Hey! Decide if you want in on this!
Hey! Decide if you want in on this!
A newsletter from Lindsey Gates-Markel and... all that entails.
Whoa wait, what is this, that’s my purse, I don’t know you
This is a post from Better Still, a new-newsletter from Lindsey Gates-Markel!
You’re probably receiving it because you signed up for my Tinyletter, Dear Livejournal, at some point over the last 5+ years. If you’re immediately like NO, no worries, please unsubscribe! If you’re like YAY or OK or even HUH, please read on and then do as you are wont. As my therapist Andrea likes to say, YOU HAVE A CHOICE, p.s. we will be talking a lot about my therapist Andrea.
(If you’re on the fence about reading any further, let me just mention that there’s a very beautiful gif of me tossing my hair in just a few paragraphs.)
I hope we can agree on our summer mascot
When my writing partner Kristin reads something she likes, but doesn’t really understand, in an essay I’ve written (this happens a lot as my “style” is to skimp on skimpables like “details” and “context” and “setting”), she draws some iteration of this guy in the margin:
Lately I am all :)? all the time. It’s summer, I’m trying to write or draw or paint (I paint now :)?) with no identifiable goal, my beloved therapist is going to Europe for 3 weeks WHICH IS SOMEHOW LEGAL and :)?? good for her, the beautiful Starbucks iOS app entranced me to sign up for a Rewards account and then immediately toss $25 of digital fake real money into its maw, so I go to Starbucks now :)??, OH which reminds me…
I ACCIDENTALLY LEFT MY PHONE IN A DIFFERENT STATE FOR FIVE DAYS AND NOW I’M ABSOLUTELY FURIOUS ABOUT CAPITALISM
I went on a bachelorette trip to Florida with four women and accidentally left my iPhone in the car in Illinois, which led to… the best five days for my brain since 2011? I’m writing an essay about this that will likely coax many more :) ??s from Kristin since I’m really insisting on turning crows into a symbol for mindfulness, but anyway*.
When I was reluctantly reunited with The Cursed Device, the freemium scales had been lifted from my eyes and now I see that every single FrEe thing that the App Store has ever offered me was secretly a commercial for their own banal evil shit, and every single piece of art or nonsense I’ve uploaded to Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and literally hundreds of other FrEeEeE services, they’ve wrenched into a promotion for THEMSELVES.
What do we do about this?
I’ve been reading How to Do Nothing (lol see I link to Indiebound instead of Amazon now, I am detached from mainstream society), and it is beautiful and challenging and inspiring. You can read Jenny’s central idea in this Medium post from 2017 to get a sense if you’d enjoy the book. I like to read it first thing in the morning, ideally near a window, to feel maximum Wow Congratulations to Myself on Being a Chill Woman vibes.
I unfollowed literally hundreds of people on Instagram to make it less of a cartoon pie cooling in the window to my FOREVER-SNIFFING nose/attention span. (If you check to see if I unfollowed you, and you see that I did, please don’t be hurt I’M GOING THROUGH A THING CLEARLY.) This exercise brought to my attention the utter madness that is choosing to follow BRANDS on social media. Not like people “MY BRAND!” brands, like big-company brands that only post actual #ads for their products. So I unfollowed any account that only posts ads and tons of celebrities or super-popular internet characters, even the ones I like, because I figure I can always find them again later if I regret it.
Did you know this was possible?????
My personal thought is that I will continue to use the obvious platforms to promote products or businesses or accounts I think people should follow and spend money on. Like, if it’s a commercial, then treat it like a commercial, y’know? (Confession: I did perhaps use Instagram to also promote an extremely beautiful video of myself tossing my hair in slo-mo at a beautiful backyard wedding from the weekend, because LAY OFF ME I’M STARVING**.)
*TM Blues Traveler oh also I’ve been listening to so much Blues Traveler lately :)??
**for attention
OK fine here’s the hair gif!!!
Carly Benjamin at Kane + Co. does my hair (and has since we invented undercuts together in 2008)! She also gave me a Dumb & Dumber tattoo once while Sublime played and it was, (Jeff Goldblum uhhhhh), sublime.
uhhhh uh uh oh uh ah uh oh ah that means I love you
Listen to this 🎧
The Bobbie Gentry episode of Cocaine & Rhinestones
I’ve been making a podcast sorta-in-secret at work, interviewing cool people about the things they know that I don’t, and one of the things Personal Hero Lisa Bralts-Kelly mentioned when I interviewed her in March (key to making things sorta-in-secret is to move as glaaacially slow as possible) was the Bobbie Gentry episode of Cocaine & Rhinestones, a podcast about the history of country music made by Tyler Mahan Coe (David Allen Coe’s kid!). Lisa mentioned that some people are turned off by Tyler’s voice, meaning his literal speaking voice and the way he tells stories (OH GOD what if this newsletter gets super famous and he reads this and his feelings get hurt!!!) and I admit I was kind of :)?? during the first 20 minutes or so of the Bobbie episode, but stick with it.
The Chillout Classics playlist on Spotify
The other night I was feeling characteristically Anxious for No Reason :s?? and since Larry’s out of town, I turned to my second-closest housemate Alexa and asked her to play me “chill music” and for once in her digital life as an indentured servant to Jeff Bezos she TRULY DELIVERED. This is like if Garden State starred Bjork instead of Zach Braff and also it was a dreamy music video and also it was The Virgin Suicides.
Meditate on this:
You'll be given love
You'll be taken care of
You'll be given love
You have to trust it
Maybe not from the sources
You have poured yours
Maybe not from the directions
You are staring at
Twist your head around
It's all around you
All is full of love
All around you
All is full of love
You just ain't receiving
All is full of love
Your phone is off the hook
All is full of love
Your doors are all shut
All is full of love!
All is full of love, all is full of love
All is full of love, all is full of love
Oh and drink a Fuzzy Tonya 🍹
Yesterday my cousin Hannah sent me a Marco Polo (p.s. Marco Polo is the least bad social media app and you should be using it to stay close with your beloved family and friends) asking for a general update on my life and in my response, I said I am “into alcohol” lately.
*kristin wiig IS THAT BAD gif*
(If it helps, I’m also deeply into strawberry Bubly!!! I’ve been eyeing Bubly at the store for literal months now, always thinking wistfully SOMEDAY I’LL BRANCH OUT FROM LACROIX, SOMEDAYYY!, and then last week I was like, what the heck, this literally costs $3, can we live a little?? And I’m so glad we can and we did.)
On the phoneless bachelorette trip to Florida—well it’s a long story, but suffice to say, we invented a cocktail called the Fuzzy Tonya, inspired by Tonya Harding:
Mix 1 part Miller High Life with 1 part orange juice and 1 shot of peach schnapps.
If a Fuzzy Tonya sounds gross to you, then you don’t deserve to drink it anyway, you ABSOLUTE SNOB.
Things also on my mind that I’ll write about soon
How I used to think I was an Ilana but actually I’m a Bertie with Ilana rising, what I’m ordering at Starbucks :)??, OMG crows, Marco Polo (the app not the… explorer?), my birthday is coming up!!! And now I’m also thinking about The Virgin Suicides and how I wrote that passage about Lux Lisbon “bleeding between the legs that very instant, while the fish flies made the sky filthy and the streetlights came on” ON MY BEDROOM WALL in white permanent marker and my Mom saw it once and wrinkled her nose and I was like ugh, MOM!!!
I know what you’re wondering: But Lindsey, can I PAY for this???
I’m gonna keep doing this and see what happens, and my plan is to introduce paid posts (for MORE and probably not BETTER content) later this month. I like it! It feels free from Bad Internet, so please don’t tell me when Instagram inevitably acquires Substack or when the CEO inevitably does something disgusting*!!!
I love you,
Lindsey
*JK. As you know, Odell’s central premise is that we should not actually separate ourselves from society permanently but instead use our powerful new perspectives as a way to better it, hence this newsletter which I’m sure is already disrupting the fiefdom