For some reason, it’s much easier for me to draft up an email if I schedule it to be sent. Done and dusted, but without the existential fear of accidentally using they’re instead of there and showing the world that I have no idea what I’m doing. It also feels like a complete life hack, a way to trick myself into getting something done while still avoiding the part I actually dislike (just send it! Just hit send!)

I’m in Somerville, Massachusetts, around two miles north of where I thought I would be, but also much much closer to that place (Harvard) than I ever thought I would be four? Has it been four years? Ago. I’m living in a beautiful little house with each room painted a different color. The living room is a cozy dark red, the kitchen pale green, bedroom a slate blue. There is, my roommate and I have decided, lots of value to living in a home with different colored rooms.

Oh! I’m still interested in fashion. Womp womp. Moving gave me a chance to pack a new wardrobe, something 15 year old me would have been infinitely jealous about when I was going through a phase of loving capsule wardrobes and coveting the idea of the perfect wardrobe. I brought things I decided I wanted to wear, actively wanted, not passively reached for. The heroes, so far, are platform boots for stomping, a pair of velvet pants in the color “pear” that are like luxe pajamas, and mustard yellow gloves a friend knit for me. Also, reusable shopping bags. The grocery store is several blocks away.

This semester feels to be about newness in older experiences. New roles, projects, and ways of thinking, but all connected to where I’ve been. I’m writing about clogs, reading about the garden, walking streets I’ve never seen before in a city I’ve spent years in. Funny, to be here, everything tinted with the hazy memory of seeing a road, a field, a building, fourteen years ago, or a Covid-year ago, whichever is longer. But now I’m getting to explore as myself, this most recent version, not the final, but a new iteration.