newsletter

09.12 | oh my gawd she's back again

Be careful what kind of stories you're telling yourself. They shape the entire world.

elaine

12 Sep 2025 — 3 min read

✉️ letter #66

Hi friends!

I can barely believe it. It's been over a year since the last letter I sent. I won't bore anyone with the details of why, except to say that once I was invited to be on a careers panel and I told a bunch of undergrads that I operated much like a shark – once I stop swimming, I sink. A decade later, I tested that theory and it turned out to be true.

But now life is revving up again, I went from desperately searching for things to do to having too many things to do, and I suddenly feel the need once again to create stuff and tell a small (but mighty) audience about my creations. Including my first video in a long, long while.

🎼 the soundtrack | Model, Actress, Whatever - Suki Waterhouse

I turned 40 last year in the middle of a summer Euro Trip, during a period of inspiration that was supposed to turn into at least a half-dozen vlogs and really reinvigorate this Youtuber hobby... and then I got stuck on this video idea specifically – about what advice I could offer now that I had completed another decade around the sun – and just... couldn't... move... forward.

A whole year later and after countless revisions, I finally settled on something I could say with confidence:

Be careful what kind of stories you're telling yourself
They shape the entire world.

I'm going to continue trying. I can't promise anything in terms of consistency. It never really was my strong suit. But the story I'm telling myself now is that consistency is a myth built by hyper-capitalists to turn us all into content mills anyway. What's more important is that we-I don't let a missed beat completely derail us-me from creating the things we-I enjoy.

As I mention in the video though, it's not just that a scheduling misstep caused me to spiral – the world continues a drumbeat of news so awful and frankly weird that reading the headlines can ruin my day. A lot of things happened just this week that I would've never imagined to put on any bingo cards a few years ago. I won't talk much about them except to say that I don't celebrate political killings, yet I don't pretend to mourn for the deaths of heinous people, and I hope that this doesn't turn into America's Reichstag Fire even though – heaven knows, Republicans seem hell-bent on trying to create one.

It's hard, in these times, to not let current events knock the wind out of your sails. I think there's nothing to do but get better at navigating around them.

🪢related threads

Something about this excerpt feels relatable: "Tolstoy had also been in his sixties when he learned how to ride a bicycle. He took his first lesson exactly one month after the death of his and Sonya’s beloved youngest son. Both the bicycle and an introductory lesson were a gift from the Moscow Society of Velocipede-Lovers. One can only guess how Sonya felt, in her mourning, to see her husband teetering along the garden paths. ‘Tolstoy has learned to ride a bicycle,’ Chertkov noted at that time. ‘Is this not inconsistent with Christian ideals?’" [Granta]
"Once a universal feature of human psychology, the “unhappiness hump” in midlife has disappeared, replaced by a new trend: mental health is worst in youth and improves with age." I suppose instead of a mid-life crisis, we just have a sustained all-life crisis these days. [Science Daily]
Maybe part of the reason is that it's just so hard to find a job these days – not even a job that's not bullshit. Just a job: "I did everything “right,” I worked so fucking hard, I did all those fucking internships, I even have a bunch of situational privilege, and now I’m somehow both undertrained and overeducated for everything. She’s not picky; she doesn’t even want a job she’s “passionate about.” She just wants a job." I feel you on that, young ones. [Culture Study]
But also maybe it's always been that hard for a lot of people. Right before I started applying for yet another grad degree, my aunt told me of a show that I absolutely should watch about a 40-year-old who, due to extended time away from work and a terrible job market, pretends to be 26 in order to get an entry-level position at a publishing company. Starring Sutton Foster. It began airing in 2015. [Younger]

✨something to enjoy

I love Sutton Foster. I don't know if I can full-throatily endorse Younger since I watched two episodes and lost interest (maybe it gets better? maybe one sick day I'll return and try it again. It did manage to last seven seasons). But I can endorse a whole lot of other work she's done, including her debut in Thoroughly Modern Millie, which is a piece of pop culture I return to at least once – often multiple times – a year.