Welcome to FRONTSEAT! This newsletter is an ongoing commentary on the inner machinations of my mind, pop culture, and maybe more, if you’re lucky. If you find yourself enjoying this, I would love it if you forwarded this to a friend!
I won’t lie, part of me wants to make the subject line not just clickbait. I want to write out every individual bad thing that has happened to me in the last week, and I want to capitalize off of an opportunity to be a victim. It’s true!
Butttttt, you see, I am “working” on things about myself. (Yeah! I said it!) And ultimately, nobody else really cares but me. Which is not a negative thing! But, if I were reading someone’s newsletter, and they were just talking about bad things that happened to them… I would honestly be interested in whatever the worst thing that happened was, and that might hold my attention for like 10 seconds, and then I would stop caring. And ultimately I’d be like, whatever? Lol.
I must admit, the list of things that have happened in my Worst Week Ever is actually really funny. It reads as though I’m Hannah or Marnie in Girls, living a typical week and having only pathetic, embarrassing, rotten things happen. This morning I was FaceTiming an old friend from college who I haven’t talked to in years (highly recommend BTW, you don’t need a reason, you can just FaceTime someone and say that you wanted to see what’s up!), and I told him my list of bad things. And I just started laughing. It’s so fucking funny! I am in a sitcom.
But I think it’s more interesting and more fun to write whatever I’m writing here, instead of giving that list. You know, sadness/misery/anger/pain, those things? Just because they aren’t positive feelings, doesn’t mean they’re not valuable. And I have a long history of sharing all of those feelings with other people. Including the intimate details. I think this time, though, I’m mostly going to keep them to myself. I’m finding there to be some beauty to owning your pain, and just sitting with it and letting it be there. Instead of doing labor to avoid it, or to “heal faster” (no such thing), or oversharing to a bunch of people in the hopes that casting a bad vibe out onto others will absolve it from within me.
None of those things in that last sentence really work. :/ And then I end up with those secondary negative feelings: guilt, shame, regret. God, those are quite nasty, aren’t they! These are the feelings that plague, that torment, that stick to your insides and leave a residue. They are feelings that I loathe, and ultimately, I’ve discovered they are most powerful when I live my life out of fear, instead of owning my shit.
So I’ve been relieved, honestly, to be stuck with anger, pain, and sadness this week. It’s a sign that I am growing and owning myself more vibes.
Anger/Pain/Sadness - they’re kind of my Powerpuff Girls. Anger stokes action. Pain can teach a lesson. Sadness means we care deeply. All beautiful things, to me! And when you let them in and sit with them, they can course through you, as they’re meant to do, and you can express them, and then you can become whole again and continue on with your life.
When I was staring down my toilet bowl, tears down my cheeks, drooling, gasping for air (OK I will divulge that I had food poisoning on Monday, which was one of my series of unfortunate events), I had a spiritual moment. I felt gratitude. I thought: I have a roof over my head. I can afford to live the way I live and I have a lot of friends and a fairly stable family and honestly, I have a great smile. And my butt is flat but it’s not small! Gratitude is my favorite thing to never feel, but I’m kinda feeling it lately which is fun.
Alright, I have the urge to write so much more, but I think that’s enough diary for my hungry little subscribers today! I always have an intense ego moment when I write vulnerable stuff in here, but it’s like… once again, nobody really cares! Everyone is busy theorizing about Kim and Kanye, or Kim’s ex, or Kanye’s ex, or Kim’s current, or Kanye’s current. Thank you for reading all of this, and if you learned or gained something from it, that is very chic. I love being able to write stuff and send it to my hungry little subscribers! <3
OH…
I really need for you guys to listen to the Lennon Stella album. It’s here on Spotify. Whoever produced it needs their ass ATE! Sorry mom if you read that. It’s just a turn of phrase. The production is nuts nuts almonds nuts, though, like wow. And there are bops and ballads, like any great pop album should have. And her voice is really nice :) I was telling someone the other day that there are so so so many girls in the Julia Michaels School of Songwriting (Madison Beer, Gracie Abrams, Maggie Lindemann, Charlotte Lawrence, Chelsea Cutler, Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia O’Brien et al), and it’s like… that’s a lot of competition. They can’t all make it yuge. But Lennon… it’s a yes for me. She’s got what it takes. I am rooting for Lennon, and I hope my hungry little subscribers join me.
Faves from the album: Fear of Being Alone (BOP OMFG), Kissing Other People, Much Too Much, Save Us. TBH I love every song though! LMK if you listen.