Do you know what the absolute worst thing is about becoming a morning person? And before I share this horrible thing, I’ll note that this is a problem that is probably (hopefully) specific to my own particular brand of BBS (Broken Brain Syndrome) and is therefore quite niche, but being niche doesn’t make it any less real so I would like you to please take it seriously, okay? The absolute worst and most horrible thing about now being a morning person, after years of believing that I most certainly am not a morning person (and yes, this is very similar to the feelings of betrayal and confusion I felt when I found out in my mid-20s that I was, in fact, a Libra rather than a Scorpio) is this: Now, every morning when I stand in my bay window in ever-diminishing morning light, wearing my big wool house socks, the dumpiest sweatpants you’ve ever seen, and a yellow sweatshirt that’s absolutely covered in toothpaste because when I got a Sonicare I not only stopped actually brushing for myself but also stopped properly spitting my toothpaste out and now seem to just let it ooze out of my mouth and down my chin and onto my sweatshirt like a toddler WHY? Why?! I don’t know why, but I do, and as I stand there in my toothpaste-covered sweatshirt grinding my coffee and staring out into the dark world beyond my double-glazed windows, the following lyrics play on repeat in my head:
I know she loves the sunrise
No longer sees it with her sleeping eyes
For those of you to whomst these lyrics mean nothing, congratulations! You clearly survived the early 2000s without the sleepy-beachy music of foot-fetishist Jack Johnson1 constantly playing in your local Starbucks and also everywhere else. (Side note: remember when they sold CDs at Starbucks? Remember CDs?! Here’s a cute story about Roger Federer being a big fan of them, lol.)
For years and years I thought morning people were overrepresented in our cultural real estate. Every time you read a profile with someone successful, their secret to getting it all done always seems to start with their alarm going off at some ungodly hour so they can write or work out or take phone calls while walking at 5.6mph at a treadmill desk. While I still think we need more night owl representation in our culture, I must confess that now, as someone who doesn’t drink, I kind of love the mornings and waking up early really does feel like some kind of life hack. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that 🎶 I love the sunrise 🎶 I do love slipping out of bed under the cover of darkness, lighting a flickering candle like a consumptive Victorian ghost, and then sitting at my desk and getting some morning pages done as the room lights up around me. While I know that I’ll never have it in me to be like Michelle Obama and hit the gym in these wee hour, I do sometimes go to an 8AM exercise class now and whoa, the endorphins hit harder in the morning, don’t they? Those morning endorphins are like MDMA and that smug af glow really does last all day.
TL;DR: I’m a morning person now and it’s nice but would be so much nicer if I could go to that clinic in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and have any memory of Jack Johnson permanently removed from my rotted brain.
Anyway, here are September’s greatest hits!
The Photographer’s Gallery
You know what slaps? Going to a museum on your own. You don’t need to worry about your type-A friend reading every single fucking plaque or your type-ADHD friend roaming around the galleries like a helium balloon in a tornado. You also don’t need to feel bad for spending so much time in the cafe or the gift shop, two of the best places in any museum. Going to a museum on your own is *bliss* and I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when I went to The Photographer’s Gallery to see the Evelyn Hofer show. It was so nice to take in her photographs on my own, to really sit and look at the imperfect backgrounds in her work that I probably would've tweaked in photoshop (why?), take in the grubby footwear choices of NYC beatniks, and to marvel at the rich history of the passive-aggressive please-look-afer-your-dog sign. I personally find shooting strangers on the street stressful, but I do love taking portraits and this exhibition made me want to take photos again after months of barely touching my camera.
In the basement gallery of the museum, I found myself fully enamoured with Luke Stephenson’s Incomplete History of Show Birds. This is such a fun and beautiful series and the prints are gorgeous. Olivia Rodrigo is right, birds really are so foreign to us! I could look at them and marvel all day.
Instagram Ads FTW
I’ve been duped into buying not one, but two products relentlessly marketed to me through instagram recently and miraculously they’re both really living up to the hype their marketing teams created.
The first is AKT Deodorant. After using a Canadian natural deodorant that I was having to use Google Translate to buy from an Austrian website, I finally decided to change it up and try something closer to home. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much success and tried a number of natural products that somehow made my soupy sweat smell even worse and/or gave me rashes from the high concentration of bicarbonate soda in their formulas. I was ready to pull the plug and go back to drugstore brands when I was swayed by AKT’s extremely chic branding, fully recyclable packaging, and compelling story of two sweaty actors saving the West End from rank armpit stench. I’ve been using the orange one for about a month and am happy to report that it genuinely smells incredible and, more importantly, that I don’t smell like onions and cabbage every time I break a sweat now. This is a big win for everybody who has to share a space with me and I am forever grateful.
The second thing I was suckered into buying mid-scroll is the Lumos Pen by Tom’s Studio. I’m a diehard Muji .38 gel pen girlie and have been using the same two pen bodies with refills for the better part of a decade now, but have had my eye on more sustainable metal pen options (specifically Pen Type-B by CW&T) for years. But paying an extra duty to ship a pen from America felt annoying so I kept putting it off. Enter Tom’s Studio, a Dorset-based company with an even more sustainable refillable pen offering, a cheaper price point, and a much more aggressive instagram ad strategy. Despite dropping and temporarily losing one of the little pen parts within minutes of unboxing, and then denting the nib after dropping it on my keyboard a few days later, I’m having a great time with the my new pen! The black metal is incredibly smart, it writes beautifully (though, full disclosure, it’s not as sharp as I’d like and I’m going to order a fineliner pack of pen tips this week) and refilling the ink is extremely satisfying, like real modern day Emily Dickinson vibes. While I don’t think it’ll fully replace my Muji pens for journaling, it’s a wonderful addition to my desktop toolkit and great for drawing and daily to-do lists. If you have a writerly type on your Chr*****s shopping list, I genuinely think this pen would be a hit.
GIVE THE TREE FELLER ALL OF MY CRAMPS
September was one of those very special months that was bookended by my period, a real double-the-cramps-double-the-fun kind of situation. After unsuccessfully sending my cramps to Novak Djokovic at the start of the month, I thought it was best that the second bout of cramps stay closer to home so as not to lose potency whilst traversing the Atlantic, so I harnessed all my energy and sent them to the man who cut down the tree at Sycamore Gap. I know there are much worse things happening in the world right now (and those worse things deserve punishments much worse than period cramps) but this tree felling has sent me into a tailspin. My climate grief and anxiety is already at an all-time high and this absolutely senseless act feels symbolic of the hopelessness of our environmental situation. I want so badly to believe that things will get better, but things feel like they’re going backwards in hyper-speed here in the UK right now and it’s overwhelmingly awful, isn’t it? I’m very much this: 😩 and I wish the absolute worst cramps on this chainsaw-wielding wrong’un!!!!!
Sending all of you strength and hope and light periods, if you are someone who gets them. ⚡️
This next week, I’ll be taking lots of dog walks with my granddoghter, celebrating 100 days of not drinking (!!!), continuing my Mission: Impossible marathon, and leaning all the way into October’s immaculate autumn vibes. See you soon!
Look, I don’t mean to kink shame but from memory, this man mentioned toes in multiple songs and even went so far as to describe them as bubbly in one. Bubbly toes. What does that even mean? Are they arthritic? Are they buoyant? Do they float through the air? I don’t really want to know, I just want to state for the record that I do not like it.
It's very rare to find the documentation in today's world, but my mom's bday is 9/23. If you search around in older publications, you'll find her bday classified as a Virgo. The woman is VIRGO personified! I can comfortably say this because I'm a Libra. She doesn't have one iota of Libra essence.
Congrats on the upcoming 100 Days!!!
Since you might be a morning person, have other sleep patterns changed? Like being in bed by 8pm isn't early, you party animals! Or naps = love?
I've run the gammet of sleep patterns, but a couple things have remained consistent...I require more sleep than the average human (no, I don't apologize for it). Also, naps keep me kind...on most days. 🙃😂
GL❤