A Full Life

Happy Wednesday! Have I ever mentioned how much I love June? I’m hiking after work today then skiing before work on Friday. Haters will say the conditions will suck for both; I say get your half empty glass out of my face, please and thank you.

Anyways, I’d be remiss if I used this space to do anything other than talk about my amazing, amazing, amazing friend Katie Gatti whose book comes out next Tuesday, June 10th!!!! I can’t put into words how cool it is to watch one of your best friends in the world say “I think I want to write a book” on a random weekday in 2022, receive a few snippets of the drafts via voice notes from 2023-2024, and then watch this book come to life in 2025.

In my totally, completely, absolutely unbiased opinion, Katie is one of the best writers out there. Her ability to take ridiculously complex topics and distill them down in a way that not only makes sense, but also feels fun to read, is nothing short of a gift. Rich Girl Nation is a blend of cultural critiques of our current financial landscape paired with practical tips for the everyday person.

Anyways, preorder your copy now. Because it’s amazing. And Katie is amazing. I’m so passionate about it that I started a sentence with the word “and”—one of my least favorite things to do.

Backcountry Chronicles

I love New Jersey—but my feelings are complicated because when I tell you that I love New Jersey and I miss New Jersey, what I’m really saying is: I miss being a kid. I miss life before the internet. I miss jumping into the backseat of my parents big blue Suburban with a gaggle of friends and being driven to soccer practice and screaming the soundtrack to Hairspray the entire way there.

I heard a quote the other day: Childhood is the air we breathe. We think we’re grown and evolved, but we’re all just an amalgamation of our childhood—a bunch of 30 year old children trying to figure out the world. So, naturally, I got thinking about this air that I breathe, and more specifically, the memories that go along with it.

I think so often about past and future versions of myself. How refreshing is it to sit and really, really think deeply about the person you were at 11, 15, 17? I think about how 11 year old McCall, utterly obsessed with soccer, would be overjoyed to know that at age 29 I still occasionally play with a coed team and how bad ass she would think it is that I have season tickets for the Denver NWSL team.

I think about 14 year old McCall who came to Colorado for the first time ever to stay at her grandma’s cabin in Grand Lake: how enamored she was with the mountains, how humbled she was when she signed up for a 5K and got absolutely gobsmacked by the altitude, and how insane she would think it is that I live here now.

Then there’s 5 year old version of me that always brought her colored pencils and sketch pad onto a plane because she loved, loved, loved to draw and doodle. She’d spend the entire plane ride to Texas (4 hours on Continental Airlines; real ones remember) lost in the colors and would always give her finished product to the pilot as a way to say “thank you!”

I imagine the 17 year old version of myself, so deeply afraid to be vulnerable with the world, or show any trace of femininity and how free she’d feel now to know that you can define it all on your own terms.

I think of 16 year old me, who once stayed up until 4AM reading a book, how that was the night she realized she was, in fact, a bookworm and how happy my personal library inside my apartment would make her. I think of 4th grade McCall whose teachers always told her “you’re going to be a writer one day” every time I sit down to write this newsletter or get to write a piece of long-form content for my full-time job.

At the end of the day, I really am just a culmination of all those versions of myself. It’s the air I breathe. It’s the hurt I feel and the love I give.

The New Jersey I grew up with and have grown to love in my bones isn’t the New Jersey I know you’re thinking of. This was pre-Jersey shore, spray tans, and MTV. It was picturesque. The water was always the perfect temperature. The drives down the Jersey Turnpike (southbound on a Saturday morning) taking the local lanes (of course) with an everything bagel and a blue gatorade in hand.

When you drove further inland, it was green. Everywhere. Hydrangeas like you wouldn’t believe, rivaled only by the hydrangeas in Cape Cod (I’ll fight on this).

We fished at the pond that was a 20 minute walk from my parents house. We crammed into the car to go to Camelback mountain to learn how to ski, where all 800 feet of vertical gain might as well have been 8,000 feet of vertical gain. There was so much to do and so much time to do it.

A few weeks ago, I had one of those really, really long days that makes you want to never look at a laptop screen again. I left my phone at home and went for a 2(ish) hour walk around my neighborhood. No headphones, no anything—just me and the world.

When I was walking past a house about two blocks from my apartment, I noticed something I never had before: there was a honeysuckle bush in their front yard (!!), practically hanging over the fence into the sidewalk. I audibly laughed out loud that I’d never noticed it before. Honeysuckle, more than anything else, takes me right back to my adolescence. Our neighbors had a giant honeysuckle bush that bled into our yard. Because it was the 90’s/early 2000’s and everyone trusted each other intrinsically still, we, of course, didn’t have a fence separating our yards—so the bush felt as much ours as it was theirs; and, of course, our adorable 70+ year old neighbors didn’t care at all about the line between our yard and theirs. They just wanted to kids to be kids and for us to be happy, so they told us time and time (and time) again that their yard was ours.

Alas, back to the honeysuckle. My summers were defined by that sweet, sweet smell. We’d get our noses as close to the bush as possible once spring came around.

I don’t remember the exact moment that my parents showed me how to get the drop of sweetness out of the flowers—pinch the end, pull the string (slowly!), wait for the drop to form, indulge—but I remember about 100 times that my brother and I ran over to that bush to get a taste of summer.

And in those moments—and that moment two blocks from my apartment—the air I breathed was perfect.

Artiste Break

Some online art inspired by helping my dear friend Emma pick out some art for her guest room in Amsterdam. I love poking around online at other artists’ work to get my creativity going.

To Go Snacks

📝 Silly me, I almost forgot how wildly talented Cheryl Strayed is when it comes to writing. A dear friend sent me this old edition of Dear Sugar and I immediately printed it out and highlighted 50% of it. Give it a rip.

💞 One more essay. I’ve become obsessed with Maggie Rogers over the last year and her op-ed in the New York Times was pure gold. Here’s a quote if you need any further convincing: “The thing about being an artist is that it’s not a profession; it’s a vocation. It’s not something you do or sign up for. It’s who you are. It’s something that calls to you from the deepest depth of your being.”

🎙️ Nick Kroll is one of those comedians who’s always been in the periphery of my personal zeitgeist and I thoroughly enjoyed his episode of Armchair Expert. Of course, there were laugh-out-loud-funny moments, but there were a ton of unexpectedly deep moments that I loved.

🎿 Okay, fine. I’ll make one mention of skiing in this newsletter too. Here’s a great breakdown on ski boot stiffness from the one and only Cody Townsend.

I’m not gonna even pretend that I’m sticking to my bi-weekly cadence of sending this, so see you when I see you.

- McCall 🌻

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