Or how to become a better you Hailo is a bit of a character to me, she is someone who I become when life gets hard or when I need to do something brave. As ridiculous as it is, I think alter ego or persona building is extremely effective, and more importantly fun . My Princeton boyfriend began calling me hailo during our relationship. The name took other shapes like “swailo.” I began using hailo as an online name early on TikTok, then again when I became a discord moderator a

During the summer of 2024, i was pretty unhappy with my life and i began to set all of these arbitrary rules for myself. Like the fact that I would run every morning and only listen to music that made me feel hot after a long stretch of depression rock and roll, and probably most importantly, that I wouldn't complain anymore. About anything . Whether you want to call it manifestation or what Proverbs says about protecting your thoughts or quantum leaping, my life changed real

The Lovers, William Firth, 1855 I Literature attends to the structures of lived experience. As prose and poetry, it informs our understanding of the experiences we have had: of love, of friendship, and of loss. Our favorite books give us back the thoughts we formed only halfway, which we recognize fully formed on the page even though we have never seen them fully formed. I love to hear my thoughts given back to me with edits and enhancements. That is why I read. What belongs

Or, How to Clean Up Your Life Every since I was a little girl, I have been a hoarder of memories. I've always treated my life like a really good meal that you want to savor. Saving the best part for last and being upset when it's all gone. Actually, always isn't a fair word. It's beautiful, but it's never true. Last Friday, I had the honor of giving a talk at Sarah Lawrence. We sat in the Graduate building as I read them a letter a boy wrote to me at seventeen that I read whe

hello hello I'm reading my Bible and packing up my apartment for a big move. To where? That's not a secret I'll never tell :o I own one pair of jeans Leaving this space has me reminiscing on what it was like to move in. In my early 20s I made up for what I lacked in experience with audacity. The bed frame for example, was put together by a very kind Italian man as our first and last date. The mount that held the TV to the wall was a gift from an Australian man who I kept runn

In an effort to lay lush groundwork for this column, I’d like to start with love.

FOREVER LOLITA I flew to New York alone for the first time at 17. I had just won Miss Teen USA and was coming to the city for media training and a press tour. I wore a denim mini-skirt I got at the pacsun in the mall where I also bought my first bra. I was reading The Sun Also Rises and sat next to a man who resembled the professor of my first writing class at Princeton. The man, my seat neighbor, asked me about Hemingway. I said something, mentioned that I’d just graduated h