Jacquelyn Scieszka

Grayscale Mode  changes all pixels on your screen to shades of gray. It's supposed to be for photosensitive users. Grayscale Mode has become something of a trend lately, but mostly for the youth obsessed with their phone. Me. It must have been January of 2024, when trying to get my head out of my phone, that I heard this mental health tip discussed in a YouTube video that attempted to rehabilitate addicts like me, from a former addict themselves. I recall not their name, gender (hence the gender-neutral pronouns), or even their facial features or  the nuances in their voice. Just what they said: Try Grayscale. They said this step might be a bit extreme, and I agree, it would be hard for many of us, and outright impossible for visual artists. I tried it anyway. At first, I had trouble acclimating my eyes to the dimness of my new screen. It kept me off my phone more. I rarely used it. The glamor and sparkle were gone. I don't recall very well, but it did the job. Th...

It's certainly not like the movies anymore. This, of course, depends on generation and demographic. Remember learning about the oversimplified examples of bullying in 2nd grade? Did they ever relate to to you, like it would always be as simple as telling your teacher about it? They never take you seriously in elementary school! But, more importantly.. Our medium  of bullying has changed. The cyberspace is like the ether, and poking unassuming victims in anonymity is just too easy. So, everyone could do it. It's not even exclusively inflicting abuse anymore, it's a war no one will win. You see bullying in the movies, getting beaten up and locked into the janitor's room, is that really happening anymore where it used to forty years ago, or at least, to that extent? It feels more like sick nostalgic catharsis-inducing screenwriting to me. Like someone brought up in the 70s finally found a way to vent. And the gory brutality is usually reserved for the boys in media. But th...

For various reasons, I've been taking pills. You know, to make me feel okay. It can be quite like a weight on my chest. I could breathe, barely, but I cannot smell. I can open my eyes, but cannot see. It's nothing. Not darkness, not black, I was feel nothing. A pill altered my life,—and, perhaps more importantly—my personality. The stuff that makes you one in eight billion, what we value most about the self. The rarity of that internal, personal, emotional essence grows more and more, the more folks forget to use condoms, the less often people take their last breaths, and hopefully for them, in hospital beds rather than in a large swathe of fire accompanied by wails for help. Given prior circumstances, numb was better. Not good, just better. I went from a complicated pit with nuanced ridges to the flat surface above. I wouldn't say it was bad, to have pain ebbed away. All feelings and opinions pushed aside, and I was left with.. nothing. I felt like a passenger in a train w...