sometimes I wonder ep.1

a new newsletter format on here <3

Hello to all the people who came here after my culture vulture’s guest post. I loved writing it, and I am very touched that people seem to like it (love is a big word). So hello to those who decided to follow me after reading it, I feel so Youtuber-esque saying this (chic!).

I have been thinking for a while about writing something that looks like a newsletter. It seems that everyone on Substack has a newsletter. As a concept, it both intrigues me and terrifies me. Intrigues because, as a person who can never focus on one thing, it’s impressive to me that people have a specific point of interest, and that they can write about it every week. Terrifies me, because what is my that something. Is there something I could write about regularly? My 20s so far have been nothing but wondering what my thing is - both a beautiful and exhausting continuous emotion. If I started, would I have the stamina to keep going? A girl can wonder.

A girl can do too. And I have been thinking - after the article on culture vulture was published, after rereading my old journals - that there was a time that I didn’t even have a Substack. When posting something to the world just like that was something out of my orbit. I remember writing on a special Instagram page, always going over the word count (not too generous).

I have also been reluctant to start a newsletter, as opposed to sporadically writing things that I’d classify more as an essay or maybe a listicle, because, to be quite honest, I am overwhelmed by information. I ask myself what my newsletter would add to the sea of things that everyone seems to need to know? There’s 85 thousand (it seems like) newsletters about marketing and pop-culture, and something like a million more about the beauty industry, or music industry, even more about business. There is obviously beauty in that - Substack is a place where everyone can try writing (and they’re doing a wonderful job at it), but in an oversaturated world (with information, with news, with all the versions of yourself you could be, but are not, but someone else definitely is) I yearn for things that make me stop a little bit. That’s why I love Substacks like: personal canon - they make me slow my pace and read something that fills me up with words, not information. And I think this is something we need. I listened to this podcast that a friend sent to me, it’s a conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates, and in the podcast Coates mentions that people nowadays forget that the most important thing about writing is words. The very thing that makes the writing is what makes writing good. It’s simple - like all other smart things, but it’s true. And so I realised. I don’t need to have a thing if I want to write a newsletter. I can just have the words. And I do think I have them.

I think Sometimes I wonder will be about various musings, anything that fills up my mind this week (I’ll aim to do this weekly, but eek, who knows). I will make up categories, but might not follow the same format each week. It will be a playground for words and long sentences, but sometimes also very short ones. And it will probably have some misspelled words, but won’t require much from you. It will be like that notebook you carry around with you and scribble things that you can look back on. Well, sometimes I wonder.

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the main thought - everything is relative and where does personality end and the lack of wanting to change start

I started a new job last week. That might be the biggest push to revelations. Or maybe so is every new, definitive chapter that greatly restructures our daily life. The first two days definitely felt like hitting a wall. Maybe not a sturdy one, but a wall nonetheless. But my biggest revelation, or the one worth sharing, was a thought about personality.

As with every new environment I enter, I try looking at it not only from a very personal point of view, but also from a more observant one. Here I am in a room with 50 new people. I would like to become friends with them, and at some point, I hope I will, but they are also a group of 50 people. And that is a big group of people that can bring new perspectives. It’s 50 new characters.

New characters, especially if they feel very different to me, have a big effect on the way I operate in the world. Sometimes I feel enamoured, sometimes I feel threatened, and sometimes I feel like I am okay with myself. It is always very interesting to see how much the way I perceive myself depends on the people I spend time with. And I am not saying that is bad. I remember moments when I felt cool, I felt like I was moving with ease, and that was because around me I had people who had smaller personalities or had made me feel like I was the biggest person in the room. When people have bigger personalities, or are just in an environment they feel comfortable in, and I am new there, I feel small again. And that is an interesting feeling. I try not to approach it from a very personal point of view - they make me feel small, but from an observer point of view - it is interesting to feel different emotions like that. Observe how everything is relative.

Seeing people so different from me also makes me question my personality. And I allow myself to do this. I try not to do it with people I see online (but to some extent I still do ), and I allow it (just a little bit) with people I know. So obviously, I have been questioning my personality. More specifically, I have been questioning my will to do things and the will to change. Very often (and I presume that happens to most people), I realize that people are acting differently from me - they have different habits, different goals, or even a different style. And sometimes I think to myself - maybe I’d like to have some of those things, maybe I should change my habits, goals, and my style. A typical response I get from myself is no, that is just not who I am. So I have been wondering - do I just know myself well, and stand strong on the ground that is my personality, or do I just use it as an excuse not to change myself too much? I don’t have an answer to this one, but it’s been a thought that has been inhabiting my mind for a few days now.

still reading: Intermezzo

I have been reading Intermezzo for what feels like a few months, but it has been something more like 3 weeks. To be quite honest I am not the biggest fan of the book so far. I have not at all been involved in the discourse around the book - because I am trying this thing of actually trying to digest and review rather than swallow and write a one-liner (this is actually a very interesting concept I’d like to explore in a longer form, Jack Edwards called it something along the lines of a discourse culture).

*discourse culture = where people add to the discourse about something (usually some form of media), rather than actually giving the required time to dissect the media itself

And I have been reminded by Mina Le’s latest video (Switzerland, how I read books and margiela fragrances) where she talks about her practice of reviewing and her review notebook she keeps that it is okay to take time with whatever media you’re consuming.

Intermezzo is written well - like every other Rooney book - but I don’t like the chapters written from Peter’s perspective. The book follows the lives of two brothers, and each chapter is written from a perspective of one of the brothers (so the book looks something like: Peter, Ivan, Peter, Ivan, Peter, Ivan…). I understand what Rooney was trying to do - to induce the feelings that Peter feels in us - the sentences are short, they are written in a passive voice, and they feel rushed. But so far as a reader, whenever Peter’s chapters come up, I simply dread them. To be fair, it could be the case similar to The Process or Crime and Punishment, when the reading made me feel unwell, but then I realized that’s the whole point. Nonetheless, I’ll keep on reading.

watched Queer by Luca Gadagnino

I reviewed the movie on my Letterboxd - I have been trying my best to not only write ironic one liners but actually take the time to write something constructive (again, the idea of writing something on today’s lack of honest reviewing is on my mind), and you can read it here: CLICK

things you can hear when you listen harder, things you can see when you look closer

Something like 2 hours I now spend now on getting to work. It seems like a lot, and it is, but there’s something very familiar in it. I used to commute to high school, and then when I moved to Amsterdam for university, I lost the joy that is looking at people on public transport. This, the commuting, is a temporary situation, a temporary fix. I give it 4 months, no more. And I intend to use it well. So far, I have talked with an older gentleman, who at 90 is flying those small planes that can twist and turn, and when he was talking about them, he showed me his set of perfect teeth - fake, I presume, but he was smiling proudly.

Yesterday, a bee got trapped inside the tram, and for the distance between the two stations, this boy and I were connected by our sharp focus on said bee. I released it, touched its fuzzy body briefly when the doors opened for the next station. With the voice coming from somewhere hidden in the vehicle, screeching: Następna stacja.

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and that’s it for the first newsletter <3 ! is it chaotic? a little bit maybe, but so are my thoughts. I tried keeping this one brief, because the introduction itself was long, hope you like it, hope you read it. till the next one :)