Until now. It took going on an African safari to convert me into an animal lover. To appreciate them for providing the blueprint for so much of humanity. How we live, eat, and mourn.

I now love animals for the same reason I love people: the stories.

On our safari, we saw a group of hyenas fight over impala remains. A lion next to its recent kill: a young giraffe. Saw the mother of the giraffe out looking for her baby, who was gone. These moments, although heartbreaking, were profound. Witnessing the natural order of things. I have to say it—the circle of life. It was naive of me to write off animals, without thinking about how without them, there would be no us.

Our safari guide and tracker sat at the front of the vehicle, introducing us to the surrounding animals. I’d never heard of the tracker role before. The tracker scans the Earth for footprints, smells, anything that might indicate where the animals have gone. Our safari was on a private reserve, so we were actually able to off-road. Follow the animals. What they called “ferrari safari.” We’d hold onto the railing, our butts flying in the air. And it was thrilling. Following footprints, seeing where they might lead.

Oftentimes, the tracker gets out of the car. We’d just leave him, in the middle of the open field, where lions and rhinos and buffalos roamed nearby. He put his life in the hands of nature, trusting the animals, his expertise. And when we would find the animals, they might be skittish at first. But they’d frequently settle back into what they were doing. Elephants eating grass. Lions nurturing their cubs. All we wanted to do was watch them. No touching, hurting. Just observation.

We stayed at Londolozi—a luxurious private game reserve. It was the experience of a lifetime. And it wasn’t just the amenities, although the spa, heated beds, and custom menus were nice. It was the people. The stories. The multiple generations of employees: father son guides and butlers. Husband and wife tracker and chef.

On our last night, they surprised us with a campfire in the middle of the reserve. Our guide told us his life story: tales of being a refugee, an elephant flipping over his vehicle. He repeated the idea of going into the unknown. He started as a tracker, and now he’s a guide. But he talks about the thrill of being a tracker. Said there’s nothing better.

Our tracker and guide not only shared their stories, but the stories of animals. The leopard whose birth they witnessed, that they now get to follow into adulthood. They take pride in their “finds,” and their favorite animals they’ve spent the most years with.

It was there for me this whole time, I just hadn’t looked. That we’re all connected. That to study psychology, you have to understand biology, evolution.

In our guide’s culture, they place an emphasis on ancestors. Protecting their dead bodies from demons, believing in reincarnation. I’ve been afraid of death my whole life. I don’t think you can ever get over it. But hearing about all of this, seeing all the life and death created and vanquished before my eyes—it almost made me at peace with it.

That we are all part of this. There’s something that came before us. And something will come after.

Now…onto the less deep stuff.

• Our first stop was Capetown. Beautiful city I’d love to go back to. We stayed at the Cape Grace Hotel in the V&A Waterfront area. The service was amazing. Rooms were beautiful. They had an excellent spa; I had my FIRST EVER massage there. The highlight of the hotel was their restaurant. Dinner was maybe the best we had the entire trip.

• Our first day in Capetown, we did a tour of Cape Point, the penguins at Boulders Beach, and some of the seaside villages. One of the best parts was the drive, absolutely stunning rocky coastline. On the second day, we visited a couple lovely wine estates. We had a guide which was super helpful!

• Next, we went to Londolozi, the star of this Substack post. It’s a stunning private game reserve in Sabi Sand Game Reserve. Every detail was perfect: from the private pools in the room (where we saw elephants??) and the beautifully-decorated main area we ate our meals. The staff made sure we had the best experience, and on our last night we had a special campfire. 10/10 experience. Nelson Mandela stayed here. Truly felt like family.

Also I’d told my camp manager that I wanted to learn about African medicine/plants and they printed this out for me. How cute.

• Our final stop was Thorntree River Lodge in Zambia. The hotel is beautiful, located on the Zambezi River. We stayed around here to see Victoria Falls. Worth a quick trip! Falls were stunning; we viewed it from the Zimbabwe side. Getting back and forth between the sides was kind of a pain but great overall experience. Including a crazy sunset cruise surrounded by hippos. We also had some special guests at the hotel: monkeys and warthogs. So funny.

Sharing some of my favorite videos.

1. An unhappy hippo

2. baby hyenas popping out of their den

3. and one of the brave ones🥺

4. a pack of lions seeing elephants and deciding to move further out

5. leopard climbing down a tree

6. hyena + rainbow

7. baby monkey sucking its thumb

<3 <3 Julia

I shelved the book, never queried it, and didn’t look back.

Creativity is vulnerability. Even when you’re writing fiction, there’s parts of you. My books contain snippets of my real life, even if it’s subconscious. A character quirk, a favorite film.

I was never a perfectionist, but I had high standards for myself. I can’t draw a straight line, but I want to be good. Great. Above average. And that probably stems from being good at school at an early age. Not having to study too much for tests. And because of that, anything that could be perceived as subjective, I’d run away from.

I tied my creativity to my self-worth, rather than what it really is: part of my identity.

I’ve only recently realized that there are so many ways to be good at art. I’d always thought that because I can’t draw a straight line, I’d be banned from the life of an artist forever. Realism doesn’t come naturally to me, but it doesn’t have to.

Creativity is deliciously subjective. No performance reviews or A plus for effort. A thousand people could read the same book and get something different out of it.

Showing the world your ideas is like sitting at the edge of the airplane, about to free fall. (Yes, I have been skydiving, and yes, I am extremely afraid of heights). You know that once you jump, there’s no turning around. But to do the act, you’ve got to summon all the superhuman powers you can only dream of.

Last summer, I was sitting on a finished manuscript. Some Substack ideas. Art visions. And I finally did it. I jumped.

We are our own biggest blocker. I tell that all the time to my friends. It’s funny that the villain in our lives are most often ourselves. Look in the mirror. See past the shadows of self-doubt and hypothetical laughing crowds. We probably only live once. If you don’t jump, you might regret it.

How did I jump?

Pick up a Poetry Book

I went to a writing workshop earlier this year where we read poetry and then wrote a piece inspired by it. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever you want. Poems are evocative, full of imagery. One word can trigger an idea.

Notice the Art Around You

I’m pointing things out all the time. So much so that, when we were in Colorado, my friend Emily said to my friend Talia: “watch, Julia’s going to say ‘oh I love this!’” and I did. Predictable, but in a wholesome way, I’d like to think?

Revisit a Past Era

Maybe it’s a musician’s or maybe it’s your own. Every time I write a book or work on a creative project, I enter my own version of a Taylor Swift era. So when I’m stuck on a current project, I reach into the past. What was I listening to? Reading?

What are people saying?

I find writing fiction dialogue tricky. So I watch reality TV. Unfiltered conversations, especially Big Brother because they have almost 24/7 live feeds. What do people talk about? What separates each person’s speech? Similarly, I have been known to park somewhere on the West Side Highway and just listen.

Switch Genres

We are multifaceted! We draw inspiration from dark, light, the in between. I’ve recently gotten into horror, but I’m also always down for a strong drama. Or smart comedy. It’s fun to swerve lanes, see what else is out there without committing to one.

Create an Inspo Log

We are in the era of productivity. Logging how much we sleep, read, eat, etc. It’s exhausting. I’ve always been a fast reader. I skim and sometimes miss things. So of course, when I’m reading a lot of books in a year, I often forget how I actually felt about them. So I started an Inspiration log. A place for anything that inspires me, movies, TV shows, books, experiences. I write down the date and a couple notes about the meaning I took out of it. Really only my favorites. And so far, it’s been fun to look through and think about all the things I’ve been loving.

I’ve started monthly create & consume recaps. The idea being, we’re consuming media, of course. But we should also be broadcasting what we’re creating! Save the Earth! Reduce, reuse, recycle!

Build yourself a Creative Instagram (or Pinterest!)

There’s been a trend toward going analog, but for me, I just wanted to find my own healthy corner of the Internet. I was so tired of my feed making me feel unworthy, jealous. Feelings I didn’t like. So I made my creative Instagram juliaclairecreates as a safe space to be Inspired without playing the comparison game.

writers who make me think about the world in a new way

movies that stayed in my mind, the ideas and the aesthetics

singers with lyrics i think about when I write

brands and artists for visual inspiration

Hope some of this can inspire you too! Would love to hear where you get your creative inspiration, and how you overcome blocks!

<3 <3 <3

Julia

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I went to summer camp for ten years growing up (more on that here), and in our final year as campers, we took a trip to Colorado. It’s a rite of passage, and almost akin to the transition from kid to adult. We drove around in a bus, except for the famous three day hike when we peaked Anchor Mountain and had to carry everything on our backs.

Aspen is amazing, but Colorado is more than just that. Every time I’m there, I think about journeys. Odysseys. Timely, I know.

Where I was and where I am now. In the nature, I can find gemstones from my past. I can think. Create.

Last week was my fourth time in Aspen and my sixth time in Colorado. My friend Emily’s family has a timeshare there (Thanks Em and Asher’s!).

Colorado is a diary. Colorado is a canvas. This time, I brought my pencil and paint.

Pretend you’re a bug. I did have this thought watching a bug crawl around the pool edge, and no, I was not high. One night, we had to take a different path home because there was a bear in the alley. On a hike, we crossed paths with a fox with a chipmunk in his mouth. Truly the circle of life. Thinking about what animals think may sound silly, but it really does offer perspective. Or even a person. Sometimes I think the best writers are also actors, because they’re able to jump into another persona quite unlike their own.

What song do you think about when you land? Colorado has a soundtrack. It’s one of only a handful of lucky states. When you get off the plane in Aspen, you’re surrounded by mountains. I land, and I hear the music. Noah Kahan. The Lumineers. John Denver. On any trip, I immediately think about the music that could accompany it. Serve as background to the trip’s montage.

When in doubt, Mixed Media! I was talking to a friend about my digital art and how stiff it feels. She suggested printing it out and drawing on it. Or creating a collage. Our first day in Aspen, we walked through the Annual Art Festival. So many artists found incredible ways not only to mix media, but also use surprising art forms to describe the world around us.

This can apply to writing, art, anything. Surprise yourself. If you’re feeling stuck, go grab a paint brush. Watch a show and clip a line. Inspiration can come from the funniest places and make our ideas more interesting.

• Nature: For hiking in Aspen, I’d definitely recommend Maroon Bells . It takes two buses to get there, but the view is incredible. In town, there’s a couple different trails and then the John Denver sanctuary. Less of a hike and more of a nature walk with song lyrics in the background.

• Cocktails: If you want to go out, sing your heart out at Monday Night karaoke at Silver City. Hooch and Golden Horn also have good cocktails.

• Food: Grateful Deli is a super easy lunch. Sandwiches. My favorite was the El Paso. Clark’s is great for cocktails and the lobster roll is amazing. For a nicer dinner, try Matsuhisa (same owners as Nobu) and Ajax Tavern (steak was amazing + tuna tartare) with the view.

• Dessert: We went to Paradise every day. Ice cream and cookies and brownies and any sweet treat you might want. Pro tip: if you download Bumble and show them on Wednesdays or Saturdays, you get a free dessert. Seriously. Not sure how long that promo is going to last. Also I got their Madhappy sweatshirt and I love it.

• Arts: I went to Explore Books almost every day to write and get shit done. There’s a wine bar and coffee shop upstairs. We were so lucky to arrive on Sunday for the final day of the Annual Aspen Art Festival. The art was incredible, such a love letter to the nature and animals around us! In addition, we went to a couple cool galleries.

Colorado is a diary. A canvas. A soundtrack. We went to Aspen a year ago, last June. We had a magical adventure, just like this trip. I made the connection between Aspen as the Silver City and the song Silver Springs, and we sang Silver Springs at Monday night karaoke. And of course, we sang it again this year.

The lyric “Time cast a spell on you but you won’t forget me” encapsulates what Colorado is to me. Memories written into the mountains. Winding through the rivers. All across the state’s bones.

It’s a special feeling, knowing that I’ll keep going back, and it will all build.

And each time I’ll hear that song, I’ll think of something new.

People are reading this newsletter for different reasons. Some want the recs, others want the more thought out cultural pieces. Feel free to share what resonates with you!! What cities have your favorite soundtracks?

XOXO

There was a thrill to summer camp ghost stories. And the school year came with its own cast of characters.

In elementary school, I was terrified of Bloody Mary, who supposedly popped out of the mirror when you said her name. I made my parents lock themselves in a bathroom, turn the lights off, and chant the phrase to prove it wasn’t real. My sweet sacrificial lambs, they walked out unscathed. And eventually, I stopped being scared.

Do kids today have that luxury? Fear used to be a door you could walk in and out of. Now, it’s a vampire. Once the fear is invited in, it stays as long as it likes. It’s ingrained itself into our homes, disguised as productivity, lifestyle. Alexa, can you add milk to my grocery list. Siri, can you turn on the baseball game. There’s so much good about it, we often forget the long list of side effects. Read aloud so quickly we barely hear them.

I recently watched a really great horror film, Companion, and an amazing, Emmy-nominated series, Widow’s Bay, that made me think about modern horror. In both, the horror is allowed into the home. Despite everyone knowing the risks.

Widow’s Bay begins with the entire town warning Mayor Tom Loftis that he shouldn’t bring tourists to Widow’s Bay. The town is cursed and wouldn’t be able to handle the influx of tourists. If at first he didn’t believe it, he then saw it with his own eyes through ghosts and clowns. But still, he brought tourists in.

In the final episode (spoilers incoming), karma caught up to him as the island unleashed a supernatural storm, forcing all tourists into the basement of the town hall. The mayor admits that he laughed it off, and he didn’t listen. He knew, and he still brought tourists. Why? Because he wanted more. For his son. For himself.

He wanted to be the coastal destination. The next Martha’s Vineyard.

Summer is one of the best settings for horror, because it is unexpected. What could go wrong on a bright, sunny day? It’s the seductive pull of wanting more even when there’s something dark lingering underneath the surface. Invisible until the sun goes to bed and it’s time to meet the darkness.

Companion was released in 2025 but didn’t get nearly as much attention as 2026 horror hits Obsession and Backrooms. Yet, it perhaps hits on the horrors of modern society better than the latter two. In Companion, Josh takes his girlfriend Iris (who you soon find out is his companion robot) to a lakehouse with a group of his friends. Things get bloody, and similarly to Widow’s Bay, Josh and his friends knew what they let in the house. He willingly purchased this robot to be his girlfriend. And when it “malfunctioned” he and his friends must pay the price.

I think back to the fears of my youth. The carefully contained summer camp ghosts and legends of Buddy’s island. Even movies like Halloweentown felt so far from our reality. In this magical land of Halloween, the fear is limited to the month of October.

Now it’s year-round. This summer, I’ve seen an explosion of Summerween movie recommendations and bookstore displays. Horror has increased in popularity, so with the typical cycles of capitalism, they’ve found another season for it.

We let our guards down in the summer. Come on, everyone. Join the party. Sit by the campfire. We’re all friends here. Until we’re not.

As a kid, I’d get home from camp and no longer need my flashlight to go to the bathroom. I wouldn’t think about the ghosts Misty or Buddy, because they were now hundreds of miles away. But something like a robot companion, or a town promoting tourism even when it shouldn’t… that isn’t some far-fetched ghost story. It’s real. Glossed over by the beautiful sheen of summer, but still. Even unlimited sunshine turns into Fall. It happens every year.

We all already have technology in our homes. I have a Notes list of the most beautiful travel destinations in the world, including towns like Widow’s Bay. We’re armed with Alexas, and Oura rings, and smart refrigerators. How many clicks away are we from the horror?

In the age of social media, we have all become detectives. Finding our potential partners’ curated personas online, wondering if that would fit in with our real lives.

Laundry list of crazy things I’ve done with social media as enabler:

• Stalked a guy on find my friends to see if he was where he says he was

• Searched through a guy’s Venmo history to see if he’s seeing anyone new (and paying her)

• Gone to their Spotify to see if they have any new shared playlists

You can drive yourself crazy. I’ve driven myself crazy. It’s never been easier to become obsessed.

Gen Z (which I guess I’m on the cusp of) is terrified of being rejected. We quantify everything. Likes, comments, shares. It’s all predictable.

Obsession, a brilliant new horror film, encapsulates many aspects of modern day dating. Sweet, naive Bear has a crush on his childhood friend, Nikki. But when she asks him if he has feelings for her, he denies it, too scared to get rejected. He then makes a wish on a One Wish Willow for Nikki to “love him more than anyone else in the world.” She then flips a switch, and is completely obsessed with Bear, which leads to the horror part of the movie.

In Obsession, Bear has fallen in love with the idea of Nikki. He thinks her love will cure everything. But even when she starts to show signs of the real Nikki behind demon Nikki, he wants to suppress it.

Today, we have access to so many things, that of course, Bear believes he has a right to the One Wish Willow. Whatever wish he wants. Without thinking about the consequences. (Spoiler alert: Bear asks another character to override his wish and the friend then wishes for a billion dollars, which falls from the sky).

The movie hovers around male entitlement and female agency, but I think it also talks about the danger of greed. Thinking that whatever you want should be handed to you. And in dating, this means we’re falling in love with ideas instead of people.

We protect ourselves by selling our own stories, packaged on our social media pages, dating app profiles (see Love is Blind). And when something falls apart, we yearn for what could have been (more in Silver Springs).

But then there’s the obsession. Thinking we know a person because we found a picture of them reading our favorite book online. And one time, they took a trip to our favorite destination.

The show You, based on the book by Caroline Kepnes, is about a similarly “nice guy” who is actually not so nice. Joe Goldberg is a charming guy-next-door with self-deprecating humor and a passion for books. In the first season and titular book, he meets a woman, Beck, at his bookstore, and proceeds to stalk her until she finally acquiesces and goes on a date with him. (Spoilers ahead) Joe gets rid of any obstacle in his way to Beck, by murdering Peach, her over-protective best friend and Benji, her on-again, off-again boyfriend. But he believes that all of this is a good thing. He’s so in love. Throughout the four seasons of the show, Joe justifies all his behavior, fixating on a different woman in each season to obsess over. Everything falls apart when he realizes that the women are not actually the “ideas” he fell for in the first place.

Not every obsessed lover is a villain. In Olivia Rodrigo’s new album, You Seem Pretty Sad for A Girl So In Love, she obsesses over her boyfriend. In “Stupid Song”, based on the French book Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux, she sings about being driven insane by her love.

In “Drop Dead”, she admits that one night she was bored in bed and stalked her lover on the Internet. In “Maggots for Brains,” she admits to being lovesick when her boyfriend is away.

The album was likely supposed to be a love album, but when Louis Partridge and Olivia Rodrigo broke up in December, it became something more real. And timely. Rodrigo was so in love, but in a not so healthy way. Throughout the album, she wrestles with codependency and her own mental health in a supposedly happy relationship. Until she finally admits to herself that his love will “never be the cure.” Something Bear might have realized in Obsession, if it wasn’t a horror movie.

I’ve been there before. So sick with love, not realizing that that wasn’t the good kind of love. Love should feel stable. Not like “a car speeding down a boulevard without a break” in “Stupid Song.”

And when it comes to a dying relationship, it seems to be up to the woman to salvage it. Find the cure. In Taylor Swift’s “You’re Losing Me,” she sings “We thought a cure would come through in time, now I fear it won’t” early in the song, and then the iconic bridge:

How long could we be a sad song

’Til we were too far gone to bring back to life?

I gave you all my best me’s, my endless empathy

And all I did was bleed as I tried to be your bravest soldier

Men may be obsessed in the beginning. But it’s the women who will often hang on until the bitter end.

I wrote a poem a couple days before getting broken up with a few years ago. Here’s a snippet:

One day

Will my eyes shut off

Will they close forever and I’ll never be able to see you again

Blurry lights down the highway as twilight settles in

I should pull over but I keep driving instead

Not wanting to press pause, pull the brakes

So I continue full speed ahead

This isn’t the portrait of a woman so in love. This is someone whose art is telling her that something isn’t right, but she pushes on. Desperate to hang onto something, the idea of a boyfriend.

Because in the absence of love, all it is are ideas and fantasies, of who a person should be, how they should behave. What should happen. When we’re in a relationship, we see the future. Marriage. Kids. House.

And so we reach for that with the closest thing we have, even if it’s not working.

We are a culture limited by our need to control. We are what we eat: our algorithms.

We rate books on Goodreads. Movies on Letterbox’d. Restaurants on Yelp, or Beli. Runs on Strava. We are accustomed to quantification, data analysis. And we can use that data to obsess over, again and again, instead of face our fear.

Rejection. The unknown. Real love that goes against the data.

Because it’s safer there. Falling in love with ideas. People are scary.

I visited Paris twice before. Once in college on a double date trip with my roommate, her boyfriend (now husband) and my ex. We were students pretending to be adults. Piecing together a trip to Versailles, a couple popular Instagram spots. I went back three years ago, this time with my two best friends. It was rushed but electric. The city had changed, or maybe I had.

I ended the trip in Barcelona, where I studied abroad in 2019. Back then, my priorities were all under the umbrella of having fun. We went out clubbing and shopping at Zara, swearing that the European fast fashion was better than it was in the US. I visited again with an ex at the very start of our relationship. We went on our first date in New York in May of 2022. We realized we’d both be in Barcelona in June. Him for a wedding, me with my sister. “Well, if this goes well, I’ll see you there,” he said.

And it did. We ended up seeing each other. He met my sister. I met his friends. The city was alive and romantic. Different, more mature than it had been just a couple years before.

Standing in Barcelona now, I passed the Taco Bell I went to after Spanish class in 2019. Not realizing how silly that looked. Or maybe realizing, but doing it anyways. I had some friends back then that I no longer talk to now. Relationships. We go through partners and friendships, and they sometimes pass us by. But I can still see them in the memories and think, wow, what we had was special.

When you’re traveling alone, you notice everything. Some things start to feel like a sign. Senior year of college, my neighbors loudly blasted a song almost every day. I dubbed it the clown song and asked them about it, and they didn’t know what I was talking about. Years later, I figured out what it was. Bella Ciao, the theme song to Money Heist. A man played the song on an accordion in France near the beginning of my trip. And then a woman played it on the streets in Barcelona like a bookend.

I’ve started reading and watching movies before I visit a place. There was a LONG list of French literature and movies I dug through. I only read one book based in Spain. What struck me about the French art: they were all about reinvention. Les Mis, where a convict vows to reform his life, and becomes a good person. Amelie, where a quiet woman decides to make something of her life, do random acts of kindness for strangers. Ratatouille (LOL, but seriously) where a rat realizes he can be a chef.

Traveling, especially solo, is about the same thing. Reinvention. Long travel forces you to reckon with who you were back home, and that travel changes you. Just like we’ll change multiple times in our lifetime. I stopped writing for four years. But the thing about passions that I’ve realized is—they can often be cyclical. Maybe it’s not fully “reinvention” but borrowing from your childhood self.

France has had such a volatile past, that it makes sense they want to reinvent. People I talked to there discussed how everyone in France loves a protest. They want to disrupt, change things. That’s a spark I’ve been riding since I quit Amazon, even if some days it feels like flying down a rollercoaster with no seat belt.

Reinvention doesn’t have to be this whole big thing. It can be a haircut. Or doing something alone. Changing up your walk home just once to get a new view. I talked to so many people throughout the trip who were visiting Europe because they needed a change. They were tired of their hometown. They’d just gone through a divorce. A life moment happens. Person feels stuck. Moves to Barcelona. Maybe Thailand.

We go through multiple iterations in our lifetimes. It’s beautiful, but also can be heartbreaking. When marriages fall apart because they aren’t the same people they were when they started. But that’s life. Change and change and more change.

I saw Obsession and Backrooms, two low-budget breakout horror movies, back to back when I returned from Europe. (spoilers ahead). Backrooms is about a furniture store manager who discovers a labyrinth of mysterious rooms through the wall of the building. We discover that the backrooms are some iteration of real life. The manager describes it to his therapist as “imagine someone trying to describe a dog when you’ve never seen one before and then asking you to draw it.” And it’s just a little bit off. The further you go into the Backrooms, the more liberties are taken in the spaces. Each “room” or space holds memories. And in the end, some of the characters are stuck there. Because they don’t want to change.

Early into the France trip I watched Ratatouille. I resonated with the part where Remy tells his father: “Change is nature.” His dad asks him where he’s going after an argument about going back home to do what rats do, Remy says, “With luck, forward.”

Change is all around us. It’s in our art, in our DNA. Where are we going?

With luck, forward.

I want to be her. I hate her. I don’t know.

We are constantly reminded of what we aren’t as we scroll on our phones. I am not a published author, but I want to be. I don’t get invited to literary events, but I wish I did. I don’t have a boyfriend, am not planning an extravagant wedding with family and friends. But I see them all over.

But I can mimic the cool lit girl. I can subscribe to the Lit Girl Substack. Post about the books I’m reading. Participate in book clubs. Buy book loving merch.

Caro Claire Burke, a refined lit girl in her own sense, released her debut novel, Yesteryear, a couple months ago. Despite being written by a Lit Girl, the perspective is from that of an embittered tradwife influencer. The novel vacillates between a critique on the American influencer echo chamber and tradwife culture as a whole. The book is satire, so you could tell that Burke is critiquing the tradwife through her main character, Natalie. The lit girl versus the tradwife.

Both clubs have a strong identity and a cult-like following. They can feel exciting to join. The problems start when the lit girl begins to battle the tradwife. And it’s eerily similar to our two-party system. Yet, this time, it’s a game for girls.

It’s never been easier to join a club. No sign ups required. Just a flick of a wrist. All I have to do is watch reading and writing content to see more and more of it. For my phone to know me inside and out, enough to know who I’ll keep watching. Until every idea I thought was unique, is then repeated back to me by someone else. Who reads and writes and travels too. So I go back and mine my own thoughts. Think about the movie I watched before I read the reviews. I need to have a take that the lit girls would approve of.

This is what the rabbit hole looks like. And we’re all stuck in our own version. Our own thoughts echoing around us: but from someone prettier, smarter, more successful. It’s gotten me even more stuck in my own ways, because I know I have an army who would back me up if tested. This is the “groupthink” so many books warn us about. So much validation that we can’t hear an opinion that goes against ours.

It’s packaged seductively. These “girl” identities are as trendy as lip filler and style of jeans. They’ll go in and out. We girlbossed too close to the sun, we swing back to tradwife life. But men don’t have this plethora of options. It can feel fun, like our own secret club. They don’t understand us. We have our own private jokes.

There’s nothing wrong with the clubs inherently. It’s only when the clubs flatten us. Make us more palatable to a world still owned by men. And many of these “girl” activities are tied to our value in society: our looks. Hot girl walk. Hot girl dinner. Hot girl summer. They’re fun and sexy and freeing. But we’re only being watched because it’s hot. Would the other half of the population follow along if we called it ugly girl summer? If we posted selfies accentuating our acne, our stretch marks?

As Charli XCX famously sang during her “brat summer,” sometimes it’s confusing being a girl. Pick a club. Pay the entrance fee. Find the villain. Switch clubs when the trend dies down.

All while being hot, poetic, palatable. Each one of us requiring a “niche” or a “brand” in order to be seen online. We can have our clubs, distracting us from actual world domination. No, leave that to the boys.

My club may be wannabe lit girl, but there’s tons of others you can join. Tradwife. Wellness. Makeup. It’s like college orientation, where every college thought they were quirky when they bragged about their “Quidditch Club.” There’s something for everyone.

It’s like slipping into a character. We are all the protagonist in our own stories. I think about this often when I overhear conversations on the phone, or go through an argument with a friend. Most of the time, we all think we’re right. But there’s countless POVs that see the situation, flipped. So if we’re the main character, it only makes sense that there’s a formidable opponent.

Enter Yesteryear. There are hundreds of people telling the Internet what they think is wrong about Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear. They think that she didn’t properly research Christianity. Or stay true to the 1800s period she was writing in. Others are cheering her on, maybe even taking it a step further, ready to hate-stalk tradwife influencers. But that rage is fueling conversation. And that conversation, that controversy—that sells books.

All of the rage only deeper entrenches us in our own clubs. Other people with similar-looking bedazzled pitchforks.

Women are placed in boxes. People loved Amanda Batula for a couple months when she was recently divorced, empowered. But then she started dating a close friend’s boyfriend. How easy it was for her to go from hot divorcee, to something quite the opposite: a mean girl. A human dart board.

I want to be a lit girl. Caro Claire Burke is a great example. But, when you’re that high up, is it really that fun? Easier to be in the club on the bottom floor. The higher you get, the closer to the sun. You’re shining so bright, you’re no longer human. But the embodiment of the lit girl. So they will throw their rocks, pin their voodoo dolls, thinking that it can’t reach.

I want to be her. I hate her. I don’t know.

Join the club.

“Huh, people must really love exercising here.” They do. But my first day in Aix-en-Provence also happened to coincide with a triathlon.

The whole city shut down for it. No buses. A lot of street closures. If this had been my one day in Aix-en-Provence, I would’ve been pissed. But I was staying eleven days.

So I found a spot in the shade and cheered on the runners as they passed. Sporting small flags from all over the world: Germany, Australia, the United States. A map of all the places I’d like to visit.

Modern day Paid Time Off doesn’t afford us the art of lingering. Vacations when I was working were always rushed, hitting the hot spots instead of getting lost in the side streets. Now I’m here. Eleven days. The whole town shuts down on Sundays and Mondays, too. It doesn’t matter.

European cities are built to wander. Street lanterns affixed to old stone walls, alleyways curving into alleyways, tree-lined avenues covered in bookstores and bars. Cafes and artist studios. Locals smoking a cigarette on their balcony, hanging their laundry out to dry.

The best kept secrets are in the side streets: an artist spray painting an interior wall, a guy walking his cat, bartenders yelling at each other from bar to bar. You won’t see this if you only stick to the tourist attractions.

I’ve spent the last week on the tail end of my Aix-en-Provence visit. Planned to write this Substack right after. But then I had a crazy 36 hours in Barcelona and subsequent 36 in Girona, Spain. I’ve met people from all over Europe: Ireland, Belgium, Austria. The through line of every one of my conversations—throw out the plan you think you have for your life.

Linger. Explore. Challenge yourself. Stay awhile. Have a glass of wine. Maybe two.

The last couple years, I’ve made the beautiful transition away from countless tequila sodas to wine. First Riesling, then Pinot Grigio, now Pinot Noir. Slowly stepping toward the huge glass of red wine I picture Olivia Pope sipping after a long day of saving the world. I’m solo traveling, but I have a book, a journal, and a glass of wine at all times. That’s really all I need.

My first night in Girona, I was convinced I was going to have a quick dinner then go back to the hotel and write. But then I was seated next to two 55-year-old Irishmen at dinner. They were hilarious and full of stories and more Irish history than I could remember from AP Euro in high school. I told them about the horror novel I’m working on, and they gave me book recommendations. James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist, Jonathan Swift and Clive Barker. Convinced they do horror better than we do in the United States. “More beautiful,” they said.

I’d planned to go back, but I’m always going to say yes to experience. It only fuels the writing. Turns the one glass into two.

One glass is a teaser. Like visiting the facade of a museum without going inside. But something about that second glass of wine enables you to connect with who you’re with. What you’re reading. Relax your limbs and just be. But three, three might give you a hangover. I’m not going to pretend I always stick to two, but if I were smart, I would.

Instagram gets the pretty pictures and videos. Substack sees the struggle.

Yes, I’ve gone to vineyards and sipped my two or three or four glasses. Spent time at a beautiful pool with a view of Provence. But I also went on a 7-hour boat ride from hell with screaming children and loud tourists. Couldn’t read my book and relax like I’d wanted to. And then I missed my bus from Aix-en-Provence to Nice. Cried about it. Had to order an expensive Uber.

This trip was my third time in Paris. My second time in Barcelona since studying abroad there. There were still so many fuck ups. And yes, notes I’ll take for the next round. But we’re human and shit happens and it will not always go right.

But there’s beauty in the unplanned. In the people you meet because you couldn’t get into the restaurant you actually wanted to go to. I watched Before Sunrise and Before Sunset: the first set in Vienna, the next Paris. Beautiful, simple romantic movies that depict the art of lingering. Meeting someone and changing a plan. Exploring a city with a new pair of eyes beside you.

One of the Irish men I met got divorced about a year ago. She left him for his gay best friend (? Still don’t fully understand). He got really into cycling. Now he visits towns like Girona with groups of friends from all over Europe. And somehow he knows everyone.

There’s life after the plan is thrown out the window. Most of life is lived in the middle. In the nights spent sipping that second glass of wine.

The garden began with a door-like frame, leading you down a winding path. A hidden camera was camouflaged into the grass. And then you stepped through a garden, the path lined by a pool. Above which, there was a painted sky, with a giant circular cutout in the middle for the door.

This garden exhibit was modeled after The Truman Show. At the end of the movie, the viewer is left wondering what happens when Truman opens the door. What’s next? What’s beyond the moon-shaped door?

In that moment, I felt like Truman. I’ve been performing in the corporate world for years. Originally went to school for writing, but decided that business made more sense. I’ve worked in Buying and Vendor roles, learning a lot. But the truth is: the things that have excited me have all been outside work hours. Writing my last book. Checking my email during the work day, to see if any agents were biting. I was having a rendezvous with my creativity. Circling around the door but never fully committing. Until now. The performance has been stripped off. In the quiet French countryside, I can hear myself think. But my mind isn’t quiet.

Last week, I stayed in Amboise, a small town in the Loire Valley. My Airbnb looked over the cobblestone streets and clocktower, a castle looming in the distance. It looked like the town from Beauty and The Beast, just with a handful of river cruise tourists instead of bakers.

I’d just come back from Paris, where I followed the path of creatives who treated Paris like their playground. I’ve been building the script for Paris since my first visit in 2018. I visited museums and felt like I was being told what to be inspired by. And there’s a beauty in that. Finding your favorite Monet painting. Learning about the hauntings of Notre Dame.

But in the Loire Valley, there wasn’t an inspiration playbook. I had to find it on my own.

The French have perfected the art of going off the grid. For hundreds of years, they’ve been retreating to sophisticated chateaus to escape the city. PTO, before it was a thing. While my time in Paris was spent cafe-hopping, the Loire Valley was for chateau-hopping. I visited palaces with incredible libraries (dubbed the salon), apothecaries, and canopy beds. But my favorite part of all of this was never inside the castle, but what surrounded it. The homes are all perfectly designed, with plaques on the wall explaining who lived where and what portrait was which Louis.

I gravitated toward the gardens. Putting myself in the perspective of these figures from so long ago. Looking out at the same sky. Basking under the same sun.

I love living in New York, but there comes a tipping point. When you need more grass, land, sun and have to book a train or a plane to get out of there. I spent my childhood summers going to camp. No phones. Ipads. Just Mad Libs and books. Being out here in the country has allowed me to see what’s possible for me. Not through the lens of a cosmopolitan city, where everything is measured. Just grass. Trees. Rows and rows of vineyards.

I wish I could truly disconnect. But unfortunately “the grid” is what’s navigating me around France solo. And also what I hope will build my career (social media, Substack).

My algorithm has seen a flurry of trendy posts about going “analog.” The rise in AI has made people want to log off more. Yet, we’re still posting online about how offline we, and you, our audience, should be. I was guilty of this. I started a series called “Scroll Less Create More” intended to show the ways I was creating. But I was talking to a friend about this, and realized it was such a contradiction. We don’t need to tell people what to do when they’re offline, online. And going analog means something different to everyone.

What enables you to strip off the performance? Where do you feel your most real?

For me, it’s solo travel. I’m an extrovert who has only recently discovered the power of being alone. It’s enriched my writing, and set me on the path to more creation.

The only person I’m competitive with is myself. On Day 3 in Amboise, I decided to bike over to Château de Chenonceau. I hadn’t ridden a bike in years, and each time I’ve ridden, I’ve ended up crying. Part pressure of not being good enough, part terror at my body not working the way it should. The guy at the bike shop told me it was 28 miles. I’ve probably never biked more than 10.

“Okay, no problem!” I said.

Exiting the city was immediate PTSD. To trying to bike through Brooklyn with an ex and almost running into all the cars along the way. My heart focused on my wrists, gripped to the bike. Trying to hold on. Not run into anything.

But once I made it out, everything cleared. There were stretches where I’d be alone for 30 minutes. Passing farms and plants and dandelions. Everything moved with the wind, like nature was dancing. Carving a path for me to prove a point, not to whoever I was riding with. But to myself.

I was the girl picked last in every gym class. But now, I can run. I can bike.

I weaved my way through construction, other riders, and backroads. Until I hit the castle. The view felt earned.

My last day in Amboise, I took the train to Chateau Chaumont. I was kind of chateau-ed out, but this one seemed different. The castle grounds host an annual international garden festival. This year’s theme: Cannes Film Festival.

I visited the chateau first, drawn to the library: the perfect place to sit and gab.

Then I made my way over to the garden. The first garden: an illuminated chair floating in the water, against the backdrop of a silent film. The only sound, the water dripping down over the screen like rain. The scene immediately transfixes you. Sets the expectation that you are going to be wowed by the sheer force of storytelling and nature.

And I was.

I meandered through the 24 gardens, each meticulously curated. Each carved path elicited a new emotion.

Every exhibit contained an element of surrealism. Smoke pouring out of water. Floating doors with no discretion between what was inside versus out. I felt like a child again, bumbling through the magic forest, past Alice in Wonderland ephemera, Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf.

Entering the Little Shop of Horrors garden, I was struck by kismet. Two years ago, I’d seen the show for the first time. I loved the metaphor of “don’t feed the plant” for human greed. A culture where we’re always looking for more. The show inspired me to write the novel I’m currently working on. The garden featured a greenhouse, spilled over pots and plants, and a large Audrey II hurling insults in French. Perhaps displaying a future where we didn’t destroy the plants. We just observed them.

Back to Truman.

“What will the main character discover beyond the moon-shaped door?”

My answer: Art, art, and more art.

How we can be inspired by people and nature. I wouldn’t be a writer if I wasn’t also consuming. Movies, books, art exhibits. Conversations with friends. Travel, seeing the world through a different lens. A different language.

Another exhibit featured a garden you couldn’t go into. You had to view it from the window.

The plaque asks: “Are we actors, directors, or simply the viewers of our own gardens?”

Maybe all of them at once.

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For more information on Domaine Chaumont: Garden Show

I was at Shakespeare and Company last week on my third day in Paris. I’d pick up a book, look at the title and the cover, and then turn it over. And then I’d think: what word in the back description made me put the book down?

I’d been to Shakespeare and Company three years ago, with my best friends. I remember really enjoying the experience, but not being able to fully sit in it. Yes, it’s an extremely touristy spot, but I think it’s worth the hype. They don’t allow phones, so you’re not standing in line, waiting to snap a picture of something because you feel like you’re supposed to. And no Goodreads review stalking. You’ve got to trust your gut.

So on this trip, instead of meandering through the shelves, I parked at a plush, navy couch on the second floor. Took out my journal, and watched people come in and out, leaving little messages on a wide mirror with musings from all over the world. The store has quotes all over the walls, and pictures in antique photo frames. It feels a bit haunted, like the air holds all the people who’ve walked in before.

One note said “Dear future me, I will be back in Paris and I will work hard enough to make it happen and travel the world.” I smiled. It was like I’d written a note to myself back in 2023.

Eventually, I got up. Not because I had a ticket to the Louvre, but because I needed to eat.

I watched Midnight in Paris a couple nights before I left. Owen Wilson plays a writer obsessed with the 1920s Paris literary scene. Every night, he leaves his fiancé to go back in time, getting drunk with the Fitzgeralds and Hemingway, among others. Before this movie, I didn’t know about this boom of artists, the Lost Generation, congregating in Paris in the 20s. I became obsessed.

I stayed in Montparnasse, a quiet neighborhood known for the kind of cafes Hemingway used to write in. I cafe crawled my way through Montparnasse and the 6th Arrondissement. Le Select was everything you could hope for a French cafe, an older crowd in the morning, smoking cigarettes and reading the newspaper. The waiter brought me iced tea when I asked for coffee. He was annoyed when I asked him to change it. But I won him over in the end. La Coupole was a boisterous, sprawling cafe also frequented by the likes of Patti Smith, Simone de Beauvoir. I wrote and read there my last night, and came back the next morning for a little more.

I’ve felt like I’ve been living in the past, present, and future at the same time. Learning so much about artists I’d never bothered to care about. Journaling about the present so I can’t forget. And then holding onto the image, that one day, I’ll be a published author, with books in my favorite bookstores.

I visited a couple museums, including Monet’s gorgeous home and garden in Giverny. I remembered seeing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in 2019. I took the picture because everyone else did, but it wasn’t my favorite one. Yet, it was the primary thing living in my camera roll. This time, I roamed through museums with my eyes instead of my mind. Skipping the crowd around Van Gogh’s self portrait in favor of a small bulletin by the gift shop about the Impressionist movement.

A group of artists including Renoir and Monet banded together after being consistently rejected by the Salon jury, who decided what art was selected for viewing. Their paintings were beautiful and full of life, but not adhering to the accuracy that was often rewarded. A critic once referred to them ironically as impressionist painters, driven by the title of a Monet painting. The term stuck.

There have been a couple moments where I’ve laughed at things like this. How something about a group of male artists from the 1800s could somehow reach through to me. Being an artist is hard. I stopped writing altogether freshman year of college to pursue a reasonable business degree. But then the calling came back. And it hasn’t stopped. I queried 100 agents last year, with a couple full requests that didn’t amount to anything. But as an artist, you can’t stop when things don’t go your way. In fact, a lot of the time, people won’t understand. But, like the Impressionists, you can turn that misunderstanding into a movement.

In Paris, I read a lot and wrote a lot. I finished Giovanni’s Room, a beautiful James Baldwin book about a space that can hold love and loss at the same time. I finally got around to Yesteryear. After finishing it (loved), I couldn’t stop thinking about the danger of staying stuck in your own world. We all have our own algorithms feeding us a streamlined message. We’re divided, because our phones are telling us that yes, the world does revolve around us.

Sometimes, it doesn’t. But you keep going anyway.

When I sent out my last book to agents, I was so stuck in my own world, I didn’t realize it wasn’t finished.

I finished the third draft of my current novel in Paris. Sitting in bed with a towel wrapped around my head. I took a selfie to commemorate, thought I’d never put it on the Internet. And I’m happy. Knowing that I’m going on this journey. That my book may or may not get published. But I’ll keep going, traveling, writing, reading. Because it’s what I love to do. I can see the image so clearly: my book in my favorite bookstores. And a cover that makes a reader stop, pick it up, and turn the page.

And I’d do it all again:

Cafes:

• La Coupole

• Le Select

• Cafe de Flor

Shopping:

• Messy Nessy’s Cabinet - obsessed, got my Writers & Readers Club hat there!!!! It’s a super whimsical store and they host reading/writing events

• Artazart - located in Canal St. Martin; you can spend hours in this area it’s a mini Amsterdam by the canal. this store has a lot of amazing art and books!!

• Shakespeare & Company - gotta give her a shoutout

• Klin d’oeil - Tom, who worked there, was the nicest person I met all trip!! really cute selection of stickers, home goods, art

• Merci - another touristy spot but really cool selection

• Babel Concept store - got a super cool fish eye mirror here

+ many more!!!

won’t be my last time in paris :)

My relationship ended, and I was stuck on a series of images. Not of the relationship, but of what could have been. The places we talked about visiting. The concerts we wanted to see. All of those rosy what ifs that felt like memories—gone.

I used to have a plan that I’d date a digital nomad, and we’d both quit our jobs together to travel the world. The image was so clear: driving a car along the coast of New Zealand, visiting Pink Beach in Indonesia. We’d meet people we’d never see again and reference them in conversation like our own secret.

But that didn’t happen.

You could be my Silver Springs…

The song Silver Springs embodies the alluring, dangerous pull of what could have been. A town passed through on a tour bus, containing translucent promises and no harsh truths. I’m drawn to art about things that never happened. Or the anticipation of something before it occurs. Taylor Swift’s Cornelia Street, where she sings “I hope I never lose you…I’ll never walk Cornelia Street again.”

There’s a beautiful nostalgia in what never got to happen. The problem isn’t Silver Springs, but staying stuck in the story even when the next one is waiting for you. I didn’t quit my job with a partner, but on my own. Traveling the world and writing the book I never started when I was in a relationship. I’ll go to the same places, but rewrite the story, lighter without the weight of a partner by my side.

So many women I know (including myself) have been more devastated by a “situationship” than an actual relationship ending. Because the what ifs are endless.

I love a fling because I love its liminality; it will never be anything concrete, and for that reason, it feels fleeting. You’re in it, but you’re already nostalgic for it, because you know it won’t last forever. It’s an almost desperate hope. I’ll drive myself crazy afterward, because he told me I’m unlike anyone he’s ever met and he talked about the places we’d go together. Plane ticket never booked, car with no mileage. He never had the time to mess up, and for that reason, the future looks beautiful to me. I may have only gotten a couple months, but I’ll cling onto all the what ifs to sustain me. After all, I’m a writer. I love building worlds, even if they hurt me.

I find it funny that I can imagine a million different futures with a guy who won’t choose me, but I can’t imagine a future with an unknown partner. Like my brain cruelly wants to rub it in, that something isn’t going to work out. The pain we know is safer than the future we don’t.

I no longer have my comfort what ifs with any ex, but I still find myself going back in time. To the girl sold a story that never got picked up. I live in the present, past, and future at the same time.

Today, I’m flying to France to live there for a month. I time travel back to my France trip three years ago, and then the one four years before that. Each with a different partner by my side or a phone call away. This time, with a different what if.

I quit my job, am flying to Europe, with plans to travel Asia in the Fall. The what ifs are endless, and they’ll stack up like postcards on my wall. Showing off seas and mountains, boats and wide open skies. I’ll hold a special spot for Silver Springs; but it won’t be the only one.

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Extras

Procreate piece I made imagining the town of Silver Springs:

Poem I wrote a year ago, finally found a place for it:

postcards

You will always be stuck in postcards

In glossed over photographs of snippets in time

Memorialized in montages of singing and dancing

drinking and crying

laughing and leaving

Short days that feel like long ones

Throwing everything we could in the back seat

Leaving subtle I miss yous in the form of jokes on the way to the airport

Where you drop me off and say

I hope I’ll see you again

Is there such thing as right person wrong time

And is time actually synonymous with place

The spaces we occupy during moments

And how that fits into the blocks of what could be

Could have beens are always worse than the has beens

Could holds mountains of potential

Aspirational lives in picturesque postcards

At least now I’ll live in my own mind

And not have to occupy it with outlines of us

You’ll live in postcards

In airport drop offs

In goodbyes

And never see you laters

We were living in the era of iMovie, when the feature that let you pick your own background in Photo Booth felt revolutionary.

I grew up building worlds. My early entry into the Internet involved platforms like Webkinz and Millsberry, where we could pick a character, name them, and make a series of choices that led to alternate paths. The word “influencer” not yet in our vernacular, we dreamed of being chefs and CEOs, teachers and writers.

We’ve never had more than we do at this moment. Our technology has gotten smarter at a cost—taking the childhood whimsy of world building and shrinking it into a more manageable package. Clearly defined lanes, difficult to steer from.

Algorithms have evolved to the point where they know us. They know where we like to shop, what music we listen to, the TV shows we like, just based on how long we hover over content. So they feed us more of this, similar shows, similar music, but all within the same realm. Never exposing us to something too out there.

One of my favorite childhood memories was working at a simulated small town called Biztown when I was in middle school. I had a job at UPS, made up a little jingle, and delivered people’s packages. The magic of the experience was little people acting out big kid things. They handed us the keys to the city, and we got to decide what to do from there.

I’ve found myself gravitating more toward that childhood whimsy. Finding things that pique my interest, and then going down that rabbit hole on my own. Curating my own taste with technology by my side, but never at the forefront.

And I’m a savant for reviews. I’ll still use them for restaurants. I don’t want to leave getting food poisoning up to chance. But something struck me when I posted a satirical video commenting on how I look up every Goodreads review when I’m at the bookstore. Someone commented: “But you might end up loving it you never know till you try.”

Simple, sweet, maybe a tad childish. But true.

You never know until you try. Why would I rely on an average rating, when I’m my own unique person, with my own taste? I’ve since found a better marker to be reading the first couple pages. Figuring out if that author has a way of reeling me in with their voice.

When I was writing my last book, about an artist unknowingly moving through multiple realities, I got asked “are you an artist? The way you describe art feels so real.”

And I thought, “I’m not. But I used to love it.”

So there goes a winding path, experimenting with paints, collage, markers, until I found a tidy way to build my worlds: on my iPad through Procreate. It doesn’t leave a mess, and it’s portable. I can pack it in my suitcase when I venture to France for a month.

I feel like I’m in a storybook. I just quit my job, and now I’m listening to myself. What are the things I like to do? What do I not like? I’m trespassing deeper and deeper into the woods, into the little house in the mountains. Remembering the stories I loved to read and write as a child, and adapting them into the themes I care about today.

I’m pushing myself to build my own world, without letting someone else build it for me.

I’ve got a ticket to France, a couple loose plans to see Monet’s gardens, and the rest I’ll find out when I get there.

I don’t think the trail ever stops, that we’ll ever actually reach the house that contains all the secrets to life, all our hopes and dreams. But it’s fun pushing past the fear of poison ivy. Going in.

Now it’s April and I’ve done what I’ve said I’d do. Committed to the bit that is quitting my stable 9-to-5 corporate job for a life with blank spaces.

I’m drawn to bright colors. I’ve always been scared of the dark, requiring a nightlight in my bedroom as a kid that transitioned into keeping the bathroom door light on as an adult. Night is the time of the day that forces you to think without distraction. No schedule, little hobbies to fill the time. It’s scary, being alone with your thoughts, and then somehow trying to turn them off to sleep.

I didn’t mean to write a horror book. My last novel was speculative fiction, part sci-fi. Definitely not scary. But this idea came to me after seeing Little Shop of Horrors, thinking about the brilliant metaphor of greed, consumption, and feeding the plant. Somehow that concept turned into a pack of tarot cards that a reality star inherited, initiating a string of missing people in exchange for more fame and power.

What I love about horror is that, like that feeling I get while swimming, it expands your mind. Pushes you to think past the traditional boxes you may fit into on land. It’s surreal and can be silly, but in some ways, it’s realer than most other fiction. Learning how to feel fear and not run from it but turn it into art instead.

I’m late to the horror game, but I’ve been slowly dipping my toes. I’m still a scaredy cat, so I avoid clowns and ghosts and anything I know will stay in my nightmares for months. I don’t have time for that. In my previous job as a Toys buyer, each category had a brand representative. The representatives for the horror toys always wore all black, had straight down bangs, and really embodied the goth archetype.

That’s not me. But it can be, too.

I’m sitting in a horror bookstore that opened in Brooklyn, called The Twisted Spine. Drinking coffee out of a skeleton glass. I’m wearing the most color out of anyone here: my purple and blue mountain jacket with bright pink tennis shoes. Sitting by the fireplace, looking at all the books on the walls. So many of which I have read, because they’re not all scary; they just make you think without the distractions. Tony Morrison’s Beloved sits next to Big Swiss. Stepford Wives next to Patricia Lockwood’s Nobody Is Talking About This.

I was here yesterday, too, because they’re doing this Bookstore Crawl in Brooklyn and I wanted a stamp. I bought the screenplay of Get Out. It’s brilliant horror and the book was compact. The first thing I saw: Jordan Peele was inspired by Iris Levin, who wrote Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby. Reading that, and thinking about how I read those early on in my horror journey, it made me feel like I was doing something right. Following the path of those who came before me, taking some of the magic and turning it into my own.

Fear is universal. We’re all scared of something. I’m scared of the dark, oh, and clowns and ghosts. Terrified of heights. Yet, I still willingly jumped out of a plane in 2019. Because fear can be intoxicating, and complacency can keep you stuck.

I run out of the shower to get my thoughts onto paper. This summer, I’ll be staying in places with pools and oceans nearby. Finding myself somewhere idyllic, yet somehow eerie. Dramatic irony of a girl who doesn’t know exactly what’s next. Isn’t that scary?

I quit my job, and now I’m searching for more water.

To me:

It’s holding your past, present, and future all at the same time. It’s swaying on the subway to the music in your earbuds. It’s also ripping them out and listening, truly listening to the noises. Conversations, laughter, liquor talking. Waiting in lines to get into the wrong bars. Nights that end up subpar which is okay, because you know you’ll have more of them. It’s a blend of cinema, and reality. The pictures look better in the moment. Not so much the next day. It’s trying on accents and identities, pretending to be the person you want to be and the person you’d never get to. Karaoke with friends, karaoke with strangers. Uber shares and walks through the park. Unpacking what a place looks like at midnight, a different kind of crowd. Expanding your heart because you love the city so much and the people around you. Crying when things don’t go your way and cringing about it in the morning. Befriending bartenders, screaming the lyrics to Defying Gravity while standing up on an elevated surface, like you never left college. But you did. Doesn’t mean you have to grow up, not fully. It’s feeling like you want more. To keep going, keep playing, stay here forever. Yet, you know it can’t last forever. This place, with these exact people, in this snapshot in time. Bittersweet and cruel. Cherish it while you can. The naivety of your younger self, even though you know you still don’t know it all. Meeting a guy out and convincing yourself you’re soulmates. You’ll never see him again. Pregames that shift into wine nights. Our drink orders evolve, so do our outfits. Laughter. So much laughter. Jokes and nostalgia, memories birthed in bars by the jukebox. Pretending you know how to play pool so you can talk to strangers. We open tabs and close them. Dance to songs we’ve known for years, discover new music, too. Making friends in the bathroom and writing messages on the walls. Speakeasies with locks and keys and bathtubs, hidden in the subway, behind a barber shop. A maze of a city, a game on a board. It won’t be like this forever. That fragile magic of a fleeting moment you’ll tell your kids about. A night out in New York.

Books that feel like a night out in New York:

A Visit From The Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan - for the rush

Wild West Village, Lola Kirke - for the fun

First Love, Lilly Dancyger - for the friendship

Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susan - for the promise

I’ve never been detail-oriented. I like to go, move, do and not pause to be patient. Sometimes, I don’t even want to find my own mistakes. I assume that I did a pretty good job and move forward without turning around.

Inspiration leaps out to me, through neon signs, sidewalk chalk, graffiti. In December, on my trip to Japan, I convinced myself I needed to learn to sew. The clothes there were so loved, with layers and buttons and special details I’d never before seen. I did the easy part: signed up for a four-week sewing class in Brooklyn. Then I had to have a talk with myself: I wouldn’t impulsively buy a sewing machine I’d never use. I’d go to the class, see if I liked it, and then decide if I wanted it to be part of my life.

The class was great. I sewed a pair of funky pants, making many mistakes along the way. With sewing, every part of your machine has to be set up properly to get the intended result. So for me, an aggressively Type B, Type A person, this was difficult. I let myself fuck up, laughed about it, and tried to burn the proper steps in my brain.

Sewing, like other art mediums, unlocked a new way of seeing the world. Now, I see an intricately made dress at the store, and I’ll think, wow, a lot went into this. It makes you appreciate the art when it’s good, because so many things have to go wrong before it can be that good.

One of the best parts was not being on my phone. I love any situation that forces me to lock my phone away. This past winter in the Philippines, we had a couple day stretch where we had no service. Today, I’m going to the spa, and I can’t wait to lock my phone away. Yet, I can’t set this boundary for myself. It’s too easy to pick up. Too hard to put away.

The class was over, and I made the more rational decision of buying a sewing machine. It came in the mail a couple days later, and it was bigger than I expected. It sat in a cardboard Amazon box for weeks, teasing me. Do you really think you’re going to open me? Is this going to be another hobby you quit before you can even begin?

I reminded myself: You can do hard things. Come on. It’s just a box. Just a machine. That I’d already learned how to use!

So I cut it open, watching the foreign tools slip out of the packaging. The machine was similar to the one I’d used in class, but there were more options. Too many options.

Come on. Push through.

I opened the manual and realized that I was overcomplicating this. It was easy to set up. I had the tools; I just had to use them.

Hand crafts and machines have become so daunting to me, perhaps because we’re so accustomed to having all the answers on our sweet little phones. It’s become harder and harder to practice patience with our waning attention spans. To fuck up. Be bad at things.

I made a small makeup pouch for my first product. I had to piece together inner and outer fabric and learn what interface fusing is (extra lining that you iron onto the fabric). I had to take out my IRON which I haven’t used in years.

And I messed up along the way. I sewed the outer pretty sides together once, maybe twice. Figured out that I had a seam ripper, where I could cut through the seam I just made, try again. There were more bumps. Sewing a zipper is difficult; my thread kept coming undone, and I had to thread my needle again and again and again. Which only taught me more about the process, made it faster each time I messed up.

My finished makeup bag has holes in it. There’s one corner I didn’t bunch up the right way. It’s not perfect, not even close, and that’s okay. I’ve already made it clear I’m not a perfectionist, but it’s not about that.

This year, I decided to focus on improvement.

I’ve been a good student my whole life. When I’m not good at something, I back away. Or even when it’s not perfect, I keep going, and don’t look back. But that’s not a healthy habit to develop. You’ll never improve if you don’t learn. If you don’t push yourself to do the hard things, even if they seem silly to other people. Opening a sewing machine shouldn’t be so daunting, but for me, it was. A reminder of all the things I’d tried and quit.

You’ve got this. Push through.

I’m not going to become an expert seamstress overnight. I’ll probably never be an expert at any one thing, because I love so many things too much. But I can try to be someone who pushes herself. De-mystifies things that shouldn’t be so scary.

I’ll open the box.

Re-thread the needle.

Keep sewing.

Reality TV is a cultural snapshot of what’s going on in society. People are fed up with modern dating. It’s been completely gamified, all based on pictures and prompts. The pictures might be edited. Prompts perhaps written by Chat GPT. Our profiles don’t capture language, someone’s voice, the nuance of how they speak. It’s all a game of hot or not. Love Is Blind is testing this, but exposing other problems in its wake. Dating is no longer just about love, but marketing, too.

Love is Blind starts in the pods. Contestants go on dates to single out their strongest connections. Talking to a wall, they discuss family, lifestyle, hopes and dreams. It feels like the conversation you’d have at a sleepover as a kid. Do you believe in God? If you could be anything in the world, what would you be? That kind of conversation is exciting, limitless. Anything feels possible with the lights off and the clock ticking past midnight. But most of it is fantasy.

I don’t really think Love is Blind is about love, but connection. Building on shared interests and dreams rather than shared experiences. When I think back to past relationships, the best dates were always the ones where we were doing something together. Playing putt putt or going to comedy show. Bring your partner out in public and see how they react.

On the show, in those late-night, lights-off kind of conversations, we say things we can’t quite be beholden to. Oftentimes, contestants will say “we talked about things I never told anyone.” Which has me thinking… are these deep wall conversations really more about loving yourself and the story you’ve shaped? It seems like the deeper contestants go with someone, the more they like them. It doesn’t prove compatibility, but vulnerability, which is a good thing. But…a strong relationship should have more than that.

This season, Chris, a salesman, presented a completely different picture to his two strongest connections. One women got alpha male provider Chris, and the other saw a more reserved, sensitive side. He catered to what each of them wanted to hear. All words, no action.

We have all become experts at storytelling. Not just on Love Is Blind. Our dating profiles are packaged stories in a world that commodifies dating. Our Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook accounts are all curated for the audience we have and the audience we want. Dating can feel like a race, and it’s common that a lot of us have been on a lot of dates. And so we’ve rehearsed the story. Memorized our opening pitch. We each have our own hero arc, alluded to on dates and blasted all over social media.

What happens when we go off script?

The standout drama of the season centered around the aforementioned Chris, and Jess, a doctor. Chris was attracted to his other connection from the pods, Bri, once seeing her, and not attracted to Jess, his fiancé. The penultimate sequence showed Chris explaining that he wanted someone who “did pilates” and expected, without saying it, her to have a different body. And this was clearly producer-baited. He genuinely thought what he was saying was fair. And I’m not sympathizing with him, but the public does love to find a villain and rip them to shreds. It’s not healthy. It becomes like a fun game for people, but more on that in future Substacks.

Jess was rightfully upset. She never presented as someone who did pilates every day. She’s a doctor. She’s busy!

So there’s the story each person sells about themselves, and then there’s the story that people make up about their partners. When you’re falling in love, you can excuse things, believe things about people that they never claimed, like that she did Pilates. Similar thing happened with Alex and Ashley. He couldn’t keep his story straight on his nomadic lifestyle and whether or not he was able to settle down somewhere. In the pods, she probably convinced herself she was okay with that. But she was never going to be. He also wasn’t attracted to her, and couldn’t force that. (Spoiler: the men never can)

I still try to be optimistic about dating. I don’t think it’s a lost cause, and we shouldn’t give all the power to the men. But, in a world of swiping, where more women than men are going to single events, on the dating apps, going to college, do men maybe unjustly feel like they have an abundance of options? We women are curating our stories and aesthetics online. Plastic surgery, Ozempic, etc.

You cannot love someone if there’s something about them you want to change. Something big. You can’t make someone work out if they don’t like doing that. In the beautiful love story this season between Vic and Christine, they both showed up as themselves. And they loved each other for allllllll of it.

Back in the real world, the stories told in the pods start to disintegrate. Jealousy and insecurities come out that didn’t exist when there was nothing but you and the wall. Men often get into trouble for staying out too late and partying. They probably didn’t fantasize about clubbing until 3 AM with their potential fiancé.

And don’t get me wrong. I think the experiment can work. The show has a good amount of couples still married. But those people, they seem to see beyond the stories and into the soul. Who a person is at their core, without caring about trivial things. Because if you love someone for their soul, who they really are, the story isn’t one predetermined but evolving.

We watch Love Is Blind because it’s human. Real people participating in an absurd social experiment and often stumbling in the process. Is love blind? I think the show has proven it’s not. But it is an interesting study in humanity, shattering the illusion that we are the same as the stories we tell about ourselves.

Now, it’s 2026 and I’m doing something similar. Texting my friends about the latest Traitors episode, where all of my reality TV characters converge for an extravagant game of Mafia. The Traitors is my reward for my dedication to the Bravo and Survivor cinematic universes. I get to see Yam Yam dramatically accuse Lisa Rinna of murder. Ciara Miller becoming best friends with Boston Rob.

Survivor 50 premieres this week, and it got me thinking about why we love seeing our favorite characters (both fictional and reality) play, compete, interact with each other. Sometimes, it’s to see the best compete against the best, like in the NBA All Star Game or Survivor: Winners at War. But often, it’s just about taking familiar people and dropping them in a new environment. We know them. We just don’t know what’s going to happen when their worlds collide.

A good narrative TV crossover typically includes an episode from each origin show’s POV. Last year, I watched the heartwarming Abbott Elementary teachers greet the gang from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The Abbott episode is heartwarming and weirder than usual, though the episode is still tied with a happy ending. The Sunny episode, like always, is vulgar and full of debauchery, just this time in a school setting.

Reality TV has its own version of perspective in the infamous confessional. In a confessional, a reality star is seated against a blank canvas and asked questions by a producer. What do you think of so and so? How do you feel about the skinny-dipping incident? The questions are edited out, so just the answers remained. Many of the soundbites later ridiculed online were all spawned by producers’ seemingly innocuous questions.

The confessional elevates the typical character experience. We don’t just see the world through the lens of a designated protagonist; we see everything. We know every character’s stated motivations, hopes and dreams. Emotions are heightened when producers are riling you up, preparing you for a meme-able explosion.

On The Traitors, one of my favorite parts of the show is when the murdered contestant learns who the Traitors are. This involves character, hidden information, and a big reveal: essential elements of storytelling. We, the viewer, are privy to information that most of the castle doesn’t know. We get to watch the innocent contestants, labeled the faithfuls, guess who the murderer is; and fail, win, and deceive, together.

The brain craves comfort. That’s why we all have a favorite book, TV show, movie that we can lean on when nothing else sounds appetizing. It’s called the mere exposure effect: people like things simply because they’re familiar with them.

So what is better for our comfort-craving brains than all of our favorite characters getting together? Breaking bread. Good or bad, we’ve developed parasocial relationships with them. I text about reality stars like I’d talk about my friends’ problems. Or even my own.

Maybe because, we see them sometimes as more than friends but extensions of ourselves.

Characters are how we process the world and learn to empathize. In one study, researchers asked participants questions based about themselves, Game of Thrones characters, and their friends. Researchers found that frequent story consumers activate the same part of the brain when thinking about fictional characters as they do when thinking about themselves. Not their friends.

But there’s something different about Reality TV characters. Taking a person, once unknown, and catapulting them to fame just because they were authentically themselves.

I used to be an avid fan of The Bachelor. But in recent years, the script has gotten boring. People go on to be influencers, and no one is crazy enough to think they really have a shot at love. That’s what makes Survivor so endearing: the contestants are crazy enough to starve on an island for the chance to win one million dollars. Sure, some contestants see moderate post-show success. But it’s not a guaranteed deal.

The conversations are realer. The revelations rawer. It’s harder to fake it when you’re surviving on rice for twenty days. Yet still, there is the edit. Storytelling producers decide your fate; if you’re meant to be loved or loathed. Though it doesn’t always work out as planned.

In my reality TV foray, I want real, passionate characters working toward a goal.

Survivor 50 is my reward for going back through and finishing half of the show’s 49 prior seasons. In a competition show, it’s not just about the thrill of watching characters interact. They’re competing. You root for people like you would a team. But instead of being introduced to fresh faces, for Season 50, it’s a reunion from Survivor past.

Reality TV, while sometimes scripted, is realer than a lot of what we see online. It helps us form connection, join fandoms, and find solace in characters who maybe remind us a little of ourselves.

For Survivor 50, the stakes are higher than ever (I’m even using a famous TV hyperbole). New era contestants will face off against old. Survivor 50 is labeled In the Hands of the Fans. This season, key game elements were voted on by the fans. For the first time, we’re not just watching. We’re reaching through the screen and playing the game with the characters we’ve spent years rooting for. That game element increases our reward on investment even more.

Another polarizing Season 50 twist: celebrities like Jimmy Fallon and Mr. Beast make appearances throughout the game. We’ll see if these changes work. But one thing is clear: Survivor 50 is offering us a little unpredictability amid a cast of comfort.

Bridget Jones Diary opens up with 32-year-old Bridget’s mother trying to set her up with a man. She’s rejected, labeled a spinster by a young Colin Firth, and goes home to sing “All By Myself.” Pause.

This scene is exactly what all women are taught to fear. Being over the age of thirty and all by yourself. Sad, pathetic, alone.

When it comes to being single, we’re given a choice: choose to focus on “yourself” or focus on dating. And if you do neither, you are like Bridget Jones, sad and lonely and drinking wine, singing to yourself in your apartment. (As I type this, I realize this is me.)

The innocuous “Are you dating?” question prompts a sort of straight-A student behavior in me. I add up the dates I’ve been on and try to parse out any meaningful information that might prove I’m getting closer to finding a partner.

And if I haven’t been dating much, I still want to prove that I’m doing something.

So, as 21st century women, what are we doing with our time?

In the context of Lena Dunham’s Girls, I’d put Hannah Horvath as the Tortured Poet, Jessa as the Girl with the Roster, and Shosh as Miss Independent. Marnie famously exists where no woman wants to be; she’s for the male gaze.

All roads must eventually lead to a lover. That’s what the books, movies, music tell us. We look at being single as a precursor to being coupled, instead of celebrating being single without a deadline associated with it.

Dating is such a subjective experience, yet there is countless dating advice out there on the Internet, along with societal pressures like: You have to find someone by the age of thirty. Don’t sleep with anyone before the third date.

The numerology in the discussion inevitably promotes the scarcity mindset. Modern technology has largely increased the age limit where it’s socially acceptable to be single, but the dating apps have increasingly gamified the dating scene.

Men don’t have the same homework when they’re single. The single male archetype in pop culture is either fulfilled by the free-loving bachelor or the sad widow. They get to have fun in buddy comedies, superhero movies, or playing endearing unconventional leads like the shrink in Shrinking. Women, what do we get? To fall in love. Most modern movies still fail the Bechdel test, and only feature women when they’re talking about men. Men are allowed to be, and women are allowed to “be” in relation to how close they are to locking down a man.

Life isn’t a board game, and there isn’t one way to get to the end. I’m grateful for being single and the flexibility it allows me, but I recognize that there are other amazing paths I may take. My friends in relationships and marriages are so happy, and I love that they feel so loved and connected to a person. There isn’t one correct way to do a marriage, either, or most people would probably fail.

Society likes to place us into boxes, because life is messy and boxes are neat and contained. For now, I’m single. One day, I may not be. And I’ll continue to vacillate between boxes, flattening them, because they’re in my way.

In a world of Instagram and Facebook and a million opinions flying through your feed at any moment, it can feel noisy. Chaotic. Like a never-ending video game trying to escape the villains who just can’t seem to die.

That might be why we’ve seen a rise in “eras.”

Looking at life episodically can help us organize some of the chaos. A beautiful yet terrifying aspect of the Internet is the ability to catalog your life. It can be the cause of mass cancellation, but it can also be a love letter: to life, to your past self. This year, I created a creative (lots of creates) Instagram and Substack to sort of serialize my creative journey. I’m excited to one day look back at all of this and think, oh my god, I really thought I knew everything.

In 2025, I spent a lot of time consuming and a lot producing as well, drawing inspiration from music, TV, books. I’m trying to work on slowing down. Or my version of slow. Because you can’t enjoy all the things you consume if you’re rushing through them.

So this recap isn’t meant to be a race, but more of a record of what shaped my year.

EXPERIENCES

Broadway + Off

The theme was, as is most of the time, female rage.

Heathers : Saw this in London and it scared me and I had to walk out halfway through hehe, but LOVED the New York production!

All Nighter : Play about female friendship in college; I went on opening night, really liked it.

John Proctor is the Villain : All the flowers to Sadie Sink for this performance and carrying the acting in Stranger Things Season 5.

Honorable mention to Teeth, which I saw in 2024, but it LIVES in my brain, very much Heathers vibes but even more out there, LOVED. They gave out ponchos to the first few rows, and it was hilarious.

I also saw Mamma Mia, which was fun, and Last Five Years, which was good, but cool to see both, as I’ve been listening to their soundtracks forever and I love the structure of Last Five Years.

Concerts

Pop Girlies, always. I went to see Sabrina and Lorde at MSG and Beyonce at MetLife. I’ve been wanting to see Lorde since high school, so it was definitely a full circle moment. I felt a lot more connected to Virgin after the concert. I went by myself and drank two canned wines.. and it was an experience.

Mt. Joy - Ok, not a pop girly, mostly men, but have a lot of girl name song titles, including Julia, which was incredible to see live. I’ve always loved their song Lucy, but didn’t know the meaning. This was a piece of art that spoke to me without understanding it, and when they spoke about their friend Lucy and the true meaning, it began to mean 10x more.

Travel

• Started the year in THAILAND!! I did a Contiki trip at the end of 2024 into early January 2025. It was my first time out of the country essentially by myself, and I met a lot of cool people on the trip. I loved Thailand and hope to go back soon.

Prettiest view I’ve ever seen

• Had some Hudson Valley moments in Beacon, Hudson, Cold Springs. I love how close New York is to these quiet, quaint towns.

• I went to Martha’s Vineyard this summer and LOVED it. Nautical but a lot more accessible than Nantucket. Also went back to Aspen and loved.

• Ended the year back in Asia in Japan and then the Philippines. Japan’s food somehow exceeded expectations. I went to the Philippines without really knowing anything, and it was a beautiful country with amazing people.

ART I ENJOYED

Movies

Before this year, I’d decided that movies were for couples and because I was single, it made a lot of sense that I didn’t watch movies. I also felt that getting hit with an entire story arc in one sitting rather than through multiple, like in TV shows, could be overwhelming. But I battled through it, and can confidently say I am now a movie girl, and still single.

I got into horror, maybe light horror, this year, which is pretty funny, because I’m scared of everything.

Horror favorites (most did not come out in 2025): Sinners, Blink Twice, It’s What’s Inside, Ready or Not - the sequel comes out this year and looks super campy but I’m excited???

I saw Oh Hi and Die My Love in theaters and really enjoyed both. I finally got around to watching Soul, and it may or may not have made me question and re-direct all my life choices. The power of Pixar.

Full transparency: I tagged the Letterboxd even though I really am a Rotten Tomatoes girl.. should I make the switch?

TV Shows

Somehow, I feel accomplished when I finish a mini series. Maybe that’s why there’s so many mini series now, because it’s achievable. Just this week, I’ve ripped through His and Hers and The Girlfriend. Oh, and last week, Heated Rivalry obviously.

In 2025, I loved The Studio, Paradise and its soundtrack. Bad Sisters, Me and Mrs. Smith as a kind of offshoot to the movie. One of my highlights of the year: Overcompensating and my introduction to Benito Skinner and Mary Beth Barone. It re-invigorated my love for The Black Parade as the ultimate movie moment song.

Per my horror streak, I read Haunting of Hill House, which is one of the first books to truly terrify me. Then, I watched the Netflix show, which was even more haunting and just as beautiful even with an extremely different plot.

And it wouldn’t be a well-rounded culture experience without my reality TV. Each year, I tackle a new Housewives series, and in 2025, I was introduced to Nene Leakes and the Real Housewives of Atlanta.

Books

I read so many amazing books this year!! Here are a few that stood out:

I cannot believe this was my first year reading Lily King. Will now read anything she writes. Loved Writers & Lovers and her 2025 release Heart the Lover.

A lot of re-reads this year and a lot of classics. Finally tackled Rebecca, Beloved, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Bell Jar, One Hundred Years of Solitude. I am also now an Iris Levin stan, having read Rosemary’s Baby and Stepford Wives. Confused how a man can write such feminist work??? But I’m sure there are plenty of think pieces that say otherwise.

I read Rouge, my third Mona Awad book, and it might be my favorite of hers. Jason Mott came out with People Like Us, which was incredible.

John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed was beautiful and brought me back to my John Green-filled childhood. The book introduced me to this song, now one of my favorites.

And my dear personal friend (I spotted him on the street two years ago) Paul Mescal recommended Dept of Speculation and I immediately bought and loved it :)

Albums

Haim’s I quit might be my favorite album of 2025 (I realize I keep saying “might” lol - I have commitment issues with favorites). I listened to this on my solo trip to Hudson and felt so young and free and summer.

Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving for dancing around the kitchen, Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend for dancing in the living room, and Conan Gray’s Wishbone for crying in bed. And we will never say no to a woman scored: epic album, West End Girl, from Lily Allen.

I’m super super late to the Fleetwood Mac obsession but I keep discovering their music and it is perfection. I also got into Father John Misty in 2025 and am having a good time.

A LITTLE BIT OF ME

A lot about the art that made my year, but I had some big moves on my own, too. I got into running, started going to writing events and workshops. I moved to Brooklyn, took up painting, decided to stick to digital art to start. I was so nervous to start this Substack and Instagram, but I did it. Pressed post. Put myself out there.

It wasn’t all perfect. I got 100 rejections on a book I thought could make me a debut author. Couldn’t open a wine bottle to save my life and got at least 5 corks stuck in 5 bottles, so my birthday gift from my friends was an electronic wine opener. A couple years ago, they gave me a meat thermometer. Clearly, they’re trying to tell me something.

But it has all lead to a better sense of who I am and who I want to be. I’m inspired by people and stories and am looking forward to using this platform in 2026 for well, all of the above. Because these albums and books, travel experiences and concerts, they’re all stories. And that’s the fun part. Not the snippets we share on social media, but the stories behind them.

This was a lot. If you got to the end of this, congratulations. It’s definitely just my mom and dad. Hey guys.

One of my favorite quotes (whose owner I can’t find the name of, which I think is pretty poetic) is this: I am a museum of everything I’ve ever loved. And adding onto that, everyone I’ve ever loved, too. Here’s hoping 2026 continues with good people, books, experiences.

Memory lane or whiplash? Home can feel like both. A romantic haze of girl to woman. Or the mistakes and embarrassing moments you hope to leave behind, buried somewhere in your parents’ attic.

Home compels a montage of memories. Nights spent driving around looking for unfinished houses. Dresses and dances, class schedules and uniforms. The hometown bars I couldn’t wait to access, but now I’ve outgrown.

In the novel I’m drafting, about 75% through the book, the main character goes home to Louisiana to face the past she’d been running from. It’s a classic benchmark in storytelling, labeled “The Dark Night of the Soul” in Save the Cat. The Dark Night of the Soul is the story beat where the main character is allowed to sulk. Things seem bleak, and they’re forced to reckon with themselves.

For me, this moment felt like the perfect time for my protagonist to go home to remember who she is and what she cares about.

When I was home for Thanksgiving, I found a couple old journals and a picture book I’d made of some mermaids. It reminded me that I’ve always loved creating, writing. It’s always been a dream, even if it felt dormant for some time.

Oftentimes, going home comes at the end of the movie. Art likes to follow the popular hero’s journey model. The hero is called to action and goes on a journey just to return home, but better. I want to flip the script here. Think about how you can actually learn the lesson at home rather than out in the “special world.”

Home is identity. It’s the question people might ask after “what’s your name.” Where are you from? And what can I discern about you based on that knowledge?

We don’t get to choose our name, or where we’re from. But we do get to choose how we package it to shape our identity.

And this is seen in the silliest of places: Reality dating shows. Making it to hometowns on the Bachelor is a big deal. The Bachelor or Bachelorette meets four contestants’ families, sees childhood photos, visits their favorite spots, and somehow doesn’t fall in love with every single one of them? And then there’s Love is Blind, where you get to go back home and show your friends and family the person you’re going to marry.

Showing someone your home, the part of you that was once little and naive, that’s vulnerability.

In two of the best romance films, Sweet Home Alabama, and The Notebook, a trip home makes them re-evaluate their decisions and ultimately (spoiler alert) remember why their first love should be their last, too. It’s a beautiful idea that something right for you when you were young can be right for you again. And maybe it’s not love. For me, writing. Taking a break through college just to return when I’m ready.

Who does emotional realizations like Disney? Recently, I watched Soul, and it made me think about the meaning of life. It pretends to be a kids movie. It’s for all of us.

For me, The Lion King is the hero’s journey blueprint. Amazing score, beautiful animation, great songs. And the story is so classic, yet so beautiful against the iconic African backdrop.

Simba completes the hero’s journey after fleeing his home, Pride Rock. He was running away from the truth, a monumental moment that shaped him. It took him some searching, mentors, and Hakuna Matata to get him back to where he came from.

including a clip from the end of the movie because it’s just soooo good

Leaving home, even if for a brief vacation, expands our world view. I used to think that eight stories in Memphis was a super tall building. Now, I live in New York, in a sub-ten story apartment that feels small. We see things, out there in that special world, that can make us appreciate more things about home.

Some of us stay home and some of us leave, thinking we can run away from something that will always be a part of us. But there will always be a Poplar Avenue, reminding you of the person you once were. Home is part of our story, and even though being born in our hometown wasn’t our choice, our story is up to us. When someone asks you, “What was growing up in ____ like?” what will you say?