Dear sugar is supported by the universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heartsick.
Sugar is here, the both of us speaking straight into your ears.
I'm Cheryl strayed.
I'm Steve Almond.
This is dear sugar radio.
Oh, dear song, won't you please share some little sweetness with me?
I check my bell vibes every day.
Oh, in the sugar you see, in my way.
A few years ago, I started writing an advice column for a relatively obscure website called the Rumpus and basically assigned myself the job of being an advice columnist, which is, on one hand, kind of.
You're a giver of advice, you're empathic, you're doing the world a favor, but in a much more fundamental level, it's incredibly narcissistic.
And you're essentially saying, I have all the answers.
And so the way I solved that dilemma was I created this Persona.
I wasn't writing the advice columnist Steve Ullman.
I was writing as somebody named Sugar.
And sugar in my mind, in my imagination, was a woman of a certain age, probably in her late thirties or forties, who'd had a very eventful life and was wise and irreverent and no bull.
And that worked kind of badly because it was fake.
And then something very curious happened.
I received a fan letter.
In fact, I think it was the only fan letter that I received.
And this was toward the end of my run as sugar, and I was looking for somebody to replace me.