stop waiting and start doing

2024:a Play in 12 Acts

I’ve been biding my time for November, a month that spends days like they’re minutes. It falls quickly into the holiday blur, but I’d like to argue that it still has a lot to offer on it’s own. First of all, it happens to be the month I was born. That’s usually a pretty important part of it, but this year it’s magnified by the fact that it will be my 30th. That’s right I’m actually going to be 30 years old, and I’m marking the occasion the way any reasonable girl would— I booked a flight to Paris. What is the point of getting older if you don’t spend your money on plane tickets? I really have to wonder. I’m going to Paris for two whole weeks and I won’t have any responsibilities but to sit in cafes, eat delicious things, and write. I want to reflect on my life somewhere completely outside of my life, and I want to let it transform and inspire me as I head into this new decade. I want to ask myself who I am and answer back in a clear and confident voice.

So much of this year has been about uncovering what I truly want. I’ve collected hobbies like baseball cards my entire life with no North Star but the knowledge that I want to make something. I want to make something out of nothing, and I want to make something of myself. This has led me to acting classes, dance lessons, graphic design courses. It’s also led me to wonder if the desire to create is enough of a reason to create anything at all. I’ve tied myself in knots trying to find the one thing I was put on this earth to do, when really the truth is that I was meant to do all of it. Really, all of it. I’m done with the self-consciousness of adolescence and twenty-something self esteem. I was born to do it all.

Recently I attended the book launch of Eat the World, a book of poems by my favorite songwriter Marina. This is her very first book, her first time writing poetry, and her philosophy about it is the exact thing I’ve been telling myself all year. ‘I don’t believe in needing experience before doing something’. When she realized she wanted to write poetry she just started doing it. I don’t think the accomplishment of her publication is that it’s the best book of poems anyone has ever released, I think it’s that she wanted to say something and so she did. That’s my ultimate goal as a creative. Instead of waiting for the glossiest version, I am committing to living my life in the rough draft. Polishing as I go. Living and learning. I’ve spent years biting my tongue and waiting for my turn, but in the real world nobody is going to give you the push but you. You just have to go.

Go where? Well Paris of course. Soon I’m off to Paris where I will be on my first ever solo trip, something I’ve wanted to try for a while and so I’m trying it (look at me already doing instead of waiting!). In New York I’ve learned your time spent anonymously in a crowd can be the most nurturing of all. I’m trying new things in new cities and I’m also writing music again. If you didn’t already know, most of the writing I’d done prior to Substack has been in the form of songs for my band King Willow. COVID paired with my first full time job and subsequent move across the country stopped the band from existing, but in my current renaissance I’ve found the magic in music again. The practice of writing to write and making to make has freed up all these previously blocked off channels in my brain. I’ve been describing it like a vacuum sealed Pringles can finally popping it’s lid. I nurture my ideas for keepsake, so in return I get ideas for music. I don’t have much to report yet, but I’ll say now that while King Willow is over and done with a new project I’m working on is very much alive. I’m in the midst of recording demos and very excited to share them with you when there’s something to listen to.

What else could there be? More writing. Creative fiction possibly. Could I really write something like that? I have to try it or I’ll never know. I’m so excited by the new idea energy in my brain that I’m saying yes to every passing fancy. I am a bundle of nerves and a swirl of ideas. I want to extend every branch of my fig tree and say yes to every one of them and so I do.

November: Renaissance

Opening the portal, affirming your reflection, rebirth and reinvigoration

• Honor your inner child and ask your future self for advice. Search your soul for the things you want to bring back from your past, and the things you’ll need to get where you’ve never been before. Bonus points if you do this as a journal prompt.

• Count your eggs and watch them hatch. No more superstitions, no negative roadblocks stopping you from realizing all that you have and all that will one day be yours. Look at all the wonderful things around you and nurture them until they become even more wonderful things.

• Say yes to something wild. I don’t know what’s wild for you, but it’s wild enough for me to be solo traveling around Paris for a few days, and I’d like to encourage myself to have the open-est of minds for this period.

• Journal it out. I have tried and failed the daily pages thing. Maybe it’s overwhelming for you too. What if we just committed to at minimum a weekly recap? Make it part of your routine to sit with your thoughts however often you see fit.

• Bask in your glow. It doesn’t have to be your birthday month. I’m letting you steal some of that energy. Look at the year you’ve had and pat yourself on the back as we are almost at the finish line. Maybe it was terrible, maybe it was lovely, maybe it was extraordinarily mundane. You’re still standing and asking for more in 2025 and that’s something to celebrate.

♡︎ Find your power in the time you spend with others. I’m going to assume a lot of us are seeing old friends and family around this time of year. What are you like when you’re around those people? Is it different than the way you are with other loved ones? Is there something you value about this version of yourself? Is there something you wish you could change? Whatever your answer is I bet it’s worth reflecting on (hint hint this is another journal prompt).

♡︎ As the year comes to an end start plotting your new year same (but still learning and growing) you. What do you want on your plate in 2025?

♡︎ Sorry for the Scorpio erasure, but as a November Sagittarius this is the month to think like the centaur! Be an optimistic adventurer and get out of your typical routine. Surprise yourself, believe in yourself, go to the ends of the earth for yourself.

Le Notti Bianche

I don’t believe in endings. Not really. I hate to quote Closing Time by Semisonic but ‘every new beginning/Comes from some other beginning's end’ is undoubtedly true. I’ve said for months now that it will be wonderful to be 30 as I get to be at the beginning of something instead of the end. I’ve always been a cautious and hesitant person, and this has made me a late bloomer to a lot of things in life. I’m always assessing the risk before I make the leap, and when I finally jump I realize I was worrying over nothing. I’m deciding here and now that my 30s will be all jumping and no hesitating. I want to do things quickly and with abandon. I want to fail at things and be bad and then shrug and go try something else. I am opening the portal and I trust what’s waiting on the other side.

⊹₊ october favorites ₊ ⊹

I started October by downloading Logic and tracking a song with my sister. We struggled with the most basic functions, but in the end we tracked an entire demo of a brand new song. It was so much fun we decided to track three more, and I even wrote a fourth one I was so inspired by the whole process. I’m thankful for returning to something like songwriting that brings me so much joy, and doing it in a new way with a new sound.

Another highlight (also musical) was seeing Vampire Weekend at Madison Square Garden !!! I’ve loved the band for so long, yet never seen them live. It was such an incredible show to cross off the bucket list with.

I forced my talented chef sister to host some friends for a full moon dinner party where we ate short rib and mashed potatoes and drank approximately 1.5 bottles of wine each. Highly recommend full moon dinners where you set intentions, and also recommend the gin gimlet I made to start. I used prickly pear gin from Mexico City.

Saw some great movies as well including Anora (one of my favorites ever and definitely of the year) and Conclave (I love a movie where people speak in harsh hushed voices about the papacy).

I did my little socializing thing and took two trips upstate, but I want to give a special shoutout to the IRL

saloon

meetup in particular. It was so cool to come together with all these likeminded people in a gorgeous vintage shop in NYC.

P.S.

I am going to be very active on Substack this month. I will be publishing a lot more than usual with Paris travel diaries, plus I’ve got some things up my sleeve for club keepsake. With all this bonus content there has never been a better time to become a paid subscriber, especially because I am currently comping paid subscriptions for a whole year! We have this really passionate and creative community within keepsake, and I want to create more content for it without forcing you to go through a paywall. If you’d like to be added to the special bonus content paid subscriber list just let me know via comment/dm/email and I’ll add you to the mix.

Wishing lots of lovely things for everyone this November and I’ll see you in the first edition of club keepsake in one week’s time!

xo Julianna