2026: The Year of the Vegetarian

(a real photo taken of my poorly taken care of yard circa 2025)

 My back door opened to a poorly placed pool and an overgrown mess of grass. The grass continued further, down a giant hill my parents insisted on having. The end of our lot kissed the edge of farmland owned by one of the largest farms in our town; the barbed wire grazed the newly built fence. 

And I was eight, standing only halfway up the hill, spotting two cows with their heads resting on the top of our fence. I watched them.  

I would stumble down the hill in my mismatched pajamas, stopping at the imaginary bubble engulfing the cow duo. I believed the cows were the same two cows I would always see at six in the morning. I would sit on the oddly-placed bridge and stare at them. I would stare and imagine that these two cows loved resting their heads on my fence and made it a point to do it everyday and stare back at the weird looking preteen.

And Toy Story was horrifyingly monumental for my personal philosophy. The idea that my stuffed animals, the ones that formed a mountain atop my pink bed, were sentient and would awake at various hours.I was mortified at the idea of having a favorite stuffed animal; the thought of invoking tension between each due to my favoritism stirred in my mind. By age ten, I had to have a separate conversation with each of my stuffed animals while tucking them in. If one fell off the bed due to my stirring (or the very real stuffed animals moving while my eyes were closed), I had to move them back to the centermost part of the bed and make every other animal move to the perimeter of the bed. All of my stuffed animals were bears and cows. And one salacious crumb. 

I sat down with my mom at The Cheesecake Factory, going through the prepared monologue inciting my new diet. Eleven years old and vowing to never eat a cow, or chicken, or pig, or fish. My mom stared at me. And then picked up a piece of bread. And chewed. And swallowed. And said:

I don't care what you do.

Maybe not as proactive as I wished for, but it was a victory. I ordered a plain house salad.

I am coming up on eight years of being vegetarian. I wish I could say I am the world's best vegetarian. But I love gelatinous candy. And marshmallows. And I don't double check if soup has plant-based broth. And I eat figs. And I order fast food fries that are cross contaminated. 

But I hope to get better. I fear being on a campus where I forget animals exist in any other context besides Chick-fil-a and Canes is part of the issue. 

During winter break, my dog burrowed a hole under the fence and ran into the giant field. I had to contort my body to fit through the barbed wire my brother held open. And then I saw a cow. And I got so insanely scared that I almost gave up finding the dog. But then the cow looked at me. And at this point in my two-hour, dog-finding extravaganza I genuinely believed the cow was going to start talking to me. Obviously, that didn't happen. But staring at that cow on the farm I was not supposed to be on made me remember why I became vegetarian in the first place. 

So mark my words, 2026 will be the year of the vegetarian...

moo!

-A.K. (zoologist)

an ode to my bad writing

    I often times feel like a middle schooler clutching a god awful breakup poem in a room full of the colligate equivalent of Shakespeare. 

    The first official thing I ever wrote of my own accord was sophomore year. 

    Before then, I would have a moment of complete creative capability for about two mediocre song lyrics, look at the aftermath of my glittery pen to page- then angrily close my notebook. 

    Sophomore year, I decided to submit my own play to the Walter Trumbauer Festival. I would spend my entire life saving ($463) to recover that 14-page, comic-sans-covered masterpiece. 

    I did not know how to write a play. All I did know, however, is that I was extremely competitive. And was pretentious. In a sick attempt to create a modern-day Hamlet, I definitely ripped off Don't Worry Darling and poorly constructed this grandiose one act play. I think, at least. I honestly do not remember a single line out of that play. I remember the basic idea of it: girl trapped, piano, she plays notes, memories appear, illusion starts breaking, she escapes? (It's fully a poor man's Don't Worry Darling.)

   As pathetic as this sounds,  I was so confused on how to write that I spent $73 on Amazon "How to" books for writing.

    I brought four different colored highlighters and two different sticky notes to the high school's library. 

    Innovation center. I used to talk to the librarians every day (Oh my god) and would constantly get corrected when I addressed the space as the library. The innovation center held two different Nintendo Switches, board games, Lego sets, and a (not) well hidden PlayStation. And a very dusty set of books. 

    I wrote all of my play on my school-issued Google Doc account. Unbeknownst to me, your school-issued account gets completely deleted the night of graduation. And sadly for all of us right now, while I was mentally prepping to hobble across the stage in five inch, ugly black stilettos, I did not remember my 14-page play that hadn't been opened since I was a bus rider.    

    I took a creative writing class my freshman year. I remember walking into that class absolutely horrified- only thinking about the district Trumbauer judges saying scene 6 didn't make any sense. Also how I didn't win. And I became even more horrified when someone asked if they could use a typewriter for their assignments. I didn't have a typewriter. I only had Word. And a highlighter at the bottom of my backpack.

   And some days I look back at my random submissions for that class and cringe at the contents. And some days I look back at this blog and secretly delete things and pray that no one read it. But I think I can appreciate my bad writing. I am okay with my basic sentences and my boring, redundant structure. And I have come to terms that anyone can open this blog and think I should switch my major to something far, far away from English.  I can deal with the fact that my writing may not be compared to that of a Shakespearean successor. I am just glad I am writing. 

    I do not love stealing Don't Worry Darling's plot. But I do love my bad writing. 

-A.K. (a letterboxd user that logged Don't Worry Darling at a 2.5)

the carrie bradshaw of it all

And I begin to think, will Big ever read this dammed post?

Carrie Bradshaw. Arguably the main character in Sex and The City: witty, smart, sexy, and undeniably her.  Running through the streets of 90s Manhattan in Manolo Blahniks led to her footprints inevitably being discovered by 2025's young adults. Discovered, and ultimately cut and copied endlessly. As of August 2025, I never want to see another "pinnable" photo of Carrie Bradshaw wearing vintage Dior followed by a 20-something-year-old replicating the outfit with Princess Polly. I am in Hell.

What drew our generation to Sex and the City? Was it simply the fact that it had more than eight episodes in a season? Was it the egregious amount of spliced audios from the show that reigned TikTok's for-you page? I'm starting to believe it's the generation's early signs of psychosis. 

The most horrific thing I can recall from walking my intermediate school's halls is related to this, surprisingly. In the mandatory fifth grade past-present-future project, the amount of future dreams being famous or youtuber was absurd even for my ten-year-old, LDShadowlady-obsessed mind. Was the future bright? Was everyone from this small town in Alabama going to become mega-rich youtubers with a giant camera in people's faces? 

Ten-year-old me was a prophet. And twenty(ish)-year-old-me is now a counselor:

You are not Carrie Bradshaw, You are just addicted to your phone. 

The internet-wide infatuation with Carrie Bradshaw and her lifestyle can ultimately be boiled down to this: people crave authenticity. Col authenticity. They don't simply just want to be cool, they want to be noticed as cool. But what prompts me to roll my eyes at the "authentic-fishing" posts is the mere fact that everyone is so boring. Everyone has morphed Carrie's style- fashion and writing-into a formulaic tool to attempt virality. When watching certain videos, it ultimately feels as if the video I am watching is somehow ballooning into this giant bubble of nothingness because of this very calculated attempt at being "real". I often find myself staring into the lifeless eyes of these creators and wonder if they also understand how ultimately depressing this reality is. 

The irony of me writing a blog post about this is not lost on me, btw. This is not me banishing the mere idea of dressing eccentrically and writing prophetically from all of you. Moreso, this is an attempt to understand why Carrie Bradshaw. 

-A.K.

Edit: If you can't tell this was a scrapped newspaper piece.

A.C.

 Cancerous cells cultivate into the mitosis of the person they have infected. The splitting and creating new cells manifests into the overall change in a person post-cancer. This reigns true when looking at my father.  Our relationship can be split into two periods: B.C. (before cancer) and A.C. (after cancer). Before, he was the standard northern dad: blunt, tough, borderline cruel. We argued from sun up 'till sun down, occasionally halting during major holidays. After the diagnosis, however, he managed to find a little glimmer of light in his heart and be somewhat normal in our interactions. Maybe this is fully due to the whole "near death experience making you deem life worth living" or possibly just my teenage hormones mellowing out and me finally acting like a standard human as opposed to a sadistic, hellish monster. Even so, looking back on our relationship during his chemotherapy felt very on the nose. Who would've guessed when a loved one gets sick you become more inclined to change your perception of them. 

In my creative writing class, I forgot to do an assignment until ten minutes before class. I sat on the creaky bench in the English building's third floor hallway and pulled upon my notes app on my cell phone. I stared at the blinking cursor a bit too long, making me feel fundamentally stupid. I opened TikTok (sue me) and started to look for inspiration, I presume. At the same time, I got a notification from Life360 stating my dad had left on his voyage to the hospital thirty minutes away for a round of chemotherapy. I decided to throw together something about hindsight. Here's a bit of it:

 Hindsight is a sorrowful act put on by the grieving. I didn’t understand my Dad and never will. Looking back, I knew just as much information about my Dad that one knows of a baseball player from their trading card. Hometown, age, fun fact. I’d like to think hindsight makes these memories with my Dad more valuable than they realistically were; the mundanity mixed with grief turns out to be the key to profoundness.

Presently, I am trying to not make our relationship mushy gushy nonsense because of the diagnosis. Seems somewhat selfish, but a nuanced relationship is filled with far more love than a picture-perfect idea of a relationship, I think. So that, in turn, should make this a noble act than selfish. So. 

-A.K.

nasty nineteen. noble nineteen. nefarious nineteen.

 18 was hell. I think my life works out went I am a prime number. 13. 17. hopefully 19.  I know it is talked about all the time- maybe even too much- but growing up is odd. Scary. Weird. 

I never formally thought about 19, however. I always imagined turning 18 and then flashing to like 29. Without unlocking something new like being able to drive or drink, there are literally only cons when getting older. Which, whatever we can sit here and talk about how hating aging is misogynistic and deeply rooted in society and how aging is beautiful. But the truth of the matter is that I am a very scared eighteen year old who thought her whole world was going to collapse (burn more likely I was a really big global warming worrier at 12) when I faced responsibility. Sadly (or happily idk yet), that did not happen. World kept spinning. I am here. 

I can't think of any famous nineteen-year-olds. Okay. Just searched famous birthdays. Alabama Barker. Will I manifest into an Alabama Barker prototype when the clock strikes 12 on February 26th? Maybe. Maybe not.  

It feels somewhat pointless to write about how I'm scared of the unknown and growing up. I guess it's pointless to write anything anymore. I feel most things I have experienced have happened in some regard to someone else at some point in time. I could google right now "19 year old scared of future" and I am sure I will find someone else like me. Maybe I can find comfort in the idea that everyone is in the same boat. Majority of the time it just makes me daydream about what would happen if I went back in time with the knowledge I know now and become a Nobel laurate. 

Nineteen-year-old Nobel laurate. Has a nice ring to it. 

-A.K.

Rom Coms have ruined my (love) life

Maybe a bit dramatic. Hopefully a bit dramatic...

I do believe it do be true, however. If I could go back in time and make myself watch The Terrifier over some romantic comedy, I would, and I would do it a hundred times again. 

I was a casual rom com viewer- maybe a handful a month. However, I truly believe it warped and fried something in my brain. I have yet to discover what part of my brain melted during the technicolor love fest, but I am certain it was imperative to have that during my college years.

What a BORING story. Loser high school girl (A. Theater kid B. Choir kid C. English freak) who never had a boyfriend goes to college and blossoms into a beautiful, charismatic flirt! As I came to University of Alabama, I was fully under the impression that I would find my soon-to-be husband, or even several flings. But as the days pass by, I am growing more and more pissed. WTF! Not a soul has glided down bleachers singing a tune, or even had the DECENCY to have a witty back and forth banter with me. And trust me, I've tried.

         The sun sets as I glide a Maybelline smoky brown eyeliner in my waterline. The frat party of the week, broadcasting all over the school-wide Snapchat story. My hair falls into a mediocre mess of curls. I quickly tug at my new lacy black top. I looked odd. Not my usual style, but I thought it was fine for the theme. I roll my eyes as my roommate and I venture into the Uber.

    Making it into the muddy lawn of the frat house, I make eye contact with a boy. Decent looking, beer in hand. 

Him: Hey.

Me: Hey. 

Him: What's your major?

Me: Guess

Him: Hm. Nursing?

Me: Nope. English.

Him: Oh. Law school?

Me: Nope.

Him: English teacher, got it. 

I laughed instinctively. I normally laugh at comments like this. 

Wooooshhhh out of the Wattpad fanfic. SO not romantic, right. Every. Single. Time. My major is my kryptonite. Or at least that's what I've been saying every time I leave one of these events. But I am fully starting to believe it is my brain. And with each Valentines day passing by with a lack of plans so to speak, I continue to envy the lovers. Very common I know. But what is a girl to do. 

Okay. Tangent over. Happy February. 

-A.K. (cupid)

fashion

"Oh, faithful fashion god!!! What will we ever do without your insightful fashion takes??"

Fear not, I am here.

 I began working on a piece for the crimson white over the break. My working title was "Battle of the Brands." Idk. It felt like my entire feed was hauls of obscure "fashionable" influencer's merch/clothing brands. I was going absolutely crazy. I won't double up and write an unedited piece about those brands here. Fret not, I'll leave that for the newspaper. But here, however, I feel inspired to talk about fashion. 

First and foremost, I am cognizant of the fact that I am fully an ignorant teenage girl who knows nothing & spends too much time online. Take this all with a grain of salt! Who knows, maybe I'll eat my words in a month.

I guess I have to briefly talk about my fashion journey. I shopped at boutiques in my hometown for my adolescence because I thought it was cool. I would wear whatever. Blah Blah Blah.. In 2018 I was obsessed with youtubers and would beg my mom to roll our rusty 2007 Toyota up to the pearly gates of Urban Outfitters. I thought I was in heaven. Overpriced, poorly made tops were MY STAPLE by the end of eighth grade. It still wasn't a curated style. Just a walking billboard for Urban. Or maybe the opposite. The outfits were so heinous I probably was a giant, flashing red light warning people to not shop there.

In 2020 I got obsessed with 70s fashion. I poorly tried to curate looks with the remnants of Urban Outfitters pieces and pieces from my new love: the thrift store. I repressed all of those bad outfits. All I remember is an emerald green pair of ill-fitting bootleg pants. 

By my senior year most of my closet was from the thrift store. I couldn't even say I had a style at that point. I would just buy random things I thought looked nice. Some of it was trendy and a little on the nose (I would wear ribbons in my hair. At 8 am. Would walk into lit class with ribbons in my hair. At 18 years old. I digress.)

Then came college move in. I knew going to a giant SEC school would change my fashion. And to aid this progression, I decided to give away my entire closet. You can ask my friends- they were gifted with seven trash bags worth of clothes. I was wearing strictly lululemon for a solid three months. That was probably the most miserable I've been in a long time. Sure, there was probably a myriad of reasons for this state of depression I was in, but I do feel it necessary to note my major fashion glow down. I never even did my hair! Call the police because SOMEONE is pretending to be me if I don't do my hair! 

Now. 2025. I am slowly rebuilding my closet. Yet again, I am searching and scanning various thrift stores and vintage shops. Still irritable on the fact that I had a cute closet this time last year. But I digress. Wear what you want! Have fun!

-A.K (the all knowing fashion forecaster [kidding])

The inevitable doom of doomscrolling

     Catchy title, right? My entire for-you page on TikTok has been infiltrated with Supreme Court rulings over whether the app will be banned or not. I have reminisced with friends over the countless edits I have of semi-attractive men that will somehow vanish into the void of the unknown on January 19th. As psychotic as it might seem, I get outwardly upset about the amount of time I have spent as an avid user of the app. Since sixth grade, @adys0nkdancer_26 has been pushing out lipsync video after lipsync video on Musical.ly. Even in middle school, I slowly rekindled my love with the newly-named app, watching countless funny videos. Now, I spend upwards of six hours a day scrolling... I don't even recollect half- or even three-fourths- of the videos I consume. But this app- at least for me- holds my "eras" so to speak. T.V. shows, movies, characters, books, makeup, celebrities: all bookmarked in my TikTok Favorite folder. Along with this sappy feelings towards the app, there is a part of me that hopes this fixes the obvious issues attached. My brain is hardwired into opening that app day in and day out; the moment I hit my alarm, TikTok is already the background noise of my day. While I'm watching a boring lecture mid-day, I scroll on TikTok in hopes of soothing my boredom somehow. As the app's lifespan slowly dwindles, I can only hope to fix my attention issues. But with that comes the constant worrying that this will all either A. blow over like 2020's potential ban did or B. content swiftly moves over to Instagram or god forbid another app. 

As I've seen in text conversations with friends or posts by people my age, it seems like the consensus is somewhat similar: We want our lives back, but we also want the same level of entertainment. With this comes the idea that TikTok has fully disrupted a generation of growing young adult's and teen's minds and attention spans for the worst. Even if the app goes away, the problems will remain. Sure, doomscrolling can end on TikTok, but why couldn't it just as easily move to Instagram or Youtube? And as I continue to type this, the more and more I decide I do not care. I am f**ked either way. 

And as of right now, I am sitting in my college dorm on the 12th, about to scroll on TikTok for the umpteenth hour. Just to reminisce, obviously. 

A.K.

fresh & new

     

    With the closing of another semester of school, I have already fallen back into trying to crack the code on how to fix everything wrong in my life by New Years. New year, new clothes, makeup, diet, exercise, friends,  me. Something that will always reign true in my life is the constant anxiety surrounding school. Unbeknownst to me, high school actually wasn't the end of that. Now, as a freshman in college, I understand that THIS is what matters- not how many clubs I was involved in at my tiny public school. 

    The end of December always carries the burden of being the most mentally taxing, since not only do finals begin the month's festivities, New Year's resolutions about getting productive internships squash any holiday glee in my heart. 

    To counteract my infamous end-of-the-year existential dread, I decided to finally start a blog. The only other time I have written for an audience is my school's newspaper. The formulaic pieces are nice, but I want to start something fresh!! and new!! Hence the title of the blog, fresh fruits. Hopefully, it will be filled with fruitful (get it) insights and perspectives from a college girl much like myself.