Is going to the Atlantic Ave Target for hometown comfort a universal experience? Ten years in and I still feel cozy there.
Also the rebranding of THE West Village to West Village is the weirdest part to me.
Lastly, yes:
“And please stop saying you'd never raise a family here, as if no one ever has. Do you know how many people grew up here? They're often more interesting and exposed to the world than most adults in my hometown.”
Well said! These girls are living in one of the most culturally rich cities in the world and are deeply uninterested in growing in any way that won’t net them TikTok likes and sponsors. It’s depressing. They’re not living for themselves or personal growth, the experience is just something to check off their bucket lists before they move back to the burbs and have kids.
Thank you! I feel so lucky to live here and to be a part of the culture. It upsets me to see so many people turning their noses up at everything New York has to offer and contributing to its homogenization.
Totally. The vibes have been off these past few years with all these IG backdrop type businesses opening up. It’s giving a weird suburban mall vibe in some neighborhoods 😣
So, so - just so - good. And the type of conversation this piece should be spurring vs. the gross oversimplification of 'let the girls be girls.' This summed up just exactly the point:
"The problem is the erasure of culture in favor of sameness. It's not about whether you love an Aperol Spritz or live in a doorman building. It's about whether you understand that this city isn't here to reflect you. You're supposed to grow here and add something to the culture."
also.. since the crux of the “WVgirls” thing is about the lack of authenticity.. it’s do refreshing to read something BURSTING w your individual & authentic presence. I could feel what it must have been like to live in the different spots xo
i'm an oldie & grew up outside NYC. Quirky string of neighborhoods after college in the '80s: West 46th st w a BF, EV, UWS (68th off CPW) w another BF >> WILLIAMSBURG 1985-1989 (89 north 6th st) which was a bit bananas & abandoned ..but kind of fun frontier feeling & the street was still a working meat market in the day..
Moved away & med school & kids & Boston bio scene with NYC weekends 2x/mo in UES ..finally made my way back 2015..then another string: Lafayette house on east 4th (RIP BBar -- we were next door)..lived there off and on. and on & on..until 2022..but with 2 stints on west 12th (GV not WV lols) & super beautiful Carnegie hill apt where I could NOT SETTLE (the vibes the vibes...love love love the tranquility but I always felt like a guest) & so I sold that ..kept west 12th a bit longer..then impulsively moved to LA ~ 2 years ago (in case its of interest..1st a sublet in Glassel Park..now renting a LODGE from the 1920's in Silver Lake.)
My recounting not as evocative -- but had to chime in xoxoxoxox
I lived in NYC from 1995 to 2009 after I graduated Cornell and only went home to Chicago to visit. I took up residence in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, Queens, Washington Heights, Mt. Vernon, etc. I owned a co-op in Queens and I had friends who owned Brownstones in Bed-Stuy and Harlem. I left before social media began to pop, but I was there when the grumblings began about all the renaming of neighborhoods. The City that I’m from was if you didn’t know where I was from then something was wrong with you because everyone knew the landscape whether they lived in a particular neighborhood or not. I’m not a girlie but I raised my family there with my ex-wife (who was from the Bronx and a girl) and I know so many more who still are. I don’t think we believed the erasure was possible because that was one of the few cities whose culture was greater than the people in it, like Chicago, and LA. But NYC was always at the top of the pile. I’m rambling now but I guess your piece took me down memory lane about what we all didn’t think was possible. I visit often for plays but I stay in hotels in midtown or the LES (if it’s still called that) so I’ve seen the changes but I’m not there long enough to feel it. And as a marketer I see the influencers but I ignore them at the same time. A very thoughtful piece. 🙌🏾
Oh wow, you have extensive NYC history across neighborhoods. The renaming of the neighborhoods is very real. People are trying to make "SoBro" happen for the South Bronx. It's wild to see the erasure occur because I also didn't think it could happen to this extent so quickly. That's what some of my friends are saying too. They're hearing my stories and reading articles, but when they visit, they're not there long enough to fully grasp it. Thank you for reading!
Shelbi thanks for this. Your experience of New York eerily paralleled my own in many ways and my own irritation with the kinds of Manhattanites I have encountered over the last decade. This next iteration is simply more grist for that mill. My own irritation comes more from the white trash V. $WASP spectrum, but it has a lot of parallels: my black roommate in college used to tell me we could have grown up in the same trailer park and my Caribbean classmates used to tell me I was born in the wrong culture. I don't know if that's true or not, it's their judgment not mine, but I can say that I identified with much of what you said and have other grievances related to wealth and privilege here. It is, persistently, monochromatic and blind. And I don't mean necessarily skin color: what stuck out to me first on that photo on the original article was that all five of those girls had white washed tops and acid washed bottoms. It's a monochromatic humanity as sickly as monocultured forests: the lack of biodiversity sets the stage for a fire.
I too came in 2014.
Blockheads is gone, yes, as well as Republic, Eisenberg's deli, and many of the other restaurants that built these very neighborhoods. And yet, Tacos El Bronco is still around and thriving, as is Kai Feng Fu dumplings, Wakkys (apologies in advance: I think that's the one I had first at my buddy's in BStuy in 2015, but I'm probably wrong, I'm trying to remember while looking at the map...), Tanooreen and Karam, any number of the BBQ joints between here and Queens, Sunset Park diner and donuts, and that one empanada shop that sells out of the basement window in the Bronx. You know the one, right?
Point is, I've said since 2014 that in New York, you can get artisanal culinary experiences or food. Typically you have to go get food after getting an artisanal culinary experience anyways. I prefer skipping the ceremony and getting right to the food at mealtime.
I think that can be compared to almost every sector of life here and it cuts clean through monoculture.
You can have artisanal instagrammable politics or you can knock on your neighbor's door. You can meet people on Partiful or you can meet them at your block party downstairs. You can accept our hand-written invitation to third Saturday salons or you can ignore us and all of the other real humans sharing the sidewalk with you until you get poached for your next job three years later and continue coasting through life lonely and addicted to Netflix. You can talk about what's seen online or in ads and therefore ephemeral and temporary or you can meet what's unseen and have an engagement with what's eternal.
It takes actually seeing people, who look nothing like you and like nothing you like, striking up a conversation, and learning.
And this distinction shows up as a kind of perpetual whininess in the manhattanite who refuses to travel more than three or four subway stops when compared to residents from the three main outer boroughs: there is a travel resiliency that automatically makes folk from Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens more likely to have seen NYC's castles, NYC's nature reserves, our obscure waterfronts, our forty-some islands, the various ferries and pirate ships, the free kayaking, the block parties you mentioned, the pickup ultimate frisbee, the (hello?) door-to-door canvassing for local politicians (vote Zohran and Alexa, folks, fill out the whole ballot, and don't rank Eric or Andrew), or just plain old conversations over a donut with the working poor. It also, through the commuter rail, makes them more familiar with the entire Hudson valley, Long Island, and (gasp) Morristown New Jersey and Philly.
By the working poor, I of course mean people experiencing homelessness who work full time. One of the families of five who lived next to us at our old place is still on the street after a fire. Still 60+ hours a week. I hold that in contrast to influencer culture: what these folks need is an advocate who will stop, talk, and isn't afraid of getting involved.
But there's a bigger problem, related to ads and art.
For the problem of investing in local, living artists and culture verses bidding on dead art _is_ the problem of getting paid in ads. It _is_ the problem of being an influencer. That was the whole point of Warhol's soup cans, though — like everything in the 80's and Gen X — it cynically embraced it, eyes wide open, which is far more depraved. Here's how monoculturing and global ad culture is directly connected:
The point isn't that you can't make money writing poetry or art in America. The point is that most of our best paid poets and artists are paid by Starbucks, Folgers, Chanel, McDonald's, Google, Apple, Disney, and Tiffany's:
"I should say the first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement. I do not necessarily mean that there will be no good art; much of it might be, much of it already is, very good art. You may put it, if you please, in the form that there has been a vast improvement in advertisements. The improvement of advertisements is the degradation of artists. It is their degradation for this clear and vital reason: that the artist will work, not only to please the rich, but only to increase their riches; which is a considerable step lower. After all, it was as a human being that a pope took pleasure in a cartoon of Raphael or a prince took pleasure in a statuette of Cellini. The prince paid for the statuette; but he did not expect the statuette to pay him. It is my impression that no cake of soap can be found anywhere in the cartoons which the Pope ordered of Raphael. And no one who knows the small-minded cynicism of our plutocracy, its secrecy, its gambling spirit, its contempt of conscience, can doubt that the artist-advertiser will often be assisting enterprises over which he will have no moral control, and of which he could feel no moral approval. He will be working to spread quack medicines, queer investments; and will work for Marconi instead of Medici. And to this base ingenuity he will have to bend the proudest and purest of the virtues of the intellect, the power to attract his brethren, and the noble duty of praise."
— Chesterton, Utopia of Usurers
Poets and designers make plenty. The question is whether they're happy. Ours are not. They occupy desks and houses and lives that all look the same. Was this not the entire point of Mad Men? They are not happy because the ends of this kind of style is a proximate good, not an ultimate good. Change the ends of the style from a proximate to an ultimate good — and make sure they're rewarded handsomely — and the problem with "slick marketing" disappears overnight. It's the difference between inventing a fashion choice unique to one's self and signaling with fashion.
Kendrick, for instance, is having a great time.
"The artist-advertiser will often be assisting enterprises over which he will have no moral control and of which he could feel no moral approval."
THAT is the ballgame: there is no moral control or moral approval in the influencer life. There's only money and the things that money can buy, an endless circle of avarice and envy that, like ouroboros, eats itself. It's why it has no self, no culture, no biodiversity in the types of art and expression and language and personality that come from these neighborhoods. It's sanitized of all of that by the disinfectant of, "Sponsored by..."
Nine times out of ten, it also has startup capital and startup networking from wealthy parents compared to the family who's still on the street from the fire.
As for the west village, I think there's a fascinating correlation with this administration's defacing of the historical sign at Stonewall Inn's park. That's the canary in that coal mine. But the seeds were there long before in Chelsea Market, the buying up of Hudson Yards and the whole waterfront, and in the High Line. In neighborhoods like this, I keep thinking "We are not Tokyo... We are not Tokyo..." hoping to will it into reality. I might as well say, "We are not Cape Cod..." for all the good it'll do. I'm currently failing on that front on basically every waterfront, including Sunset Park's, even though we won the rezoning fight.
I have no point, only a kind of vague grief. I'm merely processing this in-betweenness, but I know that I've never had much patience for mainstream monoculture nor exclusive cliques. They will always and forever seem to me so painfully unaware of the actual vibrancy of the very world they occupy. They miss the whole for a part. And the smallest part: the part they play in a rather small theater for a rather small audience when the world itself is waiting.
I prefer the whole and persons — real persons who actually try to find authentic selfs and surgically remove toxic shame wherever they find it in themselves. But right now, there are several neighborhoods like the West Village where I struggle to see an authentic true name and personality coming out of the majority of souls I meet there. Instead, I see masks upon masks upon masks and I wonder how many dragon scales we'd have to carve into in order to get to the real Eustace.
Unless, of course, we're talking about the folks experiencing homelessness who play chess just a few blocks away from the West Village at Washington Square. In that case, Reggie and Angie are completely, utterly themselves and growing more like the authentic versions of themselves as each day passes.
This was so good. I was born and grew up in Brooklyn, and went to school right near the west village. It’s hard to put into words how fast everything changed. Thank you for writing this!
Thank you for reading! It means a lot that my transplant experience resonates with people born and raised in New York. Everything is changing rapidly, and while it is a constantly evolving city, this new direction is tricky.
Love it🙌🏾 Girls put the erasers down and celebrate the culture that is NYC❤️
Yes! This place is magic. I feel so lucky to live here every day.
Blockheads. Never forget.🥲
Only the real ones remember.
True!! I miss it so much.
100000%
Brilliant. No notes. 😎
Thank you for reading!!
Read this, slept on it, read it again this morning
oooop what are your thoughts?
I loved it! The community you've built in NYC is so impressive! I was happy to be a little part of it before I got ripped away 😂
Love that you are getting the recognition and audience you deserve for your writing!!!!!
thank you for being here from the start and always cheering me on! I miss you in NYC.
Spottttt on
thank you!!
Lived in the West Village in 1996, spent 17 years in Brooklyn and raising a family in Jackson Heights, Queens now
I'm sure you've witnessed many changes. You're living proof that raising kids here is still very much a reality. I love it!
🎯🎯🎯
Is going to the Atlantic Ave Target for hometown comfort a universal experience? Ten years in and I still feel cozy there.
Also the rebranding of THE West Village to West Village is the weirdest part to me.
Lastly, yes:
“And please stop saying you'd never raise a family here, as if no one ever has. Do you know how many people grew up here? They're often more interesting and exposed to the world than most adults in my hometown.”
OMG yes. A universal experience! It hits when I need a suburban moment. It's as big as the Target at home, and you're right, it feels cozy.
I 100% can't stand the rebrand to "West Village"; it's just wrong.
no no no no...I must have missed that part. like people say "I live in WEST village?"
I can't
Well said! These girls are living in one of the most culturally rich cities in the world and are deeply uninterested in growing in any way that won’t net them TikTok likes and sponsors. It’s depressing. They’re not living for themselves or personal growth, the experience is just something to check off their bucket lists before they move back to the burbs and have kids.
Thank you! I feel so lucky to live here and to be a part of the culture. It upsets me to see so many people turning their noses up at everything New York has to offer and contributing to its homogenization.
Totally. The vibes have been off these past few years with all these IG backdrop type businesses opening up. It’s giving a weird suburban mall vibe in some neighborhoods 😣
So, so - just so - good. And the type of conversation this piece should be spurring vs. the gross oversimplification of 'let the girls be girls.' This summed up just exactly the point:
"The problem is the erasure of culture in favor of sameness. It's not about whether you love an Aperol Spritz or live in a doorman building. It's about whether you understand that this city isn't here to reflect you. You're supposed to grow here and add something to the culture."
Brava
The exact same words I came here to say. This is SO SO good. ❌⭕️
Thank you!! :)
also.. since the crux of the “WVgirls” thing is about the lack of authenticity.. it’s do refreshing to read something BURSTING w your individual & authentic presence. I could feel what it must have been like to live in the different spots xo
Thank you! That's such a high compliment 🥹
i'm an oldie & grew up outside NYC. Quirky string of neighborhoods after college in the '80s: West 46th st w a BF, EV, UWS (68th off CPW) w another BF >> WILLIAMSBURG 1985-1989 (89 north 6th st) which was a bit bananas & abandoned ..but kind of fun frontier feeling & the street was still a working meat market in the day..
Moved away & med school & kids & Boston bio scene with NYC weekends 2x/mo in UES ..finally made my way back 2015..then another string: Lafayette house on east 4th (RIP BBar -- we were next door)..lived there off and on. and on & on..until 2022..but with 2 stints on west 12th (GV not WV lols) & super beautiful Carnegie hill apt where I could NOT SETTLE (the vibes the vibes...love love love the tranquility but I always felt like a guest) & so I sold that ..kept west 12th a bit longer..then impulsively moved to LA ~ 2 years ago (in case its of interest..1st a sublet in Glassel Park..now renting a LODGE from the 1920's in Silver Lake.)
My recounting not as evocative -- but had to chime in xoxoxoxox
You get me, as always! I'm glad it resonated.
I lived in NYC from 1995 to 2009 after I graduated Cornell and only went home to Chicago to visit. I took up residence in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, Queens, Washington Heights, Mt. Vernon, etc. I owned a co-op in Queens and I had friends who owned Brownstones in Bed-Stuy and Harlem. I left before social media began to pop, but I was there when the grumblings began about all the renaming of neighborhoods. The City that I’m from was if you didn’t know where I was from then something was wrong with you because everyone knew the landscape whether they lived in a particular neighborhood or not. I’m not a girlie but I raised my family there with my ex-wife (who was from the Bronx and a girl) and I know so many more who still are. I don’t think we believed the erasure was possible because that was one of the few cities whose culture was greater than the people in it, like Chicago, and LA. But NYC was always at the top of the pile. I’m rambling now but I guess your piece took me down memory lane about what we all didn’t think was possible. I visit often for plays but I stay in hotels in midtown or the LES (if it’s still called that) so I’ve seen the changes but I’m not there long enough to feel it. And as a marketer I see the influencers but I ignore them at the same time. A very thoughtful piece. 🙌🏾
Oh wow, you have extensive NYC history across neighborhoods. The renaming of the neighborhoods is very real. People are trying to make "SoBro" happen for the South Bronx. It's wild to see the erasure occur because I also didn't think it could happen to this extent so quickly. That's what some of my friends are saying too. They're hearing my stories and reading articles, but when they visit, they're not there long enough to fully grasp it. Thank you for reading!
no So bro
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJU7lBdJ7wb/?igsh=MXB3azA5eWFvc3loag==
Really wonderful piece - you did an amazing job.
Thank you!! :)
Shelbi thanks for this. Your experience of New York eerily paralleled my own in many ways and my own irritation with the kinds of Manhattanites I have encountered over the last decade. This next iteration is simply more grist for that mill. My own irritation comes more from the white trash V. $WASP spectrum, but it has a lot of parallels: my black roommate in college used to tell me we could have grown up in the same trailer park and my Caribbean classmates used to tell me I was born in the wrong culture. I don't know if that's true or not, it's their judgment not mine, but I can say that I identified with much of what you said and have other grievances related to wealth and privilege here. It is, persistently, monochromatic and blind. And I don't mean necessarily skin color: what stuck out to me first on that photo on the original article was that all five of those girls had white washed tops and acid washed bottoms. It's a monochromatic humanity as sickly as monocultured forests: the lack of biodiversity sets the stage for a fire.
I too came in 2014.
Blockheads is gone, yes, as well as Republic, Eisenberg's deli, and many of the other restaurants that built these very neighborhoods. And yet, Tacos El Bronco is still around and thriving, as is Kai Feng Fu dumplings, Wakkys (apologies in advance: I think that's the one I had first at my buddy's in BStuy in 2015, but I'm probably wrong, I'm trying to remember while looking at the map...), Tanooreen and Karam, any number of the BBQ joints between here and Queens, Sunset Park diner and donuts, and that one empanada shop that sells out of the basement window in the Bronx. You know the one, right?
Point is, I've said since 2014 that in New York, you can get artisanal culinary experiences or food. Typically you have to go get food after getting an artisanal culinary experience anyways. I prefer skipping the ceremony and getting right to the food at mealtime.
I think that can be compared to almost every sector of life here and it cuts clean through monoculture.
You can have artisanal instagrammable politics or you can knock on your neighbor's door. You can meet people on Partiful or you can meet them at your block party downstairs. You can accept our hand-written invitation to third Saturday salons or you can ignore us and all of the other real humans sharing the sidewalk with you until you get poached for your next job three years later and continue coasting through life lonely and addicted to Netflix. You can talk about what's seen online or in ads and therefore ephemeral and temporary or you can meet what's unseen and have an engagement with what's eternal.
It takes actually seeing people, who look nothing like you and like nothing you like, striking up a conversation, and learning.
And this distinction shows up as a kind of perpetual whininess in the manhattanite who refuses to travel more than three or four subway stops when compared to residents from the three main outer boroughs: there is a travel resiliency that automatically makes folk from Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens more likely to have seen NYC's castles, NYC's nature reserves, our obscure waterfronts, our forty-some islands, the various ferries and pirate ships, the free kayaking, the block parties you mentioned, the pickup ultimate frisbee, the (hello?) door-to-door canvassing for local politicians (vote Zohran and Alexa, folks, fill out the whole ballot, and don't rank Eric or Andrew), or just plain old conversations over a donut with the working poor. It also, through the commuter rail, makes them more familiar with the entire Hudson valley, Long Island, and (gasp) Morristown New Jersey and Philly.
By the working poor, I of course mean people experiencing homelessness who work full time. One of the families of five who lived next to us at our old place is still on the street after a fire. Still 60+ hours a week. I hold that in contrast to influencer culture: what these folks need is an advocate who will stop, talk, and isn't afraid of getting involved.
But there's a bigger problem, related to ads and art.
For the problem of investing in local, living artists and culture verses bidding on dead art _is_ the problem of getting paid in ads. It _is_ the problem of being an influencer. That was the whole point of Warhol's soup cans, though — like everything in the 80's and Gen X — it cynically embraced it, eyes wide open, which is far more depraved. Here's how monoculturing and global ad culture is directly connected:
The point isn't that you can't make money writing poetry or art in America. The point is that most of our best paid poets and artists are paid by Starbucks, Folgers, Chanel, McDonald's, Google, Apple, Disney, and Tiffany's:
"I should say the first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement. I do not necessarily mean that there will be no good art; much of it might be, much of it already is, very good art. You may put it, if you please, in the form that there has been a vast improvement in advertisements. The improvement of advertisements is the degradation of artists. It is their degradation for this clear and vital reason: that the artist will work, not only to please the rich, but only to increase their riches; which is a considerable step lower. After all, it was as a human being that a pope took pleasure in a cartoon of Raphael or a prince took pleasure in a statuette of Cellini. The prince paid for the statuette; but he did not expect the statuette to pay him. It is my impression that no cake of soap can be found anywhere in the cartoons which the Pope ordered of Raphael. And no one who knows the small-minded cynicism of our plutocracy, its secrecy, its gambling spirit, its contempt of conscience, can doubt that the artist-advertiser will often be assisting enterprises over which he will have no moral control, and of which he could feel no moral approval. He will be working to spread quack medicines, queer investments; and will work for Marconi instead of Medici. And to this base ingenuity he will have to bend the proudest and purest of the virtues of the intellect, the power to attract his brethren, and the noble duty of praise."
— Chesterton, Utopia of Usurers
Poets and designers make plenty. The question is whether they're happy. Ours are not. They occupy desks and houses and lives that all look the same. Was this not the entire point of Mad Men? They are not happy because the ends of this kind of style is a proximate good, not an ultimate good. Change the ends of the style from a proximate to an ultimate good — and make sure they're rewarded handsomely — and the problem with "slick marketing" disappears overnight. It's the difference between inventing a fashion choice unique to one's self and signaling with fashion.
Kendrick, for instance, is having a great time.
"The artist-advertiser will often be assisting enterprises over which he will have no moral control and of which he could feel no moral approval."
THAT is the ballgame: there is no moral control or moral approval in the influencer life. There's only money and the things that money can buy, an endless circle of avarice and envy that, like ouroboros, eats itself. It's why it has no self, no culture, no biodiversity in the types of art and expression and language and personality that come from these neighborhoods. It's sanitized of all of that by the disinfectant of, "Sponsored by..."
Nine times out of ten, it also has startup capital and startup networking from wealthy parents compared to the family who's still on the street from the fire.
As for the west village, I think there's a fascinating correlation with this administration's defacing of the historical sign at Stonewall Inn's park. That's the canary in that coal mine. But the seeds were there long before in Chelsea Market, the buying up of Hudson Yards and the whole waterfront, and in the High Line. In neighborhoods like this, I keep thinking "We are not Tokyo... We are not Tokyo..." hoping to will it into reality. I might as well say, "We are not Cape Cod..." for all the good it'll do. I'm currently failing on that front on basically every waterfront, including Sunset Park's, even though we won the rezoning fight.
I have no point, only a kind of vague grief. I'm merely processing this in-betweenness, but I know that I've never had much patience for mainstream monoculture nor exclusive cliques. They will always and forever seem to me so painfully unaware of the actual vibrancy of the very world they occupy. They miss the whole for a part. And the smallest part: the part they play in a rather small theater for a rather small audience when the world itself is waiting.
I prefer the whole and persons — real persons who actually try to find authentic selfs and surgically remove toxic shame wherever they find it in themselves. But right now, there are several neighborhoods like the West Village where I struggle to see an authentic true name and personality coming out of the majority of souls I meet there. Instead, I see masks upon masks upon masks and I wonder how many dragon scales we'd have to carve into in order to get to the real Eustace.
Unless, of course, we're talking about the folks experiencing homelessness who play chess just a few blocks away from the West Village at Washington Square. In that case, Reggie and Angie are completely, utterly themselves and growing more like the authentic versions of themselves as each day passes.
Blissed are the poor and so forth...
This was so good. I was born and grew up in Brooklyn, and went to school right near the west village. It’s hard to put into words how fast everything changed. Thank you for writing this!
Thank you for reading! It means a lot that my transplant experience resonates with people born and raised in New York. Everything is changing rapidly, and while it is a constantly evolving city, this new direction is tricky.
appreciate this so, so much.
Thank you for reading and sharing my thoughts. I appreciate you!
Perfectly said!!!
Thank you for reading! :)