Amtrak fixed my Existential Crisis

America I.R.L.

I want to start this one with a re introduction. I am hailo. An American girl in your blue light river.

A daughter. A writer. A friend.

I love

• really good art.

• French food.

• Gin.

• And Jesus.

I have a Bachelors from Princeton in English with a triple minor in Gender Studies, African American studies, and creative writing. I am a writer. I am NOT a journalist. I took a journalism class my freshman year and knew immediately that it wasn’t for me. Because I liked the freedom of writing exactly what I felt and thought. And of taking creative liberties.

Throughout the past few months, I’ve gone through a sort of “dark night of the soul,” and I’m proud to declare that I’ve come out not only okay but very determined with a new found clarity. I love working really hard. The last guy I dated was almost freaked out by my work ethic.

But I think that work ethic is exactly what makes me Kansan. Take a journey with me:

I was born in Kansas.

My father grew up in a rural area. His parents built their house with their bare hands. My grandma talks about pulling the tractor and getting scared as it reared up.

My Mom grew up in an “urban” area. She was the first person in her family to get a college degree.

At 16, I worked on a mayoral campaign.

At 17, I became an overnight influencer through pageants and spent the year advocating for civic engagement.

At 18, I was a digital fellow on a Presidential campaign. I spent a lot of time on Twitter that summer. That and reading the New Yorker.

And it got to me. Media. I got so paranoid in that one summer that I was afraid to leave my triple studio apartment (yes you read that right. I am not a nepo baby).

I'm really taken up, as we all are right now, with the question of the American identity. I’ve been thinking about diets—literal diets and media diets, exposure, and delayed gratification.

I literally had to leave New York because the contrast of extreme wealth and extreme poverty that exists there broke my heart every single day. I was literally giving away money. Was barely eating anything myself. People say “you get used to it–it being inequality,” but I don’t think I ever could.

Partially because of my midwestern values, but to be fair, inequality happens in the midwest as well. It’s typically not as visible because the urban planning isn’t conducive to foot traffic, but it happens. So perhaps because of my heart. Or perhaps because of my religion. But it all got to me. I stopped shopping at corporations I couldn’t take 3 weeks to learn about, wouldn’t eat anything organic and ethically sourced (besides Hooter’s), and was about to crumble. I had my Nietzschian “look-at-the-horse-in-the-eye” moment. But instead of going insane, I clicked my heels and went back to Kansas.

My parents, who are the smartest people I know, knew that I was not doing well, with my dwindling weight and new found fascination with Amtrak, that was probably a fear of flying in disguise. I spent like 80 hours on Amtrak trains over the past few months. I called it Eat, Pray, Love on a budget.

On one trip, I sat across from a 68-year-old chef in the cafe car. I’d seen him in the station fiddling with some sort of belt. The whole thing felt very Agathie Chrystie, but less luxurious since trains are underfunded (for now). Out of little plastic bags he procured chicken, eggs, carrots, a whole avocado.

“Excuse me sir,” I said, “I’m a writer working on a project around food. Did you make this all yourself?”

Like a faucet, he brought forth his story. Two children. Divorce. Sold his house. Let go of everything.

“Chef Ted Wanderin and pondering,” he said, nodding to my computer as trees whirred past us with the sunset.

The one he really wanted me to read was about a community in Hawaii that did yoga and lived communally and was barely legal. I’m always fascinated with the line between community and cult. Belief and delusion.

“I just travel with the three knives in my bag,” he said, and it didn’t scare me because I understood. I was also in a phase of letting go of it all, of questioning what anything was worth anymore. He was a chef at the mandarin oriental at one point.

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve seen so much of the world that nothing really impresses me anymore,” he said.

I’ve heard of people waiting to die, but he was really planning how he wanted to go out, you know? And it was sort of beautiful. To bear witness to him.

On another trip, I met this woman named Yara. She was Peruvian, on the way to an immigration hearing. There were no empty booths in the cafe car, so she sat across from me, with the little box of Amtrak food. That trip I had no headphones. Just a midi controller and a DAW so that any music I wanted to hear, I’d have to make myself. At that point, sampling fascinated me. That and America. I asked her for a voice memo about America–what it meant to her, and she gave the whole thing in Spanish. Then we got to talking about about food.

“You’ve had ceviche?” she asked. I nodded.

“But I’m from Kansas,” I told her, “So I’m a little insecure about seafood.”

“We have the best ceviche,” she said, telling me about the Japanese influence on Peruvian cuisine.

I asked where she was off to. She explained, and I realized that in this moment, the best thing I could do was listen. Was just being there. Assuring her that she wasn’t alone. She gave me her email. I did write a song, like I promised her, with her name in it. But my music production knowledge gap is wide and I’ve only really played it for my Grandma and Father on the piano.

As she left, she smiled, softly, kindly, and left me a packaged cake. I wanted to eat it so badly. So so badly. To accept her gift. But I was afraid. Of packaged food. Of food in general.

The last train stranger I really connected with was a young man from Ohio. He spoke about Columbus with such passion that half of me wanted to move there. His verve–for travel, for concerts, for connection was infectious. Seeing the midi, he asked if I was a musician. I never know what to say in moments like these, where you’re confronted with a label. I think I said yes.

I played this cover for him. He sat there, watching the east coast roll by–sky and dense forest and pockets of pond water, as he listened to me. And I watched him listening to me even though my mouth was not moving.

“Wow,” he said, “This is perfect for this moment… On the train like this.”

I laughed. “Thank you, I’m actually quite insecure about my voice.” True. I was picked on in elementary school for it.

He asked if it was uploaded anywhere, and I put it on youtube right there in that moment, in front of him. He subscribed.

“Is this you?” I asked.

“Um… I share my account with my friend,” he said. I began feeling a little unsettled. The anonymity matching my performance, even if online. Something about voyeur and spectator, like theater, like storytelling, like life. A tale as old as time, only changing as we do.

As I get older, I have a stronger desire for privacy. To have fewer relationships with more meaning, consistency, and depth. To focus more on craft as opposed to performance.

And in a weird way, I think my journey reflects this bigger evolution of America, because like I read in this book on painter Walt Kuhn, we are inevitably shaped by the place and context in which we grow up. And within the idea of a democracy or the democratization of media and art and narrative, I’d also argue that we are also shaping it. With the stories we tell others and more importantly, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Now let’s get nerdy

ON POLITICAL DIVISIVENESS AND THE NEED TO HANG OUT WITH PEOPLE DIFFERENT FROM YOU

Back when I thought I wanted to work in politics, the phrase kept getting thrown around “we are in a battle for the soul of this nation,” and I can’t stop thinking about the two party system. How it’s a system that has the pain of slavery and the civil war rooted in its history and promotes this “us” versus “them” mentality and dissuades unity with your neighbor. Or the pursuit of really simple pleasures for a community like good sidewalks or buses that are safe and on time. Or the ability to say no to a franchise in favor of a local business that feeds you like they would their own family.

Alice Walker dedicated The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart to “The American Race.” To which I say, what is it? What is it? The same way I was asking, obsessively, “what is American Food?” to everyone I met during the last few months.

Everyone is convinced that the world is ending. But it is, as always, a matter of perspective, right?

I’m thinking of this thought experiment in “Fiction” – a story in The Mind’s I by Hofstadter – about how the world could be a book that someone is reading, and if they stopped it would be over. I was talking with my friend the other day about church. About God. I read my Bible every morning. She’s been reading Revelations, but I’ve been reading Genesis. And I feel so inspired–about business, about creation, about the ways we can make the world a better place instead of trying to predict some sort of destruction.

Our minds have been globalized. We are so connected–that was Mark Zuckerberg’s initial intent, connecting the world, and the law of unintended consequences is real. But what it takes is another generation, aware of the earlier one’s mistakes to make different stuff that fixes a lot of the issues and creates unique issues of its own for the next generation to fix.

Things work in a pendulum like this.

I started reading this one science fiction book that has a really beautiful prediction around the future of AI. But he also points out that if we perfect everything, we will literally have nothing to do. The pendulum will stop. I think this has something to do with Quantum Physics, which I’ve read a lot about but still have some knowledge gaps I’d like to fill in.

The author imagines these AI assistants (Nabokov also does some imagining around this in King, Queen, Knave in something that’s more comparable to the AI girlfriend) and points out, that if productivity increases with the help of AI, we will need to have more stuff to do, with the free time. We need to invent more stuff to do. In a country with so many resources, so many people of different cultural backgrounds. If we spent more time trying to understand one another in real life, we could do something really, truly beautiful.

That was one of Jonathan Haidt’s biggest qualms around social media when we had him on the podcast last summer– “You’re not doing anything,” he said, about our generation. And while the phrasing is harsh, I sort of understand his intention, you know?

We were raised in a dopamine feedback loop of watching, but everyone is waking up and looking around and realizing that scroll scroll scroll is actually really boring. And is also making us all distrustful of one another.

ON MEDIA CONSUMPTION

So in The Media is the Massage, Marshall Mcluan makes this brilliant point about media that works well in conversation with Wittgenstein’s work on language as limiting. Wittgenstein states that when you put something into language, you lose nuance, and in a sense, truth. Mcluan mentions that when we started printing books, we bound things to a linear narrative. So intelligence or literacy, becomes being able to read things linearly.

A friend of mine is working on a book around truth in the age of AI. I am quoted in a section on dating, I think (oh boy). But what is truth? The etymology of it is:

"triewth" (also spelled "treowth"), which meant "faith, faithfulness, fidelity to country, kin, friends; loyalty; disposition to be faithful; veracity, quality of being true; pledge, covenant"

Truth has never been static. The same way language has never been static. I think the truest thing we could ever say is that things are always being made and falling apart.

That is the human condition, right? Growth and decay and excessive consciousness, which–like Dosteovsky, I used to see as painful when I was listening to too many sad songs, but now I see it as a blessing. As something to conquer and to devote to a sense of belief, faith, and purpose.

So take Gen Z, right? If we zoom way way way way out in the context of human history (and bear with me because I’m just now getting into history more (David Marc writes that it’s actually much easier to learn via TV than in a book, and I’m currently obsessed with the history channel), then here is a snapshot of media:

• OLD TIMES - we hung out, and literally just tried to survive. media was plants, sky, animals, one another

• AND THEN - somebody started talking idk apple, snake perhaps

• FAST FORWARD - film and radio are invented

• AND THEN - television and 24 hour news cycle (addiction/paranoia about neighbors)

• SOMEWHERE IN HERE - the “do you know where ur kids are” milk carton stuff starts along with the “war on drugs” in the 80s which makes everyone terrified of one another

• CHANNELS ON THE TV - and then people don’t even have to sit with family then can go to rooms

• WEB 1 INTERNET - originally for gov and schools, but obvi that didn’t stay that way

• WEB 2 INTERNET - everyone is blogging and ranking friends online for the first time. People gain followings from writing for publications and/or traditional media/pr like magazines

• STREAMING - we’re not watching stuff at the same time anymore

• SMART PHONES - the computer is no longer static. The internet is a place that you also go and then you can bring it with you

• SOCIAL MEDIA - the information/media is now one another and it’s addictive and fun, people gain followings from visual media they post themselves

• TIKTOK - short form video and the introduction of algorithms (algorithms are so interesting because it becomes the disruption of linear consumption)

• WEB 3 INTERNET/AI - anonymous accounts and discourse around revolutionizing or “disrupting” something. I think this could be a rejection of mass media/culture that began taking root in the 60s. And/or the idolization of the silicone valley startup founder. People gain followings from thought leadership and/or content that breaks through an algorithm (which usually has to be divisive or like brain rot to maximize engagement)

That’s my brief recap (fact check me, please haha), and then stay with me on this train of thought, okay?

ADD // OR THINKING NON-NORMATIVELY

Books were written linearly. You have to read it in order, so literacy is being able to sit down and read a book. Let’s zoom in on the etymology of literacy–

The word "literacy" originates from the Latin word "literatus," meaning "learned" or "lettered." It entered the English language in the 15th century, initially referring to the ability to read and write. Over time, the concept of literacy has expanded to encompass a broader range of skills, including critical thinking and understanding different forms of communication. –

With the invention of new forms of media and tech, the definition of literacy and intelligence is always changing. What’s constant is story, I guess? And I had this moment at my third job where I would try to communicate with people older than me and they’d be like “girl you’re at point C and I don’t know how you got there” because they are used to thinking linearly, but our thought processes as a generation are probably not linear, because we got phones at a really squishy time for our brain. Which could be the over diagnosis (or mislabeling) of ADD, or a new way of thinking that simply does not thrive in the 9 to 5, which was designed during the earliest stages of industrialization.

ON PERFORMANCE/INSTITUTIONS,

I was reading this book on Bluegrass music because my Grandpa loves it. In America people used to play music just to hear it and have something to do. Speaking to both sides of my heritage, Bluegrass music was a reaction to a hard way of life for white Americans as they homesteaded and built homes, farmed, etc. And then Black Spirituals (I checked out a book of sheet music of early spirituals and have been learning them on piano) were also a reaction to hard work, and the need to hear music and cling to beauty and hope in times of extreme pain.

Music came first. Industry followed with the invention of recording devices and the ability to mass distribute. And again, this is not bad, it’s simply the pendulum. But now we have distributed music to the point of streaming where artists aren’t making money the same way they would with live shows.

Or let's look at storytelling/writing. Storytelling used to be an oral tradition. But then, (again hello Mcluan), we write stuff down and one person’s perspective is cemented. We lose nuance with translation (I think about this with the Bible all the time). We get to the sale of books in the US with the beginning of publishing. At first it’s religious texts, educational texts, governmental writing, reference books, and then we get literature.

Leigh Stein once told me about how more people wanted to become writers with the rise of blogging in the 2000s, so the industry became oversaturated compared to what it used to be. And this is where I’m thinking of exposure.

ON EXPOSURE

We make choices for ourselves in our life based on what we’re exposed to. This is where globalization can be really good, however, I think there could be a generation overexposed to music and art and celebrities in the age of social media and streaming, and we’re currently witnessing a generation overexposed to influencers and lifestyle content. And the biggest places for these industries seems to be New York and Los Angeles. Many people making media are presenting as cool and interesting instead of pursuing personal fulfillment. And it’s confusing the children. They’re on the same internet we are, and they are also asking lifestyle influencers – “but how do you make money?”

I wanted to be a ballerina at three because I saw Zoe in a tutu in a performance of Elmo. I loved ballet because it made me feel beautiful and I could achieve a flow state. I wanted to be a writer because I feel in love with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work at 16. That is why I went to Princeton.

I wanted to be a model when I began consuming lifestyle content by models on Youtube in the 2010s. I considered consulting in college, when everyone else began consulting. Instead, I graduated confused, with an internet following that I’d turn into this community (thank you for growing with me) and moved to Germany with my then boyfriend while I found my legs.

I moved back to New York because my friends from school were here. Applied to some places on LinkedIN. And ended up working for a cool millennial writer at a really sick start up. And every day I am grateful. I pray every evening and say thank you.

But my point is, we are easily impressionable. By exposure. Through media. Through the people around us. Through what we believe in. And it takes real cognitive effort to step back and think “what do I want for myself.”

Like do I really want to live in a big city? A question many members of Gen Z are asking themselves, pushing back on Scott Galloway’s famous advice for ambitious young people to get to the nearest big city. I think this stood during his time, but I don’t think it’s the only way. Especially considering the cost of living in a big city.

ON CITIES

New York and Los Angeles are canonized in American Art, I’d argue, because of industry. What is industry? –

The word "industry" originates from the Latin word "industria," meaning "diligence, activity, zeal". This Latin term is derived from "industrius," which signifies "diligent, active, zealous." The word entered English through Old French, and its meaning evolved to encompass "cleverness, skill" before settling on its modern definition related to organized economic activity. –

Everyone thinks you have to move to New York to be a writer, because the publishing industry began here (here as in east coast. Boston!) and the networking of it– of art, of culture, of scene– led to a lot of art about New York. A lot of eyes on big cities.

Same thing for LA, you know? I think? You’ve probably read the stuff on F. Scott Fitzgerald and Didion trying to go to movies because that’s where the money was.

But the internet has disrupted this, by allowing people with shared interests to connect across space.

You don’t have to move to a city to be an artist anymore. You can and should build a good life where you are, unless you want to go somewhere else, then by all means. But ask yourself why, you know? I have some reading to do on economies, but if the world is oversaturated with artists, I think every artist should also be an entrepreneur. To create an ethical business that can help anchor America a little more as we witness a redefinition of the American workforce.

And you don’t have to start the next Facebook. You could start a coffee shop that is also a music venue. Or a dog grooming business. Or a website that helps people find the best Americanos in any city for a small subscription fee.

ON ARCHITECTURE

Filmmaker Linamarie Gonzalez

lina

once said “we are in a beauty deficit” and then this really cool woman at Trove Jewelry in the West Village once told me that people predict we are on the cusp of a gilded age because of this.

I’m thinking of Alain de Botton’s book The Architecture of Happiness, which I’m not deep in, but am still reading. He makes a cool argument about the importance of seeing human care and time and love in the structures around you.

When architecture firms get cheap and build the same building over and over, it sort of makes your gut sink, you know? We need more people to be architects building really beautiful things.

And for people to go all in on historical societies to preserve buildings, because I think there’s this very shy US insecurity around lack of antiquity. Like we’re a bunch of children in a sand pit, a little embarrassed because we kept destroying and rebuilding instead of learning how to savor what was there. Because we’re young.

ON NARRATIVE ADVANTAGE

I was on a date a few years ago and at our second location, we got into a chat on colonization and something called “narrative advantage.” I tried to attribute it to him, but he didn’t remember saying it, so maybe I did. :o That is the last time I dated a writer haha.

We defined narrative advantage as the person whose narrative lasts. When you look at the beginning of colonization, the prevailing documents are a lot of white European men making judgements about Africa. When you look at America, there is a beautiful willingness to look back at one's history and to want to exhume something or make it right. But clearly, there is much pain. My mother, who is the smartest woman I know, reminds me all the time that looking back to find problems is a recipe for a depressive episode if you can’t put yourself in a mindset of empowerment and positive change too. (Like a 24 year old woman convincing herself she will be okay for the rest of her life if she only pays in cash and takes Amtrak forever. You have to look forward with optimism, excitement, and discipline).

Narrative is something that’s been democratized through the internet, through substack, through so much. Which is why I keep coming back to this question of:

What is America. What is American culture.

I can only answer based on my own experience–Reading Little House on the Prairie. Growing up at first in a house my parents broke ground for, across a literal wheat field. Learning about computers at 3–the same year I began learning to read and dance. Growing up with strong values and morals, yet being exposed to French culture through ballet. Getting super into Russian literature at 17. Moving to Germany at 20. We define ourselves in comparison to things. We are exposed and we pick what we want to embody and what we want to reinvent.

So what is it to be American? Well, as someone pointed out to me, America is a continent. We are the United States, which is an inherently collective identity too.

I have a strong kinship to Kansas. And if I had to define what Kansas culture is, I’d say it is to care about your neighbor. To be hard working and entrepreneurial. To value your family. To watch football (go chiefs). To ask someone how they are and to listen to the answer.

As for the other states, the other cultures that make up this gorgeous place, I have no idea. Which is why I started this column. Because when I was Miss Teen USA, I got to see what each little pocket of culture was like as I traveled for appearances. And I guess that could be my fascination with Amtrak, too. You get to meet so many people and see so much of the US.

Trains are also wrapped up in American culture and media in the most fascinating way. I took Diana Fuss’s American Cinema course at Princeton. Some of the earliest American films are of trains (hello Thomas Edison and Library of Congress Archives). One of the earliest theaters was made to be like the inside of a train. People in the theater were so scared as the train approached the camera on screen that they left the theater.

According to The Foods that Built America on the History Channel, Heinz not only had faith in Edison so much so that he invested all of his money into the first electric factory for ketchup, but he knew he could send his product across all of America by train. The train is sort of amazing, as is ketchup.

When I took off on the train from Newton, Kansas there were these kids with a camera on the tracks. We, humans, are fascinated with ourselves. With big feats of effort and surpassing what we thought was possible. Which brings me to the subject of tech.

ON TECH

Let’s define tech:

the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry.

machinery and equipment developed from the application of scientific knowledge.

So looking at these definitions, industry and tech are not inherently bad. But after watching The Foods that Built America, and the stuff around Heinz’s factory and thinking of Henry Ford, tech in combination with industry shaped the contemporary American work force, which determines most of our day-to-day lives.

The inventors and industrialists, the innovators or whatever you want to call them, built tech that determined the way we lived and worked. Like even urban planning is a form of tech.

Take the stoplights (another fascination of mine, which you’ll read in my first book) for example. Garret Morgan, a genius Black inventor from Kentucky, invented the stoplight. The stoplight determines how we can travel through cities safely in cars and on foot at the same time, which is sort of incredible. Brilliant writer and Hot Literati member Nate once told me over coffee that some academic has a theory around how we identify as the mode of transportation we use. Like if you’re running and people are walking, you have to make sure to empathize with the people walking to be good mannered. Or the same with bikes (hello delivery bikes hahaha I almost got hit by one a few weeks ago).

We’ve worked on so much stuff. So much industry. But a lot of these inventors, as you’ll see in The Food that Built America (I’m so obsessed I love like the kitschy acting and everything), forgot to work on themselves. They acquired insurmountable amounts of wealth but betrayed family, didn’t take rest, and didn’t know how to have fun or give back to the world. We live in a different age now. One with therapy. One that has had Jesus and Epicurus and Nietzsche and Dostoevsky and bell hooks and Alain de Botton and you.

We have the power to be both industrious and caring. To be optimistic and productive. To enjoy life while trying to make a world that allows everyone to live a fuller, more fulfilling life.

ON CLASS, MEDIA, AND UPWARD MOBILITY

In Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton writes about how peasants were more content with their lives because they had no semblance of upward mobility. That they knew they would be a peasant forever. And it is this “industriousness” that defines the American ideology–do your own thing, reinvent yourself, to dream big.

Like my brilliant friend Joze Piranian. He was born with a stutter, but when he came to America for the first time, he made up his mind to not only be the funny one, but to conquer his stutter and become a public speaker and stand up comedian. We walked side by side together a few months ago, holding coffees and soaking in summer’s earliest sun. We discussed American TV. Gossip Girl. He said the phrase “believing in the betterment of your own life,” which cemented itself in my brain.

Last summer, Jonathan Haidt looked at me and said, earnestly “You can have all of the money you want in the world. It is your time that is limited. Your focus.” I took that to heart and really began observing my own time and attention. How much of it was spent passively consuming.

In The Anxious Generation, Haidt argues that social media is largely a class issue. That children of lower income areas consume the most media, which reflects patterns around access to healthy food. But unlike urban planning and food desserts, you have choice within digital media that is not limited to access. You just have to take the reins on your own media consumption to seek out the stuff that is good for you.

The stuff that is motivating, inspiring, and ethical. These are principles I’d say matter even more than taste or beauty within media. “The future belongs to optimists.”

Media is your mind. Your mind is your life. Your mind is your identity. Your subconscious mind is particularly malleable. Look at the marketing industry. That’s why I love bell hooks. In All About Love, she emphasizes the importance of committing to honesty. I, as a business owner, see you, my community as smart. As kind. As generally good and worthy of content that leaves you believing in the betterment of your own life.

You can learn anything. Especially with the advancement of technology. And I believe that whatever you want to do with your beautiful life can make the world a better place.

ON HAPPINESS

I can’t stop thinking about three things:

1. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

2. This podcast with the man who allegedly has the highest IQ in the world and opted out to go Henry David Thoreau it in the woods.

3. This David Foster Wallace interview where he discusses his friends in white collar jobs who are depressed (I got the title of my first book from this interview. I don’t want to read DFW, because I’m convinced it will put me in a bad state of mind the same way The Bell Jar did.)

ON MASLOW’S CHART / THE WILL TO HAVE FAITH

This is how I suggest walking up Maslow’s chart in a way that should be doable:

1. Physiological needs: The need to eat food that makes you feel good. Hello limiting refined sugar, which costs you more long-term and makes you irritable with crashes (mentioned in The Blue Zone Cookbook))

2. Safety needs: The need to feel physically safe (fitness) and secure (financial literacy)

3. Love and belonging: The need to feel seen and connected with (Digital community for niche interests that are net good and ethical), irl community for building trust with the people you’re physically around, especially if you disagree with them because it builds empathy and generates healthy discourse

4. Esteem: The need to log off. Go outside. To look at the trees instead of yourself or photos of other people.

5. Self-actualization: The need for purpose. For hard work. For setting a meaningful goal and pushing toward it, past your comfort zone.

I know this is sort of insane, but I’m also wondering if the limitation of today’s pyramid no longer stands or at least doesn’t for this generation. Because it is a linear model of thinking of itself and one’s life. And as I mentioned earlier, we do not think linearly anymore.

I think media can be the motivation you need to pursue self-actualization and work your way back down. By consuming only media that is actually inspiring and good for you.

Why am I confident in this claim?

Two examples:

In Slave Religion, Albert Raboteau writes about Black enslaved people worshipping God during slavery. How even though they couldn’t read the Bible, they connected to the story of Jesus and/or a higher power and felt something so deep in themselves worthy of love. This kept them going in times of hardship.

And then my parents:

My mother left the path America would have led her down through church, hard work, Janet Jackson music videos on MTV, and pageants. She could see herself in other people who were successful and she worked to achieve success. And then my father, who was the only kid in a rural town intrigued by a computer. He traded his first car for a computer and spent most of his time on it, moving away and ultimately securing a job in tech. His earliest media memories, as we discussed in Miami (everyone should go to miami with their dad and have a white claw on the beach), are Star Trek.

ON THE MAN WITH THE HIGHEST IQ

I watched this video when I was really depressed (NEVER AGAIN :D ) and one thing he said was that brilliant people have a really big scope of seeing the world, but can’t necessarily narrow their scope. I think we are all dealing with this in the age of information. Too much real-time information is simply overwhelming. You’re trying to have a margarita with your best friend and you’re considering everything that could go wrong from the top-down scale of global politics to the guy you never texted back, instead of narrowing your scope and thinking, “this margarita is good and I love my friend.”

Logging off and/or taking hold of your media diet allows presence and peace in moments that should be special and singular.

Media is so powerful. Exposure is powerful. Faith in something and belief in oneself to deserve and pursue a good life is powerful. The Attention Economy was built on scaling your time and attention, so one of the most revolutionary things you can be is an ethical, empathetic, and intentional consumer as a new wave of mission-driven businesses take shape.

That is the philosophy in which I’m building Hot Literati. I want it to give your life more meaning. Not to take your dollars or your time and attention. I want you, as Joze said, to believe in the betterment of your own life, and therefore, the world.

ON FAME

I took this class at Princeton called “the meaning of celebrity” in 2018. We studied Kanye West and Albert Einstein. This paper really stuck with me. How as we scaled fame, it revealed a new class system within celebrities and made fame difficult to monetize.

I love Jonathan Haidt’s take on fame. That it should be a byproduct of actually helping people and not empty performance, you know? Of doing something that makes the world a better place.

Service-based leadership is one of the best things to learn, to study, to live. A philosophy that’s in the writing of people like Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie and bell hooks, even if the prior two had other beliefs that would not age well. Culture is always moving forward and changing. I find my anchor in this philosophy to be in the work of Jesus. Writing that warns against virtue signaling, of performance, deception, vanity, and fear.

After reading Think and Grow Rich and reflecting seriously on the idea of a definite chief aim, I started thinking differently about Hot Literati. About what it could be. About how it could actually serve you—like really serve you—instead of just reacting to the chaos of the world or whatever the internet is doing that day.

I want the book club to give you something solid. Something that helps you believe in the betterment of your own life, in your ability to choose what you want and then go after it—ethically, artistically, fully. I picked Think and Grow Rich not because I think everyone should want to be rich (although you absolutely can be), but because I think it gives you a way to structure your own beliefs. To decide. To commit. To believe in yourself and God or the universe or the future. Not in a robotic grinding way, but in a truthful way.

If you’re curious, if you want to read it with us, we’re reading it during the month of July. Become a paid subscriber to join us live each week as we read it together during the month, or to receive the reading schedule and weekly audio conversations directly in your inbox if you can’t make it in real time.

I didn’t pick this book because I want you to chase money. I picked it because it helped me find a sense of purpose again, a sense of direction. And I want that for you as well. Belief. Faith in yourself, in your ability to commit to something. Faith in the idea that you’re allowed to have a future that feels good to you.

This is the direction I want to grow in. Not louder, not more visible—just more intentional. More faith-driven. Less reaction, more creation. And I want to build this with you.

IN SUM

What do you want? You can do anything. You’ve read this much. And if you are in this community, then I know that you are kind and you have ethics.

It’s all narrative. And I love Dostoevsky because he woke me up to the idea that there are no villains. That everyone is telling themselves a story in their own heads that makes sense to them. And the only way to overcome this is empathy. To understand someone else’s story before sharing your own. Active listening. The willingness to see the divine light in them and to see similarities instead of differences.

What stories are you telling yourself in your head? About yourself? About America? What happens when you let yourself daydream and become like a child again— before any pain, before anyone told you you couldn’t do something— and tell that story?

I got two more tattoos over the weekend. Completely unplanned. Two more hearts. You guys ask why I keep on getting getting hearts. It’s because of this Dosteovsky quote:

“At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of people’s sin, and asks oneself whether one should use force or love and humility. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once and for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.” full section here

I lost touch with God for a little. That’s what being human is to me. Losing touch and finding your way back. Again, and again. I love Dostoevsky because he brought me back to him, through a more realistic lens.

I lost touch with myself when I started doing the American rat race. But I befriended an old Italian man who reminded me day after day after day that you have to do everything with love. That you can think of yourself as an actor in a movie written for or by God if you get lost and need a mental exercise to believe in something.

IN SUM

I want Hot Literati to be good for your media diet. For your heart. For your brain. For your ethics and your belief in the betterment of your own life and the world. If you don’t believe in the betterment of your own life yet, then perhaps Hot Literati can get you there.

We can do this. Look forward with optimism. Design a better future and pursue it, in spite of, or because of what we see in the present day. With determination and vision and hard work, we can create a really beautiful future.

Welcome to Hot Literati, a collective of:

• Hot - discovering one’s own aesthetic through history, art, & cultural appreciation

• Cool - independent thinking and discerning based on a cultivated personal taste & value system

• Well-read - educated with an ethical yet challenging artistic canon

People.

I am hailo. I am An American girl in your blue light river. I grew up on the internet, playing Webkinz and The Oregon Trail and using a Google Search Engine to set goals for my own life.

And my brilliant friend who I lost this year, identified as an abolitionist, told me that abolition is not about destroying, but about building better institutions, while the old ones fall away. I’m reading Genesis every morning. And I want to build something that actually helps the people within my scope of influence. Which is you.

And all I want for you, is to believe in the betterment of your own life and your ability to make the world a better place through belief, optimism, and intellectual thought.

Interested in joining the book club?

This July, we’re reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. The reading will be paced across four weeks. Paid subscribers will receive:

• A weekly reading schedule

• Audio reflections delivered by email

• Access to live discussions (optional)

The book club is designed to support focused reading, meaningful conversation, and a deeper sense of personal direction. Join if you’d like to read alongside others, or follow along privately at your own pace.