Putting on the Silver
A little announcement.
Hi there, sailor. It’s been a minute.
Coming down after an über-chaotic holiday season (I’m writing a book! I turned 25! I cried a lot about both!), I am currently sick in bed. I’ve been dealing with what I can only call ♡ BODY PROBLEMS ♡ since late last summer — an abdominal flare here, a cycle issue there, a hard cold here, a migraine with aura there. I’ve always had a weak immune system, but even with an intense supplement and nutrition regimen, nothing has helped. I think this is my body’s hard-cut way of telling me to slow down.
I have been Go! Go! Go! Career! Career! Career! for the past seven years, starting with my scholarship to college. Even during COVID, I did not rest. Even in between family funerals, I freelanced. Even when I had my top six teeth ripped out of my skull, I worked on HALOSCOPE stuff. I had convinced myself this was just my nature; I was a Capricorn, goat-mermaid-woman, busy little worker bee. Labor, even creative labor, was never “work” to me. It was simply the rhythm of my life. I couldn’t understand people who didn’t answer emails on the weekend or didn’t find deep pleasure in toil.
I am not a New Year’s resolution person. Resolutions, to me, are so finite and immovable that all you feel is loss when you don’t meet them by some arbitrary marker. I am much more interested in goals, which can be measured, and therefore chipped away at, rendering them easier to reach. Goals contain work, and who am I without work?
Which is precisely the question that flung me into stasis. At first, I thought my uneasiness was borne from the constant mystery illnesses; or the nausea I kept feeling whenever I received emails begging something of me (constant); or the days I spent crying without really knowing why — but I realized pretty quickly it was because I finally did it. I had been so career-driven for so many years, and I finally hit that capital-PG Professional Goal, and I did not feel as beautiful and buoyant as I thought I would. I had sacrificed so much of myself over the years that I did not have someone inside of me to celebrate and comfort. I reached into my heart and nobody answered.
For the first time in seven years, my yearly goals are not guided by any kind of professional success but instead by deeply personal healing. This is going to all sound a little too Eat Pray Love, so forgive me, but: I would like need to slow down, get to know myself again, and tend to the things that bring me peace. Find strength — mentally and literally. Get comfortable with vulnerability. Honor myself. Stay soft. This is a hard sell for a woman who has never been described as “soft,” much less “vulnerable.” I come from a long line of hyper-industrious harridans. I don’t know if taking care of myself is in my DNA. But I would like to try.
Part of taking care of myself means inventorying what’s working and what isn’t. And I don’t feel like this current iteration of the newsletter is working. I am no stranger to hard work (just look at HALOSCOPE!), but the amount of heavy lifting gives me pause. I just do not have the brain power required to write an exacting essay, concerned with voice and pose and diction every week, let alone twice a week. I couldn’t even do that if someone was paying me. There’s a reason why, say, when I get commissioned for a print article, there’s about two months of lead time. I was cramming two months of lead time into every week and wondering why I felt so burnt out. We tend to think of creative work as devoid of sweat, considering its somewhat vainglorious manifestations, but it does require much effort, especially if it’s not your full-time job. I want the effort I put into this newsletter to better reflect what you want, and, too, be less stressful for all of us.
So here’s the deal. I’m taking a break — about a month, give or take a couple of weeks — and will return after Valentine’s Day. I’m placing everyone’s paid subscriptions on pause so you will not be charged. When the newsletter comes back, it might look different (hell, it might have a different name!), but I’ll still resolve to write about fashion with steadfast love, attention, and consideration. I just need requisite time to rest, research, reformat, and find a better groove — both personally and for the newsletter.
I am so endlessly thankful to everyone who’s read Mermaid Café weekly and has supported my writing, whether as a free or paid subscriber. Even when it’s stressful, putting out this newsletter has been an exercise in empathy — I’ve had so many beautiful conversations and have been fortunate enough to befriend so many of you, and I take none of that for granted. When the newsletter returns, it will not be a paean for the past but a song for the future.
And, on that note, the song that brought me here:
See you in February. ꩜