I’m coming to you from a still-warm Los Angeles autumn. It’s not so hellish out anymore, though, so I don’t mind it. I’ve actually been outside a lot: eating breakfast on the sunny staircase of my building…I waited in line for thirty minutes at the little woodsy cafe inside Griffith Park. I’m reading Shantaram (a little daunting). Listening to Hell Bent while I cook and eat and floss my teeth.

It’s Scorpio season. Death card. What has recently burned to the ground in your life? What’s emerging from the ashes?

Maddie said she’d have gotten a fan for the bedroom by now if it were her, but the heat will pass, so I don’t feel the need to. Anyway, sometimes I don’t mind being uncomfortable for a while. Disruption is an opportunity to do things a little different, which I think is rather healthy—and can be fun. One should always be ready to turn an unexpected situation into a treat, vacation, or adventure.

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Under a covering during a thunderstorm; chamomile with milk, pan au chocolate. I’d been planning to walk along the lake to a taco place for dinner but unsure if it’ll fly. The rain is lightening but the crashing of thunder is growing closer and less charming. Will make a decision soon and finish writing later. Reading Jane Eyre, watching videos on people reacting to last week’s episode of the show I like. Look at the purple of the sky when lightening hits!

It’s the next day, now. Last night, I did borrow an umbrella from the hotel and head out on the promise of potentially satisfying nachos but turned back for a number of reasons: wet feet in sandals, nonexistent sidewalks, 15 minutes more in the walk, plus the nag women feel sometimes when alone. Instead, I showered and had cream of mushroom in a robe. Slept a fat ten hours with the black outs closed, now have a few before my journey home. First stop was vegan bánh mì, as suggested by someone who responded to my note (thirst trap). It was quite delicious; now I’m at Tranquility Books and Coffee for an iced hojicha latte. Have to be showered, packed and ready in an hour: a foot massage scheduled then a taxi to the airport.

Reader! I’ve been in Vietnam! Traveled with my sister and co. since the wedding in Mongolia. A few days in Tokyo then the rest here—trees and ivy on long, narrow buildings, neon lights, clumps of tall, green islands in the ocean outside Hanoi. We tempered the incredible, steaming heat with rounds and rounds of cans of cold beer (the word in Vietnamese is “bia” which was the delight of us adults in the crew who adopted it as a sort of rallying cry: “What's my favorite word?” “BIA!”)

We went our separate ways yesterday afternoon. Leaving loved ones at the end of a trip always comes with stabs of panicked grief but it passes quick if you don’t think about it.

So, now I’m headed home. It used to be that one of my favorite parts of traveling was coming home because I would feel revived and realigned with all that I wanted. In the last few years, though, it hasn’t been like that. Heading back now, it’s like my hard drive’s wiped, an AI that no longer remembers its user. What were your motivations again? What was it that you wanted? Try saying something to help me get to know you better.

That can be pleasant in its own way, I suppose. I’ll use the plane ride to craft a fresh to do list, whatever comes to me anew. A few things that need to be done like an oil change and going to the dentist. Yoga, grocery shopping, picking up extra shifts at the cafe if I can.

Talk to you soon, reader. I’m happy to be headed home. Hope you’ve been enjoying your summer. I’d love to hear about it.

Yours,

Z

P.S. who’s watching the summer I turned pretty as a grown adult?? I was squealing on the plane watching this most recent episode 😭

Serenity prayer, sent by a mutual of mine:

God,
Please grant me the serenity 
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference 

summer | leo season

I print them out and put them in thrifted picture frames for guests to pass around. Can release the prompts for Virgo season in a couple of weeks if you want them! Let me know if you want any advice on pricing, hosting, etc.

Now:

Just finished pondering the last of what weighed on me from back home; all thoughts and daydreams reached conclusions and I've emerged from my mind to find myself on the Mongolian countryside. Backseat of the van with my Norwegian nephew and niece, six and eight now, asking about Japan (we’re headed there next). Land and land and land—haven't seen city since we left Ulaanbaatar days ago. Gotten photos with all the expected animals and have been endlessly on long single highways.

We were here for a wedding—a best friend of mine from high school. I wore a beaded vintage gown one night, traditional Mongolian dress the next, both sunset colored. My sister and I were first on the dance floor wedding night, per usual. The afterparty was in one of the yurts we were spread out in for the night and we gossiped, laughed, etc.

A guy next to me at one of the group lunches said he thinks I’m exactly the way I come off. “How’s that?” I asked, and he said free. (I love when men know how to compliment me.) A couple of people used the same word since we’ve been in the country: “We’re free out here,” they said, single spots of a person alone in a field or straight in stirrups on horses across land.

Hope you’re well, reader. I’m doing great x

Z

Where were my militaries and fanatics? Songs about the experience of desiring me; images on canvas of me, piled and leaning against studio walls? Others are fickle, I learned. I may be beautiful, but maybe not enough, or not when my hair’s frizzy, or if I don’t fit in—not if I’m in a white space but not the kind that finds me desirably exotic.

Well, what do they know? These days, I don’t think anyone could find me as beautiful I find myself, as fully and consistently, knowing all the correct bits to admire. At the same time, I’ve begun to ask myself what kind of artist I am. What do I create? What do I write? It’s an obvious pair to form: maker, muse.

Forget the vague, male artist I felt I ought to be seen by. I see! I have access this body and mind I was born with, have spent a lifetime developing in accordance to what I thought was best, in response to the circumstances of the life presented to me. The constant alignment of me in my own reality is in itself art, creation in my own image. My theory has become that physical creation—making and writing and presenting—should come through the same way. I create what I sense I am called to. My aim is to trust that alone.

Though, I have noticed I’ve begun to think in titles to possible Substack posts. If I see, through a glimpse of myself, that I look beautiful, I put myself to work. Pose, find the light, re-film the moment, rewind the song so I capture it all just right. Post for others to see and “heart” and comment on—then we all move on. That’s become success. It reminds me of the way we take photos of sunsets before we fully look at them ourselves. But how long are you meant to look at a sunset to have gotten the value out of seeing it? What is the purpose of beauty if not to capture it? Create something lasting in its image? How do we keep a sunset from going to waste?

If the talented man artist of my early dreams were my lover, called me muse—if he treated me like I treat myself, I’d resent him. I’d feel harvested and unseen. I’d say, darling, look at me! Not only through a lens and the flat screen of my captured image. Listen to me! Not just for insights that could resonate if chopped up and presented.

The purpose of beauty is to see it, I guess. Appreciate it, devote yourself to it. Even though all the time, the sunset changes and I know it will fade, and no one will know how good it was and how close I got. I hate the feeling that I’m letting something slip away. But I suppose that’s the nature of all things.

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I went to Coachella! Never thought I’d go, I realized, because I’d deemed it something only rich kids at my college did. But whatever—why can’t I be rich kids?

The real thing that makes me unfit for Coachella is that I can’t hang. I did well during the day, but by nightfall, I was sitting in dirt with my friend’s little sister, who was on her phone. On night two, I went to camp early and read in the tent. A friend of the group’s hovered his thumb to thumb and his pointer to pointer and said, “I get the sense you’re kind of a square,” which sounds mean but, you know. Fair read.

But I had a really fun time! My favorite part was seeing the singers perform. Here were a few of the most classically successful artists in the world (Lady Gaga, Megan thee Stallion, Charli XCX). They’re far away, so you end up watching them on the ginormous screens that frame the stage, but you always see them on screens and hear them over speakers. I liked to stand on toes and focus eyes to find their bodies on the stage, performing live what was projected above them. Actually seeing them humanized them to me. The scale of what they’ve achieved as artists seemed especially impressive. A sea of us screaming for a tiny figure on the stage.

And the pop star performs for us, fully inhabited. An embodiment that speaks to training, practice, and an ability to merge themselves fully with their craft. I admired them for it, and as soon as I had a moment with my phone and some cell service, I found a pole dancing class to take back home. I actually went last night. It was a lot of fun but the membership prices make me wonder if I’m the type of person who uses other, possibly YouTube instructed ways to practice embodiment. (The rich kids conundrum again.)

I’m sure I’ll make something work. Hope to hear from you. I’ll write again soon.

Z

watching: The Last of Us (season 2 + I’m rewatching season 1 while on the treadmill)

reading (still): Demon Copperhead — Kingsolver

best meal while camping at Coachella: seasoned tofu Kaylie got at the Korean market

Hugged our cousins goodbye yesterday. Now in Greece. My sister and her husband have joined a new business organizing chartered boat trips for young, cool types. This first round is of mostly business folk and Scandinavian influencers, and they’re all quite nice. (@oceoyachting on IG)

7 AM now, slept just a few hours. I’d blame the full moon, but it’s likely the espresso martini I had with lunch. Or nerves for the yoga class I’m hosting at 10.

That’ll be my third ever class. And one of a few creative updates, steps toward my midyear checkpoint to do list. (I’d hyperlink that but you can’t when you post from your phone…)

Otherwise:

• soft practice (new name hard launch) has hit 100 subscribers!! I’ve been tinkering with the Substack social media function and have connected with a few lovely people who’ve helped me make it.

• Pretty much finished my short story— though it needs a final edit it when I type it up. I’ll do that when I get access to a laptop. The submission I’m eyeing closes on September 1st.

I’ll be heading home soon after that. Not yet saying goodbye to summer but I can feel the season yawning now. Bittersweet. Like catching the moonset, fleeting.

Miss you,

Z

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(An ex-boyfriend said I seem to subscribe to a sort of positive nihilism. And he gave me a book to read which I didn’t start until recently. I was, for other reasons, indignant that day. Wondered why he thought he still knew me so well. But the book is really moving and he was lowkey on the nose about me. Haven’t finished + have left the book at home this trip.)

In Norway with family now. Writing in the dark at three am, though we’re up for a flight to meet my cousins in an hour or so. Guess I’m feeling a little manic, but I don’t mind. It’s still summer, baby! The idea is that I’ll be writing my short story this week.

Talk soon,

Z

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Meanwhile, I’ve been attempting to write fiction again. It can feel daunting. I’m facing old problems with none of the propelling naïveté of the fool (someone who doesn’t know what they don’t know).

But I don’t know anything about sketching! It’s that fool energy that makes my new hobby so easy and lighthearted, that allows me to finish a page and brush off my hands and tell myself I did a good job. I’ve wondered if I can nail down what it feels like to sketch at this phase, I could channel some of that energy into my writing. This is what I’ve been thinking:

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1. desire to capture

   The urge to create a sketch feels like a desire to capture something. It’s subtle because if there’s one thing about me, it’s that I’m going to admire a view—but some views I sense I have the ability and drive to put in ink. If I come back to the same view, the sense is still there. When I’m writing fiction, I’m sometimes stalled by the infinity of what I can put down plus all that’s left out. Maybe I should search for that sense of what I have the ability and drive to capture in my writing.

2. cut what doesn’t fit (scribble until it looks right)

   Though I recreate specific views in my sketches, I’ve learned I don’t care for rulers or exactness. Trying to be perfect makes me stressed, bored, and strips my sense of style from the piece. Things look a little wonky, and sometimes I realize I haven’t left enough room for everything I’m looking at. So I cut it out. And I scribble over old lines to make it look like I meant to. Sometimes when I’m writing, I spend hours on something that simply doesn’t fit. So I’ll work on being quicker just to cut, scribble, and move on.

3. move quickly

   My sketches never take more than twenty-five minutes or so. Maybe if I were trained or had a better eye as to what mistakes I might be making, this wouldn’t be the case. But at least this fool is finishing what’s started! It’s not like that when it comes to my writing. I’ve left pieces unfinished, ideas unrealized, and a big aspect of that can be my lack of speed. It’s something I’ve known I needed to work on for years. I’ve enacted it this time by writing bunches of my current piece by hand—then editing when I type it up. We’ll see how it goes. The submission I’m eyeing closes at the end of the month.

Have you been thinking of picking up a new hobby? You might make a list of things you liked to do as a kid, things you kind of think you’d be good at, that allow you to be a bit of a fool. lmk

Thanks for reading. Fill out my survey, please!

Yours,

Z

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7 am. First class taught by the resort owner, Kriti. We chant a Sanskrit mantra we’ve grown surprisingly confident in. We roll our shoulders, butterfly our knees, stretch our hamstrings—Kriti says in a few days one of us will lead the warm up ourselves. We do fourteen rounds of sun salutation. An hour of intense stretches and poses. For the first time, I touch my heels to my butt for crow (and almost straighten my elbows!) and in my headstand, I finally lift both legs straight up together.

9 am. Breakfast is a yogurt bowl: muesli, almonds, apples, perfect mangos, sliced bananas, warm soy milk on top. In my room, I read a little and wash my scarf in the shower. I leave to sketch a view I’ve been eyeing and FaceTime Maddie about what’s been happening at work.

11 am. The rain is so loud, we bring our mats closer to hear Kriti properly. She looks to us one by one to see if we’ll commit to getting an enema and trying water vomiting (to experience shatkarma, body purification). I say I’d have to work up to it mentally, and she says, “Okay. Next week.” She teaches us to teach: backbends, folds, proper alignment. We practice stretching cramps out of each other’s legs.

1 pm. For lunch: quinoa, boiled beets, chickpeas, tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, steamed green beans (light fare today). Our meditation guru said there was specific benefit in holding a mantra practice for forty days and seven days ago, I picked a short mantra off Google. At my desk, I chant it mentally on each bead of the necklace they gave me (a mala). Then I read and take notes on the seven chakras. A feeling of wistfulness keeps me from napping, so I journal instead.

4 pm. Yoga philosophy with our teacher, Subash. More talk of enemas. (It’s part of the last of shatkarma to be covered; plus a breathing technique and candle gazing). For the last hour of class: Ashtanga asana (sun salutations with jumping and chair poses; triangle pose, side angle, forward fold). While adjusting my wheel, Subash suddenly folds and prods me into a variation with my elbows on the ground. The process alarms me but I am ultimately very pleased.

6:30 pm. Dinner. White rice, steamed vegetables, potatoes, some kind of veggie patty, and tomato soup. I sit for a while and chat with the ladies, then up in my room, I find a large spider on the wall. I try to be brave and catch it with a bowl (that’s how big it is) but upon learning it’s also fast, I message Kriti’s husband and he sends a man to kill it. Once it’s done, the man tells me to keep the screens on my windows closed. “I do!” I say and he asks how the spider got in, then. “I don’t know!” I tell him. I say thank you and we bid each other goodnight. I shower, oil and cream my face, read, and get ready to sleep.

I’ve been thinking about the nature of personal future. Something feels kind of baffling about finding myself on this trip and on the top floor of the silo shaped building (our yoga room with prayer flags from the ceiling) I looked out at hazy, huge, and pink Kathmandu and felt almost confused. I would’ve never expected to be here except that on a rainy day in February I had the idea to do something like it. Then I found this place, started saying I was going, followed a few, non-difficult steps to make arrangements…

I think what feels odd is the proof of possibility—and responsibility. Outside of things we can’t control, our futures will pan out the way we set them up to. And the things you set up can be anything, you can find yourself anywhere—on a whim.

I suppose the question is whether there is value in leaning into those whims. (I don’t know exactly what I’ll do with this yoga teacher certification, and I spent money on it, and I’m keeping from work for the next near month). Personally, I’ve decided to operate on the theory that when I can follow through on my most exciting whims, I’ll find myself somewhere extraordinary. At the least I found myself here, somewhere I’d never thought I’d be. And I’m having an incredibly moving time.

Hope you’re well.

Yours,

Z

It was a fucked up place and anyway, neither of us were really suited to an office job. But the internship did develop bits of what we’d become: I wrote my first interviews there and Collin was reading birth charts at our knot of pushed-together desks and office chairs. Today, with the lighter, open-aired backdrop of lower Elysian Park, he refreshes himself on mine. 

“Your Saturn is early degree Aries,” he says. We’re on a blanket in a grove, my Co-Star profile up on my phone. I find a speckle of bird crap on my shoulder and Collin tells me to leave it: it’s good luck. 

“Saturn’s gonna be in Pisces, I think until the next year, and then it'll move into Aries,” he continues. “So this year is my Saturn return and next year is your Saturn return.”

He says it like I should be pleased, though “Saturn return” is a phrase I’ve avoided on account of what’s seemed like a generally negative reputation. Still, this is why I wanted to speak with Collin for my interview series. He’s the most accredited spiritual person I know. 

It’s the result of many experiences added up over time: after our internship, Collin worked with a personal stylist, then a perfumer, then he got his esthetician license. But during and after, he was also a student at an online astrology school, the assistant to a psychic, a member of medium circles and meet up groups. He spent his 2020 lockdown in personal study, reading on herbalism, shamanism, folklore. He’s practiced witchcraft and candle work, and when I speak with him, Collin is preparing to put down a deposit for Arthur Findlay College. That is a school for psychic sciences taught in a manor in England—

“—and they do not play with mediumship,” says Collin.  

I’m leaned forward and buzzing. “I can’t believe you’re going to Hogwarts,” I say. 

He smiles, stretched out in the shade. “I am literally going to Hogwarts.”

This faithfulness to learning is at the heart of what I admire in Collin. What becomes obvious speaking to him—of course!—is that adding to your experience in a field will make you qualified in it. Collin seeks the qualifications of what he calls a village witch.  

Well, I tell the witch Collin I’m anxious about the idea of my Saturn return (when will the stars say things are cute and stable?). He tells me not to be. 

“I always start my readings saying in astrology, there's nothing bad, there's nothing good,” he says. “It's all just energy and how you work with it. If you think about it really, every blessing is also a curse. Or every good thing has a shadow.” 

Collin says his own Saturn return seems to be about dedicating himself to a career path. ‘Till this point, he’s allowed himself to drift toward wherever life and his interests have taken him, something I find personally familiar. 

“I’ve always felt like I didn’t have a set direction,” he says. “And now I finally do and I have to commit to it.” Collin is in an early stage of developing a skincare line—intersected with spirituality. It’s an amalgamation of the bits of him developed through his drifting; the best that can happen from finding yourself in fucked up places like our internship, or wherever lovely spot your interests take you. As a drifter myself, I find the idea titillating. I could actually do with a Saturn return like that. 

Collin and I speak about much there in the grass, from Catholicism to the nature of his connection with spirits—primarily clairvoyance: he mentally sees physical characteristics of a person who’s passed away. He says it comes through intuition or maybe a direct download from “source, creator, god, universe. Any way you want to name it.”

“I mean there’s part of my logical brain too, that’s like, ‘oh, you're making it up,’” he says. But that’s why he was drawn to mediumship over, say, psychic development. “You get validation right away on who you’re picking up on…It’s called evidential mediumship because you have to provide evidence of who you’re talking to before you can move forward with messages.” 

This does lead to a question I’ve mulled over throughout my own spiritual journey. It’s a bit delicate and it takes me a moment to find the words: “What’s your relationship with like, the idea of magic being real?” 

“Great question,” Collin says. He settles in after having just been poked by a mysterious thorn. (“So freaking Briar Rose,” I’d told him.) 

“I think people are initially attracted to high fantasy. That’s their first impression of magic, you know, Harry Potter and like, fire sparks coming out of a wand. And maybe that does happen for some people, but for me, magic is more of a mundane or low fantasy kind of thing, in the sense that magic is being present.

“You have to be present to feel magic…You have to really sense what is happening around you. And when you're doing magic, if you have an intention that's being set—if you're like, ‘I want more money,’ and then you look for a job and you get more money, you could logically tell your brain, ‘oh, I just found myself a job.’ But I think magic, just like with prayer, is: things work behind the scenes for you, too.

“You know? You're led to that website, you're led to that job position, you're led to reaching out to that connection and you happen to call the person at the right time. I think that sometimes magic is a faith that things are working out for you. Sometimes it doesn't really feel real. And sometimes I think if you're not paying attention, you'll miss it.”

And that’s what I’ll leave you with, reader. Plus Collin and I, still gabbing on our blanket, the fading spring sky, and the whisper of building traffic: some magic.

Collin’s IG | Work w/ Collin

Charlie’s interview: a model with her own brand

Jamie’s interview: a business owner & risk taker

Maya’s interview: a yogi & community builder

You begin to say, “Zoe, that sounds really—” 

Yes. You’re correct. It was very white. At first, the whiteness triggered old feelings of outsiderness—and the BIPOC sub-sectioning triggered separate old feelings of outsiderness (mixed people problems)—but the women were kind. A soft voiced young mother let me stay in her tent since I didn’t bring one, women stopped me to share thoughts about a question I had in class. I received an invite to a BIPOC dinner where they played modern music and passed around kettle corn and I felt like there was a real world for the first time since my phone died on day two. 

Still, what I loved most was the way I could be alone. I read in the tea house every night before bed, dozed by the river on my silk scarf when the beach was clear. I smeared myself with coconut oil nude beneath the pine trees and journaled on my yoga mat while it soaked in. I didn’t realize how badly I craved to feel safe in the wilderness and I’m the most grateful to have experienced it.   

I worried about nothing back in this real world. A pair of curly-haired sisters offered me paper to release something in the fire, but I couldn’t think of anything I needed to shed.

I leave for Nepal in ten days. We’ll catch up before then. 

Yours,

Z

Well, I forgive him. It’s our last morning. Grey, as it’s always been. The bed is in the corner with windows at both sides and the view is nothing but branches, like I’m in a treehouse in the woods. I hear birds but I never see them. Right now, it’s crows, but sometimes it’s a gang of runaway parrots.

Tomorrow I go for a long weekend trip to Oregon, where I’ll actually stay in the woods. This has me in good spirits. Pre-trip to-do lists make me feel especially like myself.

On this to-list: FINISH MY SUMMER CALENDAR. Today.

Last week, I talked myself into a laissez-faire headspace where it doesn’t matter whether I finish my projects on time. Which means nothing except that I’m behind where I hoped to be in this.

I did have a sort of breakthrough last night. I realized that all the talk of procrastination was coming because I’d framed my summer calendar as an assignment I had to do. It had begun to feel like a school project I needed to simply get through and turn in.

So I’d made pages for the calendar and not liked them, but felt it was more efficient to move forward. I’d spent time trying to write something poetic or whatever when I didn’t really feel like doing it. Folly!

I remembered that the actual point of making my calendar was to make something I like. Immediately after that, it became easy to work on.

That feels like a serious chunk of wisdom, I’ll have to remember that one.

Thanks for reading,

Z

Another week pushing back my newest interview. (Maybe this is my lesson on procrastination—though I still don’t get the sense it’s that big of a deal. This newsletter is mine, isn’t it? The uppercase P Point of this post is to question why someone would do a long-term artistic project and what’s required of them when they do. But I’ll get there.)

I realized about six days ago how soon the summer solstice would come. Which meant I was very behind in making my summer calendar. I wrote in my planner that I had five days to finish to make time for the promoting and mailing process. And to have time to write a post for this morning.

Ah, but you noticed I wrote six days ago that I had five days. To answer your question, no, I haven’t finished yet. I have reason to believe it’ll be done today, but I guess who knows! It could be tomorrow.

This returns me to the upper case P POINT: I did enjoy my day, yesterday, and I’m enjoying my morning so far. It’s a blessing to have time to dedicate to artistic work, and it feels perfectly natural, like being a kid and spending an afternoon making something you thought of making.

Still, I have been returning to the question of why I’m doing this. My calendar, this newsletter. No one asked me to and there’s no financial gain. Ugh, but how boring! When the only reason you can think to do something is that you might make money.

I suppose my whys are that I don’t know what I would do with these free days if I weren’t doing this. That I’m a writer and I want to be writing. That I thought of something to make—and that I want to be the type of person who makes the things they think of.

I don’t know. Feels kind of weak today, but I’ll keep going just in case. I do think this all means I don’t have to be that hard on myself if I take six or seven or eight days to finish when I gave myself five. We’ll see if that changes!

Anyway, another question:

Despite that occupational intimacy, this is our first real go at getting to know each other. We’re in her kitchen on one of the first hot days of spring. I start with the basics: 

“What did you want to be when you grew up?” 

Charlie says an artist. Though early on, the desire was vague and aesthetic-based: “I loved the idea of like, the chore coat and the little painter’s palette. That was my vision,” Charlie says. She wasn’t sure what kind of artist she wanted to be. 

Sort of a grown-up now, Charlie is a model, influencer, and designer. Her brand, Charlie Beads, sells bloomers in gingham and cotton french terry—plus pearl and woodland animal necklaces. More tokens of girlhood.  

It took time to claim the title “artist,” but now Charlie would say that’s what she is, even sans painter’s palette. “Art is just if you want to express yourself,” she says. “Making breakfast is an art. Even going for a walk is an art. It’s all about observing and like, I don’t know, bringing shit together.”  

I tell Charlie that Charlie Beads is the reason I wanted to speak to her for my interview series. Both of us have worked with models turned successful brand-creators. I’ve imagined that as a possible path for myself. It’s impressive to know a model who’s gotten to that point so early. (I sort of remember her mentioning her age when we worked together and it was something between twenty-one and twenty-four). 

She explains that she didn’t do college but has experience working for her mother’s brand. (Like her daughter, Mum is a many-hyphenated artist.) Still, Charlie attributes her journey so far to a search for what feels fun. 

We’re sat at her little round table by a window, chairs perfectly mismatched. It’s warm in the house and Charlie cuts into pastries from Tartine Silver Lake. 

“My belief system is very much you can do whatever you want as long as you show up and really believe in it,” Charlie says. “Of course there's gonna be moments that are scarier and where you're hesitant and not so confident.” But when you can push past that feeling—“it’s fucking liberating,” Charlie says. That’s what she did moving from Vancouver to LA to be a model (despite being told it would make her a cop-out). It’s what she does constantly with her brand. 

Something I find particularly inspirational: Charlie Beads works—through the help of Mum and friends, funding from modeling gigs, Charlie’s own growing experience. However, she says, sending me into giggles, “it’s not an organized business whatsoever.” 

Her team is still working on fully grasping the business in a traditional sense, but that’s coming with and on time. Meanwhile, Charlie is indulging in fun, rapidly evolving, and creating something that makes her life better without waiting for exact answers on how. 

Charlie signed with her modeling agency in 2020, the same year she started her brand. “It’s been a four-year challenge, really,” she says, “and I feel like I’ve finally come really far. It just feels like I’m in this era of the hard work paying off. I’m excited to see the way that my dreams develop because I feel like I do a lot of self-talk like, ‘oh, maybe this will happen one day.’”

This is what she says might happen one day: She could go back to school. She could open a storefront. She could get into the world of sustainability in fashion. Consulting, creative producing, one day starting a family, modeling forever—or until she’s tired of it…The paths of an artist are endless and non-exclusive. 

“I saw a girl on TikTok this morning and she was like, ‘I was sick and tired of being inside all day, so I started selling flowers out of my pickup truck,’” says Charlie. “And I was like, ‘Yes! Oh my God, I love girls.’ It’s so cool you can literally do that.”

And that, I would say, is the heart of our girlhood movie. (Charlie’s and mine. In the trailer, we’re holding hands and frolicking.) It’s the way we are inclined to create! And do what’s fun. And to express ourselves—us girls are inclined to be artists!

Here’s Charlie’s Instagram again.

Thanks for reading,

Z

Meanwhile, a string of favors and unpaid gigs had grown into the wisps of a modeling career. My first real client reached out to me on Instagram. This was Jamie Lee. She ran Blossom Vintage from her and her then-boyfriend’s house in Long Beach and needed a model to shoot in slacks from the 1940s, delicate blouses, and once, a dress so old the inside was lined with a potato sack. 

Over five years later, Jamie and I speak over FaceTime for my creatives interview series. We’d planned to shoot together again in her shared studio downtown (she moved Blossom out of her old home years ago), but her newish baby boy is out of sorts this morning with an ear infection. (Since we met in 2018, Jamie has run her business, gotten married, and had two babies—a serious grown-up’s life.)

“That’s something motherhood has taught me,” Jamie says now from my laptop. “Everything is temporary. You think you’re in hell for a month and then it changes and you’re like, ‘This is amazing!’ And then it’s like, ‘Oh my god, this is so hard,’ you know?”

Both of us are in our yards—these days, it’s been lovely out for brief stints in the afternoon. I’m still in my pajamas; baby boy is strapped to Jamie’s chest and stares at me, cheek-squished, through the camera on her phone.

“It’s like that with everything, even business,” Jamie continues. “Even with going after what you want, it’s never going to be like, this straight path for you. As long as you’re open to that and allowing yourself to be okay with that, you’ll be okay. You’ll figure out how to make the life you want.”

“And I’m talking directly to you, Zoe,” Jamie says and I smile. 

The parallel between our conversation now and the nature of our early relationship becomes rapidly clear. Jamie was one of the first women I met in their thirties with a steady and successful creative career. The idea that my “day job” didn’t have to be some corporate 9-5 I didn’t care about was almost completely novel before meeting her. 

We have similar origins, too: “I definitely always knew I wanted a creative life path, but I didn’t know how to achieve that,” Jamie says. “So I went the traditional route, you know, I went to college.” She got a degree in English, wanted to travel and knew she liked to teach so she taught English in Korea for two years. 

“I thought that was going to be my path, but while I was in Korea, I actually fell in love with searching for vintage there. So, I started my business by bringing over Japanese vintage clothing and selling that for the first year.”

Jamie loved teaching, but when she returned to the States, she found herself restricted by the education system here. Leaning into what felt like a more joyful and stress-free life, she decided to pursue Blossom full-time in 2013 when she was around twenty-six. 

“It’s definitely been a roller coaster and terrifying 80% of the time,” Jamie laughs. She bounces baby until he snuggles his face away and he doesn’t emerge again. “But it’s 100% rewarding because you’re relying on yourself and you’re taking your own risks and you believe in yourself so much. And if you know you can do it, you’ll figure out a way to do it.” 

Well today, that drudging adulthood looms near me once again and in the forging of my own creative career path, I wonder if “figuring out a way to do it” is something one needs to let go of eventually. For the sake of a serious grown-up’s life. 

Jamie says she’d had similar thoughts when going all in with Blossom. “But did that stop me from making the choices I made? No, it didn’t. And look where I am now. You can say half of it was luck, half of it was timing, but I think ultimately it comes down to how you want to live your life.”

“It’s knowing yourself and what kind of person you are. Are you a risk taker? Are you someone who can be flexible if things get hard when the unexpected happens? Or are you someone who thrives on the comfort of stability and knowing what the next steps are?” 

And so goes Jamie once again highlighting ways I’m allowed to think about my future. Carving a creative path for yourself, as she says, isn’t necessarily comfortable, but for some people, it’s the way to greater joy. Isn’t that a risk worth taking?

Blossom Vintage is still running strong—has been for over ten years—but Jamie is now consulting for another vintage business and considering hiring an assistant for her own. “These are opportunities that I wouldn’t have had if I didn’t have my own business and if I didn’t work hard and figure out my own way.”

“I think people limit themselves to thinking, ‘I need to get to X, Y, and Z, but really, even as you get older, you never know what opportunities will come.” 

You can follow Jamie and dive into the world of vintage on her Instagram and website for Blossom. 

Thank you for reading,

Z

Read Maya’s interview

The first in mind to speak to was Maya Bachmann. We meet for lunch when the bout of LA rain finally ends and I tell her it wasn’t because I knew of her work as an artist, or that she would consider herself an artist at all (though I guessed, correctly, that she does). It was because nearly years ago, I was moved by an Instagram story of hers. Sat by the window of Joy (a restaurant in Highland Park—Maya’s turf since childhood), I described a vague scene of Maya living in the wilderness, talking about swimming in rivers and walking in the woods. Something about that lifestyle struck me. 

Across the table, Maya wears dangling beaded earrings and her hair down. She’s ordered a rice bowl I barely give her time to eat. That Instagram story, she tells me, was from when she lived in an ashram in Pennsylvania. “That was one of the happiest moments of my life,” she says. “I felt strong. I was a dedicated yogi. I was up at four AM, doing my practice, doing my prayers in the morning, being fully devoted to being of service.” 

Maya says she worked to help host retreats at the ashram, and that she volunteered at a farm in her bare feet, and played naked in a river like a child when it was summertime. “I’ve gotten to live in places and ways where I’ve been fully present, no phone, no cell service. And it’s the greatest thing. Because you’re literally confronting yourself and being yourself at all times.”

Now: back on the Eastside in Los Angeles where Maya and her mother moved from Mexico when she was eight. She says she’s actually battling a cell phone addiction. But Maya finds joy in the city through her building of community. 

She’s quite young—just celebrated her twenty-first in Bar Flores—and having decided not to pursue college, Maya’s spent the years since high school with a handful of jobs, all people-facing. Logistics coordinator at the ashram, a barista in her neighborhood; recently, an office assistant at a post-production company. When we met, at a nude dinner party hosted by Füde, Maya had helped organize the event then had welcomed each of us personally. 

I felt then and every time we met after, a startling warmness from Maya, memorable even though it’s only been a few times. I think of her fondly from even earlier today, jumping, waving hands overhead while I ran toward her from down the block (traffic from the Valley made me late). 

Maya says it’s taken her years, but she’s built a collection of friends in the world around her so that she can walk down the streets of Highland Park and run into someone and say, “Hey! Whattup! It’s been a while, how are you?”

“And I feel like that has filled my cup in ways I cannot describe.”

When it comes to her art and personal projects, things happen naturally for Maya. She was an only child who grew up around her creative mother’s friends and their conversations. “And I’ve had relationships in LA as a young kid, being around producers and creative models for artists. So, the creating aspect has always come easily to me. I wouldn’t say it’s like, my purpose or my pursuit of passion. But it’s part of my life. It’s part of being and expressing the moments I’m living or the hardships or challenges I’m confronting.” 

“What do you feel like your purpose is?” I ask. It’s my favorite sort of question.

“I think it all comes down to where I feel the feelings I want to be feeling,” says Maya. “I want to feel calm and I want to feel grounded in myself, to be capable of experiencing whatever comes my way.” She says she wants to feel useful in her community, feeding people and creating space—and that she wants to express herself! Inspired in part by her production company job, Maya has been working on a number of personal film projects, recording friends in intimate moments or her grandfather on a fly-fishing trip. She also (being a certified yoga teacher) hosts breathwork classes in a friend’s real estate office. 

“I feel like that’s part of my purpose,” Maya goes on. “It is not one thing, it is multiple things that have the underlying foundation of nourishment, inspiration,” she counts on her fingers, thinking about it, “love. Overall just acceptance, you know?” 

“Of yourself? Of the moment?” I say. The restaurant is loud, ever full. Something hip and beat-centric plays on the speakers. 

Maya nods. “Yeah,” she says, smiling. “Both.”

—

Follow Maya on Instagram here. Thank you for reading.

Z

“I did when I was your age,” I said. I love saying things like that.  

Since writing it just now though, I wondered if it’s sad. I feel far from the person I was right out of college, but in a lot of ways, we’re in the same place. 

Having said that, I don’t really think it’s true. I actually think that everything is okay and that I’m doing a great job at the exact right pace.

I’m nervous to write publicly about this. There’s something embarrassing about being an optimist!

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I wasn’t exact in my timing getting out of the house. I had to eat my breakfast while walking to work. A yogurt bowl: sliced bananas, walnuts, frozen blueberries. I rinsed the bowl in the sink and left it in the shared locker with my purse and packed lunch (cold dumpling soup).

I watched the rain through the glass front of the cafe, took the trash out in it, walked home with my hair down and hood up, apron still at my waist. 

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