Today I’m officially launching a paid subscription to Maybe Baby. The TLDR is: For $5 a month you’ll get my weekly newsletter, my monthly Q&A column Dear Baby, and access to the Maybe Baby podcast. You’ll also be helping keep this space alive and ad-free.
and hehe i've seen that poorly worn slippers meme across the internets, but it was always with the context of growing up in an East Asian, Desi, Latinx, or Black family. I guess some things are both specific and universal!
that normal people essay!!! never have i been so overwhelmingly stricken by something i so whole-heartedly disagree with. it’s so bad that i’m immediately printing it out to keep it for posterity.
Watch the episode about aliens/alien abductions in the Unsolved Mysteries reboot! I promise it does not incite the rage or sadness that comes with an unsolved murder. Also it’s based in the Berkshires, MA where I’m from so obvi biased but nonetheless! It’s a strange and fun stand-alone episode, and worth the viewing. The truth is out there 👽
a question (which is mostly about me, sorry): I haven't written in a long time. It used to be "what I do" - not for work, just for fun. It was who I was, really. (Note: When I went to type "used", I actually wrote "should" and now I feel read to filth by my own mind). But now every word and every sentence feel stuck in my throat, and if they ever make it to the page, I cringe and feel embarrassed that I somehow didn't produce a Booker Prize winning piece of writing in five seconds, when I haven't written in two years. I have been so inspired by Maybe Baby (thank you for writing it by the way, it's always exactly what I need to hear and read), and I've been toying with the idea of forcing myself to put out something like a newsletter, even if I'm the only one who reads it. So my seriously long-winded question is: How can I trust my own voice? How do I know I'm doing something right/writing something of value? Does it ever stop feeling self-indulgent?
Hello! First time commenter. I just wanted to say I appreciated the journey you had with your mother in having your view/idea of your mother expanding after realizing she was much more complex than the basic "live laugh love" decor she kept. I connected with this because I also had a lot of moments where I recognize and acknowledge I have more freedom and access to opportunities that my mom didn't have with her life circumstances, but despite her lack of access/opportunity, that she also is an active and critical thinker. I think that I had been coming from the stereotypical mindset that because my mother is so traditional, her default state is to be very easily placated and to not question or think about things more critically. Learning about my own mother's context has been very helpful and illuminating as it helps me in drawing parallels between our generations.
I think your mom's perspective on the gratitude thing is really interesting, and I think I see what she's saying.
Even before the Bando, Manrepeller, The Wing, Outdoor Voices fiascos, it bothered me that buying cutesy stuff was promoted as if it helped in any meaningful way. Later on it seemed like some Instagram famous CEOs of consumeristic companies thought that by showing their authentic anxious selves they were showing that you can be sad and and like happy cute stuff at the same time. Unfortunately, I think it's very rare for the purchasing of fashion and accessories to be anything emotionally gratifying (there are rare exceptions), and to pretend that it is, is some icky grand rationalization. I love buying pretty stuff, conscious that it's a vanity drug, not because it makes me a better person. The uncomfortable feeling is that these aforementioned anxious CEOs never bothered to figure out the root of their depression and look for external cures and justifications, which are never sustainable. Has anyone ever thought, yea maybe I doing selfish jealous signaling person things, yes I am still redeemable, but am I willing to travel the improvement road?
I just wanted to add a note that it'd be really useful to also add the release number to the adjoining podcast in the title name. I've been listening to the podcast and then returning to the newsletter to get the visual components or click on the links of the list of 15.
hi! as someone who feels like i’m just finally getting into the world of ~being an adult~ (whatever that means) i can’t express how much i love your newsletter, especially the q+a portions! that being said i unfortunately can’t contribute to it monetarily at the moment and would be so so grateful if you could put me on the list of comped subscribers 💗
Haley, love the content like every week. Felt so identified with the email running out of space and my inability to let go of my precious emails! Best wishes from Argentina.
PD: I would like to please ask you to put me on the list of free suscribers, I cant afford right now to pay in dollars, but i am a huge fan of your work.
Funny, I recently decided to revisit this minimalist / anti-consumerist blog I hadn't read in years, which I have something of a love-hate relationship with because, while I like picking up stuff like the zero-waste recipes (which can actually work out cheap), I find the good vibes completely oppressive, the way these people can go into quasi-religious aesthetic ecstasy over a toilet brush and just, how everything is simple, kind and balanced, and aesthetically perfectly imperfect.
And one of the recent posts I found was a "list of gratitudes", and it basically boiled down to a list of ways to consume - food, home decor, yoga. But through it (and the surrounding blog posts), you can kind of see a person just barely not spiraling off into anxiety due to fragile health, and some traumatic personal stuff that she's shared a little of. It's just weird reading about that stuff through lists of consumables, recipes for hair remedies, etc. and especially, lists of things to be grateful for, which she says she's been drawing up at regular intervals. My first thought was that she could maybe use a list of ingratitudes.
It also drives me nuts because that's one way I - and others - deal with depression when it strikes, is telling yourself all this positive pep talk stuff, all the while raging at it. So it feels like watching people so used to treating themselves like shit, so used to being grateful for the ways in which they've been deprived of anything but consumerism - so that their anti-consumerism manifests as even greater obsession with the things they've got rid of and the new things they've acquired, and how they've acquired, them, and how they're cheap and poverty is a simple question of not budgeting properly - that they're embroidering this depression into cushions or printing it on posters or scented candles and posting it all around their houses, wondering why it makes them want to claw their own eyes out.
Or maybe I'm projecting, and I have a hard time with slogans in the first place. Also I don't think it's necessarily useful to think in terms of generations. After all, Live, Laugh, Love (in whatever order I forget) is the title of Garance Doré's book.
Haley I was listening to this recent Sam Harris podcast ep called something like “can we pull back from the brink?” I heard it was controversial, but that’s often why I listen to Harris. I agree and disagree with him a lot but I like seeking out content that at least engages in unfiltered monologue/ dialogue. I always leave thinking more critically whether it’s in opposition to Harris or in agreement.
I was curious if you had listened to it that ep and if you had thoughts on it. A big premise of it is that completely abolishing the police is ludicrous and that serious police reform is a better approach. I have been completely on the defund the police side of the aisle but have recently been wondering about what that would actually look like and whether we could replace it with something that could still act as honest public protection. I’m still trying to learn about the history of the police as an institution, and there is so much corruption that abolishing it feels like the only way to correct. I’m just thinking and processing out loud and would love to hear your perspectives on it.
and hehe i've seen that poorly worn slippers meme across the internets, but it was always with the context of growing up in an East Asian, Desi, Latinx, or Black family. I guess some things are both specific and universal!
that normal people essay!!! never have i been so overwhelmingly stricken by something i so whole-heartedly disagree with. it’s so bad that i’m immediately printing it out to keep it for posterity.
Already used the docs.new so many times since reading it in your newsletter. Probably mostly because I now know how to do that. lol.
I read the whole email just for reading your greetings :)
thank you Haley!
Watch the episode about aliens/alien abductions in the Unsolved Mysteries reboot! I promise it does not incite the rage or sadness that comes with an unsolved murder. Also it’s based in the Berkshires, MA where I’m from so obvi biased but nonetheless! It’s a strange and fun stand-alone episode, and worth the viewing. The truth is out there 👽
I would just like to wholeheartedly thank you for the docs.new hack. Genius!
a question (which is mostly about me, sorry): I haven't written in a long time. It used to be "what I do" - not for work, just for fun. It was who I was, really. (Note: When I went to type "used", I actually wrote "should" and now I feel read to filth by my own mind). But now every word and every sentence feel stuck in my throat, and if they ever make it to the page, I cringe and feel embarrassed that I somehow didn't produce a Booker Prize winning piece of writing in five seconds, when I haven't written in two years. I have been so inspired by Maybe Baby (thank you for writing it by the way, it's always exactly what I need to hear and read), and I've been toying with the idea of forcing myself to put out something like a newsletter, even if I'm the only one who reads it. So my seriously long-winded question is: How can I trust my own voice? How do I know I'm doing something right/writing something of value? Does it ever stop feeling self-indulgent?
Hello! First time commenter. I just wanted to say I appreciated the journey you had with your mother in having your view/idea of your mother expanding after realizing she was much more complex than the basic "live laugh love" decor she kept. I connected with this because I also had a lot of moments where I recognize and acknowledge I have more freedom and access to opportunities that my mom didn't have with her life circumstances, but despite her lack of access/opportunity, that she also is an active and critical thinker. I think that I had been coming from the stereotypical mindset that because my mother is so traditional, her default state is to be very easily placated and to not question or think about things more critically. Learning about my own mother's context has been very helpful and illuminating as it helps me in drawing parallels between our generations.
I think your mom's perspective on the gratitude thing is really interesting, and I think I see what she's saying.
Even before the Bando, Manrepeller, The Wing, Outdoor Voices fiascos, it bothered me that buying cutesy stuff was promoted as if it helped in any meaningful way. Later on it seemed like some Instagram famous CEOs of consumeristic companies thought that by showing their authentic anxious selves they were showing that you can be sad and and like happy cute stuff at the same time. Unfortunately, I think it's very rare for the purchasing of fashion and accessories to be anything emotionally gratifying (there are rare exceptions), and to pretend that it is, is some icky grand rationalization. I love buying pretty stuff, conscious that it's a vanity drug, not because it makes me a better person. The uncomfortable feeling is that these aforementioned anxious CEOs never bothered to figure out the root of their depression and look for external cures and justifications, which are never sustainable. Has anyone ever thought, yea maybe I doing selfish jealous signaling person things, yes I am still redeemable, but am I willing to travel the improvement road?
I just wanted to add a note that it'd be really useful to also add the release number to the adjoining podcast in the title name. I've been listening to the podcast and then returning to the newsletter to get the visual components or click on the links of the list of 15.
Hi! Sorry if I missed it, but where is the link to subscribe?
hi! as someone who feels like i’m just finally getting into the world of ~being an adult~ (whatever that means) i can’t express how much i love your newsletter, especially the q+a portions! that being said i unfortunately can’t contribute to it monetarily at the moment and would be so so grateful if you could put me on the list of comped subscribers 💗
Haley, love the content like every week. Felt so identified with the email running out of space and my inability to let go of my precious emails! Best wishes from Argentina.
PD: I would like to please ask you to put me on the list of free suscribers, I cant afford right now to pay in dollars, but i am a huge fan of your work.
another HOTTTTT Chrome hack: you can pull up docs from your Google Drive in one step by typing their titles into your Chrome search bar!
Funny, I recently decided to revisit this minimalist / anti-consumerist blog I hadn't read in years, which I have something of a love-hate relationship with because, while I like picking up stuff like the zero-waste recipes (which can actually work out cheap), I find the good vibes completely oppressive, the way these people can go into quasi-religious aesthetic ecstasy over a toilet brush and just, how everything is simple, kind and balanced, and aesthetically perfectly imperfect.
And one of the recent posts I found was a "list of gratitudes", and it basically boiled down to a list of ways to consume - food, home decor, yoga. But through it (and the surrounding blog posts), you can kind of see a person just barely not spiraling off into anxiety due to fragile health, and some traumatic personal stuff that she's shared a little of. It's just weird reading about that stuff through lists of consumables, recipes for hair remedies, etc. and especially, lists of things to be grateful for, which she says she's been drawing up at regular intervals. My first thought was that she could maybe use a list of ingratitudes.
It also drives me nuts because that's one way I - and others - deal with depression when it strikes, is telling yourself all this positive pep talk stuff, all the while raging at it. So it feels like watching people so used to treating themselves like shit, so used to being grateful for the ways in which they've been deprived of anything but consumerism - so that their anti-consumerism manifests as even greater obsession with the things they've got rid of and the new things they've acquired, and how they've acquired, them, and how they're cheap and poverty is a simple question of not budgeting properly - that they're embroidering this depression into cushions or printing it on posters or scented candles and posting it all around their houses, wondering why it makes them want to claw their own eyes out.
Or maybe I'm projecting, and I have a hard time with slogans in the first place. Also I don't think it's necessarily useful to think in terms of generations. After all, Live, Laugh, Love (in whatever order I forget) is the title of Garance Doré's book.
Haley I was listening to this recent Sam Harris podcast ep called something like “can we pull back from the brink?” I heard it was controversial, but that’s often why I listen to Harris. I agree and disagree with him a lot but I like seeking out content that at least engages in unfiltered monologue/ dialogue. I always leave thinking more critically whether it’s in opposition to Harris or in agreement.
I was curious if you had listened to it that ep and if you had thoughts on it. A big premise of it is that completely abolishing the police is ludicrous and that serious police reform is a better approach. I have been completely on the defund the police side of the aisle but have recently been wondering about what that would actually look like and whether we could replace it with something that could still act as honest public protection. I’m still trying to learn about the history of the police as an institution, and there is so much corruption that abolishing it feels like the only way to correct. I’m just thinking and processing out loud and would love to hear your perspectives on it.