How I became an Angel

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 at my first sit down job.

Then I began using it on substack when I wanted to be more honest with my writing than I allowed myself to be.

At a work event, I met this woman who invited me to a jazz show at a club in midtown. I went by myself. I don’t smoke weed anymore, but I had a stretch of a few post grad months where I did often.

I sat on this booth in the corner of the club, watching the band, a little dreamy in my own mind, and the trumpet player kept grinning at me. He was charming, a little strange, with a blonde ponytail. He spoke with these staccato phrases, as if he himself was surprised by his next words. Next thing you know, I’m giving him my number and he’s taking out a flip phone to take it down.

A week or so later, we’re at Nublu, and he knows everybody. Keenan Thompson is in the corner. He has a tequila soda, and I have nothing because it’s a Monday. He was so sweet, and that was the time in my life where I was still learning how to be honest with people and say what I was thinking.

At the end of the night, I told him I didn’t feel the connection I was looking for and he said this phrase that burned that moment into my brain:

“But you’re an angel.”

A couple of years later, I saw him again at Coyote Ugly. I was on the second location of a first date with a tech founder behind a music distribution platform. Victoria and I were preparing to dance at the bar and ideating around some creative projects where we’d dive deeper into "angel lore."

When I look back at this whole saga, my through line is not my relationship with men, or New York, or even myself. The thing I’m struck by is my relationship with creation.

I grew up with all those romcoms where the guy in the band sees the girl in the audience and chooses her and that literally happened to me at 22.

It was thrilling and sweet. But it wasn’t enough, because I grew tired of being an object— of others desires’ of others interest, and I wanted to get to a place where I had agency over my own mind, and to a place where I was producing more than I was consuming. I wanted to get in the game of my own life.

The only thing that can bring you there is reflection, evaluation, and action. You have to be willing to examine yourself to shape yourself into something new.

Like a hot literati member. Or an angel. Or the version of yourself that you, until now, have written off as a fantasy.

A good place to start, if this excites you, is Hot Literati Academy <3