When The Stars Go Blue by Ryan Adams

I’m staring at a window glass pane that is broken and shattered yet it remains fixed in frame.

I’m at a wine bar in Chicago — near Belmont. A glass of prosecco staring at me.

“Celebrate yourself” it taunts.

I am — though I am concerned one glass may quickly turn into a $36 bottle.

I used to write poems in my free time and now I write substacks and make videos online for money.

It’s lucrative some months; fickle another. I have two financial advisors that have tasked me with responsibilities that I am avoiding.

I used to own a coffee cart that demanded all day labor with only a few hours of service time.

I loved it. It was rewarding.

It was my creative project.

It was executed well and I miss it every day.

I used to build other companies brands.

I don’t do that anymore really.

I hit 300k on TikTok and I am about to hit 100k on Instagram this week.

I submitted a casting call to a Netflix game show (I am not holding my breath)

I have a dinner lined up (brand deal) at a new Mercadito location on Saturday.

These are all career milestones worth celebrating, so why am I feeling displaced?

I am hitting a block here. Genuinely, I am. Clearly I haven’t written one of these in a minute.

I feel out of place. I feel directionless.

For whatever reason — because digital metrics feel not tangible or equatable to — per se — launching a coffee cart and exchanging physical money or clocking into work on a Monday and sitting at a desk; zoom meeting and click clacking away— I discredit the role that I play in the workforce economy.

I don’t think it’s the tangibility aspect of this equation.

I think it’s the people in my life who I once ascribed too much meaning to their opinions and their words over my life.

There's a desire to want to make those people proud of me.

That desire clashes with my purpose to perform authentically online.

Where I want the praise — rather who I want the praise from — remains indifferent and absent.

I’d call that a paternal wound of the sort.

A wound that I’ve found is soothed, consoled, and bandaged by a glass — nay — three glasses of prosecco.

I like this song by Ryan Adams.

It also balms the feelings I have and the feelings I don’t have. It doesn’t discredit my experience. It doesn’t force an outcome. The melody is the resolution where the lyrics can not. It soothes an achey heart. It allows space for the yearning — only if you’d like. It’s Ryan’s original song.

For a man that is notably popularized by his covers — this song is his.

I want to talk about last summer, but I don’t quite know where to start.

Let’s start with when I moved to Nashville after I lived with my grandparents for three months.

I moved into the sweetest duplex in Sylvan Park and it was right beside the golf course I ran around often.

There were two— technically three — suitors.

One in Chicago and one in St. Louis and one I met as a passerby at Fickle.

I named them according to their cities and meet location.

I wasn’t dating — not intentionally at least — my plate was full responsibility wise. The coffee cart was a full time demand emotionally and physically — so is my child — but I was building solid relationships with everyone in my life at the time, so I was adding these two to the mix.

Chicago boy — we eyeroll.

Coffee cart boy — we wince.

St. Louis — we smile and think fondly of him. We shake our head. A missed moment for sure.

St. Louis missed our first date.

What you need to know is he is a man of mishaps — he is the guy whose life experience consists of micro disappointments.

It’s comparative to— let’s say— if you’re hanging a gallery wall of portraits — they are all slightly off center. But it’s for a major art gallery show and there’s no time to fix them all before doors open and people want to commission.

These types of incidents happen to him all the time.

It could be a spinoff of Seinfeld. A show about nothing, but little comedic somethings of every day life.

When St. Louis missed the date — he called of course. He took the rejection very well.

I have never met another man that took the rejection as well as he did.

He was calm. He was polite. He was secure. He knew. It was a hands tugging at his hair moment for sure, but he understood.

I sat in the Trader Joes parking lot and recorded a TikTok and listened to this song.

I didn’t even know if I’d like this guy, my attention kept getting diverted to Chicago — but he’s always someone I think back fondly of, giggle a little bit at — and wish him well.

What’s important about him— is exactly a year ago — he had mailed flowers to my house with a card that read “I’m proud of you,” that I still hang on to.

Because it’s these moments — the moments online that are milestones that I want to shrug off — milestones in general that I want shrug off — that I need that reminder.

I am always proud of my ability — more and more these days to continue to choose myself. To love myself. To love these characters in my story — even from a distance.

I love these moments.

These memories.

The different versions of myself I get to look at with a break from the lens of internal criticism.

Good moments are not to be dismissed; shitted on with the projection of past hurts.

Not to be evaluated through the broken glass pane, the kaleidoscopic pane while the others remain unobstructed.

Good moments —they’re intended to be savored. However long or short they may be.

I don’t know about this influencer thing — there’s a stigma about it.

I don’t have a day to day schedule.

I suck at routine. I’ve got to figure that out.

I work better with deadlines. Tight deadlines.

To others I may appear as if I’m the girl — pretending to be goalie — picking flowers in the grass while I wait for the jersey beings to approach with a spotted ball.

To some — I’m the popular pretty girl online who knows a lot of songs. The girl who is ignorant of my white privilege. The girl some are convinced that they personally know me just because of my posts and that we’d be best friends in real life. The girl men want to sleep with and feel they have the right to do so since I “put myself out there.”

To me — on the days without my daughter nudging me to make her breakfast and get us to school on time— I feel like a dizzied girl with birds and stars drawn in a halo over her head.

I know I have to run. I know I have to write. I have to take out my camera. I know I am hyperaware of the online and real life perceptions being wailed at me.

Whatever it all is — it is what it is.

I like it— maybe the tyrant in me leans into all of it as an act of protest and solidarity because I know I’m good at it and it pays the bills.

It’s worked for me thus far; I’m just gonna keep doing that.

Now is a good time to mention — as a southerner who does not enjoy country unless it’s the occasional sub categories—90s country or alternative country — The Corrs’s version of this song also fucking rules.

Cheers to us.