As we enter the transition of summer to fall, Iām once again pulled into the excitement of the new academic year this week! Even though itās been years since Iāve been flipping through the September issue of Teen Vogue at all the adorned plaid, brunette bangs, and Rory Gilmore-esque leather book bags, thereās still something so inspiring for yet another opportunity for new beginnings!
Once upon a time, the first day back to school was SO exciting for many reasons, but I think a big part of it was because we didnāt have social media to keep us updated on what our crush did that summer, or if anyone had a major life-altering event, etc.! If they werenāt our closest friends that we had met up with down the block all summer, we had no idea what to expect from that first day of school. To be totally honest, I was very guilty of wanting to come back after the summer looking better than ever, and hoping some cutie would notice! OR hoping there would be a NEW KID I could daydream about lol! Please tell me I wasnāt alone in thisš!
Right now Iām even getting second-hand excitement about the academic new year; my niece is a frequent guest star of this publication, and today is no exception. This post marks her first week at kindergarten! Do you yāall remember that day at all? I remember going to kindergarten with my best friend Sadie (still my forever bestie to this day!) and my five-year-old self was shocked when my mum told me that we werenāt allowed to bring our stuffies or make-up to ārealā school!
(LOL yes, I brought make-up to preschool; this was the era of Clueless after all!)
I so wish I could be a fly on the wall at my nieceās first day of school, but alas Iām left to start my own exciting āprojectsā! Are you ā¦Ready For It?
I thought I would use the momentum of fall and new beginnings (and Taylor Swiftās recent engagement announcement as good luck!) to announce that in addition to my neuroscience posts, starting next week, Iām starting a new series called āFridays Are For France!ā ššššš!
Paris has always been a special place for my family. Itās where my dad thought he would move at one time in the ā70s, itās where my parents got engaged, it was the first place I stopped across the Pacific at 10 years old, and itās where Iāve lived for the majority of my time in Europe as a digital nomad transitioning into my 30s! (My future may also be in France but that is TBDā¦š)
I have SO much to share about Paris (and France in general), that I thought I would devote an entire series to it! Iāll share travel guides, arts and history inspo, downloadable PDFs and Google Maps, poetry (mine and othersā!), fun facts, cultural exposĆ©s, and much much more! We all know that learning new things is good for our brain, and travelling is one of the best things that helps keep us young inside (neuroscience evidence of this to be posted)!
Throughout this series, I will be bringing France to wherever you areāØ. Thatās right, my aim is to not just share a place, but a lifestyle- that is, a new way of viewing the world that you can apply to wherever you are living right now.
While I feel so uncomfortable doing this, I know itās time for me to get past the fear of failure and turn on the āpaidā option for this Substack! To give a little contextā¦recently Iāve learned that money is one of my biggest sources of accountability. For example, I signed up for a fancy gym a few weeks ago and I canāt remember the last time I felt so motivated to workout (more on this later)! In other words, spending that money has really forced me to get even more serious about my physical health and not let those dollars go to waste!
So! I donāt want YOUR dollars to go to waste either! After a few loved ones āpledgedā this blog of mine, I was so shocked and overcome by their sweetness. I didnāt realize that Substack made that a default option for writers, and it was kind of mind-blowing to think someone would give me their monetary support. So to keep me posting consistently this year, Iāve decided to enable the option for you to support my craft for $5 USD/month (the lowest Substack will let me go- I originally wanted to do $3 CAD/month but they wouldnāt let meš„² so I think Iāve found a loophole in their system by giving a 50% discount for your first year!).
You can choose to give more (if you give $10+/month I will send you occasional snail mail should you feel comfortable to give me your mailing address via a Google Form thatās sent out!), but for now ALL MY POSTS will still be free. Once I start making detailed travel guides and other exclusive content, that will change, but in the meantime, that $5 (or less!) is solely to support me and give me the push and to stay consistent! In other words, your $5 (or less with my discount!)/month (aka less than $1.25/week) will make myself accountable to provide you useful information every week, worth your pennies, whether thatās my neuroscience wellness articles or dreamy posts about France. BTW Iām aware that they seem like totally different themes, but trust me, they are connected!
Additionally, a portion of the proceeds will go to environmental organizations to help offset my carbon footprint! (If youāre curious of which ones I choose, they will be posted in my Notes sectionā¤ļø) Thank you thank you thank you in advance for considering to support this new adventure of mine while also helping our planet survive and be a healthy place for us to explore!
After a lifetime of writing poetry, some awards (and a high school speciality) in the humanities, post-secondary education in Creative Writing, working as a Peer English Tutor at university, numerous publications, and a current career as a full-time writer for a gaming companyā¦I have been ITCHING to dive into this topic MY way for YEARS now, and your support will be helping me to literally live my dreamsš„²! Even though 50% off $5/month might not feel like a lot to some, I know that times are tough right now, so to request anything feels very very weird to me. Please only contribute if you find my posts useful and worth that $1.25 a weekš„².
To help see where Iām coming from in a broader sense, this is a little side note of what travelling (not vacationing!) means to me: I truly believe that living in foreign countries and immersing ourselves in different cultures helps bring a little more peace to our world. In fact, itās the reason why a lot of exchange student programs started (like the one that I moved to Sicily with at 16!) after World War II to promote peace, empathy, and a better understanding of others. Within those cultural experiences, we also learn the history of other countries and what we should avoid to reduce the risk of repeating dark pasts.
The people that started these exchange programs believed that if more humans lived alongside others that were culturally and ethnically different to them, they would not only have a greater chance to get past prejudices that they might have learned from their own culture previous to immersing themselves, but they would also realize that weāre really not all that different when it comes down to it. Those people that started these programs hoped they would prevent future genocides like those that fell on the Jewish, LGBTQ, and other prejudiced groups in WWII Germany.
On a personal and slightly lighter neuro note: I also love how being a foreigner in someone elseās country (not knowing any of the language or customs!) makes us all a little more humble and resilient, encouraging us to grow outside of our comfort zone.
As Bukowski mentioned in this famous quote ^, the fact that weāre all going to die should alone make us love each other; weāre all aware that we have all faced the same beginning in birth and will again face the same end in death. This unites us in humanity. Itās also a little scary, so why donāt we spend the little time we have in between life and death having FUN and loving more instead of creating conflict and spreading negative vibes and actions?
Iām so excited for this to be the very beginning of me immersing you in all there is to love about so many people and places in the worldā¦starting with FRANCE!
When I share France and neuroscience with you, my aim is to help you see more beauty and wonder in the world. I then hope this inspires you to spread that beauty and wisdom to your loved ones, which will naturally create safe pockets of beautiful souls spreading their good energy to everyone around them. Woo-woo? Maybe! But itās also backed by science, which I will continue to explain in the coming newslettersā¦
While some of you have already pledged your monetary support long ago (omg! šš»), if you would like to support me with the equivalent of the price of one coffee a month, please click here:
I am SO grateful for everyone supporting my craft as it continues to grow in new territoriesšāš»āØ! Also, thanks for reading this far!! I know it was a really long one this week, but it was a vulnerable one for me to send out, so it took a while for me to muster the courage to SEND! Iāll see you next week for our first Fridays Are For Franceš«š·!!!!! Bonne week-end!