I like to make up new phrases. Here are my favorites.

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"Salvage the day."

I came up with this as an improvement to "Seize the day". I found "Seize the day" to be too perfectionist and stressful. Salvaging the day is all about taking the shit show that this day has been so far, accepting the mistakes you've made up until this point, and then choosing to finally do something different. You can always salvage the day because you can stop whatever are doing right now, and redeem the waking hours of the day that you have left.

• What if you woke up at 1pm, hungover and dehydrated after getting less than 5 hours sleep? Salvage the day.
• What if you watched Netflix for two hours this morning when you should have been working? Salvage the day.
• What if you just ate dinner and want to watch TV but you literally have done nothing today? Salvage the day.

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"The Present is Female."

I came up with this as an improvement to the quote "The Future is Female" that everyone has on t-shirts and bags. Women have always existed. Women also exist today. Why should we wait for the future be female, when there are kick ass women doing tons of cool stuff right now? The only way to have a future that is more female is to recognize that women are doing cool stuff today that we deserve to get noticed for.

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"Musical Cities"

Inspired by the children's game musical chairs, people who play musical cities are city hoppers. They move to a new city every couple of years depending on the weather, how they feel, job opportunities, after a bad breakup and to just plain start over. It was spawned by, but not limited to, the restlessness of the millennial global elites in the technology industry, who have too much money and not enough patience to settle down in one place and take the good of that place with the bad.

• New York has the arts and culture, but it has terrible weather and you want to learn Spanish?  Move to Mexico City.

• You live in Austin, but you want more liberals, more chill, better weed and more skiing? Move to Denver.
• You're bored of London, bored of life, and you want to live in Asia before you find a real partner? Hong Kong will kick start your happiness, surely.

People who play musical cities are city hopping for now. But will they ever settle down somewhere? Which city will they be in when the music stops? Or will the music just keep going? I guess we'll have to get to our late 40s to find out.

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"Ergonomically Reckless"

To be ergonomically reckless is a state of mind or a state of being for young people, especially those who make repetitive movements that are ergonomically terrible for them and who then suffer the consequences at a later age. For example, while I was trying to query literary agents for my first novel, I sat in a terrible posture at a desk that was far too high, and I clicked in a way that strained my hands and wrists over and over. This series of terrible postures and typing positions I embodied caused me to develop Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in my mid-20s. My wrists and hands seized up for months, and it was very painful. Young people are especially inclined to be ergonomically reckless because they don't experience any joint pain and can go for hours doing whatever without a peep. But once you hit your late twenties and early thirties, the house still has not fallen apart. Still, maybe a door is loose on its hinges, or a light bulb has gone out, then you start to become aware of your ergonomically reckless decisions and stop doing those movements anymore.

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"A Professional Hot Person"

We all know who they are. The professional hot people. I happen to know a couple of them, and they're very nice. But whatever they are trying to sell you, whether it's a book, a blog, or a bunch of spiritually healing yoga classes, their offerings are made all the more enticing because they are hot. Their Instagram or TikTok posts simply display their attractiveness in a kind of aspirational advertisement. Maybe if you buy their shit or take their workshop, you can be more like them or closer to them in some hopeful way. The professional hot person's primary job is to be professionally hot, and then whatever they want to package themselves as in addition to that, whether they're a writer, a yoga teacher, or a business guru, their goods and services sell like hot cakes. This is especially true for women. Because no matter how much we think we've left the patriarchy behind, in our shallow culture, the allure of an attractive woman bypasses something in us all.

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And remember: "For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." - Virginia Woolf