The hope & possibility of summer, shell mania, summer reading, GOODBYE TIL SEPT... 🐚🦐🦪🍋🌀
I believe deeply in “summer” as an agent of change and I wholeheartedly embrace its ability to “transform” anything and anyone.
It’s that time of year— every May or June I start to get a little bajiggity about certain things, faces, people, platforms. Essentially, I become crotchety. I exceed my quota of tolerance for the year.
It’s begun already, even earlier this year than usual. It usually looks something like:
I get increasingly fed up with people’s self promotion: relentlessly cross-posting their Beehiiv or Substack on Twitter or LinkedIn, announcing their fifth podcast, posting TikTok reaction videos of the newest non-alcoholic beverage (soda…) or meandering reflection on their own personal brand… I get it, I participate in many of these platforms and can appreciate that their success has impact on one’s livelihood, immediate or not, but when everyone becomes a creator, peace and fucking quiet is hard to come by…
Even less tolerance than usual for “DTC bros” or the oft-celebrated male thought leaders of the industry I work in (commerce), a relentless yearning to tell them that no one cares.
When someone wants my time or help with something, my reaction is exasperation or exhaustion instead of graciousness or excitement.
Things that don’t bother me
the rest ofmost ofsome of the year about living in Brooklyn— like taking my puppy for a walk and having her almost step on a broken syringe just outside our front door— suddenly enrage me and make me wonder why the hell anyone would ever spend this much to live like this.
This is all what tells me it is time to pack up my life and move to the beach for the summer, which is something I have been doing every summer since 2022, when I had to let go of Goldune’s team, burn down my business, and reimagine everything from scratch. I rented my place out (the closest I could get to any “income”) and found a small bungalow to live in on the beach. I’ve written at great length about how that summer crystallized everything and transformed who I am as a person. (See below!)
I believe deeply in “summer” as an agent of change and I wholeheartedly embrace its ability to “transform” anything and anyone… as Taylor Swift says, to live for the hope of it all…1
I love the hope and possibility that lingers at the start of every summer. I think it sits in the air until mid-July, even. In contrast, I love the way September feels like the end of camp, you count your days left at the beach, know that your evenings in shorts and flip flops are numbered— even if you’re wearing a sweatshirt along with them now, watch as your friends new and old leave one by one...
For me, that sense of boundless possibility can only find me if I leave the earthly trappings of my super corporate lifestyle (pejorative, joking) in Brooklyn behind and go live somewhere where I am barefoot most of the time2. I am able to do this because we are able to rent our place in Brooklyn out and are lucky we live somewhere that people are excited to sublet or live for the summer. I started doing this three years ago and it’s changed my life and I have a hard time imagining going back— at risk of sounding Marie Antoinette’ian, you will never find me spending a summer in NYC again for the rest of my life. I don’t like to make certain and declarative statements generally, the only thing that is certain in life is that nothing is certain, but this I know in my bones: simply, no.
Before the villagers pick up their pitchforks and storm the castle to guillotine me, please know never in my life have I even been to the Hamptons or Montauk or Nantucket, I am not absconding to a haven fit for Lauren Sanchez or even my president, influencer
. Where I am going, I can already tell you the neighboring apartment is less than a foot away from ours and our neighbor loves to blast juggalo music3 at maximum volume… awesome…This summer we’ll be living in Long Beach instead of my usual haunt, Rockaway. They are less than 5 miles away from each other, so this is at once a big change and a little change. My boyfriend moved to Long Beach from Portugal as a kid, so we’ll be surrounded by his favorite spots, his friends, his extended family. My friends in Rockaway Beach will be a 15-20 minute drive away. The scariness of that change and decision is definitely contributing to summer’s inevitable spirit of transformation and possibility: this will not be a re-run of summers past, it will be entirely new and curious and fresh and uncharted for me. If I weren’t a little nervous, it likely wouldn’t be worth doing.
It all sort of feels like the first day of camp, but I’m 30.4
Bye to Brooklyn until September— though we aspire to be gone visiting my boyfriend’s family in Portugal for that whole month, so more like October— these are the only emojis you’ll find me using for the next few months: 🐚🦐🦪🍋🌀
Moving to a little bungalow where truly everything changed set me on the path to start writing First Rodeo a year ago, my second summer away— when I was the most depressed I’ve ever been, metabolizing the events of the last year or so, and really, deeply needing to have some sort of outlet or access to my identity as a creative outside of my new role, where there was no such expression.
If you’re new here, as a general refresher: I felt like I was writing to no one, though I started out with 10 or so thousand readers. MANY of them dropped off. I lost subscribers every time I wrote. A few months ago, I hit a new inflection point and started growing and reaching people for my writing now instead of only reaching people who liked what I did in the past. (There is a very gorgeous segment of readers here who liked what I did in the past and like what I do now, and I adore you.)
That growth felt so awesome, but it also felt scary and weird. Since then, it’s been a lot more challenging to figure out where to go from here— especially because the things I absolutely had to get off my chest about my experience as a “failed founder,” the burning needs, are all already published.
Remember how I opened this letter? That general burnout, malaise and disinterest in self promotion and swirling around the toilet bowl of the great coastal elite echo chamber is sort of what has kept me from writing more often. As engagement tapers (switching to a paid model has allowed me to keep writing but has limited comments to paid subscribers only), I get less energy from writing because the engineering of the comments has made it very much a one-way street.
In the right headspace, a one-way street really can feel like peace, as it did when I started and I was purely writing for me… but I’ve grown accustomed to the way the Substack app’s UI condition writers towards consistent, constant feedback. It seems odd that when you finally do what Substack wants you to do— you start making them money— they turn down the volume of that feedback, so what used to feel like hit after hit starts to feel like misses.
I don’t have a “beat” or a “niche” in the way people often suggest writers or content creators should these days:
some of you are here because you like the personal essays about failure or getting back on the horse,
some of you are here because you like the curation or shoppy shop stuff I did,
some of you like industry news/business gossip,
some of you are probably here hoping I’ll write more about sustainability. (Alas, I can tell you that last one is probably not going to happen— been there, done that, still tired and traumatized.)
I am just being me. I will always be! But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in learning more about what you’d like to read here.
This issue is free. I’d love to hear from you in the comments. I’d love to know what you’d like to read more of. I’m craving the two-way street.
Speaking of the possibility of summer, at the beginning of every summer before I move into the bungalow or shitty apartment or beach shack that I am paying an arm and a leg to dwell in, I get this sort of consumer panic where I fear that I will (despite being like an hour away from the city) not have access to goods and services and begin to shop like a crazy person to fill the void and ensure I am prepared.
(This is misguided, obviously. I can still receive mail in Long Beach… I’m not moving to a remote island, this is Long Island…)
I think this, like most shopping, is sort of more about how we want to be seen or perceived: I want my beach life to be perfect, unlike the city life I’ve started to hate by June, so that means a transformation of the self and body. As an aside, I’m really enjoying fashion right now. So much reminds me of the 2000s-2010s and the pure excitement and joy I felt as a pre-teen and teen who wanted to go to fashion school and shop on Robertson. There’s some joy to it. I have my babydoll tops and denim mini skirts at the ready this year.
Memorial Day sales definitely don’t help… let’s just say I have a lot of returns to do this week before we move for real. Here are some of the things I couldn’t keep my hands off of, some I will let myself keep, some I musn’t. I tried a BUNCH of bathing suits from Aerie, usually a slam dunk for me, and almost all of them were scratchy, itchy and ill-fitting. Welp. If you have affordable, durable swim recommendations, hit my line.
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I also threw in a few things I’m REALLY CONSIDERING (please don’t steal) but can’t seem to bite the bullet on yet. (I am still jonesing for a Clare V crossbody in such a real way, but it’s more money than I’ve ever spent on a bag— $250-400 ish, if I could only land on a single color to covet— and feels irresponsible. At the same time, I have wanted to treat myself for reaching a big milestone: earning thousands for just writing, my lifelong dream… much less one I spun up out of writing vulnerably about some of my most painful and personal experiences.) Aah!!!
As an aside, if you’re the closet clean-out type (a must before I move each year), let me know if you have better solutions other than:
Lugging your stuff to the nearest Buffalo or Crossroads and waiting in line for an hour so the buyer can take nothing and waste your time (can’t bring myself to do this in NYC)
Mailing it to ThredUp so they can charge you $15 processing and give you 50 cents for a pair of Vince slacks
Listing something on Poshmark and Depop, getting a million notifications about nothing relevant to your items, having them sell only 7 years later when you’ve long since moved on
Donating to St Mary’s and having them come pick up (actually good but not for things you’d like to resell!)
Thanks for coming to the Consumer Corner™️, you guys both love when I write about how consumerism sucks and everyone is trying to sell you things with affiliate links and also go buck wild when I share my own affiliate links with cool things I find around the internet. Go figure. As usual, women are doomed to an impossible paradox.
I’ve noticed shell mania sweeping the nation fashion Substacks and was particularly struck by how much I loved the necklaces and accessories in
Net-a-Porter is generally out of budget for me, in principle I don’t believe in spending that much money on clothes (frequent readers probably noticing that I have been talking about maybe buying the same $250 bag for like 8 weeks now, still no end in sight, may never get there), so I poked around the internet a bit to find shell paraphernalia I could actually get behind. If you do have the budget, Brinker & Eliza, Eliou, Chan Luu and Julietta all have amazing items worth coveting.
If you don’t, I don’t want to toot my own horn but I found awesome options starting at like $10. I’ll also say that while I love the brands I mentioned above, they aren’t making fine jewelry, so the price that you’re paying is purely for brand. Good for them for getting amazing margins, you can probably find similar quality on Etsy, as I did in my ROUND UP RIGHT HERE :).
That said, you should note that:
Everything here is probably 1 of 1 (a good thing, IMO, hate looking like everyone else) and also…
…is styled much, much worse than those zeitgeisty brands who use their better margins to pay for photo shoots with models and stylists.
Like thrifting, you’ll have to use your imagination here to see these pieces out of their ugly iPhone photography and visualize them styled the way Net-a-Porter might have styled them on model. A worthwhile challenge to save a few hundred bucks, no?
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I love shells. The little magpie or 7 year old in me is just delighted by them. I really hope to collect a bunch this summer. Maybe my friend Sophie will join me and we can poke holes in them and make our own jewelry. See? I can say something like this because the possibility of summer is still ahead of me. All that there is ahead is an expanse of time, open opportunity… positively anything could happen…
Remember what I said about feedback and wanting to hear from you in the comments!
Here are my recommendations for you to get in the spirit of summer:
Read mostly any Elin Hildebrand book but most likely Hotel Nantucket or Blue Bistro.
Be outside as much as possible.
Have a Shirley Temple.
Consider a self-tanner that is going to make you feel better about exposing your flesh. I like this one that you apply in the shower and leaves no streaks or mess, nor dent in your wallet.
Grill some asparagus.
Take the ferry, if that is available to you.
Are you eating enough dip? Don’t forget that dip is a perfectly good lunch or dinner.
Love you!
The song August…. riding your bike really fast and then putting your feet up on the handle bars and going no-hands while you whoop and holler… anything that feels like it’s straight out of The Summer I Turned Pretty… mostly, but not only, TSITP version of August by Taylor Swift.
As you may have noticed, I cannot do this where I live because of all of the syringes and exposed needles on the ground…
and Nickelback! Wish it were at least Creed…
Something I’ve learned about being 30 is that you say things like “I’m 30” like all of the time… I’m sure it’s so annoying if you’re like 36, the way when people are like “oh my god, I’m 28!” I want to tell them to kick rocks, you might as well be 12 years old, you’re a fetus, you’re an embryo, have you even gotten your first period yet at 28? Shut up and enjoy it.
Re: direction of newsletter. Personally love the versatility of your newsletter!what makes it so enjoyable is that it really feels like you’re writing what you need to be writing at that time rather than the “hey guys what do ya wanna hear about this week?!” content. You have a wide scope of interests and topics and I’m here for it!
also summer is my favorite and you articulated perfectly why, i need a Shirley temple right now, and damn you really have it figured out with the bungalow life. inspired!
I’m hella late here but I live for the jergen’s wet self tanning lotion 🌞🌞🌞