Back again! Apologies for all of my Prude’s that hate change, but I am tweaking the format of this newsletter yet again. I want to try and maintain this project as something that is hopefully both fun and interesting for you to read but also feels exciting for me to write rather than another obligation on the calendar.
So ISMLFT (will it catch on?) is moving from multiple sections to just one section and some links. Why not? Keep it simple, stupid. A motto of businesses everywhere and one that I feel has become misunderstood.
Thanks as always for subscribing, or if you haven’t you can click the button here and I’ll be thrilled to have you. If you do want to keep up to date on the reg, I also recommend a little Instagram follow as well.
A Single Lady Commune
A week ago my partner proposed to me and I am now officially engaged. We had been talking about it for a while, but I wasn’t expecting it on this particular trip and spent a lot of time needlessly blocking his attempts at romance. At one point the words “Why on earth would we get champagne, we don’t really drink champagne?” left my mouth. It’s hard to romance a practical girl. I’ve already had to stop wearing the ring to gigs because it’s just too goddamn shiny under those big lights.
And even though I am excited to be engaged to someone I enjoy spending time with so much, I can’t stop thinking about all the promises I made in my 20s to start a single lady commune. This was the biggest comfort imaginable during those years that I was untethered and dating and not really enjoying it. The idea was that one day we could find a space where female friends could live together in this ideal (and well-decorated) community. A space where we regularly shared dinners, gathered around the TV to watch that show everyone was talking about, tended to the garden and genuinely pursued hobbies in the time that was taken up by dating.
This would be a space without compromise! People would listen to each other! It would be a world within a world, somewhere you could finally find the time to knit or draw or do pottery! There are women who have achieved it already!
The thing I enjoy most is how sure I am that most attempts will spectacularly fail. Setting aside the fact I rarely speak to most of the women I promised this life to anymore - what is the commitment we are getting into here? Can you join and then leave if you find someone else? Can you be a coupled lady living in a single ladies’ world? I’ve tried in the past to build a support network that relied on multiple people to fill the role that a partner might have done. And I can assure you it only ever took just one person moving on or finding a new partner and suddenly you’re back to having no one to pick you up from a colonoscopy again and the whole precarious arrangement crumbles around you.
More often than not something better emerges from the wreckage.
This is important to keep in mind because people love to tell you as soon as you get engaged that marriage is almost always a doomed endeavour. They’ll say things like ‘the happier you are at the start the uglier it is at the finish’. Maybe I like thinking about the single lady commune that never was as a reminder that there are other solutions out there that are equally as likely to end in a painful separation.
It really helps me to be optimistic about the idea you are entering a contract that will absolutely remain applicable for the rest of your life (and you have an alternative to explore if it isn’t).
Links to Click On
You know I love any story about a Diner, especially a cosmic one.
I’m in a big Lucas Sin phase thanks to a recommendation from Oliver Coleman. I still love these old Munchies Chef’s night-out videos. Though the Long Island Ice Tea made with ketchup is sickening.
Also this Lucas Sin making Mochi French Toast. I would kill for that toast.
I’m so excited for Saltburn, it’s giving The Secret History and sexy dark academia gossip. If it doesn't deliver of course the name will never cross my lips again.
I related hard to this article about walking speed discrepancies. Why do we all need to go so fast?? What’s wrong with a stroll?
I can’t help but feel like the person as a brand has gone to far with this one (I’d get Elif Batuman)
Let me live in a UFO-shaped house in a foggy english garden.
I will be (of course) buying Sohla’s cook book.
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think of the new format and whether you have any of your own plans for a commune. I want to write a Rom-Com set in a single ladies co-housing village one day so your stories will be very useful for inspiration.