Feeling Sentimental

I’ve always been sentimental. I collect ticket stubs and receipts and post cards. Voicemails from grandparents and birthday cards and business cards. Anything that captures a moment in time and later allows me to reflect on it. I’m a hoarder of souvenirs. And souvenir translates to memory in French, which is just… perfect. My deepest fear in life is throwing something away, and then a day later wishing I hadn’t.

sen·ti·men·tal: /ˌsen(t)əˈmen(t)l/

of or prompted by feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia

My home is filled with antiques that had a life way before me. My eyes are perpetually welled up with tears. I listen to sad girl music and love songs and Billie Holiday practically non-stop. I read historical fiction. I hate AI. I love small businesses that feel like time warps. I go to a butcher and a shoe cobbler. I am happiest at antique malls and estate sales, rifling through boxes of buttons and anything that opens a window into the past. I am in a constant state of reflecting, nostalgia, and excessive emotion. I attribute my sentimentality to a few things:

One: My grandparents. They met on a boat traveling to Germany in the 60s, and I grew up listening to them tell stories of falling in love while simultaneously exploring Europe. They hosted dinner parties, where Grandma played The Girl from Ipanema by Stan Getz on the piano. They collected art from little antique stores in Stuttgart. They took photos on their 35mm film camera everywhere they went. And decades later, my grandma still retells stories and shares long-ago-made memories every time I call her or see her. I could listen to their love story on repeat.

Two: My dad passing away. It happened at the most pivotal moment of my life — I’d just graduated from college and moved to Boston for my very first big girl job. I rarely saved his voicemails. I don’t remember the last thing I said to him. I didn’t take nearly enough videos of him. I have plenty of photos of him and memories to boot, but I’ve always wished I had been more intentional about capturing these things in tangible ways that I could later recall when I missed him. That’s the thing about grief. There’s always that element of “I wish I had…” and I think that plays a big factor in my obsessive tendencies to save every little thing.

This newsletter is an outlet for me to express and further dissect this sentimental mood that I find I am endlessly in. I want to highlight small brands that still make things by hand. Talk about the fact that I don’t really know what BRAT is nor do I care. Share what it’s like to work as a ~sort of~ influencer who barely makes a dime because I don’t to have a TikTok shop or an Amazon storefront, embrace saying no to things and staying home. Where this is all going, I do not know. But brain dumping somewhere other than via 4-minute-long voice notes to friends feels… good.

Since coming up with this little newsletter idea, I have felt this rush of creativity pulsing through me. You should see the notes on my phone right now. Half flushed-out ideas for books I want to write, the words “miss lonelyhearts” followed by “all I want to do is sit on my couch.” All of these little trains of thoughts I’d usually forget about, but now, I can further investigate and build from. And also… can we talk about the phrase train of thought.

Train·of·thought:

a series of thoughts or ideas that someone is having.

A literal choo choo train of cars and cabooses that are all linked together, rolling through our little heads, waiting to be lost or interrupted. Cute.

Anywho. No matter if 1 person reads this or 100, I’m excited to hold myself accountable to maintaining this here newsletter. We’re about to be in the thick of Fall and Winter, and writing somewhere warm with a glass of red wine sounds so nice. More to come.

Xo,

Claudia