Not a Writers Club is a bi-weekly newsletter. Here you’ll find musings written by me (Celeste) along with writing prompts that you can try out yourself. If you’ve been looking for a sign to keep writing, this is it.
I’m getting my first dose of the vaccine today. Which feels like I’m about to get baptized or something. Like Everything Is Going To Change. And I honestly don’t know how I feel about that.
People keep throwing around the “return to normal” phrase which is a bit unsettling to me. Maybe it’s the anxious attachment style not allowing me to get my hopes up. But also maybe there’s a part of me that isn’t quite ready to go back to the way things were. I think it’s both.
There are of course, things that I miss about life before the pandemic. Like going to Chili’s. I get promotional emails from Chili’s every now and then and it physically makes my body ache to think about how long it’s been since I last consumed a presidenté margarita with honey chipotle chicken crispers and a chocolate molten lava cake for dessert. I miss those light and airy chips that are so salty they make your lips tingle. I miss getting up to go the bathroom just to see how tipsy I am. I miss seeing someone get proposed to in the middle of Chili’s and wishing that someone would propose to me at Chili’s.
I miss free drinks at bars. I miss photo booths. I miss my friends’ friends. I miss Minami doing my makeup at Glossier. I miss when me and my old roommates and all their friends went to Boon Thai and the waiters let us use the aux. I miss seeing Syd from The Internet in the bathroom at the Cheesecake Factory, and seeing Harry Styles at a tiny cafe in Echo Park. I miss when Leah lost her debit card at Bossa Nova and a Black man with an afro came up to me in the dark and handed it to me. I miss drinking Four Loko on the roof at DJ’s house. I miss going to Yang Chow with my family for every birthday and graduation.
As much as I miss all of that, I’m hesitant to say that I’m ready to go back to it. Maybe because of fear. But also maybe because I’m enjoying myself right now. I think it’s both.
I’ve always loved saying no, and the pandemic has given me many opportunities to say no without the fear of sounding unreasonable.
I love how the pandemic has simplified the way I spend time with the people I love. Most weekends a fun night looks like ordering in with the three friends I see regularly. It’s never ideal to be sitting around an IKEA table with boxes of shriveled up tacos or containers of lukewarm curry. But it’s always a reminder that the most important thing is not that we have an extravagant, Instagrammable meal, but that we get to hang out.
I love taking walks just to get outside. I love not having a destination.
I love watching TV and TikToks. I love deciding when it’s a watch-TV-with-dinner night or a watch-TikToks-with-dinner night.
I love decorating my room. I love moving things around and feeling like a new person. I love how it feels like a different room depending on what time of day it is, depending on what I’m doing in here. I spend so much time in here, it feels like an extension of myself.
I love hanging out at the park. I love sitting on a blanket in the sun or side by side on a bench. I love when someone nearby is playing music, like they knew we were coming. I love when people walk by with their dogs and I instinctively say, “Hi little doggie!” in a voice I didn’t even know I was capable of.
I love being a part of a writing group. It’s something I don’t think I would have even considering before the pandemic. Every week I meet up (virtually) with Jin and Chuckry and we talk about our writing. We give each other feedback on our essays, we encourage each other. Before the pandemic, writing felt like such an individual activity to me. Now I can’t imagine not doing it in community.
Maybe Everything Isn’t Going To Change. We still don’t really know what the future looks like in a post-vaccinated world. I’m okay with living a semi-mundane life for now. I do miss Chili’s though.
Prompt: What do you miss about the normal world and what do you love about the world we’re in now?
ICYMI ↩️
In the last newsletter I talked about an outfit that makes me feel like myself.
Required Reading 📚
I randomly discovered that Society6 does monthly horoscopes. Here’s an excerpt from the April Sagittarius horoscope that really hit the nail on the head for me:
Quick Tip 📝
Go for a run. Or a walk. Whatever floats your boat. Take a photo of the scenery. If you think of something profound write it down. If not, that’s okay too.
Until next time <3