june/july inputs + things i bought

i live in a new state and i made a new podcast

I have finally announced one of the projects I’ve been working on this year: It’s a new podcast! I wrote about my pre-launch anxiety last week, and now I’m coming to you from the other end of launch. In case you haven’t heard it before: putting a new project into the world is really anticlimactic! I’m making a thing that people are consuming on their own time, so all I can do is refresh my metrics page and check for comments and reviews on the various apps.

I’ll probably write about this more in another newsletter at some point, but it really reinforces what every professional creative has ever said about deriving pleasure and satisfaction from publishing: that it’s a losing game. Before launching, I tried to set a concrete number that would satisfy me but let’s be real, nothing will.

I didn’t send one of these roundups at the end of June because we were moving to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I was trying to not lose my mind. Now I’m writing this from the porch of my new home and it’s possible that my nervous system has finally started to reset.

Things I Made

I made Try Hard! I announced it and published the first episode this week! Ah! If you haven’t listened to it yet, please listen to it! And if you have listened to it, send your best friend a screenshot of the show!

Things I’m Digesting

We slowly worked our way through Too Much, and while I thought it was a bit uneven, I was so into the world, the pink, the ruffles, the Lena of it all.

Inside my particular age group of millennials there are two wolves: one hates Lena Dunham and thinks it’s cool to hate her, the other has not admitted to itself just how wholly Girls shaped our impression of and orientation toward young adulthood. I am too tired to be hung up on things like coolness anymore, so I’ll admit that reentering a Girls-like universe was comforting in a way I didn’t expect, and I even felt emotional the first time I saw Lena Dunham and Andrew Rannells bickering on screen again. I loved it, and I hope she doesn’t ruin it with a second season. We need NOTHING more from this little gem of a story.

Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream by Megan Greenwell

We listened to this on our cross country road trip and I can’t recommend it enough. It would’ve been so easy to write a version of this book that simply focused on the way private equity has destroyed the media industry, but Megan wrote something that the average American can use to understand how PE touches every part of our economy and makes our lives worse. I loved that it followed four American workers as their lives became intertwined with PE against their will. You see how subtle and insidious it all is, and it explains so much about why things like your doctor’s office, your local paper, and even apartment complexes suck so bad these days.

Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

I loved this novel. I read it in one day, which I don’t do often because I’m a kind of slow reader. It’s about a brilliant young woman named Catalina who is navigating the privileged world of Harvard as an undocumented immigrant from Queens. It’s funny, it’s beautiful, it’s heartbreaking.

Endo seltzers

OK, this isn’t culture, but I’m literally digesting this. These are THC/CBD seltzers made here in Lancaster, but they’re being distributed all around the region so keep an eye out for them! I can only drink half, but it was great for calming my brain down right before bed.

Things I bought

Not to brag—ok, actually yes, I’m bragging—I didn’t buy any new clothing in June or July! I wasn’t even tempted, which was wild. I think now that I’m down to my last three articles of clothing in my 12-item allowance for the year, I’m really aware that each purchase has to be worth it.

I did make a necklace at my local bead store this week, which I guess would count as an accessory acquisition. Watch my process here:

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Purchased grand total for 2025 so far: 9 articles of clothing, 4 accessories.