the pattern recognition of personal style

8.5.26

It’s Restaurant week in NYC. I find myself eating, essentially, a McDonald’s chicken nugget rebranded as “the golden nugget” thanks to a choice of fancy toppings (caviar, trout, or truffles). The typical price for a single golden nugget? Thirty dollars. THIRTY. DOLLARS!!

Restaurant week makes this absurdity “accessible,” by discounting the nugget and making it part of a 3 course prix fixe menu. It’s the worst part of the meal. I let it slide because I’m happy to be here with two friends playing hooky from work.

Later, I have dinner with Ana, another Youtuber I met at a party my agency threw a few months back. I had come alone, mostly to meet my manager in person for the first time (she lives in Canada), but also to meet other creators.

I adored the other Youtubers I met. I know sometimes, you hear horror stories about content creators being vapid divas. But I was struck by how shy most of the Youtubers actually were. I guess this makes sense given that most of us are talking to a camera, alone in our rooms. In person, they were respectful, soft-spoken, and generous. We swapped stories and tips and encouragement. You can thank Alexander Avila for convincing me to start a Patreon.

About an hour into the party, Ana walked in and our manager (we share the same one) pulled us together, saying “you two need to be best friends.” A good talent manager should know you pretty well. It turns out ours does because she was absolutely right. We spent the rest of the night at each other’s side.

The first time we hung out after the party, a coffee date at 2pm stretched into a bar crawl and ended with us sitting on my patio eating shrimp scampi at midnight. Today, she’s wearing a flowy denim skirt and her curls leave me wistful for a time when my hair touched my shoulders.

I’m starting to understand why we see content creators hanging out with each other so often. It’s incredibly lonely doing this on your own. I’m glad to have a wide range of friends doing a wide range of things and I wouldn’t want my circle to narrow down to an echo chamber of influencer-dom. But I would like more of a community of content creators who are making a living by making things online. People like to vent to coworkers for a reason! And lacking that particular relationship does ware on you after a while. I need someone to talk my shit with! Someone who will understand the specific hazards of the job!

I’m able to talk freely with Ana and I feel deeply understood and revitalized by the end of dinner. On the bus ride home, a man with pink shoes on stood reading the ingredients of his pink Poppi can to someone on the other end of the phone.

8.6.26

Woke up and went to the gym first thing this morning. It was just me and one other guy, somehow needing the exact same corner of the otherwise empty gym. He kept walking in circles and standing there with his arms hanging. Why is the gym so fucking awkward!!

Afterwards, I sat at a cafe with a shitty little blueberry scone. I don’t know how else to describe the smell of the place other than to say it smells like Upstate New York in here. Like I’m at Summer camp. I did not go to Summer camp in Upstate New York but I can practice my imagination.

When I got home, I recorded the first book club video for Patreon. I’m planning to split (most) books up into three separate videos - beginning, middle, and end. I opened up my notes and spoke about 80 pages of a book and next thing I knew, I had 30 minutes of usable footage. Crazy how a good book can get you talking.

This isn’t what I expected though! I was expecting each break down to be like...10 minutes?? Turns out, they may just be full blown extra episodes centered around one particular book. That’s exciting to me because it feels fun to make and it’s substantial?? Hell yeah.

Later, we went to an Erotica event with a new friend we met last weekend. People of all ages piled in to a fancy brownstone in Brooklyn to share intimate stories and poetry. I didn’t know what to expect but I guess my imagination was not far off. The women were almost all sharing stories of being harmed by men and the men were mostly like “I LOVE getting my dick sucked!!” So...that was a little upsetting.

8.7.26

We went to a religious ceremony tonight. Not gonna get into the specifics, we were supporting family. But it started with a communal deep breath. J leaned over and said “this is how the erotica event started last night too.” It’s true. Sex and spirituality are deeply intertwined.

8.8.26

Spent the day with J’s family eating pancakes, playing around with cyanotypes, and planning a party they’re throwing in September. We call my (almost) three year old niece and J’s mom asks her “do you like making art?” J’s mom used to be an art teacher. My neice doesn’t hesitate before smiling and saying “no!” This was insanely funny to me. Leave it to children to know exactly what they do and do not like. Hell yeah, you don’t like making art!

We drove back to Brooklyn to leave time for the party we were invited to tonight. A friend is about to go backpacking for a few months. This is a goodbye party of sorts.

Unfortunately, I’m cramping in a way that makes it impossible to imagine my body on a dance floor. I picture me, swaying miserably in a dark and deafening club, trying to yell my well wishes to this friend across a thick crowd of people I don’t know. I opt for the couch and decide our goodbye will not look like that.

I spend the night editing a vlog instead and catch myself getting a little emotional. Vlogging is an interesting way to hold a mirror to yourself & it’s really cool to get to a point where I watch myself back and realize I’m proud, not embarrassed.

I see that I’m presenting myself in a way that is actually completely in line with what I like. The things that make me pause and admire when I look at other people? I see them on me. And that makes me smile because there have been so many times in my life when I haven’t seen them on me at all and it’s left me feeling alienated from myself.

But through a series of decisions that could have only happened over a long stretch of time, I’ve stepped into a version of myself that’s not painful to watch back. I’m specifically talking about personal style here, although I guess you could read deeper into it.

But I got tattoos on my arms after admiring women with tattoos on their arms for so long. I started wearing earrings back in college because I realized what they do for my neck. I cut my hair short because I’ve always imagined some far off version of myself with Princess Diana’s hair, or Natasha Richardson’s hair in the Parent Trap, or Audrey Hepburn’s hair in Roman Holiday. The pattern recognition of personal style is a powerful way to feel more comfortable in my own skin.

There are still things I struggle with, for sure. It’s also not a static thing. It’s not like I’ll find one way of expressing myself properly and it’s over. We’re constantly changing. I love my haircut one day and feel completely freaked out by the boyishness in the mirror the next. Ohh, the ebbs and flows of knowing who you are! And what you like! And what you want to look like!

8.10.26

Spent the night reading “Girl’s Girl” by Sonia Feldman, which is actually going to be the first book in my Patreon book club. It was important to me to trial run the additional content & make sure I actually had the capacity for extra filming and whatnot before launching.

Unfortunately, that actually means I’m missing out on communally reading the first book which is a HUGE bummer because I fucking love this book and just want people to talk about it with. I’m excited to hear other people’s thoughts in the Patreon group chat soon!

Not to get too deep into it, but I feel so seen by this book. It feels like such an accurate account of teenager-dom that resists the typical urge to flatten things into “i’m just so emotional,” which is what most adults recalling teen life tend to do. Instead, it takes a real microscope to the relational dynamics of that period of your life and how they contribute to making that age so fraught.

8.11.26

J ate the butt of the bread loaf and left the last two full pieces for me. Didn’t even mention it. I love him.