The friendly ghosts of CSBC past 👻
And its bright future
In July, I will celebrate FIVE years of writing this newsletter. Since I launched Cruel Summer Book Club back in 2019, pretty much everything about my day-to-day life has changed. And it’s way past time for me to give CSBC a facelift to meet me where I’m at today.
That’s why, next week, I’m relaunching this newsletter with a new design and format! It will be the same newsletter you know and love with some refined focus, much cuter graphics, and some exciting new additions. You’ll hear more about that next Tuesday.
For now, I thought it would be fun to take a trip down CSBC memory lane and look back on this newsletter’s growth and greatest hits.
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🎶 Let’s go back/back to the beginning… 🎶
2019 — The year of heartbreak
What I learned: Impermanence
What I left behind: False hope
On July 19, 2019, I shared my first post in a new newsletter “exploring grief, loss and heartbreak, and how we get through it.” I was a month out of a devastating breakup and in absolute hell.
“Are you having a cruel summer? So am I. The most meaningful relationship I’ve yet had ended in June, for reasons that will likely always elude me, and every day has been varying levels of difficult—from “I have to leave the party early or I’ll sob into the guacamole” to “I’ve taken up some light chainsmoking”—since then. It’s not quite the Hot Girl Summer I anticipated. As the truest adage goes, with the passing of time, I’m feeling better. But I’m still sad. And I suppose I will be for some time.”
And I was sad, for a full year. It really took 12 months for me to start feeling like myself again. And I recorded a lot of those difficult emotions right here where any stranger (and my ex and anyone who ever knew him) could read them.
I’d still count starting CSBC from such a raw place as one of the bravest things I’ve done. I had to write past my intense fears of judgment and appearing pathetic, and toward sharing one of the most basic shared human experiences of loss. I was also sure this was a project I could commit to; I knew nothing is more powerful than writing your truth.
So I hit the send button every week, even though I was often filled with anxiety that made me sick. My bet on vulnerability paid off. Over the next five years, I became a more capable and confident writer, with a community of people who gathered around me to let me know I was not alone, that my writing was reaching them on a cellular level. This Substack set me on the path toward reclaiming my inner artist, a path I’m still on today—but, like, two continents closer to my ideal now than I was then.
I wrote about the books and quotes and cliches that felt like buoys during this time of emotional drowning, like “This too shall pass” from When Things Fall Apart. And I interviewed others who taught me so much about love, life, and loss, including the psychologist Guy Winch, author of How to Fix a Broken Heart, who gave me this golden advice:
I’ve been through [breakups] so many times it’s almost laughable that it feels this painful still. Why is it that they never seem to get easier?
If you broke your arm six times, would you expect the sixth time to be any less painful than the first time?
No.
Right, and that’s the thing. It’s a loss, it’s an emotional wound, there’s absolutely no reason the experience of it might be less painful. What you might hope to gain is a certain amount of wisdom or coping mechanisms so that you will be able to not make mistakes that people tend to make, and hopefully accelerate the recovery.
I wrote my way through it. I don’t know if writing about my naked heartbreak helped me move through it any faster. But I do know that I gained emotional skills and self-knowledge I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life. And I can thank CSBC for that.
2019 highlights
2020 — The year of constant change
What I learned: How to be alone
What I left behind: New York City
In January 2020, I wrote a post that is still one of my most popular, and centers a message every single one of us needs to hear now and then: “You will be okay.”
It’s important for me to tell you: You will be okay. I know that’s so hard to grasp. I know that you’re sick of everyone saying that. I know that maybe you’ve been through this before, and you’re angry at yourself for not remembering how to get through this, for not being better at this. No matter how broken you feel, or how long the pain lasts, or how little energy you have to get out of bed and face the world today: This too shall pass. One day, you will wake up and feel okay. Some time after that, you will wake up and feel good! For now, do anything that doesn’t make it worse. Your body knows what to do. You’ll be amazed by how it heals. Keep going.
This was the year I began to feel okay again. I experienced my first nourishing Quiet January and started diving into the habits of other writers and artists. I interviewed people about divorce, codependency, Tarot, and the “wake up and dump him” tough love mentality. I was still insatiable to learn from others, to try to save myself from future mistakes, and to drink in every drop of knowledge I could about surviving the promise of human suffering.
Then, Covid hit. I got laid off. And everything changed.
I lived in Las Vegas secluded with my mother for three months. I read every Harry Potter book in six weeks. In the midst of this upheaval and eerie tranquility, I won a Substack Independent Writer Grant, started writing the newsletter twice a week, and wrote the very first Cruel Compendium!
I arrived back in Brooklyn in May and decided to leave for good in August. In September, I hit the road for a monthslong solo road trip; intentional travel and checking off bucketlist items (because I better understood now I could die at any moment) would be a big part of my life for the next three years. I visited something like eight states and seven National Parks and camped and hiked on my own in Glacier and Zion and Yellowstone. Out of my experiences came one of my favorite essays about navigating the world as a woman alone.
This road trip, more than anything, helped me reclaim myself and my future. After it was done, I felt like I could do anything—even move to a new state where I knew almost no one.
2020 highlights
2021 — The year of a whole new world
What I learned: How to make new friends in your 30s
What I left behind: Pretty much everything
This was it: the year I crafted my new life in earnest. The year I made a new home in Austin, leaned into being a freelancer, and started to build a life as an artist, brick by brick. The year I started my podcast, the most enriching creative work I’ve done in the last few years. (But before all that, it was also the year I spent six months living with my parents—who can relate?)
I settled into the first apartment I’ve ever lived in alone, one I still love. I eased into friendships I still hold dear, and explored my new city with gusto. I left the pandemic behind through a furious Tits Out Summer on a flurry of dates and late nights out and sleeping away my Sundays.
But in the midst of all that, I finally found time to make art. My podcast was born, and I got to speak with artists (like Adam J. Kurtz), authors (like Ashley C. Ford), and more creatives I look up to. I rediscovered that talking to people about the beautiful, messy, tragic, gorgeous twists and turns of their lives is what fills me up more than anything else. And I wanted to keep chasing that high and make it part of my professional life for good.
2021 highlights
2022 — The year of introspection
What I learned: Europe is worth it but don’t expect it to fix anything
What I left behind: My former identity
This was the year I took a break. I didn’t often write the newsletter. I started the year with six months of full sobriety, which was a purely joyful experience that taught me so much about my self-sabotaging tendencies.
My word of the year was “feel,” and boy did I. For the first time, I dealt with the heavy grief of leaving almost every part of who I used to be behind. I used to have exciting, respected corporate jobs for magazines people adored. I used to be a New Yorker known for squeezing every inch of juice from her city. I used to have close friends who I no longer speak to.
I was someone new now, though I wasn’t quite sure who. I had to rediscover what actually makes me who I am, and dig deep to understand that it’s never my job title.
I focused on work and made a lot of money in the first half of the year, and I continued to hold a lot of space for my family. In August, I ran away to Europe without my laptop for five weeks. When I returned, I had almost zero work for three months. That was a scary time, but making season two of the CSBC podcast helped pull me out of it. ANd I got my first story published in Cosmo, one I’m really proud of!
I felt my ambition slowly returning—after all, it’s part of what makes me me, no matter where I live or what I do.
2022 highlights
2023 — The input year
What I learned: I’m worth investing in
What I left behind: That “new city new me” novelty
In 2023, things clicked for me in my freelance career. This was the first year I truly invested in myself as a writer and a business owner and started thinking much bigger. And it was the year I wrote more editorial stories and had a pitch acceptance rate of ~43%! (Just like the ideal, nonexistent, “real” writer I compared myself in my head to would.)
I hired a financial coach and set up an S Corp, then hired a web designer, dumping over $10,000 into my business. Those dollar signs were terrifying, but I was ready to take myself and my business more seriously and set myself up for a financially sustainable future. Those monetary results are yet to be seen, but I know I’m on my way; I am laying the groundwork every day.
In September ‘23, I finally started writing the newsletter regularly again; I was ready to recommit to it and to my creativity. I started exploring topics I’d once considered taboo, like the illusion of job security and how much I make, but I learned so much from other freelancers who were transparent about money, and I wanted to shine some light for others too. Plus, I learned long ago that readers usually respond well to your riskiest posts—you just have to be brave enough to press send.
I also started folding in more news, politics, and my personal values into this newsletter because I care about social justice, I want to stand in my values, and this is my most influential platform. CSBC is small but mighty, just like me, but it just might be where I can make a small difference. I want to be a source of knowledge, power, and empathy, just as so many other newsletter writers, authors, and journalists are to me.
2023 highlights
2024 — The year of my professional glow-up
What I’m learning: How to be my own biggest cheerleader
What I hope to leave behind: Fear
I have a Grand Vision for 2024. I’ve spent Q1 with my head down and my nose to the grind, working on my own projects.
I launched my new website with 1-on-1 writing and editing services in February; I’m launching the newsletter redesign next week; and I’m relaunching the CSBC podcast in April! I can’t wait to bring her back after a long absence. It’s all been many, many hours of unpaid labor of love and self-investment. I also hired a writing coach to support me all year long, upped my networking efforts, and put pitching editorial stories on the back burner to throw my creative time and energy behind CSBC.
I’ve felt super ambitious in a way I haven’t in years. It’s felt golden to capitalize off an inner drive that flows naturally (instead of like pulling teeth). That’s rare for me, and I’m harnessing that energy.
I am still searching for a way to be the artist I dream of while making a better-than-average living, and without sacrificing my soul to corporate overlords. I’m working at it every day. I’m not going to give up. And I invite you to join me.
Have loved following you all these years and can’t wait to see what’s next!
I just went into a deep dive into yours, Samantha's and my stories that year and wow, what a wild ride it's been. So much can change in five years. Congratulations on five years of CSBC and can't wait for the new facelift!