What I Still Don't Know By 31
+ 7 ways to help celebrate my birthday 🥳
Today is my birthday!
(It’s also my wife’s birthday, her step-dad’s birthday, & our niece’s birthday, oh my!)
((So please accept this letter in lieu of an episode today.))
I feel like there’s this pressure—maybe just for people with newsletters? hmmm—to say something profound on birthdays. To share all that one has learned, all of the things one “knows” now, all of the little nuggets of wisdom that one has mined from all of their trips around the sun…
But I don’t feel like doing that, especially not this year.
Instead, what I’ll say is this:
As of this evening, I’ll be 31 years old, and I’m so happy to share that there’s so much I still don’t know.
So much that maybe I’ll never know! So many things I will truly never understand!
Some have even said that the most intelligent folks are able to bask in all that they don’t know because seriously, what the fuck is this whole life thing anyway?
But that’s cool! I’m grateful that I don’t feel completely daunted by what I don’t know. I’m lucky that it keeps me curious, keeps me engaged, keeps me in the damn game bayybeee!
I also despise making mistakes. Like truly, I sweat, I will most likely cry, and I will take approximately 19743975 hours to get over even the most minor blunder. It’s a truly chilling, personal intersection of error and emotion, but I’m trying to soften into self-compassion with every year that passes.
I’m also trying to release my tight grasp on The Spotlight Effect - “the psychological phenomenon by which people tend to believe they are being noticed more than they really are.” From what I’ve experienced, most people just don’t care that much! They’ve got other things going on! And if they do care, and they’re worth keeping around, they’ll lead with love and stay in the ring until things are smoothed over.
Wait - that’s getting dangerously close to sounding like advice, which would mean that I “know” something, and that is not the point of today!
Getting back on track—
There’s so much to learn, and so many ways to flow through this human experience, and I’m ready to keep releasing the need to be certain about things for the rest of my natural born days.
To help celebrate my birthday, and 7/7/7 (2023 is a 7 year!), here are 3 things I’m currently curious about, 3 things you can do to help me ring in a new year of life, and 1 thing that I think is so rad and totally worth your support and your dollars:
THREE THINGS I’M CURRENTLY CURIOUS ABOUT:
Heloise and Abelard: 12th Century, Parisian philosophers and lovers, whose affair has been preserved through their many letters to one another.
As Esther Lombardi writes: The legacy of those letters remains a great topic of discussion among literary scholars. While the two wrote of their love for each other, their relationship was decidedly complicated. Furthermore, Heloise wrote of her dislike of marriage, going so far as to call it prostitution. Many academics refer to her writings as one of the earliest contributions to feminist philosophies.
When God Was a Woman: the title of a 1976 book by historian Merlin Stone, which explores how the “development of the religion of the female deity in this area was intertwined with the earliest beginnings of religion so far discovered anywhere on earth.”
Sewing and Quilting: I recently inherited a brand-new sewing machine from a member of my family who loved to quilt! I’m so excited to learn how to use it, and to watch this folk film on quilting that Marlee Grace shared a few weeks back.
THREE THINGS YOU CAN DO TO HELP ME RING IN A NEW YEAR!
Buy My Book or Tell Your Pals to Buy My Book! What do you mean you saw this one coming? Anyway, here’s the link!
Subscribe To or Share my Substack! The paid pal perks have admittedly been lacking around these parts lately, but I promise that your support is helping me in so many ways, and I’m excited to get back to loving up on my inbox buds soon!
Pull me a card or send me a birthday wish! If you feel called or inclined, please consider sending me some magic on my big day!
ONE THING THAT I THINK IS WORTH YOUR SUPPORT & YOUR DOLLARS!
The Gay Marseille Tarot by Charlie Claire Burgess, now on Kickstarter!: Back Charlie’s second deck, which is fun and fabulous and totally gay! If you click right now, you might even be able to snag some early bird deals.
A liberating new interpretation of the classic Tarot de Marseille, The Gay Marseille Tarot centers and celebrates LGBTQIA2S+ identity and has fun doing it! With trans Emperors and gender nonconforming Empresses, polyamorous Lovers and a sapphic pool party under The Moon, this playful and cheeky deck celebrates gender diversity, sex positivity, nonbinary beauty, and queer love. With Justice ready for a protest and the Stonewall Inn as The House of God (the Tower), this deck remembers the past and present fight for LGBTQIA2S+ rights and integrates references to queer history and culture throughout. The Gay Marseille (which rhymes if you pronounce it the English way: Mar-say) is a vibrant, joyful, and affirmative tarot deck for reading brighter, liberated queer futures.
However you choose to spend this day, thank you for being here, thank you for your support and your readership, and thank you for swimming in the soup with me. I really love and cherish this space.