Okay, look, this is a good pic of me, I know, but what's very unfair is how hot I was as a (miserable) girl, and how mediocre-looking I am as a (much happier) guy.

The first time I got married, my wedding song was the very sweet "Into My Arms," but if I ever get married again, my wedding song will be the very dirty "Do You Love Me?" youtu.be/VJTjsVSzQ1Q?...

Kiss me again, re-kiss me, and kiss me. Slip your frigid hands inside my shirt. This useless old fucker with his twinkling cunt doesn't care if he gets hurt.

It’s 5 a.m. and my final paycheck from work hasn’t hit my bank account yet. What are the chances they’re not going to pay me?

What's worse, in your opinion? To sleep with a memoirist and get written about poorly, or to sleep with a memoirist and not get written about at all?

For years I have been wanting to edit an anthology of short stories written by women and nonbinary people from the perspective of the women in Bruce Springsteen songs. Does this sound like a thing you would submit to?

You posses the ability to heal, and you deserve to.

Yesterday, I found out a pizza guy at work has been fired multiple times, but just keeps showing up for work anyway, so they eventually shrug and say, "Okay, I guess you can still work here," and my fucking god, I love this man so much.

When I moved to Cleveland my ex wife said, “now you can go live out your scumbag Jarmusch fantasy” and anyway I’m about to publish an insufferable hipster book about a pregnant trans man riding a jet ski on Lake Erie so I guess she was right?

I still get really sad when I think about Nel and Luke from The Haunting of Hill House.

Another weird influx of "go blue" followers. Just so you know, I'm an anarchist.

I have a new book coming out, and self-promotion seems craven right now, but I can promise you I've been grappling with catastrophe, personal trauma, numbness, and what truly makes us human-- something that still might be worth your time as the world burns.

Literally the only political party I would join.

You can write a book w/ generative AI, but you'll never go urban exploring to find a setting, take a job on a mountaintop to finish your book, go to GreenWood Cemetery to find Basquiat's grave, or any number of experiences I had while writing my first book that I wouldn't trade for the world.

Thinking about my rich exes and all the friction caused by being from different classes. There's a piece of writing in there, if "Common People" and Saltburn didn't already say it well enough.

Sometimes I think people think I'm stupid because I reserve judgement about people until they show who they truly are. I would prefer this to living any other way, even though it means my heart gets broken by just about everyone.

New roommate taught me about sonic space in music, and now I can't unhear it when I listen to music.

I need to travel more, but travel stresses me the fuck out. However, now that my dog is dead, I don’t have to worry about her constantly when I am traveling. Maybe I’ll double down on that Fulbright application. Three months in another country sounds fucking delightful for so many reasons.

Told my job I had to step down from my sous chef position to deal with my grief and mental health, and was basically told they could only keep me on temporarily until they found someone else who could take my position over.

Wow I suck and can’t do anything right.

Uggggggh.

Wow what a time to be emotionally distraught!

Roxy passed away today around 3.30, surrounded by love. We held her close and said our goodbyes, and in the end, she fell asleep peacefully in my arms. She was the best girl, and I’ll love her forever.

Her pain has gotten really bad. We scheduled the euthanasia for tomorrow. This is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make.

My best girl has been eating steak and venison every day. No more kibble. Every day’s gonna be her best one until the end.

My perfect angel, my best girl and best friend has cancer that’s metastized all over her abdomen. She has a few months left. The last five years with her have been the best of my life and no matter how long she has left, I’ll love her forever.

At the emergency vet for the second time in 2 days with Roxy. She’s not doing well. :/

Question for writer friends: So many times I see a friend was in my city on tour after the fact, and I've missed the event already. Is it weird to email your friends in various cities asking them to come to your book event? I'd rather get an email than miss out.

I never thought I'd take part in a beauty contest, but a local bar is running a vampire themed one, and while I'm an average human, I'm a smoking hot vampire.

I am a writer from a working class background, but many times when I hear people talking about this topic, I am just reminded of the bad takes of some white cis het guy in my MFA who basically said it all the time because it wasn't socially acceptable to say "the minorities are taking my place."

There is no way to express that feeling of having a song summon a very vivid memory without sounding like a nostalgic sap, so I won't tell you about the memory I associate with the song "Helpless," but it always makes me cry.

You know I was excited for my class visit yesterday because I trimmed my goatee instead of having random lone facial hairs waving at each other from across the vast, hairless expanse of my cheeks.

To celebrate a year of sobriety, I got myself an Overlook Hotel carpet patterned cardigan. Nerd nerd nerd.

Someone once told me "Gavin Newsom isn't perfect on every issue, but we have to work with him" but please tell me how i am supposed to "work with" political candidates if I'm dead/completely without basic human rights????

Today, I read a piece of writing about teaching writing that I loved so much that I immediately googled the author to find his website and email address to thank him for it, only to find out he has no website. Sean Cho A., if you're out there, that piece in The Rumpus was spectacular.

I read a bunch of student essays today and all were good, but some were so good that I was like PUBLISH THIS IMMEDIATELY.

Did a class visit at my undergrad today; good to see it hasn't changed!

Couldn't remember the Vincent Price line from The House on Haunted Hill, so I googled it. Thank gods for AI.

I got a new Spotify account years ago, and I can never listen to "I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar" on it, because I listened once on my old account and Spotify played it every time I went on shuffle thereafter. I'm sorry, Jonathan Richman, ilysm anyway.

Writers' scams always make me laugh a little. You know most of us aren't making much money, right?

I managed to raise almost $1,000 for my best friend's family (her husband has had a potentially deadly illness for 6 years), and because of that, they were able to pay all their bills and get their baby boy a few bday presents, and I want to say how grateful I am to everybody who donated.

Well, you are my friend. And can you see? Many times, we've been out drinking, And many times, we've shared our thoughts. But did you ever ever notice The kind of thoughts I've got? open.spotify.com/track/2Hb6C8...

"Down in my boathole I see they've published Another volume of unreconstructed rubbish."

I wrote a little piece about re-reading "The Myth of Sisyphus," suicidal ideation, and finding ever-shifting meaning in an absurd world. buttondown.com/AlexDiF/arch...

When I was underemployed, I wrote a book. It was about a guy who goes ro his friends house to pull him out of a spiral of heroin use after his wife & kid die, only to have the friend tell him he's being haunted by an entity that only appears when he sobers up. He, of course, thinks is bullshit.

I have decided not to write any more about my longass span of depression because it bores me.

Look, I am not clever. I'm not very funny. I'm mostly painfully sincere or grumpy. I'm really not built for social media self-promo. If you followed me because you like my writing, I guarantee you won't get anything better here than you'd get from reading my book. Probably much worse.

So many of my students over the last year have loved romantasy and want to write it and I've been looking for the most gentle ways to tell them that bubble is going to pop before they get through the arduous journey of getting an agent and going out on sub.

I haven't read Camus since my 20s, but I'm about to dive back into "The Myth of Sisyphus" because I'm writing something about how it wasn't "we must imagine Sisyphus happy" that stuck with me, but "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."

It's hilarious that writers in Cleveland consider it a literary city. It's the same 10 people doing readings while 60% or more of the city is functionally illiterate.