why thursday?

the first newsletter!

why thursday?

I’m a 27-year-old writer and sex educator who has spent most of her 20’s not writing. I spent so much time lying down on the internet that eventually I got bored. I figured that standing up, even just kneeling, and writing something would be enough to make me want to keep going. I was right.

This is an account for me to share writing developed through this process of learning to live again or wanting to at least. If you’ve ever had questions like the ones listed below, you will hopefully find some writing you really connect to in this newsletter. Questions like: Can I call myself bisexual or should I choose another word? How do I learn an earth shattering piece of climate news and continue onto the rest of my day? What does a girl do with the empty space after her frontal cortex develops and she wonders what she is besides what others think of her? If I now know that I can recover from so much, is it wrong to let everything happen to me? Why do the ways my friends and I interact with each other on the internet feel like surveillance? How can I train a herding dog when I have the attention span of a small rabbit? How did Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift break up? Why did I flatten myself for so long that it felt easier to disappear? Why does Thursday feel the same in my brain as autumn, future nostalgia, the color orange, going back and forth about sending the first text, and the age 27?

Fiction and non-fiction writing exploring these questions and more will drop in this newsletter on the first Thursday of the month. I’ll also share a reading recommendation and a writing prompt to get you to the weekend.

The first piece of writing I have to share - a flash non-fiction piece written in the desperate heat of salt lake summer - is below.

easy survival

I played ping pong with your roommate while you put your bathing suit on. As she beat me point after point, she chatted heavily about the girl who wanted to date her but she wasn’t sure it should be this hard. Yesterday, it rained ash from the sky. A nearby forest fire telling us that a hot, dry summer will soon fill with wildfire smoke. Today, we woke up to a clear day and biked on impossibly hot fried egg asphalt to the tea shop. A pit stop for iced milky matcha on the way to the too big public pool. A pool that could only be this size in middle america like a regulation size football field at an elementary school or a big box store parking lot. We’re living in a world full of shouldn'ts. It shouldn’t be this hot. You shouldn’t water the lawn. You shouldn’t buy here because the great salt lake will soon dry, drifting toxic dust into your lungs. And yet, the matcha was bright green and it matched my sunglasses just right. The neighbor’s yard had two signs staked in it: Keep Going and Don’t Give Up. We dribbled chatter in between breathless gasps while biking uphill. I remembered that I loved you. When I jumped a big childlike cannonball into the pool, my bottoms slipped off like they did when I was young. In the cold blue of underwater, everything felt infinite and circular, like I might survive this and live forever. Matcha kisses and shades of blue sparkling like stars over our ashen graveyard.

- Zoe Flavin

Something to read & something to write:

Something to read: Greetings From My Shameless Summer

Something to write:

What’s one thing you used to feel shame about that you no longer feel shame about? In sex ed classes, I teach that one of the first emotional changes of puberty is feeling self-conscious about nearly everything. If you don’t know where to start, the time of life between 9-14 years old can be a good place to mine for this prompt.

If you’ve never written before or are new to writing prompts, set a timer for 5-15 minutes and open a blank document or get out a pen & paper. Think about the prompt and write whatever comes to you just don’t stop until the timer goes off.

Thanks for reading!

See you in a month for more writing & recs. I’m currently in New York, meeting my sister’s baby, buying overly expensive cocktails and taking mirror selfies. <3