THIS YEAR HAS BEEN MEDIUM COOL

And the five most read posts from our first year

It's been one year since Emily and I have been oversharing like we’ve had three coffees and haven’t been outside in a week, and damn, that kind of time goes by fast.

We started with a vague plan that Medium Cool would be like the zines we made at the start of our careers: personal, honest, hilarious cries for attention with the hope of getting on a promo list or two. But this time from the perspective of middle-aged life in Brooklyn.

Thank you to all our readers, new friends, and old friends we’ve reconnected with. We especially want to thank contributors like columnist Hannah Meyer, and our guest essayists who have trusted us with their rawest feelings about their work.

Here are the five most read stories from the last year…

1. Politics often fail us, but our personal revolutions will always save us. Here Emily revisits her late mother’s defiant act.

2. Did you know we can be controversial still? Here’s the quiz that caused the drama.

3. You REALLY liked our revisit of the first NC-17 film.

4. Columnist Hannah Meyer went there.

5. Our working class families have given up asking, “What do you do for a living?” mostly because stories like these are hard to convey over a table at IHOP.