here I am stomping, clomping, and taking up space
on going paid (!!!) on Substack
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Hello, lovely!
Well, friends, I am back in the States after nearly four months of travel. And that feels strange, sad, and also surprisingly welcome. There’s much to look forward to in the coming months, and so I refuse to let myself wallow in the post-trip comedown (okay, so maybe I cried during my layover at JFK. But you know what, who could blame me?).
Today I’ll be sharing about another period of uncertainty in my life, as well as some exciting changes I’ve decided to make around here.
After graduating college I moved back home for a year to save money on rent while I looked for my first-ever “big girl” job. Anything I could do to get back to the city permanently; that became the plan.
This manifested, at first, as working several hospitality jobs while commuting to San Francisco for one, then another part-time editorial internship. I wrote about and worked music events in the city between ringing up customers at an art gallery in downtown Campbell, California.
Sometimes the manager, a sweet Italian man whom I nursed an even-sweeter crush on, would hold forth with his restaurateur friends, educating us on expensive wines and allowing me to join in on their tastings when I wasn’t helping out potential purchasers of the art. Usually people came in, made their appropriate little ah!s of appreciation, and breezed right out—unless there was wine at the ready, of course.
On the weekends, I drove the winding 17 to Santa Cruz to party with a group of girlfriends I met on Twitter and Instagram. We wore very little clothing while we cavorted at cliffside parties and raves at the Catalyst, and shoes with platforms bigger than my glittering holographic skirts.
I learned to stomp, clomp, and take up space in these shoes and at this point in my life.
The irony? That I taught myself to do so during what felt like a year spent between parentheses. When I was actually the thing between them.
Admittedly, I was miserable when out with these girls, reminded by the status of their closeness that I had not remained friends with any roommates, indeed really any people I’d met in college. Their lives reminded me that I was currently stuck in San Jose, a place I could only grow to appreciate when I’d put enough distance between us. My mother said she worried I was becoming shallow, complained that I treated her house like a hotel, coming and going at all hours. Neither of these things were untrue.
I was twenty-two and unsure what else to do with myself.
I felt old and young at the same time, a strange stretching in the bones. Mostly I was bored. I had wanted to be an adult ever since I could remember. This was it?
As I’ve considered again and again what the parentheses, the liminal spaces of my life have meant to me, I’ve been delving and then resurfacing from these memories often. Remembering most vividly how itchy my skin was, how restless my limbs, how my soul contracted and then expanded rapidly. Often I felt I had to tiptoe through the detritus, the tiny delicate glass belongings, of my old life so that I wouldn’t break anything. I had so much to learn.
Perhaps we are most ourselves in the times when we least feel like it. In the transforming, in the becoming. When we are lost and scared, restless and alone.
But I did learn. And one of the most important lessons I learned was not to push through the discomfort, to pretend it wasn’t there, or to harden myself against it—though I certainly did attempt all of these things. For several years I prickled beneath the shell of a steely-pretty armor that kept me safe while out dancing, fighting inner demons, or careening through the world in an unruly brown body. These lessons were hard-won, and of course I had to go through them to grow through them.
A little over one week ago, I wrote about losing years’ worth of my writing that had been published online. While I was able to salvage some articles, it was a kind of death. The ultimate “death” for a writer whose work thus far has been primarily published online, whose expertise can be pointed to via the breadth of a digital portfolio. I’ve had to contend with a shedding here, one that has compounded with the shifting of identity I’ve been grappling with since January, when I was laid off.
I wonder, then, what this younger version of myself would have thought. I had to go through all that, for this? I can imagine her saying. Bristling, ready to meet the world with the brute force of her anger, rather than to be seen melting into any kind of softness. “I don’t want to be soft,” she once wrote and shared on her Instagram, text overlaying a photo of her in a silver-spiked headband, faux fur coat, mermaid scale leggings, and chunky Demonia platform boots. “I’d rather be a sword.”1
As I traveled, I sensed myself entering new timelines, shedding old skins, and along the way I’ve grieved for the parts of me that once would have found my current lifestyle, mindset, and inner stability—even peace at times—entirely impossible.
For the girl whose first job after college, after the period of uncertainty I wrote of above, was writing for a women’s lifestyle website. I poured my heart and soul into those words, struggling immensely to separate myself and my worth from my productivity at the office and the work I put out into the world. (I’m sensing a theme here…)
And, with the importance I’m now placing on truly owning my work and keeping it that way, I have some exciting news.
I’ve decided to go paid on Substack.
and I’d be utterly thrilled if you’d consider supporting me in this way.
I do not plan on putting a ton of my writing behind paywalls; the majority of this newsletter (and its archive) will remain free, so please don’t worry if you’re not in a position to pay for another subscription. You can always make a one-off donation in support of my work by buying me a coffee here.
If you do want to support me, my work, and my continued ability not to have to return to an office (ha), please consider paying for a subscription now!
What you’ll get as a paying subscriber:
Deeper discussion of astrology as a framework for what may be coming up, both on personal & collective levels, and how to use it as a vehicle for personal growth and healing. What this means right now— I’ll be bringing back + revamping your witchy writer friend check-ins! These are specially curated editions of Cosmic Kudos that hit your inbox and/or Substack app with the passing of each astrological season. They include my thoughts and recommendations on any number of relevant current events, links, literature, and what I’m creating ritual with.
Discounted pricing on services I’ll soon offer, such as distance healing Reiki sessions; yes, this will be another new offering—one I’m v excited about!
Behind-the-scenes looks at what I’m working on next
The undying gratitude of a growing independent writer and artist :)
What stays free:
Poetry and lyrical personal essays about my experiences with all things magical, manifestation, and spiritual practice
thoughtful (or what I like to consider thoughtful 🙃) cultural criticism
yes, we can have nice things. My twice-monthly “running list” of reasons why humans can have nice things. This is a space of both positivity and reframing “things” that may not at first seem positive; it features poems, stories, art, podcast episodes, articles or (good) news items, ritual practices, signs from the Universe, submissions from readers, and more
Before I sign off, I have a little something something to admit: I nearly did not set up paid subscriptions at this time. I had any number of excuses— Cosmic Kudos isn’t ready. Its branding isn’t perfect. Mercury is going retrograde on the 23rd (well, this is the truth, not just an excuse).
But also, if I keep holding off until “I’m ready” or “it’s perfect,” it may very well never happen.
And hey, I was born with my Mercury retrograde. So maybe, just maybe, the cosmos supports me in staying creatively rebellious. Yeah, we’ll go with that.
Perhaps it would be another year of writing on Substack without ever taking a leap on my writing here, as well as giving you all, my lovely community of readers, the option to offer your paid support of my work. I’m excited for that year ahead, don’t get me wrong. But I want it to be one where I’m really showing up in the fullest, most expansive version of my Self, and where I’ve made the commitment to continue showing up as her. So. This is a promise—to myself and to you—to keep showing up. To keep unfolding into this consistency as a practice. And to keep iterating!
So much good stuff to come.
Big hugs,
Kimia
Yeah, yeah, Freud would have had a field day with this. Also, it’s giving Aries who desperately needed therapy.
Woo hoo! Proud of you for taking the leap!