Here’s the truth: writing is hard work sometimes. Some days when I have been writing and writing for a few hours, I have to look away from my computer screen and look at something on paper, that I can hold with my two hands. And sometimes I need inspiration and look for it in the work already written by others, which can be from anything and anywhere. Vogue, favorite blogs, and news articles. I believe it’s good to just keep reading, because that helps me to keep writing, I can’t do one without the other.
Hello my French Riviera, my Cote d’Azur…
from a Diary of Cannes with Chopard
If there was ever motivation to do good with my life, it would be the work that she creates.
So this was me in high school with my best friend Ashley. Not that anyone will be surprised, but I was uber emo and nerdy, even at a young age. I fought with my mom a lot back then, but I never rebelled. I really didn’t start drinking socially (or at all…) until I was 23, so my experience of high school did not include a lot of parties, or drugs, making out with boys in dark places or any kind of typical rebellion similar to my peers. Y’all, I was a square. Again, no one is surprised.
All of this has to do with Ashley, the friend who was a square with me, though she was way cooler at it than I ever was. We had movie nights and sleep overs and we wrote in our journals and read aloud the words from notebooks that we wouldn’t say to anyone else. Frustrations. Poems. Hopes. What we envisioned our future would look like 10 years from then. We promised two things: that we would attend our high school reunion together (because who wants to go to that alone?), and that when we were getting married, we would be each others maid of honor.
And wouldn’t you know it… but 12 years after making that promise to each other, she gets engaged, and asks me to be just that. We’re not 14 anymore, we’re not kids anymore. We’re not sitting in her bedroom with legs stretched out, reading our hopes about the future to each other. The future is happening, and it’s big, and it’s real. There’s a word I’m searching for… what is this word? Something that would convey this emotion of the strangeness, of the things we talked about happening that are happening. And it’s true that we’re not kids anymore, but how lucky are we that we are each living our best lives, the kind we always hoped for? I have no word for this, but maybe that’s okay. Maybe the feeling of it sitting in my heart is enough.
On my way to Thailand next week, I have a four hour layover in San Francisco, meaning I get to use the yoga room, see the vintage record exhibit, enjoy the renowned 5,000 square foot cafeteria that sells fresh produce and wine, and hang out in my favorite city for a little while before departing for a 12 hour flight to Japan. It hardly matters if it’s just the airport, it makes me happy.
“I wanted to get to San Francisco, everyone wants to get to San Francisco and what for? In God’s name under the stars what for? For joy, for kicks, for something burning in the night.”
-Jack Kerouac, On The Road
San Francisco
Austin
Chicago
Photographs
The sea
Words
Family
Yoga
Friends
Letters
Sundays
Fashion & Style Editor for AND Magazine
Chronicling my life adventures with a camera in one hand, a pen in the other.
