The day has finally come, the one you’ve all been anxiously awaiting. Your friend/sister/acquaintance/niece has kept up a weekly newsletter for a full year. I could not be more grateful to all of you for at the very least signing up and at most for reading my words. I’m trying to get better at writing and finding my voice and it’s been very exciting to get to bring people along with me. There are almost 160 of you signed up. If you all paid $600 each I could buy a Tesla that makes fart noises. Just think of your impact.
I’m proud of myself. Over the year I was made at times to feel insecure and inadequate, but writing this and having work to show makes me feel like I really did something of note. On nights where I didn’t feel beautiful, I still felt smart and strong. These things matter more to me anyway. I set out on this project to try and get myself to write more, and I ended up writing around 41,600 words over the course of a year. A lot of it was okay, some of it was good, and some of it was crap. Part of this experience for me has been learning to have grace with myself. In pursuit of creativity, I can’t run myself into the ground, and not everything I share is going to be my most excellent work. Thank you for sticking with me while I figured it out.
Over the year I’ve gotten very personal with you all. I’ve shared a lot of details about my life, and I don’t regret it. Maybe I was able to articulate things you already felt. I’m not that intelligent, I'm just observant. Maybe you’ve laughed and cried with me. Maybe you deleted every one of these and you’re not even seeing this now- hello? It’s ok, the unsubscribe button is down below.
A year ago, I started this because I felt very disconnected from people. I had just moved back to New York after months in Maryland and so many of my friends were still phone calls away. I spent 6 months working for MSNBC where I watched 4 hours of news a day detailing the rising death toll from the pandemic. I started this newsletter as an escape from that. As a relief from the collective grief we were all feeling and continue to feel. It was my intention to create this platform so I could share pieces of my life, and observations about my world, and in doing so a lot of you have reached out to share pieces of yours. In times of grief and loneliness, it’s so important to share stories that remind us of life and joy. I hope I provided some amount of relief and I look forward to more.
This blog has been my longest committed relationship. Today is my first sort of anniversary. Today marks one full year of having my own back. Nobody made me do this and nobody paid me to do this. I just have a passion for philanthropy. Recently I’ve gone back and read a lot of these and in hindsight I was leaving myself a lot of clues. I can see how I was feeling, I can read through my words and discover things I didn’t know when I wrote them down.
Here’s the takeaway from 52 personal essays over 52 weeks. In my quest to find my unique voice, I discovered that I’m not that special. I just show up. We all want the same things. We want to be heard and cared for and understood. For a long time I’ve tried to get all those things from other people and that doesn’t work in full. For a long time I’ve wanted everyone to like me. I’m realizing that not everyone likes me and that has to be ok. I am not Adele. I look forward to more weeks and months and years of typing into google docs at odd hours of the day. A lot has come and gone in my life over the past year, and I’ve always been here as its stenographer taking detailed notes. Thank you, Pillowtown, for making me feel comfy. Onward!
Congratulations Rachel! There are many, many people who don't "show up" ... so consider that special. Thank you for sharing who you are so that we pause and reflect on who we are.
Happy Anniversary!