Recovery Shave/Festival Flu
I shaved my legs for...THIS?! Newsletter #61
I’m BAAAACK!! Hope you missed seeing this pop up in your inbox and hello to the new subscribers that have trickled in during my absence. Thrilled to have you be part of it all.
You are reading the latest edition of I shaved my legs for…THIS?! The newsletter explores my theory that shaving your legs or putting in that bit of extra effort should translate to having an above-average day. To test this theory I critically review every shave and the subsequent day/week/experiences and give it all a rating out of 100. Any day that scores higher than a 75 was definitely worth the shave.
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The Shave
I wish there were a salon you could go to that would shave your legs for you. I could have a standing appointment once a week and hopefully, they would be the type of salon to bring you a champagne and a little treat to help fill your time while you are sitting there. I would love to say that I would prefer a no small talk salon but to be honest I feel hugely inadequate if my hairdresser/beauty therapist/shaving professional and I don’t hit it off immediately and have an easy and flowing conversation for the entire appointment. I want nothing more than to be their favourite.
Anyway, I shaved my legs myself and it was a boring and not very indulgent experience.
Rating: 7/20 please do not even start talking to me about the possibility of leg waxing.
The Content
I have created a monster.
That monster is tik tok based on tarot card readings. An open reading designed to come across the FYP of whoever needs to hear it. What happens is you feel a little bit uncertain about yourself for a few days and these things creep into your life with their well-meaning platitudes and call to “interact 3 times to claim”. Of course, I don’t want these good things not to happen, I always want to feel that something good is coming just over the horizon for me. So I tap the like button and carry on with my life.
Only to be accosted with another video, with some other fortune, not three videos later. And these videos are all so current! They have the date on them. I’m not claiming readings from last October. They must be churning out 8 - 10 tarot card readings a day to keep feeding the beast. And eventually, you learn to just skip the ones that don’t resonate (I couldn’t care less if someone from my past is thinking about me, it’s too late!). With a little more confidence I hope to soon start skipping even the ones that do resonate, and put this whole content chapter firmly behind me.
In more high-brow content, I am also ENGROSSED in the book Detransition, Baby - which is so good and readable that I had to stop and look it up halfway through so I wouldn’t be forced to deal with Sally Rooney-type backlash all over again.
Rating: 10/20 Sometimes you get exactly what you need until you end up with far, far too much of it.
The Food
Something has changed. I don’t know if it is the impact of tipping culture, my choice in restaurants or the general levels of burnout being experienced across the board - but service at the moment sucks.
I have been to two separate restaurants in the last week looking to splash some cash around, finances be damned. Except for the fact that at both places the service was so slow and inattentive that I was barely able to spend any money because I simply did not have the patience for it. It’s so impossible to catch an eye in these moderately ambient locations, to the point where when they come to take the drink order you had to blurt out everything you want to eat at the same time. Then inevitably half of what you order goes missing and there is no one around to talk about it.
It’s not even like I am going for dinner at peak hours. I have been conditioned through comedy to require a dinner no later than 6 pm. Which should be a time when everyone is in top form.
The gift it has given me, is that when I went to pay and they handed me the EFTPOS machine with the tip amount blank, I felt much less guilt than usual about breezing right through that screen and just paying the total as is.
Rating: 2/20 two bonus points for stopping me from overspending.
The Social Stuff
I’ve just finished my first month-long solo show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and it has to be one of the weirdest social experiences you can have.
You build this deep dependent relationship with all the people that make your room run for an hour every night. The front of house, the tech and the artists you cross paths with become suddenly the most important people in your life and disappear just as quickly when the festival ends. I’ve talked to friends before about whether those working for the festival and techs, in particular, know how important they are for the mental health of everyone performing in the room. I need to distract my brain from what I am about to attempt through idle chatter until the very moment that I walk on stage.
Plus I am lucky enough to have so many other people helping me which I feel incredibly guilty about and I am resisting the urge to bankrupt myself immediately by spending a fortune on thank you cards and other tokens of my appreciation.
The other weird thing is that so much socializing happens in these dark, loud artist bars where everyone asks the same questions you don’t know how to answer and there is no snack table to linger beside like at a house party. Instead, I have taken to slowly and insidiously pulling my friends away from the action to drink in much more casual locations where people have no idea that the comedy festival is even happening under the guise of “saving my voice” and “getting a change of scene”. I’d like to say next year will be different but that is highly unlikely!
Also, thank you to any newsletter readers that came to the show! Apologies if I was weird when saying hi at the end. It’s all blurred together for me but regardless I know that each and every one of you are truly special.
Rating: 15/20 a strange experience, but one I can only hope to repeat over and over again.
The Miscellaneous Stuff
This house that I desperately want and desire. A tarot-inspired roof and that gorgeous yellow wall. Stop!
Love Helen Garner and this article that champions extreme interestingness over happiness.
You could never say no to going Goop for a week (even though you should).
Do you want to be known for your writing? Or swift email responses.
I yearn for pleats please. But I think because I love to be comfy more than wanting to be Gen Z cool.
Let me write a TV show about Romance Fraud.
Also I love nothing more than a list of lessons (and cannot wait to one day be 40).
Rating: 20/20 for the house alone.
Final Rating (54/100)
I added this one up in my head so I hope that’s correct. Either way, it was absolutely not worth shaving the legs for. Except it definitely was worth it because I love that slippery smoothness and the justification to have a very long shower.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of ISMLFT, I feel still in a partial delirium from tiredness/new experiences and post-festival flu for good measure. But it is good to be writing this newsletter again and I feel like I have a lot of new ideas to come.
If you liked this newsletter, please share it on your socials or with a friend that might like it. The more people that I can have reading this (or mostly ignoring it in their inbox for more pressing tasks), the better.
See you in a fortnight xx
I know this would fundamentally change your newsletter, but have you thought about getting a beautician to wax your legs? Quick, but not painless.
The TikTok tarot thing & the bad hospo staff is sooo relevant hahaha