"february""reflective"
hi everyone! welcome to another thursday column and the monthly reflective. sorry the posts have been a little late. i’ve been running around even more than i usually do. case in point, the post you’re about to read. we should be on a more consistent schedule now. also, this was supposed to be a february reflective, but all of these things happened in the first few days of march. i’ve been collecting a lot of stories this week, so i’m writing about them anyway. enjoy!
This month, I am writing to you from a house in the snowy Catskills. I’ve never been here before, but I like it. Getting out here was a slight ordeal that I would prefer to leave behind me. The train ride itself was maybe my favorite I’ve ever had. It’s now a dream of mine to ride the Empire line all the way up to Canada so I can stare at those views the whole way. But nobody told me that there are no Ubers and no service here. I can’t remember the last time I was in a place without service. I think it must have been when I was a small child and had never even thought about cell service.
But eventually I did make my way to last night’s function: a photoshoot in which my main job was to sit in a lavishly decorated vintage bar, drink glass after glass of wine, and chat with all of my new friends: maybe almost the entire population of the town we were in. I also don’t know the last time I was in a real small town with real small-town dynamics. Everyone in that room knew each other, and half of them were employed at the same place, but they opened their spaces and their conversations to the cast of visitors passing through happily.
After my few glasses of wine, my conversations with a former Broadway dancer turned philosophical. I said how happy I was to be there and how cool the area was and the people were. I said that I love modeling and I’m constantly trying to do it more. The dancer then reminded me of what I had tipsily said to him just a few minutes before: “life’s not over til it’s over, and sometimes not even then.” Meaning that I had found my way into the random last-minute photoshoot in the middle of nowhere with people I didn’t know, I was having a great time, and I don’t need to stress about making more things like this happen to me.
You may be wondering how I got myself into this photoshoot in the first place. And the answer is, I don’t really know. I got an email and I said yes. I’ve been trying to do that while I’ve been away from home for extended periods of time. Being in the same place for a while, especially if it’s a calmer place, gets very lonely very quickly. It’s much easier to say no to things when you’re in a place that feels too comfortable or when you’re, as I often am, in between bigger and more exciting ventures. I’ve been saying yes in my home city a lot more often too, but there will almost always be a slight sense of lacking from being in a place I know well.
My last few days in NYC, I said yes to a concert for an artist I had never listened to before. Without that, I would have just gone back to the apartment and went to bed at 10 pm. I said yes to yoga, even though I’m weirdly anxious about working out with other people around. I said yes to multiple work opportunities because I knew that being really nervous and doing it anyway is a sign that I really care about my work. (More on these over the next few weeks.) I feel like this is something I’ve talked about a few times before, the whole “say yes to things and live your life” sentiment, but I also think a lot of my Substack and my internet presence in general is being able to say when I’m proud of myself for things. So there you go. I’ve been having a really good week this week. Now, I’m going to finish editing my book.
thank you for reading!!! i have some really exciting (and probably longer) posts to share with you over the next few weeks, so stay tuuuuuuuuuuuuned!!! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo