I’m rebranding myself. Trying something new. Shifting perspective. Seeing what might fit.

You know that old adage “Woe is me”?

It’s a nod to Psalm 120, which reads—in English, from the Hebrew translation on Sefaria.org:

A song of ascents.
In my distress I called to GOD—
who answered me.

O ETERNAL One, save me from treacherous lips,
from a deceitful tongue!

What can you profit,
what can you gain,
O deceitful tongue?

A warrior’s sharp arrows,
with hot coals of broom-wood.

Woe is me, that I live with Meshech,
that I dwell among the clans of Kedar.

Too long have I dwelt with those who hate peace.

I am all peace;
but when I speak,
they are for war.

Here’s the thing. I too don’t particularly love dwelling amongst those who hate peace and rock, instead, with war. As a person who fundamentally believes in non-violence, like, yeah. Word.

But when I step back and take in what “woe is me” as a colloquial modern phrase has become—a default douching in despair, a somewhat slicing of self-pity, a punctuation for pithy pain—I’m def less enthused. Less enthralled. Less compelled by not just the phrase, but the sentiment itself.

I’ve “woe is me”ed myself a long time. Personally. Professionally. And like, at my core, I am an optimist. Which means that even when I “woe,” I still ultimately make my way back to “wow.”

But recently, after kvetching (Yiddish for “complaining”) in my inner monologue about some stuff in my personal life—or rather really noticing that my default way to respond to things I felt weren’t working out in my immediate favor—I caught myself. Witnessed myself. Watched my otherwise optimistic self go: woe. And thus, I wondered: what if I default first to: “wow.”

That’s my new slogan: “Wow is me.”

As in:

Instead of being like, why am I so busy and how come I can’t keep up with my calendar and what kind of a monster of a life have I created where I get so many texts and emails and messages a day and I can’t keep up, fucking “woe is me,” what if I’m like: Wow is me. How lucky am I to have so many people I love. And options. And possibilities. And so much life.

Or like, instead of feeling sorry for myself that now two decades into my career, I still don’t have a literary agent, and I have literally—not exaggerating—like 10 unpublished nonfiction, fiction, and poetry manuscripts, and feel like I’m literally the only writer friend I know without a published book of some kind, and like “woe is me”ing myself into self-doubting oblivion, what if I’m like: Wow is me. I’m so fucking prolific. I have so much content. One day it’ll all explode.

Or like, instead of kvetching about being single and being like “woe is me” when any dating things goes rogue, and then thinking about how I’ve been to 72 weddings, officiated seven, been a bridesmaid a bunch (and then thinking of 27 Dresses or that fucked up slogan “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride,” which has its roots in a 1920s Listerine ad shaming women for bad breath, like it’s correlated to their being unmarried and single), and wondering what the fuck is wrong with me, what if I’m instead like: “Wow is me.” I’m a goddamn fucking catch. None of this has anything to do with anything else. I’m out here in these streets. And I’m fucking dope.

And so on. And so forth. And hence. Even the quotidian and mundane.

Stuck in traffic on the bus.

Plane is delayed.

Subway, running late.

The food I ordered, kind of sucks.

Literally anything.

How fucking lucky to be alive. Have transit. Access to food!

Wow. Wow. Wow!

I’m rewriting this psalm. For me. To retrain the patterns in my head. Maybe, too, my heart.

And as for the ills of the world, the ones that are really quite literally suffocating and sabotaging our ability to revel in the real and seemingly prevail?

I’m wondering what happens if I don’t let them ruin my wow, either.

Because my sense is that a little more wow might ripple into a little—or a lot—less woe.

And that’s it. That’s the proverbial essay Tweet. It’s not much more prophetic than that.

My woe is now a wow.

I am casting this spell.

See what magic might manifest.