A Rock-Star

Farewell

Before everything changes

What your room says about you

Inside This Issue

Before Everything Changes ............. 17-24

There is still time to be this you

The You Before You Go .................... 35-40

What shifts before anything actually does

Farewell Tour .... 41-56

Goodbyes Deserve Their Moment

When small things feel big

The Container Store .................... 5-12

The catch-all and tell-all space that is your room

Moves You Can Make Now ........... 57-58

Because not every move toward tomorrow has to be a big one.

35

17

Fridge-worthy

"We didn't realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun."

— A. A. Milne

Hi.

As I write this letter to you, it’s spring in Los Angeles, but nature sort of skipped over the breezy days and went straight to mid-August heat. People are walking around in shorts and even the daffodils are fooled, blooming a bit too early. Still, spring sits sandwiched in the middle, with winter on one side of her and summer on the other, signaling longer days ahead and that “everything’s about to change” feeling.

If you’re a senior girl reading this or a girl in any transition moment in her life, you’ve probably sensed (or maybe even figured out) that we live in the “in-between” a lot. Partway through little kid and big kid, awkward phase and less-awkward phase. Somewhere between right and wrong, yes and no, ups and downs. And the version of you that exists right now never will again.

I want to share with you a trade secret. (Lean in. Here goes…) Most people miss the best parts because they’re trying to get past them. The in-betweens are some of the best bits. The small ones, especially. Dusk. REM sleep. The cream filling in the Oreo. The slo-mo sequence where the movie director is showing the tiny details we missed in the high-speed car chase earlier. There was a dandelion on the side of that highway, swaying in the slipstream. That part’s worth seeing.

Thoroeau went to the woods because he wished to live “deliberately”. You don't have to go full forest hermit to do that. Any place’ll do. Here, in the in-between, we can live with intention, fully, not just move through things on the way to whatever comes next. Dwell. Be the you of right now. The in-the-middle self. The one that’s still becoming.

If everything feels like it’s about to change—but hasn’t yet—you’re not imagining it. You’re sensing it as it cuts in front of you and accelerates to 90 like a G Wagon blur on the 405. You don’t have to chase it. Grab your friends and sit in the sliver of sun that hits the quad between sixth and seventh period. Hug your mom three seconds longer when she drops you off at field hockey practice. Stay after class a moment to chat with your calculus teacher who geeks out on numbers and inspires you to. The you before you go to “there” is here right now. You get to give her the moments she deserves.

The Container

Storee

I have an annotated copy of The Odyssey that I’ve had for enough years that the pages have turned a yellowy gray and some chunks of chapters have come unbound from the spine. It’s being held together by a rubber band that’s also showing its age, dulling and drying and probably ready to snap if I even attempt to open the book. In the margins are notes I’ve written that capture traces of revelations I had. And doodles. It used to sit on my bookshelf, but over the years, it’s moved from prominence to propping up my computer monitor to the under-a-pile-of-papers-that-should-probably-be-recycled zone. I’ll get to that pile. Maybe tomorrow. Soon. Ish.

But I will say this with absolute certainty: those papers will go the way of the blue bin, but I’ll never let go of that book. I can’t. It just holds too much.

In my life, I’ve had stuffed bears, cardigans, and ticket stubs that stuck around forever but migrated from Center of the Universe (the bed, the desk) to that sort of Land of Nod in the corner of the room where stuff just piles up. They moved, but never left. Everyone has one. That thing that you can’t ever ditch or donate. Most days, you don’t think about it until you’re moving it aside while trying to find something else and you have that “Hello, old friend” moment before moving on to the business of finding that iPhone charger.

Our rooms are not just where we sleep, study, or congregate. They’re these Museums of Me that hold both curated exhibits we want our visitors to admire and storage rooms of stuff that we shove aside when our friend needs a surface to sit on.

Everyone has one. That thing that you can’t ever ditch or donate.

The space you live in isn’t random. It reflects not just who you are, but how you see the world. That favorite chair your cat claimed as hers. And that stack of vinyl that shows your taste. Even if those same things exist in someone else’s room somewhere on the other side of the world, the way they live in yours — arranged, paired with everything else you’ve chosen — is entirely your own. Whether I plan to read The Odyssey again or wear my slightly frayed cardigan come sweater weather isn’t at the heart of why I keep them. Neither is why any of us refuse to part with our participation trophies or souvenir water globes from museum gift shops.

It’s not about utility. There’s a reason we keep things that don’t make sense to anyone else — including the people who know us best.

There’s actually a name for this: the endowment effect. It’s the idea that once something belongs to you, it becomes more valuable. Which explains why the things you’d never buy again are the ones you can’t get rid of.

It’s not irrational. It’s just human.

Your tether to those things is psycho-logic, and those feelings imbue a kind of magical thinking about our stuff.

Japanese folklore offers another way to think about this. It’s called tsukumogami. The basic idea is that household objects, after a long life of service, receive souls and become animate.