.

The journal keeps the first thought, the questions, the concerns, the growth, the mistakes and the receipts.

Mostly, it keeps me honest.

That’s why we follow the story instead of pretending we already know the ending.

#AdiaInTheAttic

Adia in the Attic

Substack⁠

Bluesky — @nunyabzns.bsky.social⁠

YouTube — @AdiaInTheAttic⁠

I recommend you all follow

The Steady State

Website⁠

Substack⁠

Bluesky — @thesteadystate.org⁠

I don’t try to be a voice for Oklahoma.

I’ve only lived here a few years.

But I do pay attention, and there is something about vouchers and homeschooling that I don’t think we are talking about honestly enough.

This is not me saying homeschool parents do not love their children.

Of course they do.

This is not me saying every homeschool education is bad.

Some are probably excellent.

My concern is much simpler.

What happens when a person was homeschooled, received an incomplete education, and never had anyone outside the home identify the gaps?

Then that person grows up and homeschools their own child.

Not out of neglect.

Not out of cruelty.

Maybe out of love, faith, fear, financial pressure, distrust of public schools, or the sincere belief that they are giving their child something better.

But how do any of us teach what we were never taught?

How do we recognize a missing piece if no one ever showed us it was missing?

That is where the lack of oversight stops being a political argument and becomes a generational problem.

A parent may believe their child is doing well because the child is doing better than they did.

But what if the starting point was already far behind?

That is not an insult to the parent.

It is exactly why outside measurement matters.

Public schools are tested constantly.

Their failures are published, ranked, criticized, and used as evidence that families need another option.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma is pulling money toward vouchers and homeschooling while asking far fewer questions about what happens after a child leaves.

That should concern all of us.

Especially the homeschool parents doing everything right.

Because strong homeschool families should not be afraid of basic proof that children are learning.

They should want the difference between education and neglect to be visible.

Otherwise, every family gets placed under the same label, and the children receiving a real education become the defense for children receiving almost none.

Public money should not disappear into a system with less accountability than the one it came from.

And parental freedom should not require us to pretend every parent begins with the same education, resources, time, or ability.

That is not judgment.

That is reality.

A child’s future should not depend entirely on whether the adult teaching them knows enough to recognize what they do not know.

Because love can make a parent work miracles.

But love cannot reveal every blind spot.

Sometimes protection means allowing one more set of eyes to make sure the child is truly being prepared for the world beyond home.

#AdiaInTheAttic

😏Yeah I hated the room 🎶

Maybe me saying now how important that room is should mean more. ❣️

Of course I write about me a lot.

I keep a journal. I feel like that’s kind of the point. 😂

But I was watching a video last night that reminded me people have been fighting for democracy every single day.

Not always with a spotlight.

Not always with a title.

Sometimes they were simply making sure representation counted.

That the people had a voice.

That the oath meant something.

That the job belonged to the country, not one person.

And somewhere in all of this, I have to ask:

How did a woman who doesn’t own one single piece of clothing with a flag on it suddenly geek out over patriotism?

Size small, in case anyone is asking. 😂

Apparently I needed to watch people risk everything for democracy before realizing I’m a constitutional nerd with absolutely no patriotic wardrobe.

And somehow I’ve ended up in the Andrew Weissmann and Jamie Raskin fan club.

Nobody is more surprised than me. 🤦‍♀️😂

But what stayed with me wasn’t the famous names.

It was the honor.

The people who keep serving after the title is gone.

After the position is gone.

Sometimes after the paycheck, protection, friends, and peace of mind are gone too.

To the people like me speaking up because all you have to lose is our country, thank you.

To the folks risking careers, safety, family, or sanity while fighting online, an even bigger thank you.

And to those fired from long-held positions that helped keep us safe, watching you made the meaning of an oath clearer to civilians like me.

The honor didn’t clock out when the job ended.

It didn’t disappear because the person in power changed.

You carried it out the door with you.

Some of us may not understand everything you’ve sacrificed.

But we see you.

Even those of us who disagreed with you in the past.

Maybe especially us.

Please remember, it isn’t only the future that will recognize your service.

We recognize it now.

You are serving right now.

And to the active military, your lives are being treated like a talking point.

I’m so sorry for that.

You are not a headline, a number, a backdrop, or a sentence somebody uses to win an argument.

You are somebody’s child.

Somebody’s parent.

Somebody’s whole heart walking around outside their body.

Our children don’t see enough honor anymore.

They see fame.

They see likes.

They see greed.

But honor is still here.

It just doesn’t spend all day announcing itself.

All day, I also watched smart people defend themselves respectfully without calling anyone names.

I appreciated that.

I was only suggesting we try it.

I didn’t actually think it would stick, but hell, ask for the moon, right? 😂

Because we can talk to each other without telling people who they must vote for.

Introduce them to the candidate.

Show them the record.

Show them the work.

Let them listen.

Let them decide.

We don’t have to drag people to the voting booth by the ear like they forgot their homework.

And if you see a red flag, don’t decorate around it.

A red flag is a don’t.

If the flag switches to red, start over.

We have tremendous people in this country.

Many of them are already right there doing the job.

Judge the experience.

Judge the record.

Judge what the people who worked beside them say about that experience.

And don’t let some orange dude—or anybody else—explain why they’re smarter than you.

If they know more, make them explain it.

If they can’t, call it bullshit.

Don’t say, “Well, I’m dumb. I thought being a felon might be a bad qualification for president, but if you insist, I’ll trust you.”

No.

Trust your own common sense enough to ask the next question.

And to anyone saying, “This needed to happen”:

STFU.

No, it didn’t.

We all needed to wake up sooner.

We need every voice.

Every platform.

Everywhere.

Most of us are trying to stop this.

But being horrified separately isn’t a plan.

If we don’t organize, we’ll keep allowing ourselves to become victims of people who already know exactly how to use our fear and division against us.

So maybe we stop for one minute.

Not forever.

I know none of us are capable of that. 😂

Just one minute.

Stop.

Think.

Listen.

Then plan together.

Let’s listen to every possible candidate before we hand anyone the job.

Let’s stop debating just to win.

Let’s stop waiting for one person to save us.

This land is not yours.

It is not mine.

It is ours.

Every loud, stubborn, beautiful inch of it.

We are so much better than this.

So let’s talk.

Let’s organize.

Let’s build.

And that’s probably enough inspirational speaking from me for one night.

I’m not Obama, and I’ll never run for office.

P.S. I meant Michelle Obama, in case you didn’t catch the reference to her awesome speeches.

Her husband’s not too bad either. 😂

Adia in the Attic
Aware through the arts
Soft power within

#AdiaInTheAttic
@AdiaInTheAttic • July 21, 2026

July kept entering through the window

not as light

as noise

as names I didn’t know
countries I couldn’t reach
mothers folding grief into ordinary afternoons
children learning the shape of fear
before anyone taught them the word

The country was everywhere

in the hall
under the chair
inside the weather
resting its heavy hand
on every quiet thing

Even the walls felt tired

I turned the music up

not to escape

to remember there was still rhythm
beneath the shouting

Still wind moving through trees
without choosing a side

Still birds crossing borders
without papers

Still people setting plates on tables
watering plants
calling their sons
feeding somebody else’s child
holding doors
making room

Small mercies

The kind that never reach the headlines

The kind that keep a country alive
while everyone argues over who owns it

I watched anger grow teeth

watched fear dress itself as certainty

watched strangers tear each other apart
with hands that had never touched

All that distance
and still we found a way to wound

That may be our strangest talent

But I saw tenderness too

quiet

almost embarrassed to be seen

A voice saying
I was wrong

Another saying
I understand

Someone carrying a story farther
because the person who lived it
was too tired to carry it alone

Someone standing in a small town
beneath an ordinary sky
saying

Look here

We are still here

The attic held all of it

the fight
the shame
the courage
the ridiculousness
the country tripping over its own history
then blaming the floor

I laughed sometimes

What else could I do

We are a strange people

We build walls
then complain we cannot hear each other

We close every window
then ask where the air went

We call the wound old
because we are tired of looking at it

We call ourselves separate
then ache when nobody comes

Still

the word together kept returning

not loudly

not like a promise

more like a pulse

faint
stubborn
alive

Together in the woman who keeps showing up

Together in the man who refuses to stop asking

Together in the teacher who stays late

Together in the neighbor who notices

Together in the stranger who says
I do not know you
but I know this pain

Maybe that is the country

Not the shouting

The returning

The small decision
to come back toward one another
after everything taught us to pull away

I do not love this country blindly

I love it with my eyes open

I love it knowing exactly
what it has done

I love it knowing exactly
what it could still become

That is not innocence

That is choice

To see the damage
and still plant something

To hear the lies
and still protect the truth

To know how easily we divide
and still leave the door unlocked
for the possibility of us

July kept entering through the window

war
heat
grief
laughter
rage
music
the whole restless country
dragging its chair closer

So I let it sit

I listened

I wrote down what I could

Not because I had the answer

Because silence was already full

Because the children were watching

Because the dead deserved witnesses

Because the living deserved tenderness

Because somebody had to remember
that beneath every uniform
every label
every vote
every mistake
every furious sentence

there was still a human body

warm

afraid

trying

And somewhere beyond the attic

past the noise
past the headlines
past all the people certain they were alone

the country kept breathing

unevenly

painfully

together

Adia in the Attic
Aware through the arts
Soft power within

#AdiaInTheAttic
@AdiaInTheAttic

Last night, I took the night off social media and just chatted with a friend.

Not necessarily about politics in particular, but hello, it’s 2026.

She’s smart.

I’m smart enough to understand that.

That’s all the information you need. 😂

Somewhere in the conversation, I ended up reading a couple of articles she wrote months ago.

The articles were about politics, of course.

It’s sad that politics is what brought me back to social media.

The articles didn’t reveal the meaning of life.

They were basically a peek back into one day in 2026 history.

That’s it.

Except a few sentences in, I got goosebumps.

Before I started reading, I couldn’t have told you for certain that I’d read those exact articles before.

Then I began reading and thought:

Oh.

I know this.

Not because I remembered every fact or every sentence.

I remembered the feeling.

I’ve gone back and read lyrics or listened to a song I wrote months ago and thought:

Damn.

I remember that feeling.

A song can put me right back inside the exact moment when I wrote it.

Not just what happened.

The whole emotional temperature of the day.

Last night, somebody else’s writing did that to me.

It came back like one of my own songs.

I remembered what the country felt like that day.

I remembered what I was trying to understand.

I remembered the anger, the confusion and the relief of finding voices that could explain what I was watching while I was still offering the world my extremely incomplete explanation. 😂

That feeling was priceless.

Of course, my brain couldn’t just enjoy the moment and go to sleep.

No.

It was midnight.

Apparently that’s when my brain opens the office, turns on every light and schedules a full staff meeting nobody asked for. 🙄

One feeling became a question.

That question became twelve more thoughts.

Then my brain connected the most obvious conclusion.

I’ve asked myself almost every day since I started writing online:

Why now?

Why did I spend a lifetime saying, “One day,” and then suddenly decide:

Fine.

I’ll go online.

I’m not expecting anything from this.

I hit post and move on.

I’m not waiting to be discovered.

I’m not building toward some grand reveal.

And this definitely isn’t me claiming I’m some chosen one.

Please.

I don’t even want to be chosen to decide what we’re having for dinner.

But last night made me realize the journal didn’t suddenly appear out of nowhere.

The anger didn’t either.

Neither did that lifelong “one day” sitting in the back of my brain.

I think I’ve been fighting the same classroom project since kindergarten.

I didn’t conform to the classroom.

Let’s get that straight.

I wasn’t sitting quietly, absorbing the boring words on a page, memorizing them, repeating them back and feeling successful because somebody wrote a letter at the top.

Sometimes I understood the subject.

Sometimes I understood it before the teacher finished explaining it.

Sometimes my brain had already left the building and didn’t bother telling me. 😂

But I knew very early that the classroom respected one way of learning and acted like anybody who didn’t fit that method was the problem.

Sit still.

Listen.

Read.

Memorize.

Repeat.

Do the homework.

Explain it back.

My brain’s response has apparently always been:

That sounds extremely unhelpful.

I wasn’t incapable of learning.

I didn’t conform to the delivery system.

There’s a difference.

My nine older siblings are Boomers.

I’m Gen X.

They’re between six and sixteen years older than me, which means they grew up in the same family but not exactly the same version of it.

They had siblings close enough in age to come home, do homework together, know each other’s friends and move through the same stages of life together.

I tagged along.

“Is that your mother?”

“No, she’s my sister.”

“And she’s twelve?”

Yes. 🙄

They had a group project.

I was doing independent study without anybody calling it that.

I watched from the side.

I listened.

I connected things differently.

Apparently I’ve been writing the same complaint about the classroom in different formats my whole life.

Sometimes it’s a journal.

Sometimes it’s a song.

Sometimes it’s me at midnight realizing something that was probably obvious by lunchtime. 😂

I’m okay with my life choices.

I accept every decision I made.

Saying I’d do some things differently is stupidity.

Of course I would.

Give anybody all the information they learned after making a decision and they’ll make a different decision.

That isn’t wisdom.

That’s hindsight cheating on the test.

But sometime during the ’80s, I noticed the classroom had expanded into the rest of the world.

The college-educated title was becoming more than proof of education.

It was becoming a social ranking.

Another dividing line.

People were finally being called out for judging intelligence or value by race, gender, weight or where somebody came from.

Good.

But apparently the answer wasn’t to stop ranking human beings.

It was:

Fine.

We’ll use education.

That one still sounds respectable. 🙄

College educated over here.

Everybody else over there.

The people we’re supposed to listen to and the people who apparently need everything explained to them.

I caught that immediately.

And it’s remained one of my strongest:

F you, asshole.

Your degree is impressive.

You worked for it.

You earned it.

It may qualify you to do something I should absolutely never be allowed near.

That matters.

But many, many, many other people have degrees too.

A degree doesn’t automatically make someone wise.

It doesn’t make them honest.

It doesn’t make them ethical.

It doesn’t mean they understand people outside their own classroom.

It doesn’t even guarantee common sense.

The orange dude has a degree from a top university. 😂

See my point?

Sometimes credentials matter enormously.

Please let the surgeon have medical training.

Please let the attorney understand the law.

Please let the engineer know why the bridge is standing before I drive across it.

Expertise matters.

Standards matter.

Education matters.

But a degree isn’t required to understand facts.

It isn’t required to recognize a lie.

It isn’t required to care about the country.

And it certainly isn’t required to vote for president.

At some point, political strategists recognized education as another useful way to divide people.

College educated.

Non-college educated.

Working class.

Suburban women.

Black voters.

Single mothers.

Rural voters.

Latino men.

Boomers.

Gen X.

Gen Z.

Everybody gets placed inside a labeled container, and then extremely educated people sit around discussing what the container supposedly thinks.

The smartest of the smartest still don’t seem to recognize the mistake in mislabeling people.

A label can describe one fact about somebody.

It can’t explain the human being.

“Black voter” doesn’t tell you everything that person believes.

“Single mom” doesn’t tell you whether she owns a business, has a doctorate, works nights, votes Republican, votes Democratic, hates both parties or missed the news because she was busy keeping three people alive.

“Non-college educated” doesn’t mean uninformed.

“College educated” doesn’t mean intelligent.

“Working class” doesn’t mean waiting for a television panelist with a larger vocabulary to explain what’s happening in your own life.

This works with almost any label.

Race.

Gender.

Age.

Weight.

Income.

Education.

Region.

Marriage status.

Pick a box.

Once the box has a name, people start talking to the box instead of listening to the person inside it.

And this is the most important part.

I didn’t come online because I thought the world needed my opinion.

I came online because my heart hurt.

I looked around in real life and could see that the message wasn’t reaching the ground.

The information existed.

The experts existed.

The facts existed.

But too much of it was still stuck inside the classroom.

Academic language.

Political language.

Media language.

Social media circles full of people explaining reality to other people who already understood it.

Meanwhile, everybody kept asking why the message wasn’t landing.

Maybe because it never left the classroom.

I’m proof the information is available.

Geeky, dorky proof. 😂

I found it.

I followed the voices.

I learned from people who knew far more than I did.

Then I looked around and thought:

Why isn’t this reaching everybody else?

Not because people are stupid.

Not because they don’t care.

Not because the answer needs to be simplified until it becomes insulting.

The delivery has to change.

The people who understand the subject need to collaborate with people who understand how different human beings actually receive information.

Writers.

Teachers.

Artists.

Musicians.

Storytellers.

Comedians.

Regular people who can hear the official explanation and say:

Okay, but this is what that means from down here.

That’s probably the collaboration I’ve been trying to describe without knowing I was describing it.

Not replacing the experts.

Not pretending lived experience is the same thing as expertise.

Getting the classroom and the ground to talk to each other.

That’s why those articles mattered near the beginning.

For the first time in decades, voices that understood the subject were breaking through the algorithm and actually reaching me.

They weren’t yelling at me.

They weren’t talking down to me.

They weren’t trying to frighten me into clicking again.

They knew the material, but they didn’t make the material feel like punishment.

And honestly, I think some of them may actually be former Republicans too. 😂

Imagine that.

Me recommending professors and former Republicans daily with complete confidence.

Hahaha.

Joke’s on me.

I absolutely do that.

With pride.

Apparently I’ve developed a very confident “do as I say, not as I did” attitude toward education. 😂

I still don’t want the classroom.

I just finally found teachers whose work escaped it.

They were writing the source material.

They understood the history, the law, the politics and the details.

I take those voices for granted now.

Last night reminded me not to.

My journal isn’t a history lesson.

I’m smarter than that.

A history lesson would require gathering the source material, fully understanding the subject and explaining it back correctly.

Homework.

No. 😂

That’s not me.

I found the people doing the homework.

My journal says:

Yep.

Those things happened.

You should’ve heard my incomplete explanation.

Someday, when I want to know exactly what happened on a particular day in 2026, plenty of people much smarter than me will have written the real history.

They’ll have the names.

The dates.

The sources.

The legal context.

The complete explanation.

When I want to remember what I was pissed about that day, I’ll have my journal.

I’m honestly writing my own version.

I call it my history because I’m not clever enough to pretend it’s anything more important than that. 😂

It’s not the official record.

It’s where I was sitting.

What reached me.

What made me angry.

What made me laugh.

What I understood from my little corner while everyone else kept talking 🎶.

The experts are recording history.

I’m recording mine.

Last night, those two versions met again.

Her articles gave me a peek back into that day.

My reaction brought back the person I was while I was living through it.

That too gave me goosebumps.

I recognized the voice before I really knew the person behind it. Now, reading it as a friend, I keep thinking—how did this even happen?

Our paths probably never would have crossed if I hadn’t randomly clicked something she posted and thought, Here’s a voice I trust.

The articles didn’t reveal the meaning of life.

They preserved a day.

And somehow, the feeling was still attached.

Six months ago felt like six years ago.

So much has happened that the days have started piling on top of each other.

Something enormous happens, and before we’ve understood it, something else enormous lands on top of it.

Then regular life keeps moving.

The dishwasher still needs somebody to press Start.

The dog remains completely uninterested in Washington.

And apparently my brain waits until midnight to begin reviewing the entire structure of American education, political messaging, social media and my personal history. 🙄

But maybe that’s the answer to why now.

Politics brought me back to social media because my heart hurt.

The people who could explain reality gave me something solid to hold onto.

And my brain, which has never conformed to the classroom, finally found its own way to respond.

Not by teaching the lesson.

Not by pretending I wrote the textbook.

Not by claiming I understand every part of the subject.

I’m writing in the margin.

Yep.

That happened.

Here’s what reached me.

Here’s what pissed me off.

Here’s what made me laugh.

Here’s what it felt like from my chair.

The smarter people can write the real history.

I’m writing mine.

But maybe the larger point isn’t choosing between the classroom and the ground.

Maybe it’s getting them to work together.

Open the classroom door.

Let the information reach the ground.

Then bring the voices from the ground back into the conversation.

And yes, apparently that leaves me recommending professors and former Republicans to people every single day.

Hahaha.

The joke is absolutely on me. 😂

But I’ll always keep my humor and apparently I take long-form storytelling as a personal challenge to every teacher who ever assigned homework.

Because let’s face it, they may be the only people still reading all the way to the end in 2026. 😂

And since you’ve already made it this far, here’s the song that probably explained the whole thing better than I just did.

Adia in the Attic

Aware through the arts
Soft power within

#AdiaInTheAttic @AdiaInTheAttic • July 18, 2026

I Hated the Room

I can still see where I was sitting
Second grade little desk
Fifty years gone by
And my body kept the rest

I looked around that classroom
At faces too young to know
Why some kids came in quiet
Why some kids carried cold

Nobody said trauma
Nobody said fear
Nobody said grown-up pain
Had followed children here

I just knew something was wrong
Before I knew what wrong could be
Little girl in Cleveland
Seeing what grown folks would not see

They said be grateful
Someone has it worse
So I folded up my heartbreak
And called the whole thing school first

I did not hate learning
I hated the room
I hated seeing children
Already carrying the bruise

I hated the silence
I hated the eyes
I hated knowing pain
Before I knew why

I did not hate school
I hated feeling small
Watching fear grow legs
And walk through us all

I had too many siblings
To be brand new to pain
Grown-up problems leaked in early
Through the walls, through the names

So maybe I noticed faster
Maybe I saw too much
Maybe some kids are born listening
For what nobody wants to touch

Our zip code said Cleveland
Same boat, different leaks
Some kids learned survival
Before they learned to speak

And I was told be thankful
And part of me still is
But gratitude gets ugly
When it is used to bury kids

Someone always has it worse
That line can keep you kind
But it can also teach a child
To leave her own hurt behind

I did not hate learning
I hated the room
I hated seeing children
Already carrying the bruise

I hated the silence
I hated the eyes
I hated knowing pain
Before I knew why

I did not hate school
I hated feeling small
Watching fear grow legs
And walk through us all

And now I look at this country
And damn if I am not there
Back in that little classroom
Back in that little chair

Same pain, bigger bodies
Same fear, louder mouths
Same children turned grown-ups
Still trying to get out

Everybody picked a label
Everybody picked a side
But I am still seeing second grade
Behind everybody’s eyes

I did not hate learning
I hated the room
I hated feeling helpless
Watching old pain bloom

I hated the silence
I hated the game
I hated that nobody
Would call fear by its name

I did not hate school
I hated what we hide
All those little children
With grown-up storms inside

That little girl knew something
Before she had a plan
Before she had the words
Before she had a pen

She did not have the language
She did not have the power
But she was paying attention
And she is still here now

So apparently people have told me my whole life, “I was wrong about you at first.”

My friends add, “Yeah, your ex-husband said that too.”

Fair. 😂

However, I’ve always enjoyed hearing it.

Probably more than I should.

Not because I’m grateful somebody stuck around long enough to discover the real me.

Please. Some days I only like dead people. 😂

I enjoy the little pause before they admit it. That tiny moment when you can almost see them wishing real life had a delete-post option.

“Well…apparently I had you wrong.”

Yes.

Apparently you did.

I think I’m a nice person, but I also live with me, so I understand I may not qualify as an unbiased witness.

Still, I’m usually friendly. I laugh, I listen, and I’ll answer almost anything somebody asks me.

What I don’t usually do is ask personal questions first. Not because I don’t care. I just don’t like making people uncomfortable.

I’ll think of a question and immediately start reading their face before I even ask it.

Not psychic.

Let’s settle down.

I mean body language, tone, hesitation, that little shift people make when the conversation gets close to something they may not want touched.

Sometimes I decide not to ask.

Then five minutes later, they tell me the whole thing anyway.

This happens constantly. Stores, waiting rooms, checkout lines—anywhere I’m supposed to be doing something simple.

We can start with the weather, a dog, the price of something, or why nobody knows how to form a line anymore. Then suddenly I know about their divorce, their mother, the child they’re worried about, the sister they haven’t spoken to since 2006, and why Christmas has required separate entrances for seventeen years.

I didn’t ask.

I’m still holding shampoo.

Then they’ll say, “I don’t know why I told you all that.”

Honestly, I don’t know either.

But while it was happening, it made perfect sense.

That’s the weird part. The conversation doesn’t feel personal until suddenly we’re standing in the middle of somebody’s real life near the toothpaste.

I understand the thing underneath the thing.

That’s language I understand.

I’m fine with dates, names, timelines, facts—all of that. But I also notice the wrong laugh, the pause, the sentence that sounds casual but clearly isn’t, and the person saying, “It’s fine,” in a tone that has never once meant fine in the history of human speech.

I notice it.

I don’t always say anything.

That may be where people get me wrong. They think because I’m not asking, I’m not noticing.

Oh, I noticed.

I just decided not to make it weird.

Then later they discover I have opinions, boundaries, sarcasm, and a memory for the thing that didn’t add up.

Suddenly I’m not who they thought I was.

No, I am.

You just met the friendly department first. 😂

My favorite version of this happens in doctors’ waiting rooms.

I spend enough time in them that I should probably have my own chair.

Fox News is usually playing loud enough to qualify as part of the medical condition, and every once in a while somebody looks at me and decides I’m clearly the right person to complain to about how “the gays are always so in your face.”

Meanwhile, I’m sitting there gay.

Apparently, they’re oblivious.

I mean, didn’t they look at my shoes?

I noticed the red hat immediately. 😂

There we are, both forming first impressions.

Mine came with visible evidence.

Theirs apparently came from whatever file they keep labeled:

Middle-aged white woman. Probably agrees with me.

They see me and think, safe audience.

I see the hat and think, well, this may help pass the time.

And honestly, it usually does.

I don’t correct them immediately. Not because I’m hiding or afraid.

Mostly because I’m fascinated.

You’ve known me for four minutes, and somehow you’ve decided I’m the right person for this speech.

Please continue.

I’d like to know how far this confidence goes. 😂

Then eventually the conversation gets personal enough that I mention I have kids.

That usually lowers the guard a little more. Apparently, motherhood gets me moved into the “safe, normal woman” category.

Then eventually my partner comes up naturally in the conversation. 😊

Nothing dramatic.

No reveal.

No rainbow smoke machine.

Just a sentence.

And then the face changes.

There it is.

That tiny moment when they realize real life doesn’t come with a delete-post option.

That may honestly be my favorite version of, “I was wrong about you at first.”

Yes.

Yes, you were.

The person you were complaining about wasn’t “in your face.” She was sitting quietly beside you the whole time, waiting for someone to call her name and wondering why the television was screaming.

That’s probably why I enjoy the sentence.

It means somebody finally noticed they’d written an entire story with almost no information.

They saw one thing, added several assumptions, and then reality showed up wearing sensible shoes.

I love when reality does that.

Maybe that’s also why the political nightmare we’re living through makes me so crazy.

We’re surrounded by people who form an opinion in the first thirty seconds and then defend it like they signed a blood oath.

A man says something loudly. A headline appears. A clip starts moving. Somebody in a suit points at a chart.

Suddenly people have reached the final answer before the facts have even found parking.

Then more information shows up.

Dates. Documents. Court records. Video. Previous statements. Actual experts. The person saying the exact opposite thing six months ago.

And instead of saying, “Well, damn, maybe I had that wrong,” people start remodeling the entire house around the mistake.

That’s the part I don’t understand.

Being wrong at first is normal.

I’ve apparently built a lifetime hobby out of letting people experience it with me.

Nobody died.

They reconsidered. They adjusted. They survived the emotional devastation of realizing I wasn’t who they invented five minutes earlier.

Some even went on to live productive lives. 😂

Changing your mind because you learned something new isn’t weakness. It means your brain is still accepting updates.

Refusing every update because you’re emotionally attached to version one isn’t strength.

It’s how you end up yelling at facts for being disrespectful.

That’s where we are now.

Reality keeps submitting corrections, and half the country is refusing delivery.

Wrong address.

Return to sender.

I already bought the hat.

That’s how propaganda wins.

It doesn’t always need to prove itself. It just needs to get there first.

Give you the first villain, the first explanation, and the first emotional reaction.

Then pride takes over and does the unpaid labor.

Once people have repeated something, defended it, posted it, argued with relatives about it, and possibly bought merchandise, admitting they were wrong feels harder than continuing to be wrong.

So they keep going.

Even while reality is standing beside them in the waiting room wearing gay shoes.

Maybe that’s why I like this part of myself.

I’m not one clean first impression.

The kindness is real. The humor is real. The listening is real.

But so are the opinions, the boundaries, the sarcasm, and the part of me quietly noticing everything while acting like we’re still discussing shampoo.

I can care about somebody and disagree with them. I can understand where they’re coming from and still think they’re wrong. I can be warm without becoming easy to fool.

And I can sit beside someone while they explain my own life to me and wait patiently for reality to introduce itself.

That’s fun.

I’m sorry, but it is. 😂

So yes, people have told me my whole life, “I was wrong about you at first.”

Good.

I enjoy knowing the first impression didn’t survive contact with additional information.

America could use a lot more of that.

Not the part where everyone is wrong about me. We don’t have time for that many meetings.

The part where people look again. Where they admit the first story wasn’t complete. Where they allow reality to ruin the post before they embarrass themselves further in the comments.

And hats off to the ones still wearing the red hat in 2026.

Honestly, I’m probably going to sit near you on purpose and hope you strike up a conversation.

Not because I expect us to agree.

I just like understanding people, especially the ones I’m told I’m not supposed to understand.

So yes, I noticed the hat.

You apparently missed the shoes.

Pull up a chair anyway. 😂

Adia in the Attic
Aware through the arts
Soft power within

#AdiaInTheAttic @AdiaInTheAttic
July 19, 2026

The first couple of days came with a migraine and absolutely no chance I was going anywhere near social media.

None.

The country was going to have to continue without my immediate commentary.

Somehow, it survived. 😂

Then I had a day or two of:

🙄 Whatever. Here we go.

For the greater good, sure.

Apparently, my brain thought shutting down for two days had fulfilled its civic duty.

Then I fed it a DJT speech and several hours of lies.

So today, my brain said:

Nope.

Write more. 🤬

Do not let this day pass without saying:

THIS IS NOT NORMAL TIMES.

Which was slightly inconvenient because I was trying to relax.

A light summer shower had just passed through. The sky was an odd orange and gray. The house was so quiet that even the refrigerator had kicked off.

That kind of quiet.

So I sat there trying to meditate.

Naturally, I ended up talking to myself. 😂

And apparently, myself had notes.

I started this morning feeling thankful.

Not because I think what comes next will be easier.

I don’t. 🤬

I’m thankful because I can feel something shifting.

The lies don’t seem to land the same way.

The scrambling is easier to see.

The loudest voices still have microphones, but they don’t seem to own the whole room anymore.

I can feel people hearing one another again.

I can feel hope multiplying.

And I know I’m more ready to help than I was a year ago.

People who know me aren’t surprised by my political opinions.

They already knew who I voted for and why. I’ve shared an opinion before 😂okay, maybe more than one.

They knew how I felt about the Joe Rogan fellas too.

That wasn’t breaking news.

They’re not surprised that I can be long-winded, self-entertaining, or wander so far off topic that the original point may need to file a missing-person report.

What surprises them is that I’m still posting.

Almost a year after:

OMFG. Hold my drink.

Apparently, this wasn’t a phase.

Honestly, that surprises me too.

I’ve always stood up for myself.

More accurately, I usually dared people to test my backbone.

They rarely needed to.

Strength, to me, has never been loud.

It isn’t chest-beating, chair-kicking, “I am man” theater performed for anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby.

Strength is carried inside.

It’s steady.

Quiet until needed.

And when it’s tested, it holds.

That part of me has never confused me.

The speaking up has.

Although I honestly don’t argue with people.

I’ll absolutely give my opinion.

Sometimes with evidence.

Sometimes with sarcasm.

Occasionally with enough words to qualify as light reading. 😏

But winning a conversation isn’t really a thing.

Be honest.

Most of us stop arguing when we know the other person is wrong. 😂

I’m not chasing strangers around the internet trying to defeat them.

I’m sharing my truth.

I’m writing down what I see, what I believe, what I question, and what I don’t want my silence mistaken for.

At first, I thought I was writing for future grandchildren who may or may not ever exist.

I imagined them finding this record someday and wondering what we saw, what we accepted, what we challenged, and what we left behind besides screenshots, forgotten passwords, and excuses.

Then I realized I may have also been trying to reparent my adult children.

Not because they need me to raise them again.

They’re adults.

They don’t follow my social media.

To be fair, I don’t follow theirs either. 😱

Nothing I’ve written is anything they haven’t already heard from me for the past decade.

They knew my politics.

They knew my warnings.

They knew exactly how I felt about the men on the screen because I was usually offering my rebuttal directly to the screen.

Apparently, arguing with a screen and expecting democracy to improve wasn’t the most mature or sane approach. 😂

I was competing with the entire internet while asking my children to trust me.

Meanwhile, the people on the screen had their attention.

So maybe the journal became a way to show my work instead of just insisting I was right.

To slow down.

To check myself.

To explain why something mattered.

To admit when I got something wrong.

To leave behind something more useful than:

Your mother yelled about this before it was popular.

They may never read it.

Future grandchildren may never exist.

That doesn’t make the record meaningless.

It means I’m finally speaking without demanding that the people I love stop everything and listen.

Then the reason widened.

It became about other people.

Then citizens.

Then the country.

And somewhere in there, I realized that some of the people I felt protective of would’ve looked like my enemies on paper.

Once I attached a real person, a family, a worker, a veteran, a voter, or a child to an issue, the labels stopped doing all the work.

They were still citizens.

Their rights still mattered.

Even when I didn’t agree with them.

That changed something in me.

Today, I’m tired of saying what’s happening is “not normal.”

I’m sick of the phrase.

At some point, it starts sounding like a smoke alarm everyone hears while continuing to walk past it.

Still, as a witness, I can’t let the day pass without saying it.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL TIMES.

The entire GOP appears to have lost touch with the American people.

Not a small messaging problem.

Not a mild disconnect.

More like the spaceship may arrive shortly to gather them up. 🙄

They keep speaking as though people can’t see, remember, rewind, compare, screenshot, or read the comments.

Some of us absolutely read too many comments.

But still.

I’m not thankful because the danger has passed.

It hasn’t.

I’m thankful because I can feel people recognizing it.

I can feel the difference between people being frightened and people becoming ready.

A year ago, I was reacting.

Today, I’m steadier.

Not calm because everything’s fine.

Steady because I know it isn’t.

I’ve learned how to listen longer.

How to separate a person from a label.

How to question my first reaction.

How to leave a record instead of only leaving noise.

I’m still angry.

I’m still sarcastic.

I’m still capable of starting with democracy and ending with the refrigerator turning off.

Growth has limits and my mind wanders.

But I think I’m ready to help more people than I could’ve helped a year ago.

Not because I suddenly have all the answers.

I don’t.

Not because I’m qualified to lead anybody.

I’m not applying.

But I know what it feels like to wake up confused, angry, frightened, and unsure whether anyone else sees what you see.

I know how much it matters when one steady voice says:

Yes.

I see it too.

Maybe that’s what I can offer.

Not certainty.

Not instructions.

Not a winning argument.

A witness.

A record.

A steady voice.

Of course, the quiet house is no longer quiet.

The dog is running around, and someone is pressing buttons on the dishwasher because apparently I forgot to hit start.

🙄 I’m saving democracy.

Somebody else is going to have to handle the dishes, please. 🤦‍♀️

And honestly, the last time something held my attention this long, a baby popped out.

That was over a quarter of a century ago.

So apparently, we’re creating something here. 😂

Maybe not perfectly.

Definitely not quietly.

But steadily.

And for tonight, that’s enough.

Adia in the Attic
Aware through the arts
Soft power within

#AdiaInTheAttic @AdiaInTheAttic
July 17, 2026

I am not commenting on that embarrassing speech the orange dude gave last night.

I will say this: I find pointing fingers very easy. 😏

But honest live writing probably has to admit when it notices something good too.

Yesterday, I read several different experts ahead of the speech, which is always helpful when the orange dude is about to speak because somebody needs to lay out what reality may look like before he starts rearranging it.

Then I turned on the mainstream news before the speech.

Same people I have watched for years.

But something felt different.

There was a spark there.

Not louder. Not more dramatic. Not suddenly perfect.

Just a little more confidence.

A little more of that old professionalism I honestly thought we may have lost somewhere between performance, panic, ratings, and everybody trying to win the internet before dinner.

Maybe the public is finally ready for the narrative to change.

And maybe some of the most respected journalists can feel that.

Maybe believing in us again is helping them remember why we valued the good ones in the first place.

Because we do know the difference.

We know the difference between experience and ego.

Between honesty and performance.

Between somebody trying to stay fair and somebody pretending facts are just another opinion.

My frustration with some of my favorite voices was never that I stopped respecting them.

It was that outsiders could say plainly that journalism itself was under attack while the people inside it had to measure every word, avoid becoming the story, and somehow prove their fairness to people who were lying, name-calling, and performing without consequence.

That had to be exhausting.

And for a while, it felt like we were trading the best journalism for the loudest show.

Last night, I could see the difference again.

The knowledge.

The restraint.

The seriousness.

The confidence of people who have lived real lives, done the work, and did not need to turn themselves into the headline.

Apparently, I needed to see that.

Someday, people may look back at the dates in this journal and think everybody was listening to me. 😂

They were not.

I am not saying anything here that millions of people are not also saying, noticing, or yelling at a screen.

But if I am going to keep writing down the problem, it would be unfair not to write down when I see even a small shift.

Did we turn another corner?

I have no idea.

But I noticed the spark.

And maybe the good ones are starting to remember that we notice them too.

I Just Needed One Voice 🎶

And somewhere in all of this, I am finding these voices.

Or maybe they are finding me exactly when I need them.

Sometimes the words start answering me directly, delivered in the form I needed for it to reach.

Jaime Ellison wrote it here:

More Than One People Like Us 🎶

Maybe that is the point.

We ARE beginning to hear one another again.

So let’s listen better, move forward stronger, and remember we are still more powerful united.

Let’s roll.

Adia in the Attic
Aware through the arts
Soft power within

#AdiaInTheAttic
@AdiaInTheAttic

Apparently, this is thirteen. 😂

Yesterday, I had a horrible headache. Today, I signed on to catch up and realized the headache was more enjoyable.

At least the headache didn’t tell me what message I should carry.

I expected news. I got another polished person at another polished table talking to another famous person about the state of America.

Not reporting from America. Not listening to America. Talking about it. From a studio. With people whose lives are buffered from nearly every consequence they’re discussing.

Then they lean forward, lower their voices, and explain what message the rest of us should carry.

Why?

Because you have information we don’t? Because fame turned into expertise while nobody was looking? Or because you’re used to being heard and you’ve started confusing attention with authority?

A person can be talented, successful, famous, generous, and thoughtful—and still have no special qualification to tell the public what political message it should repeat.

Being invited into a studio doesn’t make someone wiser than the audience. Speaking confidently doesn’t mean you know more than most.

Sometimes it just means nobody at the table is willing to interrupt you.

The lighting is excellent. Everyone has a fresh haircut, a serious expression, and a glass of water nobody drinks. You talk about “working families” like you met one in the elevator. You say ordinary Americans are frustrated, disconnected, and misinformed.

Maybe.

Or maybe ordinary Americans understand the stakes perfectly well and no longer trust the people explaining them.

Maybe the message reached the ground and died there.

Journalists and media personalities aren’t automatically the same thing.

A journalist investigates, verifies, follows evidence, challenges power, corrects mistakes, and brings the public information it may not otherwise have.

A media personality may discuss the news, react to it, package it, perform concern about it, or build a brand around talking about it.

Some people do both jobs well. Some do neither.

A polished studio doesn’t make someone a journalist. A large audience doesn’t make someone accountable. A serious expression doesn’t mean serious reporting is taking place.

Recognizing that difference may be one of the most important lessons we still need to learn.

I want reporters willing to tell the public what’s true even when it costs them access, popularity, ratings, or the next invitation to the table.

What I don’t need is another media personality interviewing another celebrity about the state of America and then handing the rest of us a script:

Smile here.

Repeat this phrase.

Carry this message.

Don’t ask that question.

Don’t sound too angry.

Stay on message.

Whose message?

And why should the public carry it just because someone famous delivered it well?

I don’t need someone with three homes, a security detail, a stylist, a publicist, and a private entrance explaining what ordinary people are feeling.

I especially don’t need that person telling the rest of us what message we should carry.

I’m not interested in carrying a message because a celebrity delivered it beautifully.

I want to know who wrote it. I want to know what facts support it. I want to know who benefits from it. I want to know what was left out. I want to know whether the person saying it has ever had to live with the consequences.

This isn’t a movie premiere. It isn’t a brand campaign. It isn’t a benefit concert where everyone goes home feeling morally refreshed.

This is public life.

The consequences don’t disappear when the segment ends.

Another famous person confirming that the country feels disconnected isn’t listening to America.

That’s wealth interviewing wealth about everyone else.

If you want to know what’s happening here, leave the studio.

Talk to the person putting groceries back. Talk to the parent deciding which bill can wait. Talk to the worker whose paycheck disappears before it arrives. Talk to the caregiver who can’t afford to get sick.

Talk to the retired person watching costs rise while the income stays fixed. Talk to the small-business owner keeping the doors open without pricing out the neighbors they depend on. Talk to the teacher buying supplies with personal money.

Talk to the person deciding whether to pay the phone bill or lose the one line connecting them to work, school, and family.

Talk to the people living the cost of admission, not the people who stopped checking the price years ago.

The cost of admission only went one direction.

Up.

Rent. Groceries. Insurance. Medicine. Electricity. The cost of raising children. The cost of caring for aging parents. The cost of getting sick.

The cost of fixing the car you need to drive to the job that doesn’t pay enough to replace the car.

But the conversation stayed at the same polished table.

The experts kept speaking in percentages. The politicians kept speaking in slogans. The media personalities kept speaking in segments. The celebrities kept speaking in declarations.

Meanwhile, the people being discussed were deciding whether to let the phone lapse.

There’s a difference between speaking about people and speaking with them.

There’s an even bigger difference between speaking with people and living under the same conditions they do.

You can’t keep asking why the public lost trust while treating public distrust like a branding problem.

It isn’t about a better slogan. It isn’t about another urgent fundraising message. It isn’t about another panel called “Listening to America” where nobody at the table has worried about a phone bill in twenty years.

And it definitely isn’t about finding a more famous person to say the same thing louder.

At some point, we have to admit change is needed.

Real change.

WE NEED TO CREATE A NEW NORMAL 🎶

Not a new spokesperson protecting the same machine. Not another familiar face promising to restore confidence in the institutions that lost it. Not another celebrity explaining the mood of a country they experience through private entrances.

Not another person telling the public what message to carry without explaining why they should be trusted to write it.

We’re told to be realistic. Be patient. Understand the process. Accept incremental progress. Lower expectations.

Wait for the next election. Wait for the next court decision. Wait for the investigation. Wait for the report. Wait for the people in charge to discover that the people in charge aren’t doing enough.

How much patience is considered responsible before it becomes surrender?

How long are people expected to adjust to conditions that should never have become normal?

We keep patching the same broken system. We replace a few people. We rename the crisis. We rearrange the seating chart.

Then everyone acts stunned when the public still feels abandoned.

I don’t need another media personality to tell me Americans are angry.

I’m an American.

I have the source material.

Ordinary people are already saying it, and we need to start believing the millions of people saying it without a studio, a producer, or a famous name attached.

People like me aren’t saying this to troll anyone or to become the story.

We’re saying it because the story is us.

The people living with the consequences. The people watching the price of everything rise while the people describing our lives remain protected from it. The people saying, over and over, that the message isn’t working because it no longer resembles the lives we’re actually living.

So when you dismiss those voices as angry, difficult, uninformed, or online noise and then invite another celebrity to explain what Americans need to hear, that isn’t hearing us.

It’s the exact opposite.

You’re replacing us with another performance about us.

I need journalists who still understand that access isn’t the same thing as truth. I need media personalities to stop confusing visibility with public service. I need celebrities to stop confusing influence with understanding.

I need wealthy people to stop describing economic pain as a mood.

Trust isn’t restored by demanding it.

It’s restored by changing the behavior that destroyed it.

You can’t tell people the economy is strong while they’re deciding whether to pay a phone bill. You can’t celebrate access while the cost of admission keeps rising. You can’t praise stability when stability means the same people remain comfortable while everyone else becomes more skilled at surviving discomfort.

You can’t keep pretending to talk with us from a studio table and then blame us when the conversation feels one-sided.

We heard you.

That’s the problem.

We heard the same promises. We watched the same failures. We saw the same people rewarded. We watched accountability become a talking point instead of an action.

We watched journalism become mixed together with entertainment, branding, access, celebrity, ratings, outrage, and personality. Then we were expected to treat everyone holding a microphone as though they were doing the same job.

They aren’t.

The person uncovering information isn’t the same as the person reacting to it. The person challenging power isn’t the same as the person maintaining access to it. The person reporting from the ground isn’t the same as the person interviewing another famous person about what the ground must feel like.

The person with the largest audience isn’t automatically the person who knows the most.

When people stop trusting everyone, real journalists lose credibility alongside the personalities who helped drain it.

We need real journalism.

We need it desperately.

But we also need the confidence to say when something isn’t journalism.

A celebrity conversation may be interesting. It may be entertaining. It may even be thoughtful.

But it isn’t a substitute for reporting. It isn’t a substitute for listening. It isn’t proof of expertise. And it definitely isn’t a reason the rest of us should carry a message without questioning who created it and why.

Fame isn’t evidence.

Visibility isn’t wisdom.

Influence isn’t accountability.

Access to a studio table isn’t access to the truth.

My most important message may be this: I’m absolutely unqualified for any of those positions.

I respect myself enough to admit I’m not nearly as perfect as y’all apparently think. 🤣

I’m not asking for a platform. I’m not looking for fame. I’m not asking to replace the standards I want to exist.

I believe journalists should be journalists. Experts should earn their authority. Public trust should be built on more than confidence, visibility, popularity, or a polished delivery.

That’s exactly why I think we need to listen to more voices carrying new messages—not crown one more person as the voice of everyone.

I may be right about part of this. I may be right about most of it. I may also be wrong in places.

That’s part of the point.

Just because I sound confident doesn’t mean my voice is more valuable than yours.

I’m not saying, “Listen to me instead of them.”

I’m saying listen to many people.

Look at the evidence. Ask questions. Notice who’s living with the consequences. Pay attention to who benefits when you stop questioning the message.

Then trust yourself enough to think.

If you disagree with me, we aren’t enemies.

We disagree.

And if the disagreement matters enough to either of us, maybe we can stay in the conversation long enough to figure out where the disconnect begins.

That’s the message.

Not follow me.

Not repeat me.

Think.

Listen widely.

Trust yourself.

And stop handing your judgment to the person with the best lighting.

With care from the attic—and full respect for your right to tell me I’m wrong too. 🤣

Adia in the Attic
Aware through the arts
Soft power within

#AdiaInTheAttic

Suggested tags:
Media, Journalism, Public Trust, Celebrity Culture, American Life, Economic Reality