So long to my Tits Out Summer™

She was a real one

I know, summer ended forever ago. But I’m still caught up in the transition from summer’s heat to autumn’s frenzy.

It’s been a year. I moved to Austin on June 1 and—fully vaxxed and coming off several sad, confined months—I declared summer 2021 my Tits Out Summer™. Which is exactly what it sounds like.

I dated with abandon, threw myself into partying and making friends, said yes to every invitation and danced at nightclubs till five in the morning. I dipped into every spring and lake and sunbathed topless every chance I got. I embraced the distracting novelty every corner of Austin held for me. I ate and drank and sang and rode around on hot nights with the top of my convertible down. It was one of the best summers of my adult life.

As the end of August approached, not only was I head over heels in love with Austin, but other parts of my life started to come together too. I worked out my dream freelancing situation: 20 hours a week at a well-paying marketing gig, 20 hours a week for me to work on my own projects. Freelance opportunities kept falling into my lap. I worked hard on hosting season one of the Cruel Summer Book Club podcast, and felt more creatively fulfilled than I had in years. I started dating someone I really like. And I signed an October lease on an unlisted apartment in an incredible neighborhood—my first on my own.

In the last weeks of summer, I hit the road. I flew to Las Vegas to drop Minerva off with my parents (my dad could not have been happier to have her back), then spent a week in Seattle with dear friends, hiking with views of Mt. Hood and watching orcas frolic on the San Juan Islands. I made my grand return to New York City, where I met up with 22 friends and walked my familiar Prospect Park loop in the first cool mornings of fall. I spent a week in Fire Island binging on pool parties, men in thongs, and late night walks under the full moon. I was relieved to find not a single part of me felt an urge to move back to New York. Then I squeezed summer’s last juices into my hair in Las Vegas with my family, boating on Lake Mead and catching up on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills with my mom.

When I got home to a violently empty Austin apartment on October 1, I dropped dead. I am no longer 25, and it shows; I was utterly exhausted. I saw no one other than Minerva for weeks. I stopped publishing the newsletter. I went to bed at 9pm and woke at dawn to go on long walks along Lady Bird Lake. I drank a lot of tea.

But within this quiet time, a new obsession consumed me. Did you know when you move into an empty apartment you have to buy every single thing that goes inside of it? My brain has become 60% Facebook Marketplace listings, my days filled with running around town to pick up secondhand lamps and gold-framed mirrors and a rug and a microwave and a velvet royal blue couch (which I picked up and moved into my house alone!).

I have a decor vision: high femme, lots of gold and millennial pink, plants crowding the eyes. I planted a garden (onions, beets, lettuce and more) in the front yard, a longtime dream. When I finally got around to plant shopping, frantically filling the living room with 17 plants—monstera, string of pearls, succulents, cacti, a five foot-tall fern, my first fiddle-leaf fig (pray for me)—I finally felt like I was home, finally felt cosmically reunited with the 25 plants I left behind in Brooklyn.

But I still have so much left to do.

I had a low period a couple of weeks ago when I realized: the fun is over. Tits Out Summer™ was glorious, but it wasn’t real life. I was chasing one adrenaline rush after another. It’s not representative of the balanced existence I desperately seek, the supportive community I hope to build, the friends who seek me out for hiking and good conversation rather than benders. (The thing is, I do love a bender, and Austin is Bender HQ. Still figuring that one out for myself.)

I’ve hit so many of the goals I set for myself in 2021, and I’m quite happy in this moment. But I still have a long way to go in creating a life I love, one I don’t want or need to escape from—both personally and professionally. I still don’t have many genuine friendships here, and need to put a lot of effort into making them (and set aside a lot of ego when I don’t hear back from people I want to know better). I loved making the podcast, but how do I make that a sustainable part of my life? And how do I not fall into the moneyed temptation of corporate gigs that take up all of my energy?

Now is my time to resist, to give this new life everything I’ve got. And I’m scared I won’t live up to the challenge, that some of the patterns I want to leave behind with my nine years in New York will just follow me here—are in fact just parts of who I really am, parts I disdain. That I won’t make the big changes I feel I need to—the ones I figured out from those hard-won, painful lessons of the pandemic—in order to truly live.

I know I’m not alone in my year-end dread. I’m trying to remember to take it day by day. I’ve only been here five months! I shouldn’t try to judge myself on any sort of “success” scale until a year has passed, and I have some perspective. But as yet another calendar year is coming to an end, I feel panicky. I feel older. I don’t want to lose sight of the big dreams that brought me here—to a life I am indeed loving—in the first place. I don’t want to never feel satisfied in this moment.

You’re right—I should try meditating.

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Thank you for your patience with me as I took a break from writing here. If you value Cruel Summer Book Club, please consider showing your support on Venmo @jillathrilla, or through PayPal. And thanks for sharing this newsletter with friends!

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