Hi! Hello! Happy Friday! Happy last day of June(?????!!!)! Tomorrow I will wake up at the crack of butt to fly to Missouri. There, I will probably drink 12 boba teas, and if all goes well, my brother and I will glue firecrackers onto Nerf darts and physically harm one another. I love summer.
Next week, expect truncated content from me – between the holiday weekend, family plans and reading for an upcoming workshop, I will be backburnering the newsletter for a tidbit. But hey, a lot of people are traveling for the long weekend and will not be reading this thing anyway! If you get bored, trundle through the archives, or better yet, go visit my old Medium for first-edition Hattie Stuff.
June Newsletter Highlights
New feature alert: at the end of each month, I will be highlighting my favorite Monday, Tuesday and Thursday posts. The benefit of this is twofold:
I review my content and bolster a healthy sense of accomplishment re: everything I am writing in this here newsletter
I create an opportunity to remind free subscribers that, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you can receive special premium content, and if you’re curious about a paid plan, now is the time to sign up because I’m doing a promo deal:
So, with that out of the way, here are some highlights from June!
Monday Poetry Post: A Moment of Reflection – I’m proud of this mirror-inspired poetry prompt, which can change radically based on where/when you attempt it. It’s not the first time a fever has activated the sleeper-cell poet part of my brain, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Read it here.
Tuesday Post: According to Plan – My friend Chloe and I geek out over planners – this week, in fact, she sent me a video “tour” of the planner she just started using. This post is a look at my current planner AND my history with planners…including all the ones I failed to fill. Premium subscribers, read it here.
Thursday Poetry Post: Book Behind-the-Scenes – [Resets the ‘days since Hattie mentioned her book in this newsletter’ counter to 0] HEY GUYS DID YOU KNOW I HAVE A BOOK COMING OUT? For one of this month’s Thursday poetry posts, I told the story of how my debut book of poetry came to be! Whether you’ve already preordered the book, or if you’re on the fence about buying it, see the behind-the-scenes here.
Bonus: I’m A Bad Swiftie And So Can You – At the tail end of May, I published this piece for premium subscribers. Today, I’m unlocking it for everyone to read. It’s an essay about listening to Taylor Swift the “wrong” way, being bisexual the “wrong” way, learning to live with others’ judgments and learning not to judge myself. Today is the last day of pride month, a celebratory period which only serves to depress me more each year as protections for LGBTQ people are stripped away. This essay is not radical or anything, but I want to make it accessible to everyone, in case someone relates to it and feels a little better about their struggle to belong. I wrote about losing for both teams( in the framework of becoming a Swiftie). You can read it here.
Friday Fixations: Padam Padam
I’ll be honest, I haven’t done a lot of content-consumption this week. Too much goin’ on. In every spare moment I have been reading the forthcoming book Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertino, which is out in 2024 and which my friend Tara surprised me with an advance copy of. I’ll say this and only this: so far, it is the best book about a fax machine I have ever read.
I’ve also only really listened to one song, which is Padam Padam. If you listen to Top 40 radio a lot (like my mom!) you might’ve heard this song recently and not known what it was. I learned about it from this video, which shows Jigsaw (?) and the nun from The Nun (?) dancing to it on a carnival ride????????????????????
I can’t stop singing Padam Padam. I also can’t stop just…saying it. I say the lyrics out loud, all the time, without meaning to. It can’t be fun for my loved ones. It’s hardly fun for me. But everywhere I go, I hear this song! Including a Yankees game where they also played the Indigo Girls! Maybe this will be the first TikTok dance I ever learn.
I Updated My Website
I updated my website! It is www.HattieHayes.com and it now includes a link to preorder my book. Hahaha, look! A second mention of the book!!! I bet you didn’t see that coming. No, seriously, though – my book is not out yet but there are very few physical copies left, so I am reminding you to order it now if you want to make sure you get a real, touchable, tangible, taste-able copy. I also have it on good authority that, along with the standalone digital edition, you’ll be able to buy my poems in a digital anthology of summer releases from Bullshit Lit. More on that soon…hint hint hint hint hint.
Things I Did Not Buy This Week
TIDNBTW! TIDNBTW!!!
Every once in a while, Super Yaki releases a collection that feels…targeted. Their Hausu sweatshirt is one of my all-time favorite items of clothing. Their Muppet mug is on constant rotation in my desk’s Beverage Zone. And now, there is a Drop Dead Gorgeous capsule collection, with many stickers AND a mug based on my best DIY Halloween costume of all time. If they’d had more of Amy Adams in the merch, I’d really be in trouble.
But how can I even dream of Super Yaki when the Inkwell Threads airbrush series is available for preorder? And I kinda need this Jo March T-shirt? And there’s free shipping?
Not a purchasable commodity, but: I have not listened to that new Fall Out Boy remake of We Didn’t Start the Fire, and you can’t make me.
Last week, I told you wedding season was OVER. But yesterday, my friend Rosa and I tried on wedding dresses at a thrift store, just for fun. Rosa JUST got married, and I already have a prop wedding dress in my closet. Still, we found an assortment of $50 wedding dresses and both had to give them a shot, because what if we needed to wear them to the same non-wedding house party and have a fake fight over it? Betrothed New Yorkers, head to the Housing Works on 96th and Broadway.
Mine had a lot of boning in it. It hurted.Miraculously, I have gone another week without buying a used Big Dogs T-shirt.
I did not buy this adorable floral purse from Fossil (because I bought it in yellow for cheaper with coupons).
This phone case is priced way too high for me, but I love it and will almost certainly try to make a DIY version with similar, kitschy baby animals.
Finally, I did not get my hair cut at this establishment, run by the brother or cousin of Edward Scissorhands.
But I would. Because it looks awesome. Have a great weekend, everyone.