Greetings! Happy New Year! Happy fifth Monday this week! Boy, aren’t you glad that January is almost over? (73 days til spring 73 days til spring 73 days til spring)
I feel like my brain has finally stopped playing this sped-up version of Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime1 and now I can think my own, normal Hattie Thoughts. And hey, normal Hattie Thoughts is what you came here for!
Bless This Mess
Before I came back to New York, my momma treated the two of us to a spa day. Nothing says “mid-winter” like running through the parking lot while ducking to keep snowflakes off your fresh spray tan. I really, really love a spray tan. Not a year-round healthy sunless glow maintained with pricey lotions and specialty application mitts, oh no, absolutely not. I like an abrupt, all-over sheen of orangey, artificial sunshine, which appears overnight and makes me look a little Cheetoesque.
There’s a new TikTokified name for the “natural,” “no makeup” aesthetic, which is “Clean Girl Beauty.” It is so boring! Why would you ever want to look like you’re not wearing a ton of blush! Grow up!!! I could dig into the troubling moralistic elements of calling women “clean” because they don’t have obvious makeup, or I could write several thousand words on the insidious ways “minimalism” has invaded every aspect of our culture in direct response to unlivable working conditions and an economy that won’t allow most people to dedicate time or energy to true creativity.
But instead, I’m gonna tell you how much I love looking fake.
Once, somebody described me as a “Zooey Deschanel blow-up doll.” Yes, thank you. Correct. And, trust me, that is NOT NATURAL. What I love most about beauty (as a creative culture, not an industry) is how accessible it makes novelty and whimsy. You want to borrow Dan Hedaya’s eyebrows for the day? You want every section of your face to be a different neon color? You wanna put glitter on [insert body part]? Okay! Go ahead! Clean makeup also tries to be “good for you,” in the way Weight Watchers-branded meal replacements are “good for you.” But if I’m smearing greasepaint all over my face, shouldn’t it be bright and shiny, instead of a subdued, subtle flush? Can’t I just look “natural,” aside from the fake tan, when I’m actually naked?
I’m not even particularly good at makeup – some of my friends can blend their eyeshadow into rolling landscapes or chisel out a new face with contouring sticks and a wet sponge. Not me! I regularly have big mascara flakes smeared in my cheap primer. And I love it because it reminds me I Do Not Look Like That. I’ve tried the No-Makeup Makeup thing, and it just makes me sad, because I craft a “perfect” “natural” face I then have to take off. That’ll only end in me feeling sad about my imperfect, actually-natural face.
But I spent New Year’s Eve caked in fake tan, with drawn-on XXL eyebrows, multiple kinds of glitter on my eyelids, and neon pink lipstick that matches the color of my soul. And when I saw pictures of myself, I thought the same thing as when I took my makeup off,2 which was “she looks pretty and appears to be having fun!”
I Have Questions
So. We’ve spent a couple of months together in this newsletter, and I would like to take things to the next level. I think we need to DTR…Discuss the Readership.
Later this month I’ll be adding long(er) single-topic essays and more poetry content to this newsletter. But! I also want to give you the opportunity to tell me what you want. If parts of this newsletter resonate with you, if parts fall flat, if you’d like me to go 5,000 words deep on hot sauce or my favorite bugs…great news! I made a Google form where you can tell me so.
Some feedback I’d be particularly grateful to receive: what’s been your favorite thing you’ve read in this newsletter so far? If you’re not currently enthusiastic about signing up for the paid plan, what would make it worth $5/month to you? What are some other blogs or newsletters you think I should read to make this one better?
I’m open to your thoughts and grateful that you’d consider sharing them. If you’d rather respond directly to this email that’s okay too. And if you don’t have any big ideas (or small ideas!) and would rather just read, that’s okay, too.
Oh No I Need Some Goals
Hey. Am I a YouTube video uploaded in 2008? Because I sure am low-resolution!
Sorry, probably should’ve given you a “Perfect Joke” warning.
For the last several years, I haven’t been consistent with a New Year’s Resolution. I’ve tried doing lists of monthly goals instead. I even came up with quirky titles! I called 2020 “Hattie’s guide to Just Getting it Under Control,” and 2021 was “Hattie’s guide to Doing It All (and then some) (for real this time).”
And other times, I’ve picked one concrete, doable thing, like a skill. Some worked (learn to rollerskate), some kind of worked (learn to do a handstand), some really did not (learn to do a cartwheel). I think I’ve exhausted my “physical feats” resolutions.
But…this year…what do I want? It should be doable. It should be beneficial.
Should I try to write ten million words?
In July, I started using Grammarly again3. I started using it in 2016, then updated my Google Chrome or something and never reactivated the plugin. But I had to use it for work, and eventually, I started looking at the weekly Grammarly Insights report it generates. I didn’t even know it provided an analysis — all I expected to see was “you can spell ‘bureau’ in one try, but the second C on ‘accommodating’ gets you every time."
And that was when I looked at the emails and saw I’d written millions of words.
On my work account alone, I was writing between 50-60k words/week, on a consistent basis. What?!?! That averages out to ~2,860,000 words PER YEAR, per account. Millions of words. No! I’m not THAT productive. In fact, I give myself a pretty hard time! Right?! Curious, I decided to re-activate my personal Grammarly in July and start tracking there, too.
Between short stories, long emails, freelance assignments, poems, this newsletter, workshop materials, and tiny crumbs of my novel, I wrote 3,458,579 words in six months.
Three MILLION!!!!, four hundred fifty-eight THOUSAND?!, five HUNDRED and seventy-nine words.
The really shocking thing is how consistent I’ve been: aside from a few spikes (like during my writing residency!), I’ve been maintaining a steady 50k to 65k across work AND personal accounts. Could I hit ten million words if I ramp up my productivity in a big way? Is this a good resolution? Does it matter what the words are? Still thinking, but will clue you in.
Things I Read and Watched (Again)
New Year’s Day was mostly black-eyed peas, cabbage, and old movies: It Happened on Fifth Avenue (which I hadn’t seen before) and The Philadelphia Story (which I already loved). Both of these movies made me want to live in a mansion, but for different reasons.
Multiple people in my life, who love me very much, are competing for my undying affection by watching the NBC show Hannibal, which means I am re-re-rewatching Hannibal. Hannibal is my favorite show. Approximately 98 percent of the dialogue is comprised of florid paeans to John Milton, dripping in homoerotic implications, which double as veal tartare recipes. The other two percent of lines are sentences like “Meat’s back on the menu.” Five stars, no notes. Wait, one note: why isn’t Love Crime by Siouxsie Sioux on Spotify?
I have listened to a bunch of songs but I’m waiting to do a new playlist til I launch the paid newsletter. But! Every year, I listen to the DJ Earworm year in pop music mashup. The 2022 mix is pretty good! However, nothing will ever compare to 2009’s Blame It On The Pop, which I have memorized.
Thanks to the Barnes and Noble 50 percent off hardcovers sale, I now have Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems, which I’ve been reading through. Little tiny scraps of poetry – and still, they’re Emily Dickinson, so they’re moving and brilliant.
I also snagged the very informative, gigantic tome Wes Anderson: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work. It was worth a whole shelf of hardcovers falling on my head (ouchie)! This has lots of fascinating details on everything from the casting of The Royal Tenenbaums to the art direction of commercials/short films Anderson has been involved with.
Thanks to my brother, I now have the 2022 edition of Best American Essays. Typically, I buy these annual collections years after they come out. But thanks to the Best American Brother (of this or any year), I’ve got the 2022 essays hot off the presses. It looks like all these titles are discounted a smidgen on Bookshop right now, so please consider using my affiliate link if you’re going to shop.
What I Did Not Buy This Week
Clinique’s Black Honey Almost Lipstick. I almost buy this almost lipstick every eight months or so. It’s a “cult classic,” which means it’s much-beloved by women who are already beautiful (see: Dior Nail Glow, Biologique Recherche p50, all that “Clean Girl Aesthetic” shit from above). In the beauty world, “cult” products aren’t actually little-known; they’re just expensive and/or French. Every time I think about spending $22 on this not-a-lipstick, I use the $2.50 Nivea Blackberry Lip Shine that has been in my purse for two years without running out. Money-saving hack!
Embryolisse Lait-Creme Multi-Function Nourishing Moisturizer, which was in my cart for a while. Then I unpacked my suitcase and remembered I brought approx. 64 fl oz of Pond’s cream back from Missouri and I will be the moistest girl on Earth until at least May.
Freggs (frog eggs) by Enchanted Frogs (follow their Instagram for updates):
A chocolate mousse that looks like a puppy:
A Sailor Moon sweatshirt from Target, which is wildly overpriced at $20. Don’t you fret! I am watching like a hawk for a price drop or coupon.
The two-DVD set of Hallmark’s Sister Swap movies, which, if I am to understand the internet, are the same movie but from slightly different angles???? I am gonna find a way to stream these without paying $20 when I need to completely disengage my brain from rational thought
Scrivener or Novlr, the two novel-writing software/online apps that I know I will not end up using, because Google Docs is simple and everything else is hard.
Acorn friend :)
A bang trim. I did it myself, as per usual, but it was my first trim since October!
While I was home recently, my brother gave me a hard time about my hair. Well: technically, no, he didn’t. When we were getting ready to leave the house one day, he looked at me and asked, in a devilishly neutral tone, “So, are you sticking with the center part?”
Am I sticking with the center part???????
So, did I trim my bangs because they really needed it and had grown out almost to my chin? Yes. Did I side-part them first? Yes. Am I still scared to Skype my brother this week? No comment!
That’s all until Monday – I’ll see you in the morning with some hot fresh poetry. Yum! Have a great weekend.
SHaWC is a good song and if you say otherwise, you’re a hater!!!! (I love you, thanks for being a hater so I can be nice)
The next day – I’m not perfect
Love a vaguely Daphne du Maurier-esque line