Big Brat Energy
Photo courtesy of Gratisography
Monday, September 15th, 2025I’ve been feeling disgruntled lately. It started the last time I was in New York, meeting up with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. She took me to her workplace to show me around.
She was working on pieces for the Spring 2026 runway show — deconstructed, twisted, familiar, but new. It all looked so fresh and exciting! I was… gritty with envy. (Yep, I went there) I miss making things with that kind of energy!
Back in Seattle, I was listening to the audiobook Imaginable by the futurist and game designer, Jane McGonigal. Imaginable invites readers to play with thought experiments and imagine what they would do in a seemingly “unimaginable” future.
One of the first exercises is to imagine waking up the next morning - writing it all out in great detail — where you are, who you’re with, what your alarm sounds like, what time it is, if it’s dark or light, what you do upon waking, how you feel. Easy enough, right?
I stopped cold when I got to how I would feel: I wrote that I would wake up tomorrow
feeling passive aggressive about my life.
Whoa! Where did that come from? What does that even mean?
Knowing that this was an unusual use-case for the term “passive aggressive”, I asked AI what it could mean in that context. And the answer felt disturbingly accurate:
“If someone is passive aggressive about their life, they don’t confront their issues directly. Instead, they procrastinate. They self-sabotage. They undermine their own goals with excuses. They mask dissatisfaction with cynicism and sarcasm. They ‘play small’ — never approaching their full potential and resenting it.”
Ouch. That hit home.
I’m a crab. My sun sign is Cancer. I rarely approach things directly. Yet I can always find lateral options, silver linings, ways around obstacles that seem insurmountable. Apparently, that’s also my strategy for leaking my energy rather than focusing it on things that are important to me.
Self-sabotage may be my best skill set: overthinking, dragging my feet, overcomplicating everything, complaining like it’s an Olympic sport. Honestly, I'm even sick of myself.
So what now? I’ve been lucky. I’m used to things just kind of falling into my lap. I’m going to have to put some grit into it this time - a little bit of effort - if I want to get somewhere else.
The world is changing fast, and my bratty, passive aggressive complaining is leaving me in the dust. I need to give the universe some direction: a resume refresh, a LinkedIn update, and some angst excavation to start.
Big girl pants on.
Time to Get Gritty