I miss blogging when I was twelve, when I had no sense of audience, necessity, or obligation. Just a girl tip-tap-typing away and believing that it would do something for her life, without a sense of the how or the why. Barely even a sense of the what, if we’re being frank.
It’s only in retrospect that I mark those days as the start of my career as a cultural analyst. My most intelligent posts, also the easiest ones to get out, were always overviews of trends, predictions as to what would be extrapolated from the runway to the lives of teenage girls in suburbia.
I wrote about Grace Coddington’s departure from Vogue sitting on top of a desk in my English teacher’s classroom in high school, desperate to get out a post before the first bell rang. I didn’t want to be late to the story, or behind on the impact it could make. I had that sense of urgency and need, despite not being able to put my finger on what it meant in the grand scheme of my life.
I’m reminiscing on the Good Old Days as I figure out what to do with this space. I promised I’d be back via LinkedIn (obligation), and I may have indicated that there would be essays and analysis (here, now) and interviews (coming soon, hopefully). Some of you are new (HI!) and some have been around for a while.
Something that tripped me up in the past was the rising sense of awareness that I could be perceived through my writing. Without knowing who was reading or what they were thinking about what they were reading, it all feels too heavy and each word feels like a commitment I cannot retract. When you work in the cultural analysis space, in trends and in TikToks, there is inevitably a time when you miss a key factor or make an error in judgment. I know this to be true. Yet, the pressure to avoid that at all costs is all-encompassing (**for me, this is a me problem).
So I ask you, the audience that consists of a few familiar faces and some unknown, to give me some grace as I venture through this self-awareness/public perception/evolving identity journey. There’s a good chance that some weeks, I’m not going to show up in your inbox. But I promise I will try, and I hope that’ll be enough for now.
Amid all this self-analysis and the rebirth of this Substack, my life has changed quite a bit.
I spent the last three days of last week puttering around my apartment, decorating for the holidays and watching a million episodes of The Big Bang Theory — all because I wrapped up my last job, one that I had been at for more than three years, on Tuesday. I’ve never been between jobs before.
After these few floaty days, I feel ready to jump back into looking at culture for fun again. While I won’t share the latest TikTok trends anymore, I intend to explore my curiosity across all niches, bar none (thus, the name change).
My recent fascination with interior design will probably pop in and make itself known, as will my obsessions with other newsletters and their focuses —
, , , and , to name just a few.For now, I’ll start you with my current obsession: buying — and reading, of course — every single book known to man.
I wish I was joking, truly, but it seems these days I’ve purchased almost every book I’ve come across in newsletters, social media, and even the New York Times. If you have a recommendation, tell me, I still want more. [And add me on Goodreads.]
In exchange, I will tell you that Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow really did change my life, Fourth Wing is just as silly and quickly-consumable as you’d expect, The Priory of the Orange Tree is Fourth Wing for people who want to read something closer to “literature” and love strong girlies, and Tress of the Emerald Sea convinced me to commit to the monstrosities (lovingly) that are Brandon Sanderson’s other novels.
The current nightstand lineup is as follows: Outline by Rachel Cusk, and An Outsider’s Guide to Humans by Camilla Pang, PhD. Audible is co-screening On Writing by Stephen King and Lightbringer by Pierce Brown.
Are you catching onto the methodology yet? It’s not new, but the fiction/non-fiction one-two punch does it for me every, single, time.
I got back into reading a few years ago in an homage to my childhood self (much like this newsletter — seeing the consistencies yet?). I read something that said that the best way to love reading again is to start with the last kind of book you devoured, whether it was middle-grade chapter books or in my case, a young adult fantasy series. I re-emerged into the literary landscape with Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series in tow and ended up dragging most of my friends along for the ride.
Recently, I’ve been trying to lean more literary, attempting to make up for the AP English lessons and college composition classes I didn’t take. Other Substacks are building up my education, and I’m (clearly) taking Stephen King’s suggestion of reading as much as possible to improve my writing.
And that brings us full circle, to here. This lovely newsletter and its purpose. If you’ve made it this far, you get to know my secret: I’m using this, selfishly, to practice and improve my writing as well as my cultural analysis.
Practice makes perfect, learning in public, etc. etc. etc. You know the drill.
One of my people suggested that I sign this off, “And that’s all she wrote” and while I laughed it off at the time, it feels just silly and prescient enough. So, until next time…
That’s all she wrote.