If Lady Whistledown Had Wi-Fi

Sometimes I wish I were Penelope Featherington.
Correction. Sometimes I wish I were Penelope Featherington, aka Lady Whistledown, aka Penelope Bridgerton-and if you haven’t caught up with Season 3 yet, I wish you mild inconvenience. Nothing severe. Just enough for character development.

The reason is simple: I am an overthinker.

Fatigue and I are not acquainted. I suspect it tried to visit me once, but its UFO got the coordinates wrong midway and landed in someone else’s brain; probably someone who “falls asleep instantly” and “doesn’t worry too much.” I do not trust these people.

My thoughts, on the other hand, are tireless athletes. They run marathons at 2:17 AM. They rehearse conversations that will never happen. They remember embarrassing things I said in 2014 and then add background music for dramatic effect.

The saddest part isn’t the thinking. It’s the postponing.

Because writing it down, on paper, in notes, on the back of a receipt, on the emotional equivalent of a foggy window-is always something I will gladly move to tomorrow’s to-do list. Tomorrow is an overbooked liar. Tomorrow never shows up prepared.

And this is strange, because I love words.

I love writing them, speaking them, stretching them until they confess things I didn’t know I felt. I write poems. I perform them. I write lyrics to songs that were perfectly fine without my intervention. I have entire concerts in my room where the audience is a pillow and my dignity watches silently from the corner.

And I digress.

Or maybe I don’t digress. Maybe I travel. Rapidly. Explosively. From one thought to another. Five conversations while telling you one thing. It’s not chaos. It’s… creative multitasking of the soul.

This, I suspect, is what adult life with few to no friends sometimes looks like. You become a crowded room all by yourself. There is so much to say, but no obvious place to place it. Your thoughts sit cross-legged inside you, waiting to be acknowledged like polite guests who arrived too early.

Which is why I understand Penelope. Not just the secrets or the scandal-but the relief of having somewhere to go. Somewhere to exist, unfettered and determined. Somewhere to say, I was here. I noticed things. I felt things.

So this is me, being a little like her.

Not to expose anyone. Not to ruin reputations. But to share my shenanigans. My overthinking. My strange, beautiful, restless mind. To make someone feel less alone. Or at the very least, make them chuckle quietly while pretending to work.

If you’re reading this, welcome to my corner of the digital paper.

I promise, I’ll try not to overthink it.

Too much. 😁