if you’ve been wondering what i’m up to lately, buckle in. lots more to come, and thanks for reading. tell me your thoughts in the comments!

Bakeries and boulangeries are similar, but not the same.

In France, both establishments sell bread and assorted baked goods. But bakeries don’t have to sell goods that were baked on-site: they can be shipped in from elsewhere, pre-frozen, made cheaply and/or sold cheaply.

The latter business is particular. A true boulangerie must bake its bread (largely baguettes and boules) on the premises without the use of additives, preservatives, or pre-freezing. These are legally protected requirements across France.

But I don’t live in France, and I don’t work at a bakery. According to these standards, even while I’m outside Europe, I technically work at a boulangerie.

Better yet, a café-slash-boulangerie.

These days, you can find me behind a pastry counter slinging espresso drinks the way I used to when I met my husband; the way I’d dreamed of doing at my remote job.

I felt continually drawn to re-entering food service during my corporate era. Until that point I’d clawed my way out of the restaurant industry via student loans, prayer, and consistent effort. I left behind 8-hour days spent standing behind a bar, handling hot drinks and rude customers.

I guaranteed myself that I’d never return. This made the growing desire to become a barista again feel a lot like regression.

But this flirtation with the past was a value shift in disguise. Remote corporate work was supposed to be a career step-up, but at work, I felt strangely stagnant. My expertise was boiled down into data points for faceless people, and my flexible, open remote-work schedule felt lonely and hollow. The Big 3 tech company that hired me cared nothing about my colleagues, or me, or seemingly human beings in general from the amount they paid us; how they laid us off in sudden yet continuous droves.

I missed what felt like ‘‘real” work. And as it turns out, I just simply and truly love being a barista. For some unknown yet very real reason, whenever I’m ‘on bar,’ I feel like a wild horse sprinting carefree through an open plain.

But more than just making coffee again, now I bake for this business, too.

Such a career move transpired after listing ‘at-home baking experience’ alongside my barista skills in my introduction email. Initially I cringed while marketing myself like this, but how many pies, cakes, brownies, muffins, scones, and cookies can I bake my friends and family before I can bake these items in a professional setting? What experiences count as ‘experience’?

Baking for a mind-blowing local bakery (boulangerie!) sounded like a dream. As a former customer, I was always mesmerized by their uncompromising quality. I figured I’d have to negotiate BOH training after months of proving skills they hired me for explicitly.

But much sooner than I anticipated, they took a chance on me. An experienced pastry chef trained me on the items I now bake weekly, and she teaches me continually about the world of professional baking.

Since making this career shift, I’ve identified new goals for myself:

Improve my latte art skills

I wouldn’t touch the espresso machine for weeks after I first started here. Not only was there so much to learn on the bread and pastry-selling side of things, but ironically, I felt a bit nervous to jump straight back into coffee-making again. It’s funny that years of distance could create such intimidation; at other jobs I’d happily stay on-bar for entire shifts.

Following a FOH-team coffee training hosted at the bakery, I stayed behind.

“Can I take this thing for a spin?” I asked my boss, pointing at our La Marzocco.

She nodded, waving emphatically toward the machine with car keys in hand. “Totally, take your time getting oriented. Make like… eight drinks. And have fun!”

And she walked away, leaving me alone in the bakery for the first time.

So I put on some music and messed around, having the most fun I’d had in a while building random espresso drinks. The art didn’t come so naturally, but I re-taught myself how to assemble a proper coffee.

Latte art was a skill I’d never really needed. It was totally unnecessary when I worked at Starbucks: drinks are to-go, mostly iced. Hot drinks came with lids on, so foamed milk was for mouthfeel alone.

But operations here are slower. Our modern machine foams milk in a flash, but I build every drink mindfully. I’m allowed, even encouraged, to take my time working. If I celebrate the artistry of coffee-making, our guests will too.

Creating quality goods is a choice, the same way a prospective customer’s choice is between artisan bread, pastry, and coffee over quicker and cheaper options. They’re willing to wait, I’m unwilling to compromise. Thus, stronger connections grow between me and the people waiting patiently by our espresso machine.

Welcome well

My time at Starbucks trained me to reflexively call, “Welcome in!” at the automatic chime of each lobby entrance. Still, former-barista-me struggled with true Customer Service Kindness, shaken easily by impatient customers and insecure if a guest was difficult or displeased.

While I encounter fewer ‘bad eggs’ here—no drive-thru helps, and it’s a clearly small business rather than a gigantic corporation—talking to people is a sport. (Sometimes playing is exhausting.) But baseline, all I need to do is play by the rules: love the person I’m talking to.

When I aim to help them rather than simply complete transactions, the anxiety of ‘customer service’ melts away. We’re all made in the image of God, and I get to hand God’s images delicious, made-with-care food.

Plus I already love talking about food. It’s easy to sell goods you believe in, and this stuff sells itself before I ever start talking.

Learn the bread trade

The more I bake desserts, the more I want to bake bread.

I’ve gotten closer, physically and emotionally, to bread. I’ve folded boules for proofing, scored the top with designs with a bread lame (pronounced ‘lahm,’ a tool specifically for scoring bread), and brought the boules in and out of our deck oven using a peel.

So close yet so far. The process is more complicated and intensive than quick breads or desserts. It’s the next level up, and I’m eagerly climbing a mountain of baking experience to get there.

My excitement for bread-making breached the border of work and home. Now I have a sourdough starter living and seemingly breathing on my kitchen countertop. I’ve been baking up a storm in my spare time (sourdough discard? i’m not discarding anything) and will very soon finally try my hand at sourdough bread. I’ve been too intimidated in the past to try this—no more!

Do everything unto the Lord

This goal undergirds all the others. Measuring, pouring, mixing, sweeping, mopping, restocking, selling, smiling at strangers when they walk in, unafraid of whether they’ll smile back. Everything is easier when I’m not working for a paycheck or my own sense of purpose, not even for the business itself.

Working with full integrity is simple when I’m doing it for Jesus. Shortcuts used to be my bread and butter (punny, right) back when I didn’t want to be in food service. I resented working hard for corporations that didn’t pay fairly, or on teams with colleagues I couldn’t rely on. Now, all my success and motivation comes from a single unshakable place.

I can’t say that being a pastry chef, bread baker, or barista will span the extent of my life. But skills I gain here become tools in my arsenal, taking me to the next stepping stone, then the next. I’m building a life I love and delight in sharing; no longer dependent on a screen for income. I write on my own time and stay focused on the horizon.

Will update soon! In the meantime, go get yourself (or better yet, make yourself) some really great bread.

Constanze

It happened to me.

The Parisian café experience I’d always dreamed of—leisurely, indulgent, out-of-the-movies memorable—became a reality on my first-ever visit.

It was absolutely nothing like I thought it’d be.

I arrived at Charles de Gaulle with thorough research in my Notes app, ready to scrape the surface of Europe’s café capital. A city’s popular cafés often reveal its personality, so wherever I’m traveling, I try to gather names and places ahead of time.

This is a habit built around visiting places like NYC, Seattle, and LA. Hype around each cafe-bakery and their must-try offerings guide foot traffic, but it takes digging (or good timing) to discern gems from duds. Knowing great cafés can be pivotal while traveling with others, even make or break a trip.

But this was not true about Paris. Based what I learned during Cecelia’s and my trip last month, you can go anywhere without intel.

Okay, probably not anywhere, but… hear me out.

Our first meal in Paris came together in a flash. We bought cheese and organic apple juice from a fromagerie, one twice-baked baguette from a boulangerie, and a box of black cherries for dessert.

These were all on the same street as our hotel, unvetted, randomly selected. Not every element could be excellent.

Wrong. One of the cheeses was a St. Felicien, (good enough I needed to find and memorize the name) a cow’s milk cheese from the Rhone-Alpes region of France. It possessed the same consistency and flavor as butter, an incredible butter you’d normally only wish you could eat in the same manner as cheese.

The baguette was fresh and hearty; our deep-red cherries were tender and sweet. We shared this patchwork picnic on metal green chairs in the Luxembourg Palace courtyard. Halfway through, a line of adorable toddlers riding miniature horses passed by us, waving.

It’s never easy to throw together the perfect meal, nor perfect experience, but it seemed to be simple here.

This picnic was foreshadowing. Usually my forte, Paris rendered my general rules of café and restaurant discernment null.

Much of this uselessness was failure in timing: August is vacation month for the French, who lock up their shops in droves and leave naive tourists like me banging on their windows and doors in agony. Almost all the boulangeries and cafés I’d listed as must-see remain on the list today.

A reason to come back, you could say, but on the trip we’d have to wing it. Once our plans were out the window, my preconceived notions followed suit.

Crème du Palais Royale — Palais-Royal, 1ème

Walking through the courtyard of Palais-Royal, Cecelia gestured toward the terrace of a quiet café to our left.

“What do you think of this place?” She asked me.

No thanks said my brain, though I took a closer look.

With proximity to such beauty. I assumed it had to be a tourist trap. Captive audience pricing, chillingly close to the Louvre. It looked like they’d only just opened. An American pop song played inside; a waitress emerged to serve avocado toast to an al fresco diner.

But actually standing on the terrace—staring out at a stage of leafy green trees in perfect rows, sun-dappling an idyllic courtyard—I couldn’t leave.

“It looks like it’s out of a movie,” I told Cecelia.

Against all reservations, we sat down.

Turns out my hunch of captive audience pricing was spot on. But unlike the unreasonable price-gouging I feared, our experience lived up to the price.

We ordered café crèmes (a French-style coffee comparable to a latte) and split a croissant so mind-blowingly tasty we quickly ordered two more. Soft, fluffy, and buttery with the thinnest threads of lamination I’d ever seen.

The café crème tasted like a creation all its own—espresso with a rich, mineral-water like quality to it, and creamy milk thoughtfully foamed. Yes, a barista’s thoughtfulness can be tasted.

The terrace left a deep impression on me. People in the courtyard took long phone calls while chain-smoking, read paperback novels, promenaded with visible ease. We reflected in our blissful state of chatting, eating, and observing that nobody around us was looking at a smartphone. In a setting like this, scrolling feels especially unholy.

I was calm to a surreal degree and utterly sated. Americans often tease about the light French breakfast, but we were easily held by this latte and croissant until lunchtime.

Are French croissants more substantial? Does mental satisfaction with a meal impact overall satiety? I’ll have to conduct more experiments and report back—I craved no diner breakfasts while surrounded by croissants.

Les Deux Magots — Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 6ème

During pre-visit research, reels of hot chocolates covered in fat dollops of whipped cream clogged my search. Spots like Carette, Café du Flore, and Les Deux Magots allegedly offered the best; I figured we’d pass them all up.

On the hunt for a worthy terrace in the area (Cecelia, a seasoned Paris-goer, discerned this better than I), we approached Les Deux Magots with caution. We saw no entry line for terrace seating, but a fancily framed signpost indicated where this queue normally starts.

A gentleman with puffy white sleeves walked over and chatted with us in French before switching quickly to English—the illusion of my understanding stood for a good five seconds. He timed the conversation just long enough for two patrons to abandon prime real estate: a front row seat to the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Believe me, at no other café would I debate ordering a 12€ beverage. Cecelia felt the same. But their mocha seemed like a two-birds-one-stone situation: espresso would give us a boost and we’d discover what all the hot chocolate fuss is about.

Their mocha, like breakfast at the Crème du Palais Royale, lived up to the unsightly price tag. Chantilly cream crowns a shot of espresso topped with thick and traditional hot choc, especially enticing when you read it first as chocolat chaud à l’ancienne. We enjoyed each layer without haste, making the absolute most of our people-watching vantage point.

Sometimes, hype is reasonable.

Ten Belles — Canal St. Martin, 10ème

In the riverside neighborhood of Canal St. Martin, Ten Belles attracts a ‘notable anglophone crowd.’

While we aimed to go where francophones go, this café appeared on so many lists that I figured we could at least peek inside. Initially I hoped we’d hit up Des Pain du des Idées before coming here, but this top bakery was yet another summer vacation casualty. We instead paired our cappuccinos with goods from the adjacent bio-boulangerie, Sain.

Specialty coffee shops are relatively new to Paris. Altering the city’s café landscape in the early 2000s and 2010s, Ten Belles was one of the first institutions to rep the new wave coffee movement. They offer what other regional cafés may not: reusable takeaway cups for their coffee, as well as beverage options like americanos and flat whites. Anglophone appeal for sure.

Rather than drink cappuccinos inside where seating was spacious, Cecelia and I opted for their street-facing benches.

Other guests trickled in, many of whom joined us in enjoying their pastries and coffee along the storefront. It wasn’t even a real terrace, yet all the stools were quickly taken.

Here, it clicked for me. This is preferable seating in Paris: a world-facing view with your coffee. The café terrace turns an ever-changing street into a stage to observe, while also making patrons into actors themselves.

The enjoyment of this experience is half passive, half active. It feels like picnicking on the banks of Parisian life’s glittering river, watching whatever floats leisurely by.

Coffee Specialty Coffee — Le Marais, 4ème

By name alone, I’d never choose to come here.

As the afternoon of our second day got hotter, our shopping jaunt through Le Marais called for a pit stop. A chalkboard sign advertised Brazilian-style coffee in front of a shady interior—that’s all we needed.

We ordered iced drinks at the counter before sitting down—or, I should say, Cecelia ordered for us in French, and I stood beside her nodding and smiling at the clerk.

This café’s interior charmed me the most out of any: peeling, almost mossy walls complemented diamond tile floors. Black-and-white photos of their coffee farmer partners adorned exposed brick in the corner.

No AC, but fans moved cool air throughout the building. The open-front design made it feel like we were outside despite sitting in the very back.

Cecelia ordered herself an iced tea. I’d watched the barista prepare a matcha latte for another customer as we stood in line, and was quickly influenced.

She foamed milk and matcha with an immersion blender in a cambro, pouring the creamy result into a cute glass before bringing it to our little corner table.

There’s a special satisfaction to a drink being exactly what you want it to be, for a random cafe you choose to be as great as you hope.

Sitting with Cecelia here, hot but cooling down in the center of a precious vacation and sitting in a beautiful atmosphere, I had zero sense of hurry. I feel the need to hurry often. Such sudden calm became a destination, a core activity in itself that could be fully luxuriated in without the pressure of wanting to make the most of our trip.

Any other vacation, any other day of my life, I’m seeking to be aware of the next thing and reflecting on what’s passed—most of my moments are inextricably layered. This half hour was completely unadorned.

It required no mental strain to reach serenity here, and I feel this must be a specifically Parisian effect. I savored our time like I was drinking it.

These interwoven experiences prove to me why Paris’s coffee scene is so integral to our conception of the city itself. The promise of a delicious, relaxing break so often draws us to cafés, but so rarely do we possess the break we’re chasing. Enjoying coffee, taking a break, seems built into the fabric here.

This culture makes a difference.

When everyone around you takes their time and aims to savor the moment, relaxing feels acceptable. When standards of food, drink, and environment are consistently high, you don’t have to be in the know to find quality. You can trust that it’s somewhere around the corner. There’s a feeling of being held by such standards when each independent vendor brings their very best to you and everyone else.

That, and taking an intentional break—a long one—in an environment where you aren’t pressured with the bill, where thoughtful beauty is essential to each space, and in a country where endless productivity isn’t considered a virtue, naturally feels different if you come from a place where breaks feel mostly stolen. Time for peaceful reflection is negotiated piece-by-piece, inessential to living. Not here.

When you walk to that break in sunshine (or rain) and beautiful, centuries-old architecture, and what you’ve ordered is so natural it’s likely even healthy… you’ll discover the Paris you hoped for was never hard to find.

My tips on café-going in Paris:

• Seek out terraces.

Not every terrace will be worthy, per se, but they’ll be novel nonetheless. Watching Paris flow past with a drink in hand is its own treat worth traveling for. Seek out old interiors maintained lovingly, café patrons lost in books or conversation, and vantage points you could easily get lost in the view of.

• Keep an open mind.

Rather than perceived product quality or internet hype, the right café might be next to your hotel. The enjoyment you get could have nothing to do with the coffee, and everything to do with the minutes or hours you spend sitting there.

• Look around. Relax.

It’s Paris. Astounding beauty—rare, refined, and real—is everywhere. I’ll have to visit a few more times to know whether this ubiquity is due to Paris’s culture itself, or the buildings, or the history, or some other je ne sais quoi quality (ha). Oh, I hope to return very soon.

Whatever the reason—while you’re here, savor it.

Until next time,

Constanze

To introduce my European friend to America, I planned a road trip.

The country’s geography shouldn’t be showcased in any other way. I wanted to show her thousand-year-old trees, sparkling lakes surrounded by mountains, and wild coastlines.

Gray mornings along winding roads, powdery gas station donuts eaten at rest stops; the mingled scents of ocean mists and campfire smoke—I wanted to share this specific nostalgia, and there was no better place to start than where I grew up.

Growing up, I hated living in the Pacific Northwest. Endless rain felt like a curse, the people weren’t very friendly, and its isolating geography wore on me. Moving away in my twenties, I knew I’d never move back.

But I never knew I’d miss it someday.

It was strange to return and find myself in awe of the nature. Tour guides shouldn’t be overcome by the views they know so well. But in trying to convince Cecelia of the Pacific Northwest’s greatness, I convinced myself.

I can only chalk this up to a mindset shift. Back in the day, I felt trapped. Returning here as an adult, I voluntarily returned; handpicking each stop to build out a quintessentially PNW journey.

Our route

Approximately a thousand miles, nine main stops, and one full week on the road. I focused the itinerary around compelling nature, cafés, and bookstores. Beginning outside Seattle, we’d dip into Oregon, cut across from Portland to the coast, and wind clockwise across the Puget Sound via ferry.

Cecelia and I slept in my childhood bedroom, at four coastal campsites, and in one hotel room after eventually getting sick of sleeping outside.

If you dream of a PNW roadtrip yourself, I highly recommend this path—you’ll see forests, coastline, and experiential gems that only this northern corner of America can offer.

First up: sunlit mountains at 6am.

📍 Rattlesnake Lake Trail, North Bend, Washington

why we came: exercise, early-morning sun, geographic grandeur.

Cecelia’s first morning in America was in pursuit of this view, one I’ve known and loved since I was thirteen.

East of Seattle, Rattlesnake Ledge is a basic yet challenging hike. I hear accents and languages from all over the world as I hike up, and the feeling of trading happy hellos with strangers is a reward in itself.

The ultimate prize is a bird’s-eye view of the Cascades; on a sunny day, even Mount Rainier. Coming down is much easier and quicker than it is going up, and if you’re hot, the lake makes for a perfect cold plunge.

Replenish your energy with a hearty breakfast—perhaps at a nearby diner?

📍 Seattle, Washington

why we came: to experience the pacific northwest’s biggest city.

Seattle is the Pacific Northwest’s largest city in size and population. Named after Chief Seattle of the native Duwamish tribe, its history extends almost two hundred years, but it’s best known for the 90’s glory of Nirvana, Starbucks, and Microsoft.

There’s so much to do here: ride to the top of the Space Needle, hike Mount Rainier, explore neighborhoods like Fremont, Ballard, and Alki Point—but the heart of downtown is best for first-timers.

Pike Place Market is one of the oldest continuously operating public farmers' markets in the US and an iconic PNW destination: the vast Puget Sound is an impressive backdrop, always with a ferry or two crossing its silver surface.

Within a few cobblestone blocks, nearly 100 Washington farmers sell their goods directly to consumers year-round. There’s almost nothing you can’t buy. Beyond goods, a walk through these bustling halls is an experience you take with you. Heaping flower bouquets stand in neat rows, fishmongers yell while playing catch with frozen halibut, steam from hot doughnut vendors melds with the ocean breeze…

Ginormous peaches we purchased in the market—too expensive, though delicious as hoped—and cheddar garlic rolls from Piroshky Piroshky would sustain us for the first stretch of our drive.

Chewing Dubble Bubble as we walked, we concluded our Pike Street walk in Post Alley at the Gum Wall. Don’t look too closely; you might get nauseous.

And ten minutes driving across the Sound, the University of Washington’s campus made for another historic walk. Rosebushes, big-leaf maples, and giant sequoia trees surround Gothic architecture. Behind Drumheller fountain, Mount Rainier looms large.

The nearby University Ave is popular among locals and students and doesn’t disappoint when it comes to pho, specialty coffee, or its well-known university bookstore. That’s enough walking! We’d drive home shortly after to meal prep and sleep early, excited for the road ahead.

Just a day of exploring these areas paints a comprehensive image of Seattle, helpful when comparing it to the next big destination: Seattle’s rival.

📍 Portland, Oregon

Why we came: endless books and excellent coffee in an ultra-walkable PNW city.

In high school, driving across the state border to Portland felt like pure freedom. It’s a city unlike Seattle in all the right ways (if you grew up watching Portlandia in the 2010s, it was extra fun to visit), and Oregon’s cherry on top for broke teenagers: no sales tax.

This led me to view Portland as Seattle’s cool, casual younger sibling, as many PNW locals do. The ongoing rivalry between them makes it necessary that you choose your favorite, though it’s impossible to do so.

An international guest house in Nob Hill made for a great single-night stay, located in the heart of a walkable, sun-dappled neighborhood.

Nob Hill is an ideal vantage point to explore the city from. Sights like the Japanese Gardens, the Rose Gardens, and the Portland Art Museum are within walking distance. “Trendy-third”—a nickname for the popular NW 23rd Ave—is also steps away, worth a visit for its vintage stores, tea shops, and ice cream. (The Portland-founded Salt & Straw is my favorite ice cream shop ever.)

But the best stop of all is down Burnside: Powell’s Books.

Dubbed “Powell’s City of Books,” this is the largest independent bookstore in the world. A genuine fortress of literature since 1971, Powell’s takes up a full city block and holds approximately 1 million books, used and new.

Just a twenty minute walk from our guest house, we arrived in the early afternoon and got lost for almost four hours. By sundown we climbed out with some quality finds, handpicked across nine color-coded rooms.

From here we grabbed dinner at the nearby Thai Peacock, a vibrant and sophisticated dinner spot recommended to us by a kind Powell’s employee. Excellent curry; glad we listened.

After a leisurely breakfast and a final walk through the neighborhood, the two of us drove on toward Highway 101.

📍 Tillamook, Oregon

why we came: a world-famous creamery and a first taste of highway 101

Tillamook is the sweetest gateway to the coast—both in the homey charm of its shop-lined streets and in its nationally famous creamery.

In operation for over 100 years, you might’ve seen Tillamook’s logo before. The creamery is huge and actively operating, with large windows displaying all parts of the process—I filmed some for you to see above.

We sampled their delicacies pre-factory tour. There was something extra fun about learning about (and watching live) the intricate dance of large-scale dairy production, all with an ice cream cone in hand. This place is definitely worth a stop before heading toward the shore.

📍 Manzanita, Oregon

why we came: oceanside camping by an ultra-cozy coastal town.

The west coast’s “Little Apple” is in every way opposite to the “Big Apple.”

Blanketed in ocean mists, Manzanita’s central Laneda Avenue perfectly embodies the coziness and charm of the PNW coast. It’s paradoxically cold-weathered yet cool; most passersby are tourists, though the place feels utterly local; it’s small enough to simply pass through, but compelling enough to stay longer than you planned.

Manzanita Coffee + News might be my favorite coffee shop in the entire PNW, and nearby boutiques and bookstores enhanced the fun.

Breezes on the nearby beach were brisk yet warm. Shrouded in dense fog, Neahkanie Mountain hides in the distance—rumor has it Spanish pirates buried treasure there in the 16th century.

In a brief walk, we discovered hoards of empty crab shells, gelatin universes in beached jellyfish, and dogs chasing tennis balls with abandon into the frigid ocean.

Though I’d picked it on a whim, Nehalem Bay State Park proved to be the perfect offshore campground. We spent the night within earshot of crashing waves and surrounded by happy campers, thanks to an early reservation.

Oregon had no fire ban. It’d be a different story the rest of the trip—thankfully we enjoyed this campfire thoroughly. After a dinner of mealprepped quinoa salad from our cooler (and those Pike’s Place peaches), we fell asleep in fold-out chairs in front of the fire we started ourselves.

This is a delightful memory. But walking up to a kindly park ranger shining the world’s brightest flashlight in our eyes, reminding us to pour water on the glowing ashes, was jarring to say the least.

📍 Cannon Beach, Oregon

why we came: a big rock covered in puffins.

Well, several big rocks. Colossal seastacks line the Pacific coast, shaped by ocean waves like clay on a potter’s wheel for millennia.

Cannon Beach draws tourists and artists alike, in part due to Haystack Rock, a 235-foot sea stack. Several bird species call this boulder home, but the native Tufted Puffins are the cutest of them—some beachcombers come solely to spot them.

The long beach makes for a nice stroll, and the town feels designed for summering tourists. Since parking is tedious in the summer, I recommend Cannon Beach most to first-timers or those traveling off-season.

📍 Forks, Washington

why we came: an olympic peninsula gateway; deep forest on the coast.

The cobalt-toned Pacific Ocean flickers through fir trees along Highway 101. Five full hours north through nearly unbroken forest leads you to Forks, the land of vampire romance.

Forks is appealing in its sparsity. This logging town certainly leans into its Twilight-induced fame, but enveloped in vibrant wilderness with little to no cell service, tourism is limited to those who truly enjoy nature.

I wrote about the downside of such small-town quietness already, but it makes for excellent camping—even despite the spooky night we had.

The Quillayute River Forest was perfectly silent while we read in our tent, until an odd, mechanical-yet-animalistic sound began ‘whumming’ in the distance. At times the sound grew louder, vibrating as if coming from underground, then became quiet again.

This unknown droning gripped us with subtle terror for almost half an hour, until we eventually fell asleep through it.

Googling this phenomenon the next morning in town (finally getting cell service), we only found theories. Nothing like a good old-fashioned mystery.

📍 Rialto Beach, Forks, Washington

why we came: stunning sea formations along a dramatic northern coastline.

After the sunrise, we packed up our tent and drove straight to the coastline.

Walking from the tree-covered parking lot onto this beach—as cliché as this is to say—the view took my breath away. First we saw the sea-moated islands, softened by mist in the early morning sunlight.

Then, the rest of the shoreline appeared. Blues, whites, all shades of gray.

We had no idea we’d walk for so long. Details kept catching our eye. Fragmented boulders carrying micro-forests on their shoulders, then driftwood logs, pelicans, and tourists lining its pebbly shore.

Offshore formations grew larger while we walked down the strip. This was the only place we found other people, wandering in groups, staring in all directions. Awaiting us were the famous Twin Rocks, the “Hole in the Wall” as a vantage point to view them through, and tide pools teeming with tiny creatures. And these weren’t all simple to reach—some required climbing, all careful footing, due to the rising tides.

Three hours of walking and climbing made us feel accomplished, but the greatest hike was yet to come. It’s incredible to think that a vast, ancient rainforest thrives only an hour away.

📍 Hoh Rainforest, Olympic National Park, Washington

why we came: world-class hiking through a rainforest of thousand-year-old trees.

The Pacific Northwest Rainforest is the largest coastal temperate rainforest in the world, spanning 2,500 miles from Alaska to California. Though there are millions of acres to see, some of the greatest are in the Hoh Rainforest.

Our unexpected introduction to true forest bathing came through wandering around in this old-growth forest. Most of these tall trees—Sitka Spruces and Western Hemlocks—are over a thousand years old.

Like fuzzy green shawls, thick clubmoss adorns these sky-scraping figures. In a way, hiking through the Hall of Mosses feels like exploring a massive museum. Every tree is a different artwork.

After the sounds of chatting hikers drift away, a soft silence fills the air.

The ease of simply standing and breathing speaks to the forest’s otherworldliness. And like a museum, one needs only to observe.

📍 Lake Crescent, Olympic National Park, Washington

why we came: glacier-carved views, a waterfall, and the ultimate picnic + swimming spot.

Staring out at the crystal blue Lake Crescent, I felt like a third grader at camp again: mind-blown by God’s handiwork, pissed that paradise was just six hours away my whole life.

In adulthood, I enjoyed it even more. Marymere Falls Trail, a short yet scenic hike near the lake that neither of us had seen before, looked magnificent in the sunlight and ended with a 90-foot tall waterfall.

We ate the very last of our cooler quinoa at a perfectly-placed picnic table, and the two of us sat and talked for hours beside the pristine shoreline. Admiring this view for so long can only result in eventually jumping in.

Driving to our next campground in the mutual afterglow of a cold swim, hair uncomfortably wet with lake water, we’d unlocked yet another classic PNW experience.

Our next campsite was the cutest of all, an A-frame cabin with string lights around its expansive campground. What a joy to be indoors!

I’d outdoor-showered before, but arriving after nightfall—carrying a towel through the dark to a big wooden box in the forest—made me nervous at first. But walking back to a place as cute as this? I wasn’t scared for long.

📍Port Angeles + Sequim, Washington

why we came: two friendly seaside cities that characterize the coastal PNW.

Washington’s northern coastal cities may feel sleepy as you drive through them, up until you find where the people are.

The independent bookstores, thrift shops, and roasteries of Port Angeles and Sequim are compelling, well-maintained spaces frequented by kind locals.

Where you can catch glimpses of the Strait of Juan de Fuca while walking around Port Angeles, in the city of Sequim—inland 30 minutes east—you can only sense it.

Timing can enhance your visit. Sequim (pronounced as “squim”) is the “Lavender Capital of North America” and hosts a dedicated, world-famous lavender festival in mid-July. We loved our visit in late August, though we could only dream of the aroma and beauty so narrowly missed.

It’s here on day five of our trip that we finally gave up camping to stay in a real hotel (we were too excited to use a proper shower) and enjoyed a real meal at a Thai spot I still dream about sometimes—dark green walls and low lighting made the environment ultra cozy, complimented by comfort food.

📍 Bainbridge Island, Washington

why we came: childhood nostalgia and a ferry across the puget sound.

Until visiting Cecelia in Stockholm, I’d never known how similar the Swedish archipelago and Washington’s islands are. Glacier-carved, forested islands speckle the Baltic and Salish seas. While Sweden offers more of them, island-hopping is a perfect summer activity in both regions.

Vashon, Orcas, and Bainbridge Islands are only ferry rides away from Seattle. Bainbridge is the most accessible: my family took frequent day trips back in the day, lunches at Streamliner Diner always preceding a walk through the town.

Besides the Space Needle, a green and white ferry might as well be Seattle’s symbol. A relatively inexpensive ride reveals otherwise unseen sides of the Puget Sound’s beauty.

Winding back around to our starting location, we drove two hours back up north to the most personal stop on the list.

📍 Bellingham, Washington

why we came: to tour an old campus, an old town, and find old memories.

Only twenty minutes from the Canadian border, Bellingham may be Washington’s greatest city. Another controversial statement: Bellingham is what Seattle wishes it was.

My favoritism comes from being a WWU alum. I enjoyed living here so much—despite disliking Washington in general—I debated living here post-grad. The college’s sprawling grounds bleed into downtown Bellingham, and as a student there, the town itself felt like one huge campus.

Walkability played a big role in my enjoyment, as did a friendly populace of all ages and being surrounded by nature at all times. Hard classes and bad workdays faded after a trip to the boardwalk, admiring horizons tinged blue by misty sunlight.

Even driving around Bellingham is a worthy pastime. Chuckanut Drive feels like a mini HWY 101; areas like Fragrance Lake and the town of Fairhaven are excellent picnicking spots. Hiking and camping areas are plentiful, too—thirty miles east on Mount Baker, you can catch a view like this:

Here, I felt all the joyful layers of this trip before its conclusion: the beauty of the northwestern coast, the novel presence of my faraway friend, and getting to show her places where I’d struggled so much, yet loved enough to know by heart.

My friend came to see America, but also the world I’d eagerly left behind. Bellingham was the last place I’d live in the Pacific Northwest—where I worked hard through college, the pandemic, and the sudden death of my mother.

Cecelia brought light back to all these dark places; she made me see they were never truly dark at all.

Thanks to this journey, I can vouch for the region wholeheartedly. The PNW is worth discovering, then rediscovering in a different light each time.

‘Til we meet again,

Constanze

If you want to read about the coffee-centric side of this trip…

Or the origin of this roadtrip…

This bias started while living in Dublin, where it felt like I had five different exquisite living rooms across the city center. Warm, inviting, and relatively cheap to visit (€3.50-4.00 per latte at the time), I’d meet up with friends, write for hours, or dissect assigned readings beyond the library. Ireland’s constant rain, greying out the windows, never failed to enhance the mood.

After discovering how affordable Ryanair was, I found even more living rooms, even better ones. Cafés in London, Rome, Florence, and Vienna balanced refined and laid-back effortlessly.

When I moved back to the States, I kept frequenting cafés around the Carolina coast. Many are excellent, serving quality coffee in cozy environments.

But they’re not the same.

Two thoughts usually keep me from writing an article like this:

1. Obviously US and European cafes feel different; they’re different parts of the world.

2. I’m romanticizing European coffee shops too much.

I’ve always viewed living in Europe in a favorable light, and sometimes still catch myself doing it. But life anywhere has its pros and cons. People > place.

And yet, how a country likes its coffee reveals a lot about its people. It opens a window into a culture’s priorities, their unique tastes, and philosophies.

I kept this in mind while planning an American road trip for my European friend Cecelia. The moody-weathered region of the US I grew up in, with its endless coffee shops, bookstores, and incredible nature that I’ll write about next, seemed like the best place to start.

Juxtaposing these actually very different areas illuminated some cultural blind spots. For instance, at home I think nothing of starting a road trip with a 24 oz. iced latte picked up at a coffee shack (we’ll talk about these in a sec). European me, sophisticated and elegant, would never dream of doing this.

The drink dwarfed Cecelia’s 6 oz. cappuccino. I learned that day how small to-go cups can be, and she learned how big they can be.

She watched me place the drink in its jumbo cupholder, laughing. “It’s… Uh… for the journey.” I reassured her with an undeserved, cowboy-like sincerity. It’s for the road ahead.

But this triggered a kind of self-reflection that permeated the rest of our trip. Why did I need so much liquid in one sitting? We weren’t in a coffee desert.

The opposite, actually: America’s ‘coffee paradise.’

Where is this magical place?

If America’s love for coffee had a heart, it’d be the Pacific Northwest.

Washington and Oregon have the most cafés per capita besides Alaska (which… they need it). The PNW’s dreary weather, their unique independent roasters, and their espresso-pioneering history make it a coffee epicenter.

Innovations in Seattle and Portland singlehandedly changed the way America drinks coffee, triggering the 2nd + 3rd ‘waves’ of coffee culture—developments from popularizing latte art to founding drive-thru coffee.

This is the perfect place to analyze our relationship to coffee. But if it weren’t for Cecelia’s European lens, I couldn’t have seen the differences so clearly.

1—we like our coffee big.

24 oz. didn’t seem crazy to me in the drive thru. But if there’s 8 oz. in a single cup, our standard sizes are big compared to what the rest of the world is accustomed to.

Americans are used to bigger portions in general. We want to get our money’s worth, to have an abundance of everything we like, and this predilection has characterized us for a while. Before we drank coffee from big to-go cups, we drank it from bottomless ones.

I didn’t know I’d get such a thrill from taking my friend to her first-ever diner experience. I didn’t know I even liked the diner so much, but it’s the closest institution we have to the kaffeehaus as a culinary cultural institution.

Lingering is encouraged in two rare ways: being open 24/7 and offering bottomless drip coffee. Sadly, few diners still stay open all day and night (shoutout Waffle House), but most should fill up your cup as often as it’s emptied, cream and sugar on the side.

Though it looks so different today, Americans then drank coffee for the same reason we drink it now: you get your ‘fill’ of a quick, convenient energy boost, one you can doctor up exactly how you like it.

I brought Cecelia to a place I know much too well. If you’ve seen David Lynch’s 1990s TV series Twin Peaks, you’ll recognize the neon-lit facade of Twedes Cafe just outside Seattle.

Characters would come to the “Double R Diner” for a sense of normalcy, community, and coffee with a slice of cherry pie. David Lynch fans come here from all around the world to try this pairing.

After graduating high school, this is where I’d come to work waitressing shifts. I’d buzz around the restaurant topping off half-empty mugs of black coffee, getting high on my own supply.

And that was my intention in drinking it—to maintain a buzz that kept me productive. Giant coffees might optimize energy, but there’s another dimension that inspires larger drink sizes: we optimize flavor too.

2—we like our coffee sweet.

Two cubes of sugar and a splash of cream in black coffee don’t cover the type of sweet we see today. Since 1990 (thanks, Starbucks), we sweeten our lattes in ways previously unthinkable.

I never noticed how common it is for US coffee shops to offer a long list of latte syrup flavors and combos. Then, I stopped at a Dutch Bros during our 5-hour drive from the bottom of Oregon to the top of Washington.

Cecelia didn’t order anything herself, but after tasting my half-sweet Irish Cream iced latte, she agreed that it was… alright.

The caffè latte brought to America was tame. It’d either come plain (milk made it sweet enough), or by the early 90s could’ve included vanilla, hazelnut, or caramel syrup if you were feeling saucy.

But Starbucks’s seasonal drinks laid the foundation of modern sugary coffee madness. Eggnog lattes, then peppermint mochas, and the biggest home run for Starbucks and similar chains: pumpkin spice lattes. Formulated in a Washington lab, the 2003 PSL’s widespread popularity changed our standards of what a latte should taste like.

I only remember ordering one flavored drink while living in Ireland, the pistachio latte above. This was a genuine and memorable treat since it deviated from my plainer norm of black coffee and unsweetened lattes.

But here, flavored lattes are the norm. Seasonal drink menus are invented for every season. When cafés promote a long list of delicious combinations monthly, plain drinks get boring. Add in the marketing tactic of limited-time-only specials, and what stops you from splurging every time?

Coffee is an indulgence of sorts already—taking it to the frequent extreme of a threefold caffeine, sugar, and dopamine high turns a balanced ritual into an arguably unhealthy fix.

3—we like our coffee alone.

Imagine a tiny house in a big empty lot. One or two baristas sit inside it, surrounded by syrup bottles, connected to the outside world via small sliding windows. Sometimes the baristas only wear bikinis, but we don’t have to talk about that.

These espresso shacks are popular around the PNW, and they exemplify what ‘getting coffee’ in America has become. If the medium is the message, “TO-GO” glows in neon.

The shop is the smallest size possible, staffed by the fewest number of people necessary. You often need a car to access it; no chance to loiter. All potential for social interaction is gutted besides speaking with the lone barista, who has a small window of time to chat with you (and talk to you through). The presence of cars lining up behind you subtly suggests that you leave ASAP—this place only exists to complement the place you’re headed.

Regardless of how isolating such an experience is, it’s common here. Even preferred—in Forks, WA, Cecelia and I found no cafés to sit down and talk in, just a busy diner and a handful of espresso shacks to choose from.

This involuntary to-go format flattens the indulgence and enjoyment of the coffee experience; strips it of all chance for art, human interaction, and—in removing the inconvenience of having to spend time sitting and drinking it—romance.

In the first decade of espresso’s US popularity, drive-thru cafés didn’t exist. Rolled out first in 1994 by Starbucks, their executives weren’t confident that the ‘in-store experience’ guests loved could be replicated in a car.

I think about this a lot, probably because I can’t believe it. My mind doesn’t bend enough from its understanding of how America works to believe that we didn’t always put personal convenience first, even down to our leisure.

In countries like Italy (via espresso bars) and Sweden (via fika), coffee is a daily social ritual with an energy boost. Coffee here is an addiction that friends can participate in together.

It’s a subtle difference, but hard to ignore once you see it. In Europe it felt like Cecelia and I grew our friendship across creative environments, coffee enhancing our conversation. During our road trip, coffee breaks seemed to interrupt our time more often than they nourished it.

a few bastions of hope

A few key stops reminded me this was coffee culture’s paradise, not perdition.

Ken’s Artisan Bakery in Portland, Oregon, is an open-concept bakery with an ambiance that complements the top-notch goods. This was raved about by the owner of our BnB (shoutout Tim) and we quickly understood why.

On the coast, I met the owner of Manzanita Coffee + News as she washed dishes next to the bathroom. In my memory she looks just like Chloë Sevigny. We talked about locals getting pushed off the Oregon coast by rising prices and how the café landscape has drastically shifted in 30+ years.

The coziness of its distinctly 90s atmosphere impressed me, clearly designed with both aesthetics and function in mind. Plus, how many newsstands do you see these days?

Up north in Port Angeles, WA, we found Essence Coffee Roasters on a whim. My expectations were low after Forks, and this was only a ten-minute walk through fog from our hotel.

They roast their own single-origin beans and make a narrow range of syrups in-house: raw sugar, vanilla, and maple. Seasonally: honey and honey vanilla. No frills, apart from the graphite slate and palate cleanser that come with their cortados.

Before leaving, I sought any kind of branded memento—a mug, a postcard, a business card. They had nothing to offer, and I like them all the more for that.

Finally, I dragged Cecelia to my old undergrad hangout, Makeworth Market. It’s in the perfect spot: beside glittering Bellingham Bay, across from the iconic Herald news building, in the heart of downtown.

And it’s still as good as it ever was. I applied to be a barista here in college and remember having to Google what ‘third wave coffee’ was. The pandemic threw a wrench in this plan, but I’d eventually do my schoolwork in their spacious seating area.

The above places prove to me that quality abounds, but we have to preserve it.

I’m not asking that we develop a more European sensibility about coffee as a country, but that we view coffee as more than an end in itself.

There can be fitting times and places for sweet to-go drinks, even big ones—but there is a quiet danger in letting them become our cultural baseline. The sweetness, excess, and isolation that characterize how we typically indulge in coffee should become far downstream from our ideal: treating coffee as a high-quality art form that exists to bring people together.

Our quality of life, even the quality of our society, suffers without a worthy space to ideate.

w/ love,

Constanze

“There are two kinds of skiers: those who’ve gone down the mountain in a toboggan, and those who are going to.”

Sean, a Vail Mountain ski patroller, said this with a smile as he folded me into the green tarp of an emergency toboggan.

I’d only seen those sleds from afar—whizzing below a chairlift I rode or passing me by on a narrow catwalk.

Once, I watched as a friend’s friend flew down the mountain after a year away from skiing, tumbled down the hill, and knocked out his teeth with one of his own skis. The toboggan he left in looked eerily like a body bag.

I always had the same thought, felt the same scared pity: “Man, that’d suck.”

According to Sean, this ride didn’t suck. It was just my turn.

Grace, a born-and-raised Vail ski instructor, called ski patrol to come get me and bring me to the ER. My scream peeled her attention away from her students, and she left the children in a fidgety cluster by nearby trees to come find me.

Saturday is a busy day for injuries—little kids get group lessons; seasonal skiers move in slow zig-zags down green and blue runs—and there I’d fallen, between Swingsville and Christmas. Collisions and injuries are always a risk, but if Grace wasn’t guiding a class that day, I don’t know how long I’d be waiting for someone with a direct line to ski patrol.

Grace stayed by my side the entire time, she and S keeping me tethered to earth. She handed S pink Starbursts to feed me—the kids don’t need them, she said—and they lifted my spirits as I sobbed, clutching a twisted leg I couldn’t feel, shaking with adrenaline.

I oscillated between pitiful tears, self-effacing laughter, and friendly conversation. Grace started teaching in high school, I found out—didn’t mention how long she’d skied, but if she grew up here, probably since diapers.

She was calm the entire time, so austere that I felt like this sudden tragedy was commonplace. She asked, “Did you hear a popping sound? Your ACL’s probably out,” with the cadence of someone diagnosing a bad Wifi connection.

A few moments later, “You ever skied before this?”

Her eyes were firm but sympathetic, blue as the open sky. I turned to see a six-year-old fly past me down the hill on tiny skis.

“Yes, many times,” I groaned, shame eclipsing my sadness. My fall was annoyingly close to the same run I’d gotten trained up on.

“Well hey, look at that.” Grace encouraged me, pointing up the mountain at a snowboarder stepping cautiously down the snowy hill with their board under their arm. “You’re way better off than that guy. They’re going to slide down the mountain on their butt. Not even trying.”

Grace was the first domino in a chain of understanding. Patrollers Sean and Devin led me down the mountain on skis and loaded me into a van driven by a woman named Janet, who’d bring me to the ER.

She was a prolific local skier with no injuries whatsoever in thirty years, she admitted. “But that’s not too common, I don’t think.”

Janet wheeled me, boots and all, to a large room with filled hospital beds—a wrist injury here, buckle fracture there.

New staff members introduced themselves every few minutes. John, the first physical therapist I’ve ever spoken to, came to S and me last.

I’d just wrapped up my X-rays. Fifteen minutes of waiting for results, and they were in—I needed an MRI. No bones broken, but X-rays don’t show tendons.

Of all the people assisting me—taking me to the bathroom, checking my vitals, diagnosing my injury—John was the only person to give me a clear idea of what to expect, since he’d had the same surgery before. (I didn’t know a suspected ACL tear required surgery—oh, how much I’ve learned.)

Questions multiplied by the second. Would the surgery be terrible? How long until I could walk again? Run again?

“Do I have to get surgery?” I asked.

“You could, if you wanted, keep your right leg bent for four months straight.” He demonstrated this position in the midst of fitting my new leg brace, seemingly the only thing holding it together. “But it’s not guaranteed to work. If it did, it’d never go back to the way it was.”

I appreciated that there was another option, even if it sounded terrible.

“Here. You’ll be a pro on these in no time,” he affirmed, handing me a set of crutches.

After I maneuvered myself from the hospital bed, I moved slowly through the hallways, S and John making sure I didn’t fall. Briefly, we moved out of the way for a 6’3 skier in his fifties to go past on a stretcher, clad in heavy ski gear.

I gave him a nod as he passed. “I was just up there,” I told him.

We both laughed.

“Happens to the best of us,” he sighed. They rolled him past the curtain and out of sight.

I certainly wasn’t the best of them.

I figured my lack of skill was the reason I’d torn anything in the first place. The injury made me feel at first like a perfect outsider: it was already a fluke that I’d learned how to ski, and now I’d somehow skied enough to get cocky. The other shoe—boot—had to drop sometime.

The previous three days, I soared with confidence down hills. In a hospital bed, it felt like a lie I’d bought into.

But this fall was the start of something: I’d earned a strange sort of badge. Leaving the hospital, I moved deeper into the heart of a ski town.

When we checked into our hotel three days before, S and I chatted with the front office manager about Vail’s historic lack of snow for twenty full minutes. The next time we saw him, he drove the hotel shuttle that came to get us from Vail Health.

Hard to miss, I stood in the afternoon’s 30-degree weather with a ski coat over my plaid hospital gown.

“I’m so sorry, how terrible,” he lamented, helping me into the car. He began rattling off his injury history to console me: dislocated shoulder, thrown-out back, and a broken leg across fifty years of skiing.

“That’s just how it goes,” he said.

At Garfinkel’s, a local-favorite sports bar at the base of Lionshead, our waiter nodded to my braced-up knee. “You did that here?”

He’d torn his ACL too, even the same leg.

“After you get the surgery, it’s literally like a dead leg. But it’ll get better again. You’ll be back skiing within nine-ish months after that.”

I noticed there was no assumption I’d quit.

He was the third person before I sat down to comment on my injury, each asking in earnest, “Did you do that here?”

S and I joked that I should reply, “No, I came here like this.” Though it was repetitive, I couldn’t believe how many people came out of the woodwork to console me.

That, and I never knew before how many skiers weathered injuries left and right—and it didn’t stop them.

It started looking like the mark of a “real” skier.

Olympian skier Lindsey Vonn suffered a terrible fall recently. Two falls, but one was worse.

In a cover feature with Outside Magazine last winter, Vonn acknowledged that ski racing doesn’t make much money, that she never had to return to racing, and her identity as a skier played no role in coming back. The article’s title emphasizes this: Lindsey Vonn Has Nothing Left to Prove.

“[Ski racing] is something I do,” she said, “not who I am.”

Chronic pain ended her career in 2019, but after a knee replacement surgery two years ago, she finally enjoyed the feeling of skiing again.

Lindsey and her family moved to Vail during her youth to advance her Olympic training. During the fateful toboggan ride that brought me to the hospital at the base of Vail Mountain—have to admit, it was fun—I passed by “Lindsey’s,” a run dedicated to her.

Regardless of Vonn’s performance in Milan or public opinions swirling like vultures over her career, those ultra-public falls helped me understand, as I’d hoped after my injury and surgery, that there’s glory in process alone. Reaching towards something with both hands and getting burned in the process is better than wringing them, wanting.

This past month rocked me. It felt like the year was off to a wrong start. But there’s no greater lesson I could’ve had, no better direction to be pointed in.

If you love the process, injury, pain, and loss are only marks of change—lasting, constructive change.

Never falling doesn’t make someone a real skier. Injury doesn’t either, though it reminds one how dangerous the sport can be.

Getting back on the mountain makes skiing real: loving process over progress.

You may have seen this meme before:

It’s an older meme, and it’s hard to take it seriously when I see it. But I’d only ever viewed it in one context: maturity. Being misunderstood by friends or family for growing, learning, or adapting.

I never saw it as an allegory for looking in the mirror and misinterpreting what you see.

Looking back at photos from Luxor, where I interviewed the director of a new Nile cruise tour company (will share this experience soon), I found a picture my mother-in-law took of me in front of the riverboat in progress. I smiled for the camera happily, hands behind my back.

I’ve never been envious of someone just because they could stand, especially my old self from only a season ago.

I sent it to S, texting about my past lack of gratitude. This me didn’t care at all about her perfectly good knee. Throughout Egypt, in Seattle, and even in Vail, I walked and stood freely, never once thinking about what it’d be like to have a knee that can’t bend without pain.

It made me sad that I’d never go back to having a leg without screws in it. I’d been changed, no hope of returning to the natural health I took for granted.

Then, S texted me back.

Until we meet again,

Constanze

Hi everyone!! Quick note:

Thank you so for your patience during this time—the injury I write of here has taken a lot out of me. But good news: many pieces are coming! Plus…

WARKITCHEN featured me in their 2026 Winter Print edition! Check it out, and read my article here:

WARKITCHEN

The World's Most Luxurious Sauna

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2 years ago · 23 likes · 2 comments · constanze price

Yesterday was the final day of a long, fun year. It went out with a bang—S and I celebrated Christmas in Seattle with my family, and we spent the week exploring and embarking on two memorable tours. The first was a self-guided Seattle coffee history tour, described below. The second was led by my uncle, who helped ‘plantscape’ the Amazon Spheres building.

Working as a greenhouse technician, he selected plant species from all across the world to place in this massive urban arboretum, a campus built for the use of Amazon employees. Designing it was a significant undertaking, considering that the building holds 40,000 plants and trees.

This lively plant wall was the most impressive sight and an equally impressive feat to construct. During development, a team of four men hung on wires four floors up, securing 25,000 plants. My uncle was one of them, recalling for us how terrifying it was to look down—thankfully, they completed the wall within two weeks.

The visual juxtaposition of this space is striking. Exotic flora look especially lush when dropped into a world of straight, grey lines and rainy skies just beyond. A 55-foot-tall fig tree called Rubi, relocated from California, was literally dropped through a hole in the glass ceiling via crane. They only broke one of her arms in the process.

These precious exports serve to represent a less-than-savory name. Amazon constructed this 4 billion dollar urban jungle as part of its headquarters.

I don’t like the company, nor their egregious use of money here, but my uncle made it possible to appreciate the artistry behind it. He knew everything: all the Latin names, where each variety came from, and whether a plant was thriving or just surviving. His love for the space spun a contrived concept into a passion project, and gave gravity to an otherwise hollow endeavor, one that money-hungry corporations tend toward.

Seattle is home to several giant institutions, some contrived, some genuine. Like the exotic plants of the Spheres building, espresso was once a novel and even gimmicky export, brought to Seattle by people with immense passion for the beauty underlying the craft.

Coffee became a Seattle thing during the second wave of coffee in America, when espresso was first popularized in the Pacific Northwest. Seattleites like David Schomer, David Olson, and Chuck Beek all capitalized on the concern that Americans were missing out on espresso.

Though Starbucks found international fame through Howard Schultz, other famous Seattle cafés of the Second Wave have stayed quietly loved, ever-dedicated to their city.

Visiting these cafes today, I noticed that serving great coffee to regulars clearly remains a higher priority than selling out on a brand name, in the way of Tully’s or Seattle’s Best.

These shops maintain the passion and flair that first put them on the map. Local events are advertised on the walls; baristas bum cigarettes off regulars and openly trade baked goods for Mod Pizza across the counter—or good conversation for souvenir postcards. There is more interaction and less transaction than any Starbucks I’ve ever set foot in.

So in the days before Christmas, I patched together a comprehensive tour of Seattle’s trailblazing cafés for S and me. If you’re ever in town, I recommend you recreate it with your own discretion and add/subtract based on taste and distance.

Before the tour began, we made two stops that I feel are necessary to mention to you:

The Original Starbucks | Capitalist nightmare ground zero | 1971

Only stopped in for a look. At 8 am they had a staff member standing at the door to direct the nonexistent line—when they tried to corral me, I was forced to say out loud that I wouldn’t be buying anything.

A giant wall covered in store-exclusive merch paralleled a small army of baristas working behind the counter, feverishly preparing for pre-Christmas crowds. There is no seating area.

Getting a drink here would be an insult to the infinitely better cafés Seattle has to offer. Spend your money elsewhere, but pop in if you want to get the fullest sense of cafe history.

Piroshky Piroshky | Iconic Russian pastries | 1992

God forbid I’d ever have to choose a death row meal, but if I did, my order is set in stone: two cheddar garlic rolls from the shop above. (Maybe two of them, if they’re freshly baked.)

Since 1992, Piroshky Piroshky has stayed a beloved Pike Place staple, attracting the likes of Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern. Piroshky is a turnover sandwich, somewhere between a roll and a calzone, served both sweet and savory. The distinct doughy, cheesy scent that permeates the surrounding waterfront shoots me back into Christmases past, holding my dad’s hand like a tugboat through rivers of frolicking strangers.

S and I split a fresh cheddar garlic roll, one that steamed after every bite. Aside from this classic, their beef and cheese piroshky, smoked salmon pate piroshky, or chocolate cream hazelnut roll are absolutely worth a try.

I recommend this place out of love, but also for practicality: if attempting to recreate such a café-tour, you’ll want a doughy base for your stomach to manage all that espresso.

Finally, we were set and ready for the first real stop on our Seattle coffee tour.

Victrola Coffee | Local favorite; ethical sourcing pioneer | 2000

In a cozy brick building from 1920, the youngest institution of the bunch is only steps away from Pike Place Market. At 8 am, employees were still waking up alongside us. I opted for a cortado as a two-birds-one-stone order, saving room and getting a more concentrated taste of the store’s espresso, and it paid off. The flavor was strong but controlled, and the milk had a perfectly velvet texture.

The environment felt utterly 90s to me, almost Central Perk-y, but their brand aims for an art deco, 20s theme: the name references the original phonograph. Unique for the second wave, Victrola prioritized bean origins and precise brewing and rightfully stood out for it. Sourcing espresso blends from several different countries is noteworthy, especially back in the day.

Bonus points go to cafes that don’t use tea bags for tea or tea lattes. We enjoyed their loose-leaf English breakfast tea before we left, with a cheeky side of honey.

Espresso Vivace | Popularized latte art in the US | 1988

Before I ever drank coffee, my hip, in-the-know Seattleite father took me to the Espresso Vivace sidewalk bar on Broadway in Capitol Hill. They shuttered this famous shack just two years ago, but I distinctly recall umbrellas gleaming with red and green neon, the smell of sharp espresso melding with early morning petrichor. Such fond memories floated back to me upon entering this bigger, warmer store just down the road.

This historic location seemed to encourage my geekiness. A back room marked as the cafe’s ‘quiet’ seating area is decorated with vintage Espresso Vivace memorabilia: portrait photos honoring beloved late employees, framed article clippings from the peak of Seattle’s coffee boom, and even an antique Italian espresso machine paying homage to Schomer’s inspiration. In the center of the room hangs their eye-catching neon sign, gleaming bright enough to light up the entire cafe.

Did the baristas notice me taking pic after pic of printed-out articles stored in a black binder on the bookshelf? Not sure. Did they see me grab three of David Schomer’s business cards, investigating them with the fervent sternness of Patrick Bateman?

Hopefully not—but I do hope someone saw my touristy approach and recognized that this isn’t just any café. It’s worth getting psyched about—the store name literally means ‘Espresso Excitement.’

My latte was well-balanced and naturally sweeter than the others I tried on the tour. Beyond folks on laptops, I noticed plenty of conversation, people reading, studying, and savoring. It did feel, on some level, like I’d stepped back into a calmer time.

Cafe Allegro | Seattle’s original espresso bar | 1975

I’ve saved the oldest and most formative for last. Cafe Allegro is hidden away in an alley, a delightful open secret of Seattle’s University District.

Cafe Allegro deserves the clout that Starbucks sneakily claims. Starbucks’s original store, circa 1971, didn’t serve coffee in-store until 1984, only beans. Allegro served drinks right from the get-go: owner Dave Olsen, emboldened by a then-blossoming San Francisco coffee scene, had an ‘a-ha’ moment that kicked off his success.

“I suddenly realized it’s all about connecting with people and taking care of them,” he said, after handing off a cappuccino to his first-ever customer. “That has served me ever since.”

Ironically, his passion fueled the early success of Starbucks: Olson was hired by Howard Schultz in the late 80s as a chief coffee buyer and eventual co-founder, training up baristas and roasting beans for local Starbucks stores in its heyday.

But there’s no corporate residue of Starbucks here. Olson’s love must be part of why it first took off: community is front and center at Allegro, even long after its founder departed.

It’s the first cafe I’ve visited in months that wasn’t playing any music, not even Christmas music. At first I found it to be an atmospheric drawback, but in the continued silence, I actually listened. I heard the barista making conversation with an old man in an excellent brown corduroy hat, caught the sound of soft laughter from the back of the room, and listened to my husband give a satisfied huff after taking a sip of his latte. I could even hear myself think.

There are a few key cafés we didn’t get to, but I like to think we hit the most important ones. Monorail Espresso doesn’t have for-here cups, making it an easy pass—though I’ll go someday with my own mug to try it, considering its impact on the Seattle coffee scene.

George Coffee & Pastries

Desperately charming with handmade ceramic mugs and a memorable 60s era design. Enjoyed an Ovaltine latte, satisfying in both flavor and concept. They advertise a weekly poetry club—be still my beating heart. Makes me wonder why this isn’t more common of a thing.

Bulldog News

Just around the corner from Allegro, this is another cool spot I remember my dad taking me in the 2000s. Not only popular for a quick to-go coffee or pastry, Bulldog News is an Ave fixture for the news and magazines they sell inside. Go analog!

Hartwood Cafe and Bakery

40 minutes east of Seattle, I found this place so charming, loved the quiches (tried both, actually) and appreciate most that they offer a vast array of mugs with as many sizes as they have designs.

URL Coffee

Top five most unique mugs I’ve ever drank out of, in a similarly unique and eclectic environment. Played excellent jazz.

Takeaway message, and something to walk into the New Year with—people make things valuable. Love makes things valuable. May we never forget it.

See you next year,

— Constanze

Legally, it’s still the “Starbucks Corporation,” and it’s only ever been just “Starbucks” since 1971. Until today, when it needs you to believe that it’s more than that.

But it’s not, and it hasn’t been for decades.

This rebrand leans on its once-humble roots. Before Starbucks sold drinks—or Bearistas—they sold beans.

Plus tea, spices, and brewing equipment, but coffee was their core. By 1980, these weren’t proving profitable enough—the company might’ve gone under if they didn’t hire Brooklynite businessman Howard Schultz in 1982.

This man had an illusion to sell.

While on a business trip to Milan, Schultz was swept away by the ‘theatre’ of coffee and the romance of espresso bars he visited. These coffee shops were community centers, real third spaces, and every cafe had a soul of its own.

Starbucks’s owners weren’t convinced that lattes would ever become an American morning staple, but Schultz was. He left to start his own cafe in downtown Seattle, selling espresso drinks made with Starbucks beans to prove himself right, and upon its success, he’d acquire the company for a cool 4 million.

The memo for his first coffee shop, Il Giornale, shines light on Schultz’s hopes for Starbucks:

“Il Giornale will strive to be the best coffee bar company on earth. We will offer superior coffee and related products that help our customers start and continue their work day. We are genuinely interested in educating our customers and will not compromise our ethics or integrity in the name of profit. Our marketing will emphasize quality and service, not price.

We will set aggressive goals and drive ourselves to achieve them. We recognize this is a unique time; when our coffee bars will change the way people will perceive the beverage. It’s an adventure and we’re in it together.”

Bold words for a company that, over forty years later, is beyond compromise. Aside from distinct values shed in the name of moneymaking, several of Schultz’s assertions are prescient: this company still holds the power of changing the way people perceive coffee, and the company’s ‘aggressive goals’ continue to be achieved—in four decades, Starbucks has grown into a 96 billion dollar corporation.

I turn to Schultz’s original memo because the company’s original values seem to still be golden to him, even if they’re lies. Returning as CEO to Starbucks post-COVID, he made it clear that his personal convictions should hold greater weight than reality, writing in his memoir on the topic of unions…

“I was convinced that under my leadership, employees would come to realize that I would listen to their concerns. If they had faith in me and my motives, they wouldn’t need a union.”

While Schultz might not understand the standard ‘partner’ experience whatsoever, he does know this: faith is all it takes to believe an illusion, for employees and customers alike.

Falling from grace

Maybe the first compromising slip of the mask came in 1987, when to-go cups helped ‘make lines go faster.’ Or maybe when Starbucks rolled out drive-thrus in 1994. Drive-thru coffee had independent roots in Portland, Oregon, in 1990, and it took executives years to hop on board because they believed “the coffeehouse experience could not be replicated in a car.”

It obviously can’t be. But that’s not where the company’s priorities were, nor the American consumer’s.

Starbucks allegedly began as a dream to nurture community, even to create a faux-cultural experience for the Americans of the 1990s and 2000s—take Schultz playing opera music in Il Giornale, the Italian roots of lattes and cappuccinos, even the drink sizes that can somehow exoticize an iced soy milk vanilla latte.

But the third space and the Italian coffee model only appealed to Americans as novelties—imports we couldn’t fully adopt without molding them into our own image.

Thus, SB is no longer an experience, a force that brings neighbors together, or a fan that stokes the flames of creativity. Now it’s diabetes in a cup that helps us white-knuckle an otherwise exhausting workday, essentially a 7am milkshake.

What changed?

If a rug is pulled slowly, it’s hard to notice that it’s being pulled out from underneath you. But why pull the rug out in the first place?

It’s easy to get rid of something that isn’t part of the foundation, especially if it won’t be truly missed.

“Advancements” like to-go cups, drive-thrus, and mobile ordering expedited the transaction process—time, money, and social energy were saved by both seller and buyer. Sacrificing the ‘third place’ once it got in the way of extra money, of staying competitive, was easy.

But we let it go easily, too. Ultra-customizable drink orders, a convenient workspace, and the ease of convenience gave us enough. The latter is especially addictive. Even if we noticed the cheapness of a burned-shot latte, or the emptiness of a breakfast sandwich eaten in front of a steering wheel rather than another person—it was still all easy enough to keep us coming back.

For some people, however, it wasn’t.

It’s hot, and it’s ready

New CEO Brian Niccol, known on the streets as “Burrito Brian” for his success at Chipotle, has helped Starbucks backpedal with guarantees of revamping the ‘third place’ atmosphere they gave up years ago.

However, this plot is technically unnecessary considering the market trends: Starbucks delivery just became a billion-dollar business.

Why go back to Starbucks when Starbucks can come to you? When everything can?

When I worked at one of the company’s ‘busiest’ locations in Washington from 2018 to 2019, I’d lament that customers would rather have buttons to press than people to talk with to get the drinks we made. At the time I made minimum wage, a dollar an hour on average in tips, and customers angry if I were ever too slow on the job. Guests had very little patience to offer baristas, especially drivers rushing to work between 6 and 9 am, leaving minimal time for their paradoxically indispensable drive-thru run.

With the clear success of delivery, drive-thrus, and mobile ordering, human interaction has been proven a hindrance.

I’m convinced that we Americans can’t enjoy coffee correctly because community is secondary to the self. (My next article covers the PNW road trip that opened my eyes to the sad state of American coffee culture—stay tuned.) In the same vein: time is money. This is something so deeply ingrained in us that it’s easy to overlook, a force I personally find difficult to fight against. Lingering for too long in a coffee shop spoils into wasted time if no work is getting done—the time I spend reading or writing in cafés abroad feels almost frivolous at home.

But if every company shifts toward prioritizing delivery, the Starbucks name won’t stand out unless they innovate. If the rebrand has failed to bring people back in-store, they at least have a shady phase two, just in time for the holidays.

Release the Bearistas

I learned about these through an article by Substacker Borderline Obsessing: here’s a gimmick as cheap and see-through as the Alibaba bears themselves.

Part of me wishes I could’ve remained blissfully ignorant, but this proves something I’d already believed.

Corporations will sell us the mere feeling of meaning—not the legitimate kind people naturally source from interpersonal connection—over and over again until we finally claim the real thing for ourselves.

Starbucks sold us the sense of community alone, and for decades, we were sold. Consumerism tells us stories about ourselves, signals to others our particular aesthetic/style/priorities, and fills up the void we’re all born with colorful smoke.

Bearistas and Holiday Red Cups are just another attempt at advertising community, and we fall for it because Starbucks (and companies like it) don’t sell illusions; they are an illusion that changes with the times—a Potemkin village torn down and rebuilt with the lift of our gaze.

After all, what makes a brand a brand? These bear cups wouldn’t be so coveted if their lid-beanies had no name on the front, if they weren’t artificially scarce, and if we as Americans weren’t so starved for authentic belonging, gorging instead on consumerism disguised as individualism.

There’s a palpable irony between yesterday’s Red Cup Rebellion, where thousands of baristas walked out of their stores in protest, and the pre-holiday Bearistamania that brought customers to tears of joy and resale listings to $400+.

Like Schultz’s boldly worded memo warns us, we have to be sure that we’re not valuing empty promises.

Would we really be clamoring for glass bears, Stanley Cups, or limited-edition junk of any kind if we weren’t desperate to possess tangible evidence of our worthiness? Would Starbucks baristas be walking out if they felt valued by their employers, or even by the customers they serve?

Maybe if they all wore green beanies with straws sticking out the top, they finally would be.

Going, going, gone

The exclusivity that an artificially scarce product brings, the privilege of a purchased ‘lifestyle,’ is only satiating for a time. Consumerism is a fake affection that can only be felt when its sources are new, physical, and coveted. Unlike the fulfillment of true connection with a friend, neighbor, or family member over coffee—where, and over what drink being the least important parts—sourcing love from illusion leaves us ever empty.

The Starbucks brand has changed so much in quality over the last four decades because it, too, is a hollow product constantly redesigned to hold our attention for as little overhead as possible. But clearly, we’re still looking.

What is attention, if not faith that what we’re watching is valuable?

We will continue to fall for novelty until we prioritize what’s already in front of us. Unless our gaze is fixed on reality, we’re doomed to waste our time on whatever illusion can grab our attention next.

Talk soon,

Constanze ♥️

Yes I’m back!! Stay tuned and subscribe for upcoming articles covering…

• The nature, beauty, and coffee influence of the Pacific Northwest

• My VIP tour at the Library of Alexandria

• Cafés, bookshops, and vintage stores of Cairo

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for the newbies: Coffee w/ Constanze is a bi-monthly(ish!!) newsletter covering travel, culture, and passion. below are my thoughts on ai, brewed for over a month—let me know if you agree w/ my take ☕️

Taste is essential in a world of slop. 

Discerning between worthy and basic has become essential. Taste draws the line between yes and no, seek and avoid. 

In a way, it feels like I’m always sifting through industrial slop, just varying kinds. I’m extra discerning at the grocery store, where a loaf of sourdough bread contains no less than thirteen additives.

I check clothing labels to make sure I’m not buying clothes linked to cancer, hormone disruption, and infertility—I’ve passed up some really cute outfits.

My husband and I live in a town where our water supply is so saturated with PFAS after years of chemical dumping by a DuPont facility upstream that locals warn newcomers not to drink it. Reverse osmosis filtration systems aren’t cheap, but here, they’re necessary.

Still, I could’ve never dreamed that industrialization would eventually come to tarnish writing. 

Some essays I discover while scrolling on Substack look so compelling, I click to read them immediately—they seem interesting enough that, even if the first paragraph doesn’t hook me, I keep on skimming until something does.

What grabs my attention lately isn’t quality, but growing concern. I find too much of this sentence structure, used in different ways over and over again:

• “…It’s not about looks. It’s about feeling.”

• “…It is not about erasure, but about elevation.”

• “…This isn’t just about design. It’s about thought.”

• “…It’s not just about distraction, it’s about disorientation.”

I pulled these from a handful of essays I found via Notes or from Substacks I already subscribe to. While each line is especially meaningless beyond its context, they all share the same repetitive structure: “It’s not about ____, it’s about ____.”

What’s the problem here?

Like ChatGPT would say, it’s not about sentence structure; it’s about overall content. 

We writers hate that em dashes are considered a ‘giveaway’ for ChatGPT use—mark my words, I’ll never give them up—but there’s a good reason why they’re so common in AI writing. 

Em dashes should add emphasis or expound on a subject. But to LLMs (large language models), they mostly fill space.

The repetitive format of “it’s not about ____, it’s about ____” juggles surrounding details around to distract from the topic at hand, one that an AI model used predictive analysis to guesstimate. Such empty parallelism makes me feel like I’m reaching around for something shapeless in the dark.

I quickly get bored, confused, and end up clicking out of the article disappointed, wondering how good it could’ve been if the writing wasn’t half AI.

This beating around of an entirely absent bush—having no first-person experience to draw from—is quintessential BSing. It’s easy to spot. Maybe, like me, you used to BS certain essays in high school when you couldn’t be bothered to read their assigned books. (I regret it; I should’ve read them!)

To be honest with you—hope this isn’t controversial—I don’t want to read BS on Substack. Or anywhere else.

It occurred to me that, if we’re always taking in some percentage of BS while reading, it’ll harm our minds the same way that artificial additives harm our digestive systems over time.

But what makes AI writing industrial ‘slop’ exactly?

This stuff is predigested as heck

If reading is like eating, what happens when our ‘fuel’ goes down in quality?

We’re all too familiar with the danger of the ‘Western diet’—ultra-processed food makes up 70% of the American food supply. This food is so refined that the term predigested is an accurate descriptor—raw materials stripped completely of nutrients when emulsified into paste, then molded into a pleasing shape for us to actually digest.

Our digestive systems aren’t meant to consume predigested anything, especially on a regular basis, and it shows.

Similarly, your brain—another vastly complex processing system—doesn't need to work hard to digest tropey, formulaic content. The reading (and writing) experience of AI content is, positively and negatively, frictionless. 

Scanning through these articles (they resist being fully read), it’s difficult to discern which parts reveal an author’s natural voice and which are the work of an algorithm, though the latter stands out like a sore thumb. The vague, flowery lyricism of an AI-boosted essay can effectively distract from its lack of depth. Telltale repetition bores quickly. Ask ChatGPT for a basic short story (I did this in the name of science), and it’ll draw shamelessly on weak clichés and tropes like a clown pulling colorful handkerchiefs out of its mouth for a laugh. It’s all pre-read, pre-written, and overinflated.

Just as ultra-processed food is meant to be tasty first and foremost, AI content exists to be entertaining—a smooth surface with no spine. We’re not meant to be challenged by these pieces, but indulged—unless we’re trying to understand what the model is saying with a nonsensical metaphor or a baselessly confident (and increasingly frequent) hallucination.

If we live exclusively off the mere pulp of our original fuel, we weaken our processing systems and damage their ability to work effectively in the long run. 

Humans need food to survive, but nutrients to thrive.

We need stories to survive, but meaning to thrive.

Sourcing is questionable

Global food corporations and tech companies like OpenAI and Meta want you to focus on their products alone. Just enjoy the taste; just enjoy the futuristic ease of creation. Consequences appear blurry and distant, if we decide to look that far down the road.

These companies use the cheapest ingredients possible, regardless of how potentially dangerous or controversial. Ultra-processed foods are mostly corn, soy, and wheat-based: all high-yielding monocrops grown with the help of artificial chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

All three are subsidized disproportionately by the US government, but even so, the global supply chain (with its notable environmental impacts) sources ingredients with cost, not proximity, in mind. Quality is low, but the price is right for both corporations and consumers.

LLMs are trained just as cheaply and controversially: thousands upon thousands of stolen reading materials, such as books ‘protected’ by copyright and articles copied from behind paywalls, were used to train them.

No Big Tech company (notably OpenAI, Google, Meta, or Books3) ever planned to financially compensate authors for their hard work. Beyond the proprietary data that many tech companies severely underpay their workers to get, nobody willingly feeds their literary creations to these massive digital meat grinders. 

And still, these systems grind away. Readers enjoy a widened variety of consistent content tailored to their interests, while writers can post more work more frequently, managing only a fraction of the old workload.

We can recognize the injustice of plagiarism swiftly on Substack, but it’s interesting that we haven’t yet drawn the line at artificially intelligent writing, especially when you don’t have to mention that you used AI to write a post. Readers are forced into a guessing game, far more ambiguous than simply checking a clothing or nutrition label—no content labels exist to warn me that an article I’m reading is 50% predigested thought.

Flavor over quality

Artificial intelligence ‘amplifies’ writing the same way that food corporations ‘amplify’ flavor by packing foods with fat, salt, and sugar. They’re convenient, low cost, and utterly addictive—scientifically engineered to keep us consuming them. 

If they weren’t so popular, we wouldn’t be so concerned.

Predigested writing will undoubtedly fill our future because 1) we prefer to avoid labor and 2) we prefer what tastes good. The essays I quoted earlier were only a handful of dozens that float to the top of Substack’s ‘Rising’ pages, racking up thousands of views per piece.

If they weren’t so popular, I wouldn’t be writing this article.

It’s understandable why writers would turn to AI to produce content. Why stress over writing weekly posts on your own brainpower if you can put out something acceptable in a fraction of the time? The ideas are still yours in a sense—bullet points about integrity, essays on slow living, poetic prose with an undoubtedly cozy atmosphere—what difference does AI really make?

This is a question that transcends writing, Substack, and “content creation,” asking instead what we value as a culture. 

What difference do exploitative labor or cheap materials make while buying clothes if the price is right for an okay-looking sweater? Why care about advertisers using AI models in commercials if the actors look true-to-life? What does an AI-driven university cheating crisis matter if students ‘feel more creative’ using ChatGPT? 

How much humanity can be cut away from our day-to-day lives before we stop recognizing ourselves?

I try to see both sides of ‘culture wars’ like this, especially when both concede that this is the future—look out. Some argue that AI gives writers a beautiful opportunity to become ‘philosophers’: artists concerned most with ideas, no longer held back by the labor that writing historically involves. 

In this pro-AI essay, writer Dan Koe claims that ‘highly emotional people’ who don’t approve of AI simply don’t see the potential here for unbridled artistry: “Most people have put too much emphasis on the labor that goes into creating something visually appealing, so that it has become their identity, and people will fight tooth and nail to avoid limiting themselves less.” 

Labor, here, is seen as a limitation. That’s the difference, I think.

There’s no obvious benefit in wrestling with language, no struggle-dependent insights to be gleaned by either writer or reader through this lens. Paving over the creative process is painless.

His article, funny enough, argues my same point:

But we view taste quite differently. Taste, to me, is a skill one sharpens, even if it begins with a natural eye for quality. It’s honed by experience: familiarity with intentional, thought-provoking work.

Quality art reflects the human condition effectively. We’ll naturally struggle to recognize ourselves in these amalgamations of rootless human voices, regardless of how carefully they’re organized.

If skills go unused, they’re lost. If our culture doesn’t value human-derived art, prioritizing convenience instead, we’ll learn to love industrial counterfeits. Readers of the future, long accustomed to AI-based literature, may view ‘good writing’ vastly differently than we do. 

I’m not even advocating necessarily for reading great literature, that we should all enjoy the classics or else. My bar is low and easy to pass: stories should be told by humans. Lived experience, conveyed and altered by the human mind, is infinitely valuable and should be respected as such.

Convenient ambivalence

While researching ultra-processed foods, I read the same acknowledgement over and over—nobody knows exactly why these foods are so terrible for our bodies; we only see their harmful byproducts. Without ‘concrete data,’ we still need 10-20 more years of adverse health effects and deaths across the world to know for sure that predigested food and biodiesel shouldn’t be consumed.

Ultra-processed writing is too new at the moment for us to know its side effects, but in watching the overall impacts of industrialization on our society, I can’t help but think skepticism will prove healthier than acceptance.

Hopefully, the inevitable over-saturation of the internet with AI writing will drive thoughtful writers to create and uplift authentic work. It all depends on what we’re hungry for: whether machine-made writing can actually satiate our natural appetites for relatable stories.

If you choose to avoid AI writing, you’ll get the same reaction from certain people that you would for avoiding processed foods: there’s a ‘holier than thou’ argument that some love to weaponize, trying to shame you into caring less about the source or quality of your intake.

This might come from the fact that values shape discernment, and discernment is a form of judgment. Writers who use AI to write and folks who never check food labels—regardless of why—don't want to feel judged for their choices. 

While I don’t mean to pass judgment, this is a pivotal moment in time. We’ve traded out so many methods of craftsmanship, all carefully passed between generations, for profit-driven assembly lines. We’ve lost intimate knowledge we can never fully regain. A line must be drawn somewhere.

I don’t buy that we need to bow to whatever the ‘future’ is projected to be—like the false concept of ‘society’ feeling lofty and faraway, we can’t forget that we are society. The future belongs to us; it’s ours to shape by hand.

But convenience is the highest value of our culture. In just a few months or years, it’ll likely be near-impossible to tell whether writing is human or algorithm-penned. Popular articles will be perfectly polished and as vibrant as LED lighting. Literature will sing loudly with life stolen, amalgamated, and repackaged. 

My hope is this: let’s never lose our taste for lived experience.

Constanze

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I had a big decision to make in the spring of 2022. 

After a year of waitressing in a Colorado ski town, I wanted to move—not back home, not to a different city in the Rockies—somewhere entirely new.

So I schemed for a few weeks and settled on two courses of action:

1. Borrow my dad’s Honda to travel cross-country solo for six months and write about small towns dangling from American interstates like charms, or… 

2. Move to Ireland and study literature in Dublin.

My eventual acceptance letter to Trinity College led me to #2. There I met a Luxembourgish girl named Cecelia: we quickly became the best of friends, and I’ve missed her ever since I moved back to the States. The last time we saw each other, she was chiseling away at her anthropology degree in Stockholm.

Cecelia is enviably well-traveled. I swoon when she talks of the lavender fields that perfume her family’s Uzés villa, when she sends me pictures of Tuscan church ceilings or the trails she hiked in Norway.

Now that she’s defended her thesis (congrats love!), she’s coming to visit the states for three whole weeks. She’s never been to the US.

What else could I suggest besides a road trip? 

Zipping up and down the West Coast with my family was the highlight of my childhood. We could branch off towards Idaho, Utah, or Montana depending on the season. America’s vast geography flew by us in blurred color, an ever-changing backdrop to the VHS tapes my brother and I watched on repeat in the backseat. Falling asleep in the shoulders of deep red mountains and waking up to a bright, foggy coast—I thought my parents knew every road in the country.

There’s far more than just logistics to plan out. While I determine the cost of gas, where to camp, what to eat, etc.—I want to relate all the key ingredients of the perfect American road trip to someone who’s never been.

This is all I know so far:

An early start

Every great road trip (at least, in my family) begins around 4 or 5 in the morning. Exhaustion is inevitable; you might as well cut to the chase. Bring plenty of pillows and blankets to greet the highway sun half-drowsy, half-vigorous.

A cooler, stuffed with snacks

I’m not sure what psychological effect made this so wonderful as a child—just a box full of lunch meats, fruit, and leftovers to survive on—until, of course, a good coffee shop or 24-hour diner approaches.

Eventually a gas station pit stop calls for too-salty chips, Coke, and a bag of powdered doughnuts—though you might want to hold off on the soda; there might be a cherry limeade in store at Sonic.

Once I was old enough to help drive, to-go cups of coffee (ideally Dutch Bros or other local chains) became increasingly vital to power through long drives of stagnant scenery: grey road and tan farmland.

All quick treats and indulgences are permitted with the understanding that it’s fine—we’re on a road trip.

An eye for the right stops

Half-conscious pacing around highway rest areas to stretch your aching legs is a rite of passage. The bathrooms aren’t often clean, but they exist. The people-watching is top-notch, and there’ll likely be a few happy dogs to pet and vending machines to stare at until realizing you have no cash. 

Antique stores, fruit stands, and roadside scenic views (anyone bring quarters for the big binoculars?) shouldn’t be missed. Each car departure is a chance to chat with locals, try regional cuisines, and catch sights you might never see again (however bizarre they might be.)

So much fun of a road trip happens behind the wheel: windows down, music loud, landscape unfolding mile-by-mile. But the core of an American road trip is America, and it has to be touched, seen, and lived in-person.

A blend of good conversation, music, and silence

A desperate game of I Spy might hit between hours 7 and 8 of a long drive, breaking up silence or keeping everyone entertained. Pushing through the boredom, there’s likely honest, compelling conversation on the other side.

American highways can be liminal spaces depending on the hour: imagine your headlights shining against pitch-black night, no other cars in sight, with miles and miles to go. There’s no quicker way to feel normal again than talking with whoever’s with you—if they aren’t asleep in the passenger seat.

There are truths shared on road trips, histories told, and promises made that strengthen your bond to fellow passengers in a way no other scenario could foster.

Hiking and camping, where possible

If your car can stand a little off-roading, there’s no greater way to stretch your legs than soaking in nature on foot. Camping is far cheaper than a hotel for the night—as long as it’s warm enough to sleep outside and you have enough resources on hand.

Nature is great from a car, but it can’t compare to sleeping in it.

There’s a charm to eating, drinking, and sleeping with limited tools. An outdoor extraordinaire I have yet to write about, a good friend named Eve that I hiked through Washington with completely blew my mind when she drank from a river with a filtration water bottle. The day before, we’d eaten snow off the ground 7,000 feet up Mount Rainier (filtered river water tasted better).

Car camping is just as memorable if you aren’t fond of sleeping on the ground, especially since twinkly lights can be involved—another one of Eve’s aesthetic essentials I’ll be sure to copy.

Appreciation for this wildly beautiful landscape

America’s landscape diversity is simply astounding. Driving from the Rockies to Santa Fe, you’ll trade snowy peaks for arid desert within just five hours.

Stop at the Great Sand Dunes National Park on the way, and you’ll feel like you’ve left earth.

Driving from the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina heading east, you’ll hit coastline after six-ish hours. Congested, busy cities like Minneapolis reveal lush lakes populated largely by red-eyed loons in only three hours.

And that’s only what I’ve seen—stories of the Florida panhandle, the foliage of New England, and little Appalachian mountain towns I hear from friends and family entice me to keep driving around.

Cecelia and I will start our journey in the Pacific Northwest, so we plan to take HWY 101 up the coast. We anticipate seeing evergreen forests on the edge of the ocean, bathed in mysterious fog, and, hopefully(!!), breaching whales off the coast of the San Juan Islands.

While we’re adding to this list as we plan, the goal isn’t to check everything off; I want to share the comfort of American roads that wind and roll, never truly ending.

w/ love,

Constanze

PS: comment with your road trip memories! what didn’t i mention, or what do you resonate with? <3

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I juggled a dozen pen pals in high school. I’d write four of them consistently: two Germans, a Slovenian named Gaja, and a Brooklynite named Satchel. Evie, the first German girl, put Polaroids of her little white dog in each letter and once sent a packet of dried flowers with ‘Summer in Germany,’ written on it in marker.

The second, Amy from Frankfurt, taught me German almost single-handedly over two years of friendship. We swapped snail mail and voice memos, where she’d patiently critique my pronunciation via WhatsApp.

If and when German speakers compliment my accent nowadays, I credit a thoughtful girl I haven’t spoken to in years.

Our letters and texting eventually slowed to a stop. Instagram remained the single tether between us, the digital equivalent of sitting a few tables apart in a busy high school cafeteria. Maybe I’d catch her looking at me, maybe she’d wave—I’d look at her story, and she might react to mine with a heart or a laughing-crying emoji.

We rarely, if ever, talked.

Deleting Instagram in 2022 dissolved my peripheral connections in an instant—friends I’d made while solo-traveling, coworkers from jobs I worked ten years ago, old high school friends and old pen pals alike—all evaporated in less than a minute. No posts kept my name subtly present in the back of their minds. If I wanted to share a meme, picture, or check up on someone, texting was my only quick and easy option.

Suddenly, texting became more necessary than ever.

I couldn’t stand it.

I used to die on the hill of texting etiquette being made up and stupid. Human beings aren’t meant to be constantly available. Texting keeps us from being in the moment. It isn’t even talking, anyway! We should all take our sweet time replying.

Taking my sweet time looks like an embarrassing cycle of apology tours, sending out dozens of “So sorry I didn’t see this!” and “Sorry, I’ve been so busy!” texts every couple weeks. Whether I actually saw a text or missed it, Sorry! is always part of the reply.

Because I am always sorry, but that doesn’t mean I change.

My creeping guilt, combined with the mellow pain of waiting long periods of time to be responded to (my just desserts), finally made me reconsider my relationship to texting. It matters more than I, and likely other people, want to give it credit for.

In the comments, let me know if you agree with the following:

Texting is simply part of being alive right now.

We’ve passed from the necessity of letters, telegrams, and landlines. We still call, but texting is decidedly our form of communication besides email, FaceTime, and… whatever young Zoomers like to use.

I’ll probably never like this reality, but I’ve at least come to terms with it now. I sought out pen pals (and wrote friends, too) early on because texting felt so cold and sterile in comparison to letters.

But if my goal is to be earnest and loving in what I write, a text can be just as meaningful as a letter. My good friend Cecelia, a cultural anthropologist studying in Stockholm, considers texts to be cultural artifacts in and of themselves. With how significant a role texts play in our day-to-day lives, they might as well be.

That, and I admit it:

In historical context, texting is super convenient.

Most of human history would be envious of us, getting to read loved ones’ struggles and blessings daily—first-hand, hot off the presses. No need to wait by the phone. No letter to read and reply to; no hunting for ink, paper, or stamps. We simply tap letters on a screen with our thumbs, and a response shows up on the same screen just minutes, even seconds afterwards.

I counted the little things in my hunt for technological gratitude:

• I love getting assurance of someone’s safety within minutes.

• Long-distance relationships probably sucked way more than they already do when you couldn’t exchange I love you’s before sleeping, 5k miles apart.

• I couldn’t swing snail mail at this point in my life. I love not having to write to multiple people at once just to trade life updates.

It’s easy to take for granted that I can hear my dad laugh in a voice note, that I can text a friend just minutes before a job interview and give them encouragement right when they need it most.

But distance is difficult no matter what. I wish I could’ve prepared myself for the exquisite pain of separation from the people I love—before studying abroad, before dating long distance, and before planting myself 3,000 miles away from close family. It’s clearer to me than ever before:

Texting can’t do it all, but it does enough.

If 2020-2021 taught us anything, it’s that we need the presence of human beings, especially loved ones, to stay normal. All forms of long-distance communication are insufficient because physical presence is so vital.

Despite its clear limitations (I’ve misinterpreted maybe 2,000 texts in my life), texting feeds relationships in small yet consistent ways. That’s another modern privilege—how many distant friendships of old faded away because one party, or both, couldn’t find time to write?

If we’re concerned with societal loneliness and isolation as much as we claim to be, we have to start doing the little things. The tiny things. Text someone to say goodnight or good morning once in a while. Text someone to make summer plans you can both look forward to.

Oftentimes, it’s not so much about the content as it is about the gesture. Reaching out has never been easier, and a quick text could matter to someone far more than we know.

But texting’s not enough, you might say. I’d agree with you—of course it isn’t. Words alone aren’t enough, and while presence is key…

Relationships require effort of all kinds.

Love needs deliberate effort to survive. It needs lots of effort to truly thrive. Keeping a relationship going is especially cumbersome if we prefer to keep all our time for ourselves.

Responding to texts can be tedious. It can be time-consuming. But our lives don’t belong entirely to us. Our time is never solely ours, and it shouldn’t be if we want to spend it properly. Interruptions, the needs of others, and their concerns should have a chief place. Social media, by the nature of how it thrives, mutes this fact.

There’s a reason people turn to dumb phones: texting is one of the few things it can do. It cuts through the funhouses, the town squares, and the alluring boutiques of social media that steal attention from our ‘real lives.’

It occurred to me over Christmas that relationships are our real life. It’s Biblical, cultural, and truly fulfilling to love others like we love ourselves—but it’s difficult to focus on relationship development when a personally tailored world of desire, pleasure, and dominance fits so neatly in the palm of our hand.

How can we focus on others when advertisers and algorithms profit directly from our constant self-interest? How could the grounding effect of texting others about our real lives ever compete with online escapism?

Other people make our lives real. Dedicating ourselves to maintaining regular, frequent communication via text or call, even when it’s inconvenient, will change the world—at least our personal worlds, first.

Quick but necessary caveat: we can’t be available 24/7, no breaks. It’s not possible, healthy, or realistic. But I realized too late… No one’s asking that of us.

Past me saw things in extremes: Texting is hard. What, am I supposed to be constantly online, all the time, nonstop? Come on!

I owe it to those I love to be consistent, not perfect. Striking a balance was never as hard as I thought it’d be, though it does take extra time and effort.

Something else I was unaware of: it’s totally worth it.

Tips from a newly-reformed Bad Texter:

• Give yourself a realistic window for responding. Everyone by the end of the day? Certain people within a few hours, and others within a day or so? Sure. Whatever window you set, keep it consistent.

• Set a standard. Let everyone know that you won’t get back to them immediately, but sometime soon. This is not a get out of jail free card, I’ve tried—just be honest, and stick to reply as soon as you’re able.

• You will feel better responding to most texts earlier than later. Putting off texting is a form of procrastination. Don’t let it get out of hand!

Texting back is sort of like gardening. We want a sprawling garden of fruitful, happy relationships—we just need to work on our green thumbs.

At least for me, I’ll be busy planting. Practice makes perfect!

w/ love,

Constanze

I’m working to get a handle on the NYC coffee scene while visiting my friend Selena (you might remember her), and I feel more alive than ever. Springtime has arrived in full glory: warm sunshine, pink cherry blossoms, and smiling people all brighten up the city from the outside in.

While meandering through Domino Park (pictured above), I felt so tuned into the moment. Too tuned in, even. Was it the gorgeous renewal of springtime? The wonderfully subtle umami of my hojicha latte, my third latte of the day? Or was it the eerie sensation I was outside America, despite staring at the Brooklyn Bridge just beyond?

It didn’t click for me until Selena and I reached her Williamsburg apartment that night, when she laughed and breathlessly remarked, “Can you believe we both took 24,000 steps today?”

I never rack up so many steps beyond Europe, since I can walk between cafés in city centers that, in American cities, I’d have to drive between. New York’s infrastructure better resembles London, Amsterdam, or Paris than the other largest cities in the country—though none of them touch NYC’s population of 8.8 million people.

Supply has to meet an incredibly high demand. Thus, NYC has the most coffee shops per capita in the U.S. The internet doesn’t know the exact number, but for all 5 boroughs, there’s somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 cafés and coffee shops in the city combined.

Say it’s just 2,000: it would take me about 400 days to visit five of them daily. I’ll never scratch the surface as a tourist, and that’s part of the fun.

Selena and I set out to explore the best-rated places, the most talked about, the highest quality spots—but a new goal revealed itself halfway through. I dedicated this year to exploring my habits, and surprisingly, had zero guilt about splurging (mentally, physically, fiscally) on this five-day visit.

Unsure if it’d be “healthy” at first, yet knowing how unconsciously healthy my habits become while I’m abroad, I reconsidered about my perennial habit: could café-hopping be an unacknowledged health hack?

In case you’d want to recreate my journey (or have any concerns about my caffeine behavior) perhaps this extensive fieldwork will shed some light.

While hopping from café to café, you’ll be…

1. Walking, everywhere

   Walking regularly is the cornerstone of a long and healthy life. Interestingly enough, walking and drinking coffee have similar effects: they both trigger endorphin release, boost focus and alertness, and even aid digestion. Busy processing lattes and baked goods, your stomach will thank you for skipping the subway and heading to your next destination on foot.

   

   If your neighborhood back home isn’t built for walking, Brooklyn and Manhattan’s strong incentives of great coffee, fascinating people-watching, and historic streets easily distract from the fact you’ll walk 8-10 miles in a single day. In other words, bring your best walking shoes.

2. Standing, everywhere

   New health fear just dropped: sitting kills.

   But there’s no need to be afraid while you weave your way through Manhattan. Think of all the too-long lines you’ll wait in, all the stuffed-to-the-brim subway cars, and all the bustling cafés, each about the size of a living room, with two to three folding chairs outside for seating (both already taken.)

   

   Those sitting people have no idea what kind of havoc they’re wreaking on their bodies. But you get to know, standing awkwardly in a high-traffic corner of the establishment, that you’re getting the full NYC coffee shop experience.

   You can break up your café-crawl with sightseeing, especially if it’s raining. Try a museum like the MoMa or the Met, where you’ll stand in line to go and stand around standing people between 2-3 hours.

   

   Selena and I actually saw two museums in a single afternoon, then capped the night with a Broadway musical. (Did you know if you opt to stand for its three-hour runtime, a sold-out show is only 1/3 the regular price?)

   With how much you’ll stand in a single day, you’ll completely plummet your risk of premature death—at least, for the duration of your visit.

3. Getting highly caffeinated

   An enticing byproduct of the festivities. Some of you might be concerned. Café-hopping? Isn’t that much coffee excessive, even dangerous? Hear me out—or better yet, hear out the results of this Harvard study:

   "Moderate coffee intake—about 2–5 cups a day—is linked to a lower likelihood of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, liver and endometrial cancers, Parkinson’s disease, and depression. It’s even possible that people who drink coffee can reduce their risk of early death.”

   Get coffee at 4 popular coffee shops, and live longer? Sign me up.

   

   To fend off the jitters, oscillate between espresso and matcha-based drinks. Matcha has slightly less caffeine than coffee, and matcha-specialized spots like Kijitora, Kettl, and PPL (all Brooklyn-based) will surprise you.

   I tried hojicha for the first time—a dark-roasted green tea with a nuttier flavor than matcha, and less caffeine to boot—I highly recommend it for both flavor and cafe-hopping sustainability purposes.

   Switching up coffee orders doesn’t hurt, either: cappuccinos, espressos, and cortados offer similar pleasures w/ differing volumes and textures.

   

   Of course, go at your own pace. Try a slice of olive oil cake or snag a guava croissant between cafés to sustain your mission.

4. Spending time outdoors
   You might not imagine the concrete jungle as ‘the great outdoors’, but NYC boasts over 2,300 parks, playgrounds, and recreation facilities. Time spent in green, leafy spaces offers many perks—better sleep, lower blood pressure, and reduced risk of chronic disease—probably correlated with the walking, biking, and jogging they’re often used for.

   Even beyond the city’s greenery, (the grayery?) exposure to sunlight increases vitamin D, regulates circadian rhythm, and balances hormones. Central Park, NYC’s crown jewel, sits only minutes away from several great spots near Fifth Ave. I personally recommend the Viennese-influenced Café Sabarsky (or, if you didn’t make a reservation for it like me, their Café Fledermaus downstairs—same menu, different interior.)

   

5. Mingling!

   Speaking of Vienna, old world coffee houses inspired so much social change and revolutionary thinking throughout history because caffeine gets people talking. It boosts sociability in its drinkers. Especially exploring these New York cafés with a friend, there’s no better food for the soul than walking, talking, and eating great food with great company.

   NYC, with its previously mentioned 8.8 million inhabitants, is the perfect place to find the face-to-face interaction we so often miss in a digital world. Connect with someone, anyone. Like my dad used to say when he’d wax poetic about visiting New York on work trips, “People just come up and talk to you.” Even as a kid, I knew this was a big endorsement, and I knew it meant NYC was something special.

These are the top five benefits—though the list could easily be longer. I wrote this first as a tongue-in-cheek excuse to justify my occasionally egregious coffee intake, but at this point I’m impressed. Café-going isn’t just a mental escape or a chemical fixation; our bodies enjoy the process, too.

Next time you’re in NYC, try it out! You might love it as much as I do—body, mind, and spirit.

w/ love,

Constanze

for the newbies: Coffee w/ Constanze is a bi-monthly(ish) publication served up in narrative reflection form, covering travel, culture, and passion. today we cover something i’ve been afraid to investigate; something utterly human.

I turned 27 last month. 

I thought about posting 27 things I’ve learned, or sharing advice that I’d give to my 17-year-old self. I didn’t, because the sum of both essays is one sentence: 

Be mindful of your escapism. 

For context, escapism is: “A habitual diversion of the mind to purely imaginative activity or entertainment, as an escape from reality and routine.” We all have our poisons of choice: scrolling, streaming, reading, gaming, daydreaming, etc. They’re different doors, but it’s the same exit strategy.

Frequent escape is worth questioning, but we all have to escape sometimes. The “be mindful” in my initial warning isn’t quit. Taking breaks from reality is vital to living; it shapes culture, connects, and refreshes us. C.S Lewis once argued that people most afraid of escape “must be jailers.”

I’m no jailer, but if you’re like me, you might share this love/hate relationship with escapism. Maybe it made you who you are, but also ruined your life. 

Hundreds of hours during my childhood were spent beyond my ‘real life’: reading, TV-watching, or daydreaming. Then came social media, partying, and body dysmorphia to steal from my teens. The sense of wasted time and potential I’m left with taught me that certain forms of escapism can be enriching, while others diminish as they entertain.

I’ve changed a few bad behaviors before, but escapism is an intimidating web of tangled knots beneath so many habits, all this time I’ve been afraid to touch it.

It raises too many questions: are we being turned into escapists by an era that profits from our attention, or is it simply part of being human? 

We aim to ‘live in the moment’, but why is it so hard to stay in?

Rolling up my sleeves, I finally started tugging on the root system of escapist tendencies that suffocates my daily life—media consumption makes up most of it. Questions kept sprouting up as I worked.

• Eating can be escapist. Sleeping can be escapist. Honestly, even cleaning my bathroom has been an escape at times. Is it all bad, then? 

• Of the 4-ish hours I spend on my phone a day, what fraction of that time contributes to my real life, rather than steals from it?

• What counts as my ‘real life’?

Seeking answers, I charted my most frequent escape routes. I ranked my tendencies using an S-F tier list (S is ‘superior’, F is ‘fail’. I begin with the worst, so we can stay optimistic!)

F Tier: never! stop it. STOP

worrying

This is the worst way to escape the present, hands down.

First off, it shouldn’t count. It’s not a comforting indulgence or a fun little mental excursion; it’s where I abandon my generally enjoyable life to go and torture myself. I used to hyper-focus on a problem until it was finally solved—up until the next issue, where I’d worry intensely about that too—so on, and so forth.

I’d actually feel guilty if I didn’t worry, like it meant I didn’t care enough about a certain person, outcome, or situation if I didn’t embody my concern. Weighing each outcome of an uncontrollable situation felt like self-care, when it was a slow self-destruction.

When I was 24, I went on a solo-day trip from Liverpool to York. After strolling through the Shambles, the Christmas Market, and along Roman ruins, I stopped at the York Roast Co. for a Yorkshire Pudding burrito (when in York). 

Between bites I called my then-boyfriend, now-husband to vent my financial stress as a grad student living entirely on my barista savings from the year before.

Minutes into our talk, worry billowed out of me like smoke. I’m so stressed about finances. I shouldn’t be here. I need to save my money.

His voice softened. Hey, now, he told me, you’re right where you need to be. 

S said that often, but continued, Seeing York will never, ever be cheaper than it is for you right now. You’re living in Ireland, you’re a student, and you’re going by a set budget. 

There’s a season for everything. Right now, you’re ruining this season for yourself. 

And it suddenly clicked for me: I ruin every season when I worry.

When I catch myself relapsing, I pray, immerse myself in the present, and work from there. There’s only so much I can do in any given situation, and when I accept that reality, I have more energy to handle whatever life will give me next.

D tier: nope. anti-me category

overconsumption

Overconsumption is often the line I cross between worthy and wasteful escapism; between ‘real life’ and retreating. Whenever I catch myself over-consuming—re-watching too many favorite movies, binging on cake, listening incessantly to favorite music—it means I’m bothered by something, and have to find out what. 

Confronting that discomfort rather than evading it yields not just growth, but that rare electric joy that comes from true fulfillment. The pleasures I’d take comfort in aren’t inherently bad; it’s the repeated overindulgence, the leaning on them like a crutch, that threatens to stunt my growth. 

However long the joy of pushing through takes, when it finally comes, it lasts.

drugs and alcohol

Drinking once had its own romance to me. That’s why I had my last drink of 2024 in Positano, on S and I’s honeymoon. 

We had an incredible lunch at a restaurant where, thanks to good timing, we were sat at the venue’s only balcony table. I ordered a limoncello spritz to complement our view of the sea.

Taking my first sip, it felt like I was diluting my experience; I couldn’t fully possess the moment if I got too lost in it. As we ate, I wondered: isn’t my everyday valuable enough to be possessed? Not just the highlights? 

I haven’t drank since, and it’s been six months. At first, it was hard to say no when everyone else said yes. Nowadays, I forget alcohol exists. 

The peace in such forgetting is more refreshing than any spritz I’ve ever had. Life holds more weight when I stay in my body. When I’m happy, I’m really happy: my good vibes aren’t induced. 

I’ll likely drink again someday, in moderation—it’s nice to celebrate, and I appreciate the camaraderie element—but it’s critical that I can be happy, fulfilled, and myself without it.

caring too much about my appearance

Rooted in 2012 thinspo Tumblr, a decade of eating disorders and body obsession was an all-consuming distraction from my teens and early adulthood. Bottomless self-criticism took focus away from a hard home life, and gave me a false yet inflated sense of self-control. In return, it took my peace, energy, and health.

I thought health, beauty and self-control were traits I could fight to establish on the outside, and my efforts would reflect inward. As it turns out, they’re cultivated within and extend outward. I never really cared for the inside until I realized that it’s all I have.

Obsession with such fleeting details of life is poisonous. Appearance matters in a physical world; focusing on it is the problem.

Focusing too much on myself in any regard is a problem. If I’m routinely unhealthy, my body will show me. I want to be healthy (balanced), and present a healthy (balanced) person to everyone else. That’s all.

C tier: ehhh it’s fine i guess

sleep

Sleep counts, though I’m not rating it highly. I appreciate the restorative aspect, but I don’t really experience sleep unless I have great dreams during it—mine are often bizarre. The best part of sleep to me are the pre-sleep fantasies, but does that count? Probably not.

It’s nice to wake up well-rested, and that’s about it. As a kid, Keith Haring made me wish I didn’t have to do it at all. If I didn’t (at least for so long), I wouldn’t.

that damn phone (+ that damn social media)

The gleaming portal of escapism in our pockets is a force we increasingly seek to escape from. Social media is said to be killing habits, community, and self-confidence. Still, it’s impractical to avoid our devices; there’s too much to stay on top of. Anyone could call, anything could happen. You can’t risk being out of the loop.

Getting a dumb phone, however freeing, is also inherently limiting when we live in an age structured around their use—though I was tempted for a time.

My personal solution to this was recognizing that phones are tools. My phone is a tool: this is my new mantra. Use it, or it will use you.

When I use my phone as a tool, I have great results. I’ve found journals and magazines to submit to, IRL friends to help me improve my German, and even found long term penpals. Here on Substack, I can write, be read, and read the work of others. When I put the people-connecting element first, I’m happier to go online.

Like the concept of commodity fetishism, we risk viewing the internet’s commodities (likes, posts, products) as the point of social media when the human interaction driving it all is infinitely more valuable. We sacrifice the genuine connection that technology was meant to facilitate, not undermine, by solely pursuing digital metrics.

When I get cynical, I refocus on my central goals. Using it to build and strengthen relationships, to make life easier, and to learn about new/important things. Otherwise, like hanging out in a town square aimlessly for hours on end, we risk being stolen from.

procrastination

Escapism and procrastination can feed into each other, but escapism is riskier as a whole. Honestly, procrastination isn’t all that bad.

If I procrastinate, I delay the timing of something on my to-do list. I’ll often prioritize doing smaller tasks in the meantime, and what I’m putting off always gets done, anyway. Yesterday, I put away dishes to delay calling dentists. I created a playlist to delay finishing this article. Actually, when I let ideas percolate and post only right when I need to, my essays are stronger than if I post them early.

Still, putting things off can make life messy if it’s not mindful. I’m more at peace when I do things on time, and as I get older, I’ve started to value peace over anything else.

B tier: pretty darn sustainable!

baking (+ other generative hobbies)

I’ve heard that between paying with cash or a card, cash is better to budget with since it hurts more to give away. Cards stay with you; it feels almost fake.

In the same vein, I wonder if craft hobbies (gardening, knitting, cooking, journaling, etc.) hit differently than social media because we’re changing something with our hands, forming a direct testament to the time we invest. Though we channel so much creativity into our phones, they never change.

Baking is my favorite generative hobby. It tests my skills, chills me out, and introduces me to new flavor combos, textures, and cultures. At the end, I get a sweet lil’ treat I can share with S and friends.

Of course, one can only bake so much (and only jam so many baked goods into my freezer.) One can only eat so much brownie/cookie/cake/concoction: the better I am at baking, the worse my temptation to eat everything I make… And so it goes.

reading (+ bookstore wandering)

Pure, artisan, grass-fed escapism. Beyond making me a better writer, books add to a lasting world inside me of ideas, styles and facts. Even the books in my DNF pile (did not finish) are worth my time, because I understand myself a little better when I add to it.

Wandering through bookstores can last hours, and it’s a dangerous game to play—I’ve started taking pictures of the books that I hope to buy someday, once I lessen my TBR list (to be read) featuring books that sit so patiently on my bookshelf.

exercising (+ saunaing)

Running and strength training remove me kindly from my mind, quiet my thoughts, and direct me into my body. I’m present in every limb, alive in sensation and movement.

This is in B tier rather than A tier because to me, escape implies relaxation or fun. I’ve worked out plenty of times where neither word applies. Still, it’s never fully been bad, either: I never regret going to the gym, but I can regret staying home. 

It seems the best escapist habits need a touch of discomfort to separate entertaining from fulfilling. When a form of exercise gives me both fun and fulfillment, it’s usually with friends in the form of a game/sport (tennis, volleyball, swimming, etc.) and that’s an A-tier escape every time.

Finally, the sauna is a life-changing escape. See here, and see here.

A tier: best ever. This Is My Life

language learning

Understanding a once-nonsense sentence after studying a language for months and years triggers an incomprehensible joy in me. This form of escapism comes without the pressure or frustration that learning new skills usually comes with—excitement to learn and connect with others cools the burn of my newbie failures.

I once lived out a fantasy in a pen shop in Freiburg, Germany. Speaking entirely in German with the sales clerk, I didn’t stutter or lapse into English once. I knew what I was saying, even knew what she was saying, and she seemed (*seemed*) not to know I was American. I felt like a secret agent.

I left the store giddy, finally victorious after years of conjugating verbs in the glow of my laptop screen.

Now that’s what I call an escape.

traveling

Want a real escape?

Vacation isn’t real life, but exploring new places shapes me in ways I find essential to becoming the person I want to be. Solo travel specifically can feel like a full-day escape room. Navigating language barriers, public transit, and unfamiliar streets while determining out where you’re going to sleep, eat, and sightsee is pure exhilaration, though occasionally terrifying. As hard as it’s been at times, I don’t regret a single trip.

S tier: This Is IT

coffee.

I don’t care how silly it sounds: drinking coffee is my all-time favorite form of escapism, and incredibly on-brand for me. Espresso’s artful rush fuels my mind, body, and spirit. It’s truly perfect.

While I could drink a latte anywhere and consider it an escape, coffee shops are a critical component of coffee escapism. It’s an ideal retreat from real life to savor a moment of serenity, ideally with friends, in a welcoming, cozy environment. (Add a chocolate croissant into the mix? Come on, now.)

in conclusion:

I’ve found that the best forms of escape…

• Enhance my regular life

• Preserve rather than steal time, energy, or peace

• Connect me better to family, friends, and myself

‘Real life’ is a place I’m active, present and aware. ‘Living in the moment’ feels impossible when we’re operating from a place of pain, or lacking control over a situation.

When I wasn’t happy with my life, when I didn’t like it, I left. I thought that’s what control was. 

True control is shaping our reality, not our imagination around it.

The older I get, the more I love working to shape my life by hand. It’s incredibly hard, but it’s worth it. I get joy out of stewarding my body when I see it as a real home; the place I spend nearly all my time. I enjoy being in the moment when I know I won’t regret staying there.

So at 27, I will no longer seek to escape my life; I’ll only take vacations from it.

w/ love, 

Constanze

My laptop sits blinking on a marble tabletop, showing a chat screen devoid of messages. I’m sitting alone before it, anxious to be sitting there at all.

This coffee shop, where I worked as a barista during the most formative year of my life, has cycled out all its former staff; no familiar faces greet me. 

The eggshell walls have turned blue, painted over with a shade of dusk. I’m waiting on a latte with honey and cinnamon, an old classic that would have only tasted better if I made it myself. A once-dense breakfast menu was shrunk down to four key items, and I only like one of them. 

A friendly barista brings out my bowl of chia seed pudding. She sets it down with the same kind of smile I used to extend to new customers.

I’m working here again, now remotely. I used to fantasize about this exact scenario. Taking a sip of my latte, it feels like I’d conquered my old life. 

This ‘old life’ was birthed suddenly by my mother’s death. Such a tragedy revealed in one fell swoop that everything is unstable. Nothing is permanent, nor should it be. If I don’t instigate change myself, I’ll be changed against my will.

I have to kill my old self, or watch her be killed.

In the wake of that loss, this version of myself swiftly ended a six-year-long relationship, gutted and sold the contents of her apartment, and moved four states away within a matter of months. She applied to this store when they needed a new barista most—probably as much as she needed them.

Embracing chaos became an asset. I’ve written before about the difficulty of barista work, but this was my most demanding job to date.

I was rocked daily by waves of wealthy, volatile customers, commanded by a parade of burnt-out managers, and surrounded by coworkers that cared just enough to show up, but never enough to restock anything. Every shift was a tightly sealed bottle of chaos that I’d pop open at 6AM, and seal back up at 4.

During the mud season to come, a quiet voice within me spoke up:

I need to find a way out.

I wanted to write for a living. Part-time work as a freelance grant writer yielded some fruit, a mere taste of my fantasy, but it wasn’t enough—neither was a bachelor’s degree sufficient for any of the writing, editing, and proofreading jobs I so desperately wanted.

I applied to my dream graduate program at the end of winter with zero expectations. By spring, I found out that I was accepted. I met my future husband the same day I opened my acceptance email. We started dating a month later. 

These changes birthed an entirely new self, who identified an upside to the previous realization: I can redirect my life’s trajectory.

Maybe that fact is what I’d been holding onto the whole time; not the café, chaos, or circumstances themselves. Maybe it’s what I’m holding onto right now.

While such a prospect has the power to change my life for the better, it could also be the root of future failure. 

It all depends on which version of myself wields it.

After graduating with my master’s and moving back to the US, I found a writing job. A tech company seeking MFA’s, former educators, and lit majors hired me for a six-month project. It’s lasted over a year now, and has no clear end date in sight.

I’m a ‘content engineer’, floating between several tasks and roles as a contractor.

It’s an email job, I tell my friends, 100% remote.

There are clear perks to this variety of work: no commute, dress code, or packed lunch is necessary. I am blissfully faceless, like everyone I work with. Handing data off to faceless clients, never seeing beyond production, the work almost feels fake. When I shut my laptop, that little world drops dead until I open it up again.

No anxiety hides between such cycles of life and death: I feel no need to tally my mistakes while lying in bed at night the way I do while working in a physical setting, surrounded by witnesses to my every move.

But I get neither PTO nor benefits, and make just as much as I would as a waitress relying on tips (maybe, on average, less.) Projects within the project are built up and torn down in a matter of months, sometimes weeks; nothing I contribute ever lasts. It’s a new, numb variety of chaos to me. There’s no thrill.

I’ve embraced extra responsibilities, dreaming of a pay increase or full-time employment, but only ever dreaming. No matter how I advocate for myself, there’s always some lofty reason why favor won’t shift in my direction.

I feel underutilized and expendable at this job, probably because I am.

“You’re trading anxieties,” my coworker told me during a 1-on-1 sync, after I weighed these pros and cons out loud. “It might be easier than other jobs, might be more flexible, but the ease wears on you.”

And recently, it hasn’t been that easy. Dozens of coworkers have been let go without warning. Lead structures are being rebuilt without parity; our training teams are being dissolved. Employees who talk about workers unions during work hours are fired outright. Social chat spaces, once a point of inclusion and morale, are being deleted. Any that remain are closely monitored. 

The quiet voice inside me has spoken up again: I need to find a way out.

Since three months into taking the job, I’ve been steadily applying to other places. I throw money at LinkedIn Premium, though I’m not sure why. Sometimes I get interviews, but never offers. The only offer I did get was for a copywriting job—an unpaid internship.

I search daily for writing, editing, “content creation” roles, and frequently update my resume. I trust something will come to me soon. But if the tech world I’ve gained experience in is—as my husband describes it—a series of built-up, torn-down projects, of facelessness, and of pretending to be busy, I wonder if this is a life I even want for myself, even with the benefits and morale I’m missing now.

The torch of my writing dream still burns, but I’m feeling pulled towards other places; ones I’m scared to return to.

A few weeks ago, I interviewed at a local café.

I was pulled in first by their food, top-notch espresso, and laid-back environment. More than these, I found myself increasingly envious of the baristas. 

They work with their hands, meet new people every day, and pitch food to customers that you can tell they genuinely enjoy both eating and making. They laugh with each other, with guests, to themselves.

I found out the place was hiring. I first debated applying in the fall, but only scheduled an interview with the owner about a month ago.

I’ll be the one interviewing him, I assured myself. Diligently I researched the café’s origins, their mission statement, and their community involvement, drafting up dozens of questions. I had to know for sure I wanted this job.

Each inquiry served as a fence, however weak, to hold back what might be my regression.

The resume I carried with me detailed two lives. The first person writes, and the second person exists to help the other one survive. The latter is older, and she’s more practiced: seven years of her restaurant work has been distilled into ‘Additional Experience’ at the bottom of the page. I worry that I’m more devoted to her than I am the former.

Sitting on stools in the store window, the owner and I had our interview.

We spoke for three full hours.

We get along great as people. He was born and raised just blocks away, cares deeply about holistic health, and wants to serve his community. As the golden hour faded into darkness, he answered all my questions, directly and indirectly. I spotted patterns of honesty, mindfulness, and accountability in the way his business operates. I admired the high-employee retention rate, the necessity of cross-training, and how they operate as a close-knit team.

Even their composting efforts excited me: by limiting plastic use and recycling their materials, they respect the neighboring marshlands and beaches.

Since the interview went so well, I agreed to check back with him next month to see if I could to work full-time—it’s the only type of position they offer.

He told me that he used to have an ‘email job’ himself, one he quickly grew dissatisfied with. A year later, he quit to pursue his lifelong dream.

I used to bus tables while repeating the mantra, someday, I will forget this place. The promise was something I held onto firmly. I’d stare an angry customer in the face with someday, I’ll write for a living vibrating in my head. I didn’t care about what I’d be writing; I’d write anything. I still will. 

I figure if I work at this new café, I’d make the same amount of money. Even better, I could direct my creative energy towards the growth of this Substack, and make it my sole writing outlet. In the meantime, I can apply to writing jobs as I see them and hope no one minds the gap in my resume.

But turning towards my former lives in my dissatisfaction—I can’t lie—feels doubly gutting.

Have I been betraying myself this whole time, complacent as a half-shadow of the writer I truly want to be, or am I risking self-betrayal by returning to a field I thought I’d outgrown? 

Am I regressing? 

Or is this a rebirth?

w/ love,

Constanze

today, we discuss an idea that I first shared in a year-old article, ‘two weeks is all you need’. this was one of my first essays (and it shows), so i’m restructuring it now to reiterate its essence: making and breaking habits is easier than we think.

If you made a New Year’s resolution and already failed, this challenge is for you.

If you struggle with behavior change, never tearing your own finish line ribbon, this challenge is yours, too.

Hear me out: we don’t need the New Year.

Early January’s promise of change is a glittering wave; as fleeting as the motivation that fails us over and over again.

When you work towards a more authentic, improved self, what force keeps you going? When motivation runs out, what’s left?

The dream of the distant goal we’re chasing needs guardrails. Resolutions often don’t have solid parameters: they aren’t specific, and they aren’t measured.

Maybe you have a new hobby you’re trying to keep consistent about, or a diet change, or a vice you’re quitting—implementing these changes can feel like we’re summiting a mountain range without gear, without experience, and with no clue of whether we’ll even like the view from the top.

But I argue that we never needed a new year to change: we need two weeks.

This is a mindset that’s helped me tinker with my lifestyle anytime, 52 weeks of the year. I use a two-week challenge format for daily behavior changes, and it’s the one goal-setting structure that’s given me the most lasting success.

Why?

Two weeks is nothing.

How long should a resolution be kept for? The whole year? Forever?

43% of people quit after the month is over. That doesn’t seem like the result of controlled, month-long experiments. It sounds like a collective stab in the dark.

New Year’s resolutions, more than anything, are a fun experiment—though they hold little chance for long-term success. We shouldn’t blame ourselves for struggling to shift into a brand-new reality, all gas and no breaks, just because we’re taking another trip around the sun.

Fourteen days of consistency, however? It’s far more specific, and far less intimidating than forever; or even just a full year. One day in, it’s thirteen days. That’s nothing!

When I feel like giving up in the midst of two weeks, I realize how absurd it’d be to give up on a lifestyle change (one I’m passionate enough to focus on) so close to the finish line.

Two weeks can act as a trial run.

With such a tiny sacrifice of time in the grand scheme of our lives, a two-week challenge can be implemented anytime during the year, with any daily habit.

We can evaluate through first-hand experience, not our imaginations, whether we’d actually enjoy a new behavior.

I love lattes, for instance, hence the name of my newsletter—but when I gave coffee up for two weeks, I found that it wasn’t earth-shattering or life-force-draining to quit cold turkey. It just seemed like it would be, up until actually testing it out.

While difficult at first, I noticed that after some time, my anxiety, mood, and skin felt more even. At my self-imposed finish line, I no longer heard the reflexive thought, ‘Should we get coffee this morning??!!’ that always made it seem like a punishment not to.

After that challenge, I went back to drinking coffee (gotta keep up the blog name amirite?), after choosing to limit my intake, rather than cut it all out completely. That’s what’s so beautiful about this experiment: permanence is not the overall goal, but instead to understand your relationship to a specific behavior in a short amount of time.

Two weeks can spur self-reflection.

Dedicating two weeks to a single change can help you make an informed choice about your lifestyle, rather than one based on fear, envy, or anxiety.

You might be uncomfortable in the first few days, but after two weeks, you’ll have a far more accurate answer when asking yourself, is my discomfort from a change of routine, or from the rejection of a genuine preference?

This challenge taught me that most of the behaviors I think I do based on preference are actually just habitual. I’d eat breakfast first thing in the morning for most of my life, certain that was a routine of self-love.

After challenging this habit, a new one stuck: now I’m rarely hungry right away, and listening to hunger cues instead has improved the flow of my lifestyle.

I used to require some kind of sound (music, television, podcasts) to go to sleep, go on walks, or exercise; nowadays, I prefer these activities in peaceful silence.

They’re little changes, but watching your preferences shift (or not budge!) through mindful, bite-sized experiments is the true joy of autonomy.

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My vital ‘two-week challenge’ tips:

Pick one habit.

Maybe you’re adding something new in, maybe you’re taking something old out. The smaller the habit change, the more maintainable; the more you can learn about yourself with repeated experimentation.

A goal like “For two weeks I’ll be a dedicated writer” or “In two weeks I’ll be able to accomplish x” is less specific, thus less effective. Pick something you will (or will no longer) do daily, and focus on that change alone.

Reflect frequently.

Evaluate how the habit change is treating you day by day. Ask yourself:

1. What times of the day is it hardest for me to stay motivated?

2. What emotions surround this change? Am I angry? Sad? Easygoing?

These questions help identify what reinforced your old behavior, why you’ve been reluctant to change, and what’s motivated you to choose a different path—even if you don’t keep following it.

More than ‘reinvention’, this challenge can teach you about who you are. The you beyond the things you do reflexively, beyond social conventions or norms you absorbed from living with your parents, roommates, or spouse. The you apart from the tendencies that no longer serve you, yet stick around because we’re so often creatures of habit.

It can help separate inner fact from inner fiction: why do we do what we do on a daily basis? Is a habit for our own benefit, or to please others? Does a habit align us with our values, or drag us down?

It’s certainly not a fix-all, but it made me confront those questions, and in that way, changed the way I think about my life.

Be consistent, but be compassionate.

Behavior change is naturally difficult. It takes grit to be disciplined and consistent, but in reminding yourself that everything is adaptable over time (especially you!), the journey towards a mindful, value-driven life becomes easier. Don’t sweat anything, just try things out!

In 2025, we should challenge our preconceived notions about our lifestyles, habits, and needs. What are we capable of?

w/ ♥️,

Constanze

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Last month, I visited Florida, Mexico, and Raleigh. I attended a wedding, brought dessert to a Thanksgiving dinner, swam in the Atlantic Ocean, and decorated a Christmas tree. But more than anything else, I wrote unceasingly.

My novel didn’t reach novel-length (I’ll post a note about this soon), but it nearly touched the 50k finish line. I came to a willing stop, rather than wring my creativity dry and risk spoiling the story.

So I didn’t write at all the first week (or so!) of December, taking a much-needed break. But naturally, guilt crept in to spoil my fun.

A hoard of unfinished essays, poems, and short stories in my Google Docs sit parched in the dirt of my psyche. They’re still sitting there, un-watered, unloved.

“Well, there’s no water left,” I tell myself, holding my bone-dry watering can.

“Well, we need to grow this stuff,” I reply, stabbing an open hand at my fruitlessness. “Right?”

“Right,” I concur, and I go to try and fill up my can, losing patience with both sides of myself.

Part of filling up again is reading. I’m studying A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens this month; I re-read it each December. This tradition began with an odd attraction—not really odd, since the story is a seasonal classic— but one where it feels like the story is mouthing something to me, yet I can’t read its lips.

My first year reading this, a thick, wintry darkness suffused my COVID-era apartment during a power outage. I remember shivering on the couch and scrolling through the novel’s pages on a cracked phone screen, straining my eyes through Victorian prose, pulling myself through a story I thought I knew too well.

But working through it again and again, I get closer to the message I long for. This year, it seems I’ve finally broken new ground in close-reading.

This underlined portion surprised me:

Scrooge is described perfectly in a single line. An oyster could have a pearl inside, flint could make fire if it meets steel, regardless of how hard or sharp it is by nature. But if oysters and flint are left alone, they offer little to no value.

These are fitting comparisons: Ebenezer Scrooge isolates himself, and this is the worst thing he does.

The catalyst for his isolation is greed. ‘Scrooge’ is synonymous with this sin: once a ‘bright-faced’ young man, energetic and well-connected, a tunnel-vision view of money gradually limited the light of his spirit, the depth of his emotions, and most importantly, the wellbeing of the people around him.

Christmas, a once-fulfilling celebration of all of those things, similarly rotted into uselessness, then became a point of irritation, and finally, a point of hatred. He’d rather see his nephew in hell than at a Christmas Eve party.

Dickens’ prose unites the spirit and the body. Scrooge’s spiritual frigidity makes any room he enters cold, stiffens his gait, and even frosts his facial features. We watch his ever-kind nephew trudge through freezing London, only to fail in stoking his uncle’s spirits: still, he’s ruddy-cheeked, exhaling in billows of smoke-like breath, as if a furnace is burning in his chest.

Both the spirit and body are fueled by connection: Scrooge’s clerk, Bob Cratchit, leaves the death-cold counting house to play games on icy streets with celebrating strangers, then runs ‘as hard as he could pelt’ to play Blindman’s Bluff in town. A younger Scrooge once sprinted to help close Fezziwig’s business for a Christmas Eve dance, eager to dance with merrymakers that he’d come to hate in his older age.

The covetous old sinner version of Scrooge heads home on Christmas Eve, to surround himself with abundant empty space that he’s too cheap (and comfortable) to effectively warm.

It makes sense then, looking back at the opening lines, why the late Jacob Marley is exaggerated to be very thoroughly dead, why he and his business partner Scrooge were kindred spirits. Marley is as dead as a doornail because he’s become both spiritually and physically dead. Scrooge, shown in his coldness and self-isolation, is halfway there.

Pushing the night’s first domino, Marley’s Ghost laments his eternal punishment, one Scrooge will narrowly escape:

Marley never moved beyond the nexus of his obsession because his spirit didn’t want to. By this wording, though it’s greed that motivated him, self-isolation was his crime; his distance from others.

It clicked for me, finally: Scrooge’s revolution isn’t only a condemnation of capitalistic greed, but also one of self-absorption, self-isolation, and apathy towards others. Our business as humans is community, and how can we truly participate in the lives of others if we funnel the bulk of our energy, time, and presence into our own ventures? Into self-satisfaction?

I was rolling towards this understanding on a rickety track far ahead of December. In some ways, I was proud of myself for my dedication and my drive last month. It’s essential to be determined, I’m a firm believer in that.

But for too long, I’ve entertained the illusion that if I can just maintain this level of dedication to something, I’ll be successful, I’ll be fulfilled. I cling to the concept that if I wrote almost two thousand words every day, every month, my life will be what I want it to be. A part of me only validates extremes; it begs that I dedicate my existence to my craft and nothing else.

When I replace ‘craft’ with ‘business’, I can make out the words this novel is mouthing to me.

The act of writing can be isolating, it comes with the territory—a too high daily word-count exacerbates this to a breaking point. So I was typing away in a hotel room while my family waded through nearby ocean waves. I was quiet on the phone with my best friend hours later, staring at an abandoned house on the nearby shoreline that I found myself empathizing with. I worried about my word-count while I watched two people get married, I was terrible (even worse than usual) at texting my friends and family back, I neglected my volunteer work, I stared at a screen when my niece and nephew played nearby, imperceptibly growing taller, older, and farther away.

If I were to maintain the level of productivity I guilt myself for never fully possessing, I’d grow one degree colder each day. I’d neglect life itself.

More than writing, more than reading, filling up our watering cans requires really living, without distraction. Good ideas suffer in isolation, but so do people.

Merry Christmas,

constanze

Dearest friend,

I write you from Key West, Florida, where I’ve come to attend a wedding. The whole event (ceremony, reception, and after-party) will narrowly precede the Mike Tyson and Jake Paul fight.

This latter event got so much buzz, so much hype, that it feels inextricably connected to the former and impossible not to mention. While S and I had a late brunch of pancakes and pie with four other guests, just hours ahead of the ceremony, I realized how prevalent this match really was.

“Who do you think will win?” The woman sitting on my right, the bride of a wedding I went to in August, asked the group.

Somehow, everyone knew what she was talking about without context. Our table burst into conversation: firm convictions, theories, and laughter overlapped on the subject. A rooster cried loudly to our left, making us all jump. We joked that he was pitching in his two cents.

Chickens roam freely around the streets of Key West, but seem to congregate at a restaurant called Blue Heaven. It’s a local gem known for having ‘the best key lime pie in the Keys’ and for a unique outdoor dining space where cats and roosters can chase each other around the tables.

The restaurant was part brothel, part pool hall, and part cockfighting ring. In the early 1900s, it was an arena for boxing matches that Ernest Hemingway himself would referee.

Hemingway lived in many incredible places, but Key West suited him especially well. The nearby Gulf Stream made for easy marlin fishing, and a proximity to spots like Blue Heaven and Sloppy Joe’s (where he’d once gotten a black eye, and later met his third wife) made for interesting stories.

His time here began with an accident: the rental car he’d ordered wasn’t waiting for him after he stepped off a ferry from Havana. To ‘make up’ for this oversight, the rental dealer offered him a room in the apartments above the dealership.

He came to love the town, enough to stay for the next ten years. He’d move to 907 Whitehead St, just a four-minute walk from Blue Heaven.

I could easily imagine the author stumbling home in the early hours of the morning after a match, high off the energy of the fight (and probably a little absinthe, too.)

The Hemingway House has since become a popular museum, celebrating the author’s life, his books, and the polydactyl cats that live on the property. I was psyched to visit (especially to see the cats) but we were running short on time.

Clara, the August bride, weighed in after hearing S and I debate. “Go, go, you’ll make it in time! Tell us how it is!” And so we promptly left our friends and empty plates to follow Hemingway’s footsteps towards his Key West home.

A growing line of tourists fanned out from the Spanish colonial house, otherwise hidden within a small forest of lush tropical plants. Tickets are purchased next to the lawn in which Hemingway would hold impromptu boxing matches.

The home features two carefully-preserved floors filled with roped-off furniture, old photos adorning the walls, and informational placards that take guests through the highs and lows of his adventurous, tormented life.

A catwalk once connected the second-story verandah, shown above, to Ernest’s writing studio. The abundance of banana palms and tamarind trees surrounding the house make for an inspiring view: not only did the house sustain his boxing and fishing passions, but it must’ve been a great place to write.

Hemingway completed about 70% of his work while living here, including books like For Whom The Bell Tolls, Death in the Afternoon, and The Old Man and the Sea.

I overheard a tour guide describe his writing routine as I walked towards his studio: “He’d begin writing at dawn, putting down anywhere between 700-900 words, before stopping around noon."

I hadn’t gotten around to my NaNoWriMo daily word-count yet — his routine both inspired me and convicted me at the same time.

Ernest’s office was my favorite part of the museum. It’s still adorned with the antiques that he and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, brought back from their extensive travels. I could almost hear faint typewriter clacks in the study’s captivating atmosphere.

From the window of his study, you can see a bright blue swimming pool. It’s a lavish surprise from Pfeiffer, commissioned while her husband reported on the Spanish Civil War.

The biggest surprise would be the pool’s price, costing a considerable $20,000 to construct: a little over $350k today. Hemingway said Pfeiffer had sunk ‘his last penny’ into it, and he pressed an old copper penny into the surrounding cement to emphasize his point.

The penny is still there today. I didn’t end up seeing it myself, but I did spot plenty of cemented cat prints.

At least a third of visitors come not for the literary history, but to pay a visit to the home’s menagerie of six-toed cats.

It’s said that Hemingway’s sea captain friend owned a cat named Snowball. He gifted one of Snowball’s kittens, named Snow White, to the cat-loving author in 1935. Snow White had six toes on her front paws.

Today, forty-five of her descendants live on the property, many of which show the same six-toed genes.

These cats don’t worry about roped-off areas, glass partitions or antique furnishings. They curl up on Hemingway’s bed, sunbathe in his study, and lounge on open windowsills.

I loved the little touches we discovered along the way: cat-laden lace curtains in the gift shop window…

And a cat kennel towards the back of the house, modeled after the house itself:

Each ticket allots visitors as much time as they’d like to walk about the grounds, but after half an hour of touring, we left in a rush to prepare for the wedding.

Following the vows, dinner, and dancing, S and I hobbled home with blistered feet and bug-bitten legs. We walked past midnight crowds on Duval Street, people smoking cigars, dancing, and bobbing through conversation like buoys in the nearby Atlantic.

I was so happy to reach our hotel room, and could barely pry off my heels before S came over and showed me his phone.

“Look, it’s starting!”

Through tired eyes, I could barely make out the boxing ring on the screen. I’d somehow completely, blissfully forgotten about the Paul vs. Tyson fight.

However cynical I could be about the match, I’ll admit that the museum visit gave me a renewed enjoyment for the sport. I fell asleep to the sound of each round’s emphatic cheers, imagining they were Hemingway’s ringside shouts at Blue Heaven.

w/ lots of love,

Constanze

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I’m doing NaNoWriMo next month.

For the unfamiliar or uninitiated, ‘doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) means that I’ll be writing 1,667 words of a story per day from tomorrow morning until November 30th. On December 1st, I’ll have written a whole novel.

To pull me through November, I made up a new mantra. It’s simple, effective, and most importantly, easy to mumble under my breath when the going gets tough.

I am a bulldog.

I was recently inspired by this interview with author Rachel Cusk, in which she discusses a pivotal life experience. A dear friend from childhood, meaningfully talented at violin playing, wanted to become a visual artist.

It didn’t seem realistic: this friend was ‘terrible at art’.

Still, Cusk watched them turn themselves from an inexperienced painter into a well-known and respected one, entirely through their own self-will. This friend could’ve had a successful career as a musician—both her parents were violinists too, and they’d enrolled her in classes since she was a young girl—but that wasn’t her dream, and due to her tenacity, it wouldn’t be her life.

This anecdote moved me. It reminded me where I was a year and a half ago, when I brought three of my best poems to my poetry professor’s office to unconsciously ask him what my own life could be.

His feedback was positive, exciting even, yet I remember little of what he said besides one comment:

“Most poets only find real success by their forties, or as late as their fifties or sixties. There’s some good work here, but success as a poet takes decades. Keep going, but slow down.”

He recognized impatience in me, even when I didn’t.

I’ve had a few poems printed in small publications since that meeting, an honorary mention in a local contest, and a response letter suggesting I was nearly a finalist in a national competition. But more than any good news, I’ve been met with a daunting stream of rejection.

My ‘better’ poems were rejected with little more than a sentence in response, and it took about 4-6 months to get a response (if I heard anything at all.) I edit each for hours once they’re sent back, but even by chipping away at what I thought was an already finished statue, how will I know it’s any ‘better’ once I’m ‘finished’?

My poetry professor was right: the road is long, and determination is key.

I work best when I have concrete reasons not to stop. This is why Substack has been a blessing for me: building an audience demands regular attendance, and even when I don’t love what I’ve written, I have to show up regardless.

November marks a full year of running my Substack, and this is my thirtieth post.

Like submitting poetry, it’s incredibly easy to get swept into self-doubt cycles when looking at numbers and metrics. I catch myself worrying, am I doing well enough? Are my pieces getting enough engagement? Likes? Comments? Views?

I can’t ask myself these questions anymore, because beneath them hides an even bigger, ultimately useless one: should I keep going?

On both sides of a year, I’ve felt about the same about posting my newsletter: hopeful but uncertain. I’ve gotten more comfortable despite this, and I’ve built up my resolve. Time and repetition alone that brought me more engagement, better time management, and that produced (whether I love it all), written work.

Keep going is the only solution.

So for the rest of the year, I seek to embody the bulldog: stubborn, perseverant, and undoubting. Bulldogs are the essence of don’t give up, don’t let go: as they latch onto toys, bones, or limbs, we must hold onto our dreams by the skin of our teeth if we want them at all.

Life demands that we let go from time to time—autumn is the best season to recognize this fact—but I believe there are values, habits, and dreams you can never let go of, not for even a second. Too many responsibilities, distractions, and unexpected forces in daily life pull at our attention.

Like Lauren Parker wrote in one of my favorite essays, “Real words are stolen.” She adds, “Writing is the radical act that in a world that wants to gobble up every last bite of your time and energy, you shut it down and put your ass in the chair.”

Life plays a tug of war with our time, our attention, and more than anything, our dreams. Why should we lose?

I’ve loved writing forever, but I’ve only been truly ‘latched on’ for a year now. Substack gave me that determination: you reading this forces me to be the bulldog I want (and need) to be. By the merit of having a platform to share it on, writing has become a game I want to win by never being beat.

I will never give up posting, even if I don’t post on time, or if I don’t get views, likes, or comments. I will never stop.

NaNoWriMo similarly inheres the bulldog mindset in its execution. Rather than essays, it’s writing 50,000 words in a sort of sequestered marathon.

The name of the game is putting words on the page: no editing, no readers, no overthinking. It’s just you, and the nearly constant act of creation.

I’ve succeeded in this month-long maneuver three times, hitting the 50,000 word finish line at 15, 16, and 17 years old. In other words, I wrote a virtually unreadable book three times in a row.

I knew each novel was unreadable even as I labored over them for hours, but that’s not the point. The point was: I was writing something.

At the end of each year, I’d have a handwritten testament to a level of consistency I struggled to reach anywhere else in my life. That, and I learned how to write my way out of plots I wasn’t sure about, how to shape original characters, how to lock in. NaNoWriMo steeps writers in the single action that makes us who we want to be: a writer, writing.

I could concede here that bulldoggedness isn’t always good advice. Maybe sometimes, dreams should be let go. Perhaps doing the same thing over and over doesn’t necessarily improve a skill, even if you love the process: if you never see ‘quantifiable success’, maybe you should stop.

But I won’t concede. That’s a quitter’s line of thought, and the world would love to see us follow it.

Writers who understand the common definition of insanity will (eventually) detect that something’s wrong with their process if their product doesn’t ‘measure up’ in their eyes. Changing up the process becomes necessary to reach whatever ‘success’ looks like to them. With enough mindful changes, growth is inevitable—but quitting prevents growth (or success) of any kind.

Even if a writer doesn’t change their process and chooses authorial ‘insanity’ instead, who says their process isn’t a ‘successful’ one to them?

It has to be asked: what does success look like?

Success in writing is often seen as getting published, receiving ‘widespread’ acclaim on a work, or increasing one’s readership, eventually leading to the ultimate goal of steady money.

It’s not that these lofty goals aren’t worth pursuing, but that laser focus on these ends make the long road appear mostly fruitless as we’re walking it. In reality, it’s anything but.

Substack (and NaNoWriMo, and submitting poetry, and endurance goals in general) taught me that I don’t always know what success will look like.

If every article I write is around 1,500 words in length, with this being my thirtieth, I’ll have written around 45,000 words. To me, that feels a lot like success.

I’ve collaborated with several publications on Substack, relating to travel, health, and literature. I’ve made new friends, one of which I even got coffee with (the unexpected actualization of my blog name is one of my biggest wins)! And in reviewing my work from last November until now, I enjoy both writing and reading every piece a little bit more each post.

It took me far too long to realize that any success I’ve found as a writer has been a direct result of being consistent.

Now repeat after me: I am a bulldog.

w/ love,

constanze

Last weekend was full of surprises.

For instance: when you go to a bar called Luckydog, you probably wouldn’t expect to see an actual dog inside. At least, I wasn’t expecting to see one upon entering a rowdy bar on Bedford Avenue at midnight.

Buzzing with post-concert excitement and chatting with a coterie of S’s wonderful friends, I noticed a copper-toned golden retriever sniffing along the floors of the establishment. This bandana-clad good boy looked almost identical to the Bush’s Beans mascot.

Savoring conversation and a ginger ale in tandem (the rare variety of ginger ale that satisfies a thirst you didn’t know you had), I finally connected the dots that this wasn’t some bar-goer’s dog, this was the lucky dog in the flesh. He certainly looked lucky: he glowed in the face of elated smiles and eagerly interrupted dozens of conversations through the evening.

He stared longingly out the window, as if silently begging passersby to come in and pet him. It was the perfect advertisement: who could refuse?

We left around 2:30 in the morning, finding it difficult to leave. But as I’d come to understand on this trip, good things come to those who wait: I was about to have my first chopped cheese experience.

I could write a poem about my love of bodegas (an ode-ga to bodegas?… I can’t help myself.) They’re convenience stores on steroids: every square inch is laden with wares of all kinds; items I’d have never thought one could purchase 24-hours-a-day from a structure the size of a living room. You’re out of cat litter? Sandwich meat? Triple-strength trash bags?

Want a hearty cheeseburger with all the fixings at 3 in the morning?

No problem, coming right up.

Accompanied by the same kind soul that let us crash at his apartment, S’s friend Henry ordered us all chopped cheeses, though I didn’t know what they were at the time. The steely chef behind the crowded counter nodded promptly at his request before jumping into action, disappearing behind the deli counter stacked high with meat and cheese. Less than ten minutes later, we were handed a plastic bag that absolutely reeked of greasy goodness.

I can best describe a chopped cheese as the lovechild of a cheesesteak and a cheeseburger, snugly bundled in a hot kaiser roll. The meat inside is chopped up before being wrapped up, thus the alliterative title.

I’ve never liked bell peppers, but I loved them in this artful mélange that tasted more like a dream than a sandwich. I can’t speak for other chopped cheeses, but Aden Food Market on Bedford Ave gave us all I could’ve hoped for.

As good as this was, it’s not the best thing I’ll recommend to you here. The best is yet to come, and falling asleep at 4:30 AM with a belly full of goodness, I had no clue what kind of morning we were in for.

I thought that Brooklyn would be fully fall-ified by the middle of October. On the plane ride, I envisioned flame-tinted foliage, carved-up pumpkins smiling on stoops, and a telltale chill in the mid-Atlantic air.

Nope; late summer hadn’t moved an inch. The sun in its spotless sky kept us warm as we explored the city, but I still found the weather disappointing.

Though it never got cold, I certainly enjoyed Sunday’s fall vibes. All I had to do to get a gray, spooky-szn afternoon was wait.

It’s difficult to maintain disappointment in New York; there’s simply too much to enjoy. Every visit feels like a whirlwind effort to wring each street, café, and restaurant dry of its fun. I researched heavily ahead of time to maximize our visit, my chief source none other than Queens-born rapper Action Bronson. 

His food-centered reality show F***, That’s Delicious is entertaining no matter where in the world (or what in the world) he eats. Most recently, he savored wine and pork cutlets in Milan by day, and performed his songs for clamoring crowds by night. I exclusively studied his Brooklyn-area café/bakery recs, and he didn’t steer us wrong.

La Bicyclette was our very first stop: according to Dr. Baklava, this is where the best bread in Brooklyn is being made. 

Splitting their brie and fig baguette while heading down Bedford, it sure seemed like it to us. Their pain au chocolate was called ‘mid’ in a review, but S attests that it was better than most—you’ll just have to come and try it yourself.

That same afternoon, we tried out La Cabra. Crossing the Williamsburg bridge with Russ and Daughters lox in mind, we stopped at this Danish-influenced café in the East Village. R&D’s was a bust (being Manhattan’s most popular Jewish deli on Yom Kippur weekend) but La Cabra was a definitive highlight.

We secured Action Bronson’s table through simply perfect timing. The music was enchantingly bizarre, eclectically-dressed clientele made for great people watching, and our lattes came in cups that looked and felt like actual stones. I’d return here for the tantalizing espresso, and I’d snag a cardamom bun too.

Radio Bakery was our final and most beloved stop, so good that I have to recommend it to you in the order of events; after our biggest surprise of all.

Fate brought the three of us: me, S, and his friend Henry, to Martha’s Country Bakery for post-bagel lattes. It was here that we remembered Saturdays are for Farmer’s Markets, and Henry took it upon himself to Google whatever was closest.

McCaren Park in Williamsburg hosted one, just a short walk away. The well-stocked stands and flow of customers looked promising.

We walked around for less than a minute before S nudged me.

“There’s Action Bronson,” he said in a monotone voice, gesturing to my left before walking away.

I turned to look, clocking his characteristic #33 Mets jersey first. It made me feel like I was in a dream: it was the outfit I’d imagine him wearing if I had to visualize him. The man’s tattoos, stature, and his distinctive auburn hair made me realize S wasn’t joking: it was really him: Action Bronson, in the wild.

S came back over and grabbed my hand, urging, “We have to talk to him!”

Though I was nervous, I knew we had to say hello to such a legend in the flesh (and, not to mention, the orchestrator of our café-hopping weekend).

S thankfully greeted him first, going, “We love your show, and we looked up all your recommendations before visiting Brooklyn.”

Desperate to say something, anything to the Action Bronson, I repeated the same thing, “Everywhere we went was based on your recs!”

I’ve never seen anyone look higher. In scanning over his face, I felt a renewed respect for the man. There’s nothing more on-brand for Action Bronson than being blazed out of his mind at a New York Farmer’s Market, parsing through organic apples with his family in tow on a Saturday afternoon. He stood beside an empty stroller while his two young daughters played nearby, and I noticed Nick Coleman, the olive oil specialist featured often in FTD episodes, lingering around the heirloom tomatoes in a characteristic tweed jacket.

Dr. Baklava gave S a swift knuckle bump, said thank you, and we hurried away.

Abandoning the market we’d sought out just minutes before, the three of us gushed with ecstatic disbelief. I was reminded yet again of life’s circularity, that maybe, this shouldn’t have been surprising. After all, we’d always planned to everywhere in Brooklyn that Action would’ve gone himself.

Visiting Radio Bakery on our final morning was all the more satisfying due to our chance encounter. We grabbed a table on the sidewalk for three, joined shortly by one of S’s friends that attended the concert on Friday; the lovely Madison. I first met her at a Bermuda wedding two Junes ago, and hadn’t seen her since.

At the Luckydog, she and I thoroughly discussed fate, friendship, and taking chances. We lamented the social frigidity of cities like Charlotte, NC and Seattle, WA, and concluded that, however intimidating making friends can be, so much relies on having the guts to reach out (or follow through) with the people you like.

Over text the next evening, we agreed to meet at this popping Greenpoint bakery. Who knows when we’d all see each other again? As it was conveniently warm enough to do so, we sat outside and chatted over some of the best viennoiserie I’ve enjoyed in a long time.

I worried that such a popular place would be slammed just an hour after opening, but thankfully the queue was barely out the door (by the time we’d leave, it stretched down the street.)

Establishments that nail the classics just as hard as they take chances are the most enthralling spots to visit. Earl Gray morning buns, shakshouka focaccia, and double-baked pistachio croissants beckoned me through the glass partition, in a manner not unlike the lucky dog’s modus operandi.

I opted to try the apple brown butter croissant after reading a perfectly-timed article from Edd Kimber that morning that mentioned it. I don’t like apples.

As much as we trust Action, it turns out my two favorite cafés in Brooklyn are the ones Madison recommended that morning, and we tried a lot. These are ‘the latte letters’, after all. We made sure to try as many coffee shops as we could muster, and I spent a weekend being violently (fantastically) caffeinated.

Devoción has a gorgeous interior and a bright espresso, Qahwah House sells organic Yemeni brews that renewed my love of cardamom, and Partner’s Coffee offers a thoughtful environment that matches the quality craft of their lattes.

Still, it’s Sweetleaf Coffee Roasters and RHYTHM ZERO that blew me away in equal measure. The former felt like an aesthetic amalgamation of its city; a hipster-esque artistic ambiance, complete with baristas that dress confidently steampunk. The latter’s interior read like an ultra-modern iteration of Edith Wharton’s New York, and the espresso was so delicious (I loved the toffee-nut undertones) that I bought a bag of their beans to take home.

Good things came to those who waited; Sunday was my favorite day of all. Madison became a subscriber (thank you for being the best!) and alongside her recs, she left me with plenty of food for thought I hope to cover in future essays. How often is destiny influenced by who we make friends with? Who do we consciously become friends with, and why?

And finally, how much of life is just waiting for luck to strike?

w/ love,

constanze price

dear friend,

imagine that you’re standing on the docks of a sun-warmed marina in capri, italy.

from where i took the picture above, you could walk through the crowds surrounding marina grande until reaching the entrance of a rickety funicular. you could ride its 113-year-old track up high through hillside lemon groves, towards the bustling piazza umberto, and, upon exiting, you could wander through boutique shops and past outdoor cafés in the direction of the fontelina beach club.

these are the steps my fiancé husband S and i unknowingly followed to arrive at the pedestrian-only via tragara, a sylvan street lined by upscale hotels and clandestine villas that one could only dream of staying in.

i write this postcard to you from the entrance of casa di arturo, where pablo neruda stayed toward the end of his four-year exile.

accused of treason by the chilean president in 1948, neruda moved between countries and the homes of his friends until edwin cerio, a famous italian historian, offered him shelter in his villa by the sea.

neruda would pen the captain’s verses: love poems from this scenic refuge, living with his wife and lover of 22 years, matilde urrutia. she inspired this collection, as well as some of the greatest love poems he’d ever write.

perhaps this view inspired him, too.

i was so surprised to stumble upon his villa during the last leg of S and I’s honeymoon, but maybe i shouldn’t have been. as i wrote in my last piece, neruda’s poetry and true love have been deeply intertwined concepts since my teen years.

his lyricism woke me up to the power of the medium. love poems always rang like tasteless, archaic alarm bells in my young ears until discovering the glory of twenty love poems and a song of despair: neruda’s first published collection.

immersed in the subtle sensuality of poems like thinking, tangling shadows and ah vastness of pines, i snapped up a copy and housed it in a chest in my bedroom. i planned on giving it to the man that i’d marry.

with a large red heart on the front, bleeding off the front of the small, matte-black cover, it felt like i’d be handing off my heart someday.

i’ve always felt that love and escape were deeply intertwined.

capri, a lush hideaway, has been a historically popular place to escape. emperor tiberius ruled the roman empire from capri in exile, taking residence at villa jovis: house of jupiter. 

centuries later, vladimir lenin toured the ruins of villa jovis while exiled from imperial russia. he was staying with fellow russian exile maxim gorki, a five-time nominee for the nobel prize in literature.

there’s something undoubtedly literary, too, about fleeing into beauty.

zelda and f. scott fitzgerald recovered from illnesses on capri 99 years ago. flaubert, dickens, and rilke fawned over the landscape in letters and travelogues. ivan turgenev visited three times, and said that his feelings for the island’s beauty would stay with him until he died.

recently, a newly-eloped couple took pictures of themselves in front of a hand-painted plaque on their honeymoon.

i had no clue we’d walk down neruda’s old street just days after eloping, but i should’ve considered the circularity of love, of escape, and of poetry.

taking refuge in the author’s words, i found the refuge of the author.

in handing off my heart, i gained it back again.

i’ll write you again soon,

constanze

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love is a delicious paradox. it’s ubiquitous yet elusive; it defies understanding while embodying it. love wears countless hats, uses infinite names, and connects us with strangers in ways we can never truly explain.

mark chapman, author of the five love languages: how to express heartfelt commitment to your mate, tried defining love in terms of a five-category framework. such a narrow selection serves to identify the flavor of affection we prefer to receive from others; the same kind that we prefer to give.

the book’s concepts spread like wildfire and merged swiftly into our western cultural vocabulary. now we all have a love language (or two), simply by the merit of loving in the first place. 

if you’ve ever scanned a list of these—being words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, acts of service, and touch—maybe you’ve thought to yourself:

i like all of these. i must be multilingual.

maybe, then, you poured over your core memories to see which shows of love stand the strongest. 

my fruitless goose-chase always starts in a mildewed, east-seattle basement where my longest-lasting friendship was formed. this sixth-grade sleepover was unrivaled: the two of us scribbled out short stories on spiral notebooks for hours, each centered around the discovery of a magical apple orchard.

we read out loud what we’d written every few paragraphs, spinning narratives in wild, dark, and romantic directions. falling asleep around 4 in the morning, i remember waking up with the pen i was using stuck firmly to my cheek. 

if the memory of this night were an object, it’d be permanently kept in a safe.

so… quality time must be what i love most?

a year or so later, my middle school crush asked to hear about the short stories i wrote during class. that was wildly exciting at the time, and the thrills only heightened when he gave me a pen for my birthday months later to ‘write stories with’. the doctor’s office pen was wrapped hastily in loose-leaf paper and Scotch tape, bestowed with childlike confidence. my naive, hopeful self was convinced he must’ve known me better than i thought. 

am i a gift-oriented person, then?

i must be: i almost exclusively give books out as presents for christmases, birthdays, and condolences. i used to carry around a collection of pablo neruda love poetry for the sole purpose of giving it to the man i fell in love with. now it resides in a drawer in S’s office, where it was always meant to be kept.

even still, nothing hits like a compliment on a poem or short story i write. thoughtful sentiments about my writing dazzle me for decades, and i roll each quote over and over in my mind when i’m wrestling with essays like this one. 

it’s at this point when i realize the only similarity i can find is the fact that i love literature, and mr. chapman didn’t establish that as one of the five. 

labeling various degrees of romantic / platonic thoughtfulness as ‘languages’ denotes an inherent learning curve to love: built-in barriers of the heart that can’t be torn down, only climbed (like rapunzel’s tower, or juliet’s orchard wall). 

this can make it a useful lens: love languages highlight our lover’s innately unique personhood. learning their language, especially if it’s different from ours, could be the same as studying someone’s personality to better adore them, to account for all the idiosyncrasies that constitute their being. many disagreements could be curbed in knowing that a loved one is simply trying to show you love in their own unique way - just in a way that you don’t love.

love languages emphasize that understanding and attention are key to making any relationship work.

but beyond those positives, i’ve never been entirely convinced. i can’t accept that there’s only five classifications of loving actions, or that they’re truly distinct from one another.

i struggle to identify my preferences in a single evening alone: for example, if my fiancé and i go to an expensive restaurant on a date, and we swap deeply meaningful words of love (while sharing unforgettable food), am i enjoying 'words of affirmation’ or ‘quality time’ most? if he foots the bill, do i consider it an act of ‘gift-giving’? how could i possibly determine which one i’m appreciating most?

as a sort of personality test, love languages contribute to the narrative we tell ourselves about ourselves. in the above scenario, if i happened to align with words of affirmation closest, would i recognize the ‘quality time’ and ‘gift-giving’ aspects of the night for what they were? or would i miss their significance entirely, since they aren’t the love language i prioritize?

as constance grady suggested, relationships might fare better if all five love languages are acknowledged on a regular basis, as part of a healthy ‘love diet’. in that same vein, choosing one ‘ingredient’ for life isn’t sustainable: our desires and needs are subject to change depending on our day, life stage, and mood. no one can survive (happily) on one form of affection alone: to quote grady, “we love in many ways, not just one.”

i’m far from the only skeptic poking holes in this concept. like the myers-briggs personality test, there’s insubstantial evidence that either of these popular personality quizzes are effective or correct; they’re widely regarded as pseudoscience by psychologists.

the university of toronto published a study on chapman’s bestseller in january, showing no “strong empirical support for the book’s three central assumptions that (a) each person has a preferred love language, (b) there are five love languages, and (c) couples are more satisfied when partners speak one another’s preferred language.”

i don’t mean to shame anyone that takes stock in these concepts. maybe you really do have a love language, or perhaps the concept taught you about yourself. they could’ve even done for you what they’re advertised to do: bridge a gap of understanding between you and someone you love. however, for all their lapses in fact, perhaps we shouldn’t give them credence.

now please, tell me: what do you think?

-constanze