I’ve always been a spitfire. As a kid, my identity was strong and clear; sassy, bossy, quick to speak out, quick to push, quick to get a little spicy when something didn’t sit right. My mama used to say, “girl, you’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” I didn’t care. I thought flies were annoying.

I am always moved by intensity. I trust chemistry. Sometimes it has led me somewhere beautiful. More often, I’ve had to fight my way back from something I walked straight into. iykyk.

So in the fall, I decided to run an experiment. The assignment was simple, at least on paper: actively seek out a sub, create an application, do everything “right,” and see what happens. Treat it like a system. A process. Something measurable. Optimize the inputs, observe the outputs. See what I get.

It is now almost April 1.

My mornings begin the same way—snuggles from my chihuahua, one extra snooze, a cup of chai with almond milk I make for myself. Then I would sit down and go through messages while I drank it. Check the apps. If there was time, swipe a little. The ritual could easily take up an hour.

An hour would pass, and I would still be sitting there, chai in hand, scrolling—not excited, not even really engaged. Just numb. At first, it felt intentional. Then it started to feel like something else: a time suck, a habit, a loop. And slowly, I got salty. The messages blurred together—

“hey beautiful, hey sexy, you look like a lot of fun, hey baby.” Trust me, I know what I look like. Somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling excited and hopeful to be seen as a whole, nuanced person and instead started feeling like a selection. A product in a catalog.

Swipe right. She looks fun. She’s sexy. That will do.

And the truth is, it makes sense.

We are all spending time in spaces designed to flatten people into options. Of course, there is crossover. Of course, people start interacting like they are choosing from a menu instead of meeting a human being. I don’t want to be consumed casually. Not by people who haven’t earned access to my intensity. I don’t want to dilute that to fit into something casual.

At some point, it stopped being about connection and started being about compulsion.

Not excitement or curiosity. 

Checking. 

Refreshing. 

Looking for something that never actually landed.

It wasn’t really the apps anymore. My brain got hijacked into a loop—the checking, the waiting, the hope that this time will be different. Somewhere along the way, the experiment stopped feeling like exploration and started feeling like a maze. Like I was a rat running out of paths, hitting the same walls over and over again. So now, instead of trying to force my way out, I’m choosing something different.

I’m stopping. I deleted my profiles on Feeld, Match, Tinder, Hinge, HER, and Bumble. Not because I failed the experiment, but because I learned what I needed to learn. I don’t want to spend my mornings (or anytime) in that loop anymore.

I want to redirect that energy into myself. My body, my health, being outside, into writing, into something that actually feeds me instead of drains me. I don’t know exactly what that looks like yet. Maybe I will write my life story, a book of poems, start a zine, or something I haven’t figured out yet.

I don’t think I’m disappearing. I think I’m redirecting toward something that actually feeds me.

Maybe the answer is somewhere else. 

Who knows, maybe you’ll see me at a farmer’s market someday, selling honey. I hear you catch more flies with it.