Cinderella @ the Substack Ball

I went to a Substack event and made it all about me + rules for a proper August

I started this morning thinking about August. I want a proper August. I want one that is big and adventurous, one where I can hear the birds chirping. I want to splay out on a striped lawn chair and burn the sadness off my back.

June was depraved. I spent every day in June crying about something or the other. Leaving my friends, leaving California, leaving higher education, just leaving. I talked about it at first (I love to talk) but then it started to feel pointless. What’s wrong my fathersistermotherfriends would ask and eventually I just shrugged. You can only say “graduation” so many times before it starts to get old. Besides, nothing was wrong. It was just all changing and I was stuck at home trapped in the intermediary.

I miss/ed college because partly I miss my core friends. We built homes together and looking back, I realize how formative the process was for my identity. We text so much, nearly everyday, but I so miss the IRL of it all. The shared meals, the solving of global issues in our living room, creating psychoanalytical frameworks for our opps, drunk ordering DoorDash and regretting it the next morning, sitting on the floors of each other's rooms to gossip and get ready. The 12 a.m. cake cutting for every birthday. Always having someone to honestly answer Do I look stupid and to comfort you when it doesn’t work out. All the yeah, he was in fact psychotic (we told you so) and even, even navigating the ethics of glue traps vs electric ones (we had one very furry, very unwelcome roommate). I miss our shared creativity. I miss our made-up traditions. I miss, I miss, I miss and I can’t go back to it but I still miss it. July was a little better — it’s harder to find time to wallow when your Google Calendar starts filling up again. July taught me that I need to be outside.

I want August to fix me, I thought to myself as I got ready for the Substack event. I turned on Photobooth to video journal while doing my makeup. I put on a strapless denim dress I bought in D.C. last week specifically for the occasion and prayed the fashion tape melting into to my skin would last in the subway heat. I looked in the mirror and smiled at myself dressed up - I felt like Cinderella.

Cinderella is a feeling I've worn often since joining Hot Literati in New York. I dress up, we go out, we interact with the world, then I take the train back to my little apartment, take the earrings off and go to bed. It feels like a dream, or as a friend of Hailo's put it, flirting with reality. And it is SO delightfully fun. The problem with being Cinderella, though, is that I am constantly worried about the clock striking twelve. At the Substack event, which was very much dreamlike for me, I was nervous. As we chatted and had cocktails by the water, I worried how to answer when people asked me what Hot Literati was and how I was tied to it. I worried about subscriber counts and metrics. I stammered my way through answering, So what do YOU like to write? Like outside Hot Literati. (The answer is I don't know. I'm new to this and I'm just getting my bearings). Admitting I had just graduated felt like confessing to the fact that I didn't really belong there. I talked to another young, accomplished writer about imposter syndrome. She laughed and told me she had it too when she first moved to the city, which made me feel better. Everyone was sweet and fun to talk to, but my eyes were on the clock.

Hailo and I had a secret challenge in mind at the event, like we often do. We were looking for a specific person. We set the conditions and at the end of the night, Hailo returned with a tatted up woman with glasses who made us laugh on the side of the road till our car came and gave us thoughtful book recommendations. You'll be seeing her soon in the Literati Universe. In the car, Hailo and I debriefed about the event and I told her about being Cinderella. She giggled and said she was glad I was enjoying it, and then something kind that made me less scared of the clock hands. I took the train home and took off my earrings.

I think August will fix me; Leo season has always been kind to girls with streaks of vanity. Besides, I am growing tired of mourning and I think it’s time to gaslight myself into coming alive. College was an adventure of the best kind, very intentional and I felt like I was shedding skin every year. There was a structure to it that I liked. It was comforting to have growth and occasional regression occur within neatly divided semesters and interludes of breaks. That’s gone now and it’s okay! I (you? we?) will be okay! The adventures that I'm finding now are active and scary and just as, if not more, rewarding. I am worried about much in life but most of all stagnation. So I will keep moving.

Here are the rules for the next month:

1. Be outside, be outside, be outside and be kind to those outside

2. Let the sun burn your skin

3. Eat something new with someone new

4. Come home too late a few times, but more than that wake up before the world does so you can hear the birds

5. Let go what you need to let go. Gently.

I hope you'll join me in having a proper August.

***

Meet us at hotliterati.com — we’re fun there too.