By Katya Agatucci | The Broadside (Contact: [email protected])

Many people my age are obsessed with different aspects of pop culture: jokes about eating Tide pods, whatever new song Cardi B just regurgitated, or the new Supreme line of apparel. Yes, they are all very intriguing — I guess?

I am not one of those people, to be clear. Everyone who knows me knows that I have an infatuation with the moon. The moon, la luna, a celestial body, Earth’s satellite, plantoid, you pick the descriptor — I am obsessed with the moon.

“Obsessed” as in I will scream out loud, drop everything in my hands, and run for my camera to take a photo of it (and probably trip in the process) if I see it looming in the sky.

If there is a spectacular crescent or if the full moon is rising, I will have several people texting me telling me to get my camera out. I get comments on the photos that I post that are similar to, “When I saw this I thought ‘I bet Katya is on this rn’.”

Everyone knows. Is it an unhealthy obsession? Maybe. Am I going to ever stop gawking at and fangirling about the moon? Probably not.

To put this obsession into perspective, I am a photographer. I take portraits, landscapes, still life, you name it. If you scroll through any of my social media feeds for less than a minute, you’re bound to run into a photo that I posted of the moon.

I have captured the moon in all of its glory so many times recently that I gave everyone in my family moon-themed photographs for Christmas. Whoops. There are worse things out in the world to be obsessed with, so I’m not particularly worried about it.

I don’t spend my evenings wondering if I am going to exceed 200 likes on my latest selfie. I am, however, worrying about whether or not the weather is going to affect me seeing the moon rise this evening.

Most of the people that I follow on social media can continue to tweet about the masterpiece that Lil Pump’s “Gucci Gang” is(n’t) or post a picture of their new Adidas slides, but I’ll be frantically tweeting about the moon.

I’m its biggest fan. Why am I obsessed with the moon?

I mean, yes we see it just about every evening. It’s nothing new. But c’mon. This glowing, globular, royal, celestial object does not get the credit that it deserves.

Remember that crazy event at the end of August last year that made everyone freak out about water and gas outages that climaxed with a tidal wave of posts of people wearing dorky glasses as as they bent their heads back and gazed towards the heavens? Oh yeah, the total solar eclipse? The Moon only casted a shadow on the Earth’s surface and blocked out the sun. No big deal, though. It only controls the ocean tides around the whole world.

It’s honestly hard to sum up in a few hundred words my feelings about the moon but, the next time that you see the moon, just know that I’m probably screaming out loud and running for my camera. ■