ISSUE NO. 02 // MARCH 04, 2026 // GHOSTS

Welcome to the second issue of The Potpourri.

I’ve been on this extended sojourn back home in Alabama for about six months now. So it makes sense to me to talk about ghosts.

When I moved here from Tennessee as an eight-year-old, I felt haunted by the violent past of this place, even when I couldn’t put words to it.

In my inaugural issue, I talked about driving around the Birmingham metro area to see where I used to live and hang out (or wanted to hang out). It’s been sad to see the north and west sides of town neglected and abandoned. This Reddit post sums up the sad current reality.

What other ghosts can we commune with or exorcise? Let’s open some old closets and drawers…

I never wanted a cellphone. People chatting everywhere was noise pollution. And, I never wanted to be that accessible.

But, in the early aughts, I had a birthday surprise: a little black Kyocera. I never knew that it would be such a revolutionary piece of tech that would eventually evolve into a smartphone — a handheld mini-computer with a powerful camera and a running historical archive.

We are currently in Mercury retrograde, a season of the re-: re-visiting, re-evaluating, and re-surfacing. In this liminal place, the past is not past — it’s a translucent, dusty ghost hovering over the present. In Pisces, this time is even more ethereal and bewildering. We can perceive into past selves and places and modes of being…

As winter comes to its end in Pisces season, I am haunted by the versions of myself that were never properly decommissioned and the furious seeds squirming underneath us…

I am not a nostalgic person, and yet I miss the vibes and aesthetics of the late 1990s and early aughts — the heyday of my Gen-X youth.

The one image that sticks in my mind about this period is this one from R&B/neo-soul artist, Maxwell, dancing in his shiny silver shirt:

I miss my white Lomo Colorsplash camera. I miss the downtempo chill vibes of Zero 7’s first album. I miss Britney bopping around in her red pleather jumpsuit and her bright metallic makeup.

I miss being optimistic about the future.

I am a Y2K aesthetic booster — specifically, I am a hybrid of 90s Cool (like The Matrix movies) and Gen-X Soft Club (Radiohead’s Paranoid Android album cover).

A mix of optimism and anxiety. Then 9/11 vaporize the optimism and exploded the anxiety.

The loss of the “innocence” and hope from the 1990s pushed me to indie music and vintage shopping while the rest of the world went towards Frutiger Aero and a maximalism I never understood.

Fast forward to now, inflatable chairs are back but not the optimism. But just like in the early aughts, the US has engaged in another war in the Middle East and hope about the future seems vaporous.

Neither nostalgia not tech will save us. I believe art and creativity can and will, which is why I’m here, writing to you and writing to myself.

I am in the midst of a digital exorcism — files transferred, emails unsubscribed and deleted, and my website faster-loading and more accessible. 

As I say on my audit offer page, The Structural 60, growth causes decay. Over time, plugins and codes and the theme itself became entangled, slowing my website way down.

So, I got to work and took weeks to modernize this old Victorian house of a site. For now, the website is a lot more functional than it was a few weeks ago.

Wistfully, I’ve also been purging my LinkedIn connections — hundreds of ghosts that no longer speak to my current self or work.

But nature abhors a vacuum, so I’m excited to make new connections and rediscover old ones.

I invite you to use Mercury retrograde for tedious tasks like these. Just make sure you don’t land in LinkedIn jail like I did! I disconnected from ~300 people in one sitting and LinkedIn froze me out for a day or so. Take your time — take breaks and don’t disconnect from more than ~50 people in a day.

It’s easy to talk about the ghosts you know. But what about the ghosts who should never exist?

In the age of AI and stochastic parrots bullshitting their way through our culture, we’ve heard stories of chatbots making up stories and gossip about public figures, including serious lies of bribery and sexual harassment.

In the Virginia Quarterly Review, Colin Dickey shares in “The Art of Haunting” about how he was confronted with a false ChatGPT version of himself (a paranormal hunter), that a fan reached out to him about.

Sometimes, I think about the versions of me that exist in people’s minds that aren't fully ‘me’ — a memory from a friend, a mention from a relative, an experience from a former client.

Just like Dickey’s ChatGPT phantom, I have no version control over those particular Deborahs. They live on in glory or infamy or oblivion…

I have a gift for you: a YouTube playlist with 20 different songs about ghosts or hauntings. Some songs were new to me and some stuck in my head as I thought about this issue. Enjoy!

Not on the playlist: my favorite 1990s music video that oozes ‘90s Cool:’ “Scream” by Michael and Janet Jackson:

The 26th Winter Olympics ended last week and through the opening and closing ceremonies, I found a deeper appreciation of Italian culture — well-crafted, sometimes kitschy, and completely passionate.

My new favorite Olympian is two-time Olympic gold medalist and American figure skater Alysa Liu. Her infectious joy of work and her hard-fought self-confidence, rooted in the support of her friends and family, highlighted the Games and continually inspire me.

After her short program performance, she said:

Since I’ve been back home, I’ve been rediscovering some old photos (photos that my mom said she’ll give me to when I leave) and listening to old stories about myself and my family.

There is a strange grace in hearing my own personal lore…

Like this newborn — the only Black child in the nursery with her noticeable full head of hair. Can you believe that there were seven other babies born on Christmas Day? Neither could the hospital staff. They were pulling folks from other floors to catch babies…

Last week, I cleaned my mom’s closet. I pulled out and sorted dust-covered clothes and shoes — a sartorial time capsule formed by a work injury. The coolest find to me: an old ESPRIT cardigan.

As I look ahead to where I am headed, Southern California, I’ve been reflecting on where I have been — Chicago, Orlando, and Seattle. These were cities of growth, of wonder, and of heartbreak.

So for my own sanity and peace of mind, I am reframing these experiences.

The places I left and the people I loved and lost weren't necessarily "failures" because our time together ended.

I have to believe in the law of conservation, that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

But it can be transformed.

Nothing has gone to waste. I can and will use these experiences as the soil and fertilizer that supports the current version/future ghost of me.

Thanks so much for reading this issue of The Potpourri. If you dig what I am digging up, I’d love your support! That’s a ko-fi button below.