But now it’s 6pm and I’m sweating through my wool coat. There’s nothing like an early spring day to remember that layers are best stripped off. I get off at Broadway-Lafayette. I’m on a mission to the flower shop. As I walk out, I see a lady biking up Bowery with a bunch of kale sticking out of her tote bike.

At the Bedford cross street, a man stands still on a box in a speedo, white sneakers and sunglasses. A woman, potentially drunk, in a large blue dress steps around the box several times over. Every few seconds she looks up at him and yells: “He’s gonna fall! That son of a bitch.” I wonder if they’re together, if this is the hottest new Happening in town I’d missed out on; but I don’t think the young man in the box knows who she is at all.

I feel an early-onset of summer euphoria taking over the city. Dollar-slice storefronts are wide open and groups are reclaiming their stoops. New York is ready to burst and today, the madness is delightful.

I wait for the subway with a bouquet. I hold it in front of me and I notice I like the contrast of the grimy subway rails behind the flowers’ delicacy and colors.

This morning, I resubscribed to ’s Substack. I want frequent reminders of what it can look like to be free.

A few announcements:

• In the spirit of Raw Material, I’ll be including more medias in these posts moving forward. Today’s post is my first attempt at adding doodles, which I think are delightful. I hope you like them, too. Shoutout to for helping me with the layout.

• On January 4, the Raw Material community lost a little chihuahua named Leo. He belonged to , one of this newsletter’s earliest paid subscribers.

Not long after New York went on lockdown in 2020, the New Yorker published this cartoon by Hilary Alison:

I consumed a lot of content during lockdown (Joe Exotic this one’s for you) and to be frank I’ve forgotten most of it, which is probably for the best. Alison’s drawing, though, I think about often. Very often. Like a lot. On the day this cartoon landed in my inbox, the reality of lockdown had started to sink in for me and, from it, the realization that I had many slates of unfilled time ahead. This generated an existential, internal kind of panic within me, which I’ve come to refer to as the beehive.

The beehive tends to awaken in the face of unstructured emptiness, as if empty space was a state to avoid at all costs. As the rhythm of lockdown settled in, the bees promised to keep me safe. “Don’t be afraiiiid,” said the bees. “With all this time, you’ll finally learn Japanese.” And bake three times a day, brew beer, start sourdough, ferment everything in the house. Write the anthology of poems I never started in the night. Train my body for the Olympics at dawn.

They can be quite useful, these bees. They keep me alert during intense periods of work, they make sure I stay fit, they push me to produce, to do more, to do better and all the time. The bees I carry are very busy, you see, and they expect the same from me.

Stuck in a storm of incessant buzzing, Alison’s drawing helped me see that I’d turned into our friend in the rowboat, reaching for fillers that would make me feel productive to distract myself from the obvious fact that I had no control over external chaos. For a second there, the absurdity of it made me smile and I felt less alone.

If I had things my way, the mind-blowing aha moment I experienced with Alison’s cartoon would have immediately led to Clara’s Peace Treaty with the Unknown. But self-awareness rarely kicks in when you want it to.

Subscribe now

Two weeks ago, we landed in San Jose and I realized I’d brought the beehive.

This was not the plan.

I’d been mentally preparing for this trip for weeks; I’d meditated and pictured my Higher Self embracing the golden stretch of time that sits between the end of one job and the start of another. This Higher Self laid like a well-hydrated starfish on the sand, manifesting her wildest dreams by the ocean, smiling in pretty cotton fabrics, thriving, rejoicing, oh so immaculately relaxed.

Needless to say that, in these visions, the beehive stayed at home. When I reached the airport customs, I looked at the officer through the security glass and hoped he wouldn’t notice the horde of bees dancing in my chest. What was happening? Why the hell were they buzzing?

“Why did you come!” I asked the bees at the baggage claim. “Why are you here??” My chest tickled—shit, I thought. They were excited. “OooOOOOOoooh but becaaaauuuuuse! With all this tiiiime! Think of how busy we will beeeeee!”

The constant thrumming and the weight that comes with carrying a nest of frenzied bees are standard experiences for me at this point. In the last few months especially, those sensations had become so familiar that I’d begun to accept them as my natural state, and the beehive and I went about our daily life, tucked in our duffle coat.

The problem with these bees is their inability to read social cues. It doesn’t matter to them that I open a book, close the bedroom door or stick my headphones in. As far as they’re concerned, they’re always invited. In fact, the quieter the better; the bees I carry want to be heard. Through trial and error, I’ve gathered that the bees can only be tamed from the inside. They dissipate in the airiness of focus and they retreat if I ignore them.

Which is why, stepping out of the airport, I became increasingly upset at me. What was wrong with me? Why wasn’t I feeling instant relief or spreading rays of light and joy? What else could I possibly need? I tried to scare myself into relaxation: RELAX IMMEDIATELY GODDAMMIT! Maybe anxiety could disappear like a bad case of hiccups (it doesn’t). We left the airport and drove for hours towards the jungle. The beehive continued to bang against my chest to the beat of bumps and potholes we rode over. The path to heaven was getting rough.

Then the road curved and led us over a strait of water. To our left, we spotted twinkling strips of ocean and all the plants I’d assumed were native to Williamsburg rental units in their natural habitat. Hallelujah! But before we could sing it, the car hit a dip, and we tried to rejoice but we had to focus on the road and I thought what will I do with all this time, where are we going, why can’t I relax—and then, something miraculous happened: I remembered Alison’s cartoon, and I laughed.

I couldn’t tell you why I thought of that drawing in that moment, maybe because driving on these dirt roads made our bodies rock like dinghies in a storm, but that night, we settled into a treehouse perched in the middle of the jungle, and the bees started to whisper.

My mornings now consist of observing howler monkeys hunt for leaves, and meditating to the songs of blue-tailed, multicolored birds called motmots. At some point between ten and noon, I gather myself and move a little before the air becomes too hot to do anything but nap. Before the day ends, we drive to the beach and watch the sun melt into the ocean until it becomes nothing but a glow hovering above the water. Otherwise, we eat, we read, and we breathe very slowly.

I don’t know how I did it either. Maybe I should’ve opened this post with a disclosure. All I know is that it’s nighttime now and the bees are gone. I can only hear crickets singing through the jungle. And maybe that’s enough.

See you soon,
Clara

P.S.: I dedicate this post to Naïma, my overactive powerhouse of a friend before she embarks on her own terrifying week of nothingness. We believe in you!

About a month ago, my boyfriend and I had dinner at Eel Bar. In case you haven’t heard of it, Eel Bar opened in June 2024 and by that fall, the restaurant had made it on The list of NY’s best of the year. Located a few blocks from Dimes Square, Eel Bar has the vibe of a cool kid who doesn’t have time for you. It’s not accommodating because it doesn’t need to be, and if you think the menu’s weird, you probably shouldn’t be there anyways. We’d heard of the restaurant’s roquefort burger with anchovies (that’s what I mean) and were already excited to order it with a side of fries before we’d reached our table. We picked a few other items from the menu and placed our order. The fried mussels arrived (incredible) and a few minutes later, the waitress brought our fries.

With mayo.

Now, I’ll concede that Eel Bar describes its food and wine as inspired by “the Basque country and Southern France” and that the menu does indeed list “French fries with mayonnaise” as an item. That being said, as someone who’s fully from France, I can tell you with full French confidence that fries with mayo isn’t French. It’s Belgian. The fact that I find mayo to be one of the most repulsive condiments that’s ever existed is beside the point; the hill I’ll die on is that if you’re going to serve fries, you better at least have ketchup in your kitchen.

Which is why when the waitress—who was younger than me because I have now reached an age where I tend to be older than restaurant staff which is unfortunate but we can talk about that another time—came to check on us, I didn’t ask whether they had ketchup, but if I could have some. Instead, I got a deadpan stare.

Waitress: We don’t have ketchup.

Me: Wait, really?

Waitress: Yeah (pause). Sorry. Anything else?

Not that she cared.

As soon as she walked away, I looked to Nick, my only eyewitness. I was in total shock and also a little embarrassed by how appalled I was but caring about being cringe is cringe. (Thanks, .)

“They don’t have ketchup??” I said, feeling like a parent on a college campus tour whispering “is that really what kids are wearing these days?” But then I thought, of course they don’t. Eel Bar’s the sophomore who decided ketchup was gauche after he came back from his semester abroad in Barcelona (and that’s bar-THE-lona to you).

We moved on. I could handle one write-off.

A week later, we left an event in Greenpoint and decided to try Chez Ma Tante. (Am I subconsciously trying to influence my American boyfriend? Possibly. Moving along.)

We got there, I went straight to the bathroom and in the meantime, Nick ordered chips and aioli. (Do we eat a lot of fries? Yes. Again, moving along.)

Somehow, the combination of fries and aioli is even stranger to me than fries with mayo. Aioli is for escargot. Everyone knows that. Anyways, the waiter seemed friendly, so when he brought our order, I asked for ketchup. I internally smiled because it hadn’t been that long since the Eel Bar incident, but the vibes in these restaurants are so different that I didn’t think this was a long shot. Chez Ma Tante is a thirty-something who knows how to host and has you over for backgammon every Friday night. Of course Chez Ma Tante would find ketchup in the back of a pantry for their guest.

Except they couldn’t. And, this time, the waiter seemed…sad? Like actually sad. Like not-okay-sad. Like he was CBS and I’d just asked what happened to Colbert. “Yeah, we don’t…we don’t carry ketchup anymore.” Then he walked away.

We ate our bare fries in silence.

***

I swear I had no idea Cafe Mado was French when we went there for brunch last week. A place that serves a hashbrown sandwich for breakfast? And yet…apparently nothing screams France nowadays like a basket of fries with herbs de Provence and a side of aioli.

We sat at the bar in the greenhouse watching the bartender prepare house-made jasmine sodas. He looked content. He seemed chatty. Of course he did – Cafe Mado is like a bubbly neighbor who shows up at your doorstep with coffees and pastries on moving day. Cafe Mado is the person you wish you were if only you had more time.

“So, I have a question,” I asked him. I tried to mask my concern with curiosity. “What happened to ketchup?” The bartender looked at me for a moment and I held his gaze, but then he just shrugged. No explanation, not even “it’s the tariffs” or something about supply chains. He just proceeded to shake an icy cocktail next to his ear. “Here you go,” he said to our neighbor. Then he walked away.

We stuck to aioli. Strike three.

***

By that point, I’d decided the ketchup boycott was a result of New York’s French restaurants trying a little too hard to be French. “I swear to God, everyone in France eats ketchup with their fries. The rest is just not a thing,” I ranted. “I believe you,” Nick said. Nick’s the kind of person who’s patient enough not to roll his eyes even if the situation calls for it. Lucky for me, we were heading to the motherland the following week.

We met my mom and brother directly from the airport and found them sitting at a terrasse on a slanted sidewalk, enjoying a rare sunny October day in Paris. Once we’d settled next to them, we contemplated the menu. Oysters, terrines, cheese plate, pâté, niçoise salad…“You should get the burger!” my mom assured us. Nick looked at me, utterly confused. Of all the French options on the menu, how was that her recommendation? “People eat burgers for lunch here, it’s really good,” she pressed. It takes a lot of energy to argue with a French mother, and we were jet lagged. Plus, I’m not gonna lie, I saw this as an incredible opportunity. Here, in my home country, I would finally prove to myself, my boyfriend, and the world, how French people really ate fries. For France!

A few minutes later, the waitress brought a bottle of room-temp water (bliss) along with a burger and fries. I asked for ketchup, évidemment. “On n’a pas de ketchup,”^[1] she said. And as she walked away, I heard her mumble: “What is this? America?”

^[1] We don’t have ketchup.

Hi all,

I tried to maintain a writing routine and start a demanding job at the same time, but it’s been hard. I’m also trying to not beat myself up for it, to remember that life is long and non-linear, and that everything can’t happen at the same time, but self-compassion’s been tricky, too.

In the past six months, I’ve been extra focused on the people who are *doing the thing* and deeply convinced that I am not one of them. By “doing the thing” I mean pursuing creative projects and ideas until they become a magical, inspiring, livable and money-generating (!) reality. Naturally, this has meant spending more time absorbing others’ content on Substack than creating my own; it’s meant feeling an immediate ephemeral high from reading an inspiring post followed by the slow and sticky crash that comes from remembering that the path to “getting there” is still invisible; and, naturally, it’s meant putting myself through this cycle on repeat.

Like with most slightly addictive but not-too-deadly things, the problem with comparison is that it always seems okay to do a little bit. When I notice myself falling into another loop, I reflexively think of that one time when scrolling through that stranger’s profile sparked an idea in me, or convince myself that I’m only typing her name in the search bar to “see what she’s been up to”—as one does with their boyfriend’s ex—just to make it alright. There’s a Drunk Uncle Voice in my head that winks at me and says a glass of wine at dinner never killed anyone. And, to be fair, I have been fueled by a micro dose of competition in the past; but most of the time, it’s plain toxic.

Comparison seems to loom large for a lot of us. So large that I’ve noticed that when it comes up in conversation, it’s often followed by an eye-roll and a “god, don’t even get me started.” And when I hear that, the inquisitor in me perks up. Pushing people to talk about the topics that make them uncomfortable is one of my favorite things in the world. But then the answers I get are confused. When do you do it? Like all the time. Who do you compare yourself to? Like people…who are…better than me. Why? They don’t know.

Comparison temporarily stops the clock. When I indulge in it, I experience tunnel vision and all I can focus on is anything I want to see about this one person and all the ways in which we are different, which are infinite. And that’s the danger with comparison, isn’t it? It can feed on anything, forever, and it’s very hungry. There’s no point in trying to satisfy it except to come out on the other side a little more drained, a little smaller still.

I know that the only way out of the comparison loop is to extract myself from it completely. I know that the only solution is to look away; to take my inclination to compare as information about what I want and then to build towards those things relentlessly. And it’s so hard to self-preserve. And it’s so easy to indulge. But I don’t think the point is just to “not compare”—it’s about “doing the thing,” all the things, that make us so proud to be ourselves that we no longer have the time, space or interest to use others as a means of self-sabotage.

See you soon,
CC

—

P.S.: I’m still thinking of ways to give the journaling prompts of the Monarc Chronicles a sustainable life. In the meantime, I’ll be joining Suleika Jaouad’s journaling club in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden next week. I’m hoping it’ll give me ideas for how we might gather around life transitions together.

I thought about social media. For someone who’s off social media, I think about it quite a lot. Maybe it’d be thinking about it less if I had it. Would that be because I’d be switching from thinking about doing to doing? Maybe that’s good. I worried about everything we need to do to stay sharp and relevant and then I worried that my abstention from Instagram was an early symptom of my falling behind. I thought, what next? I’d like to be a grandma who can hang. How do I keep up for the next 80 plus years? If it takes a @handle, so be it (a “@handle”? Jesus…).

I folded my laundry. That pile of clean laundry had been sitting on the blue chair across from my bed for four days and I decided it was enough. Enough! I thought. I would start the day informing my subconscious that I do not procrastinate. No, sir. My subconscious is a man, and I think I’m okay with that. It helps me stay productive. Anyway, I like folding laundry. One of my favorite domestic activities is talking on the phone as I’m pairing socks. It’s a subtle exercise for the brain and it’s very rewarding. If the conversation is still going on and I simultaneously realize I have a lone sock left, I try not to be rude and sound disappointed. I like to separate my need to pair my socks from other aspects of my life.

It’s just easier that way.

“Is it Spring yet?” he asked.

“Not yet…,” I answered, “but soon!” He nodded but looked disappointed, which broke my heart a little. As I kept walking, he mumbled, either to himself or intentionally loud enough for me to hear. “It’s been a long winter.” I smiled. Yes, it has, my friend.

Today we’re technically, finally, officially in Spring. I say technically because, as I write to you, I’m wrapped in a wool blanket sipping piping hot coffee, as bits of loose trash fly by my window in the howling winds of Brooklyn. According to my phone, it’s 4-degrees-Celsius-feels-like-minus-2, which I will not be fact-checking in person, thank you very much. And if you’re part of that precious 5% of the world that thinks in Fahrenheit, my point is, it’s f*cking freezing.

As far as I’m concerned, March in New York has never *not* felt cold. I’m not sure why we insist that March = Spring. There’s literally an expression in French (les giboulées de mars) that describes a March-only phenomenon of sudden, brief and heavy rains, occasionally sprinkled with hail. Hail!

Still, when March comes around, my shoulders release ever so slightly. We’ve made it past the Ringo Starr of our calendar, otherwise known as February, and more recently past the Spring solstice, a day of equal parts light and dark. As we transition toward the sunnier side of the year, applying SPF to my face every morning has gone from feeling wildly optimistic to somewhat relevant. It also feels safe again to look beyond my feet without running the risk of slipping on a patch of black ice when I cross the street. With this reclaimed perspective, I spotted a bluejay in Prospect Park on Tuesday.

I love bluejays.

I kicked off 2025 by enrolling in a yoga teacher training program, a personal project that’s dear to my heart. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be certified in July. I’ve practiced yoga for years, but this is my first time learning about the anatomy behind practice, how poses are connected to each other and how we can create sequences of poses where each one prepares our bodies to move into the next shape.

It turns out that a significant part of teaching yoga revolves around getting comfortable with transitions (I was, indeed, delighted, thanks for asking). It also turns out that finding a safe way to come out of a headstand, so you don’t break your neck is just as important as staying up there (revelations upon revelations in this class).

In learning about backbends last week, we also studied neutral poses, the ones we can hold before it’s safe again to loosen into a counterpose, like a forward bend. A neutral pose is the buffer zone in which our system can absorb the lingering effects of a strenuous position and avoid stressing our muscles by rushing into an opposite. It also prepares us to enjoy a release. Neutral poses aren’t the most exciting, maybe not the ones we look forward to, but they’re necessary transitions.

And maybe March is just that: a transitory month for our minds and bodies to thaw. A neutral pose of a month in which we can recover from a trying Winter before we soften into Spring. Maybe March is our chance to think about the layers we’ve worn and no longer need. By the time winter is over, I’ve usually developed a total aversion to every item of clothing I own and a visceral reaction at the sight of my own down jacket. This year is no exception, so I’ll use the rest of March to sort, swap and (dream big) sell.

I’m also spending part of the weekend journaling about the insights I gained this winter.

If you’re interested in thawing with me, here are the prompts I’m using to guide me:

🌱 What lessons and experiences do I want to carry with me into Spring?

🌱 Are there habits or patterns I want to leave behind?

🌱 What do I want to learn and develop as the days warm up and stretch?

🌱 What am I excited about?

🌱 How will I play?

If you end up journaling around any or all of these, too, let me know! I’d love to hear what comes up for you in the Neutral Zone of March.

With that, stand tall. Hold a neutral pose or two. Spring is coming.

Love,
Clara C.

Subscribe now

One the reasons you don’t know me is that I’ve been offline for basically my entire adult life.

To the extent I have an online presence, it’s been limited to a Facebook account I created when I was 13 and haven’t updated since, and a LinkedIn profile I spend an embarrassing amount updating. When, every now and then I feel compelled (only by a pure sense of duty) to stalk someone on Instagram, I’ll open the *web version* (I know) and pray that it’ll lead me to a public account before a window pops up asking me to have some decency and log myself in.

We all know there’s a lot of research out there about social media’s effects on teenage brains and mental health and I’ve used that as a convenient explanation for keeping social media at arm’s length. It’s the quick reason I give in social situations if I’m asked why I’ve been offline.

The more honest reason is that I don’t trust myself to maintain a healthy relationship with social media.

I struggled with an intense eating disorder in my late teens and early 20s and, when I finally started to see beyond it, standing in the transitory phase between illness and health, I protected myself like a parent caring for their preterm newborn, avoiding any virtual or physical environment that might shake my foundations. By the time I started college, I’d switched between in and out-patient care for three years, and it took me a few months to relearn how to casually complain about homework when the only small talk I remembered how to entertain revolved around some kind existential angst. Because of that, my first college parties made me sound a lot ✨ Barbie With Irrepressible Thoughts Of Death ✨ on the dance floor.

At the time, most of my friends and college peers had followed seemingly linear paths through the milestones of young adulthood. It made sense to me that they’d want to put these lives, however filtered, on public display; but social media felt like a glass palace reserved for the polished. I wasn’t polished; I was raw. I wasn’t quite sure how or where to talk about that in a way that felt worth a following.

So I told myself I’d wait until I “got there.” Once this transition was over, once I’m fully recovered, after I’ve figured it out, when I finally know where I’m going then maybe (*maybe*) I’ll poke my head out. The irony is not lost on me that, as I hid from social media to become my “fully-formed self,” being offline became part of my identity. Still today, when I tell people I’ve never had Instagram, a common reaction I get is some version of awe occasionally followed by a puzzling “damn–I wish I didn’t have Instagram….” There’s a funny retro allure to being off the grid.

I spent a lot of energy in the following years trying to step out of the in-between. For most of my early twenties, I was playing catchup with those who looked like they’d nailed down how to live the “best years of our lives” and I focused on erasing the cracks in my narrative.

In many ways, I succeeded. But much of my growth over the past decade has also focused on accepting the fact that I’ll never quite arrive (sigh)—and realizing that no one will, either.

Beyond our Instagram stories, job promotions, accolades and Substack posts, we’re all in a perpetual state of becoming. If I can move past the vertigo, I find it liberating to know that we’re all in transit together.

In moments of transition, when life’s tectonic plates are shifting and I struggle to feel grounded, I find a journal.

I’ve filled dozens of journals with thoughts and fears and hopes from random hospital beds. Journaling reminds me I have a voice in moments where I feel too overwhelmed to speak. It’s been such an essential element of my growth since I was a teenager that I kind of assumed everyone had a journal, too.

Last October, I faced a new transition.

I found myself at a professional crossroads and decided to hit pause to take time to figure out what to do next. And as I spoke with other 30-somethings, and 20-somethings, and 40, 50, 60, 70-somethings, I realized how many of us are experiencing a form of transition.

What I learned is this:

🌱 many of us are between jobs, either by choice or circumstance; most have no idea what’s coming next. On some days it’s exciting, on most it’s terrifying.

🌱 some of you got engaged! You’re planning a wedding and imagining what post-wedding life will look like. You catch yourselves remembering who your pre-marriage self was but you haven’t even left that “old self” yet…or have you?

🌱 some of you are pregnant and bracing yourselves for an outer-world shift while the body you’d maybe just recently gotten used has started feeling different every day.

🌱 some of you are processing a breakup and spending more time with yourselves than you had in months or years.

🌱 some of you are told it’s time to retire but you’re so not done feeling relevant (and why would you?)

🌱 some of you have a baby and, in those tiny increments of time you have, you look up to find that everything’s changed.

Same, but different. And although all of us will experience many transition phases in our lives, we tend to face these changes alone.

So I started thinking of ways to create a support net for my traveling friends. I wanted to introduce the importance of journaling and reflection in these moments of life-commute and encourage a conversation around change. We don't have to travel alone.

With that, I’m excited to launch Raw Material and its companion project, the Monarc Chronicles 🦋

The Monarc Chronicles will start with a series of prompts meant to guide you through a journaling practice focused on the specific transition you’re going through:

• I’m single and I like it? or the Breakup Chronicles

• Hire me but not so fast or the Career Switch Chronicles

• Eeee we’re getting married! or the Engagement Chronicles

• I guess I have a baby now? or the New Parent Chronicles

• But I’m not done! or the Retirement Chronicles

• Aahh! We’re pregnant or the Pregnancy Chronicles

• Where they at? or the Grief Chronicles

I’ll be sending out an email in the next week to let you know how to subscribe to whichever Monarc Chronicle speaks to you right now. I’ll invite you to send me your writing (honest and unpolished) for journaling accountability 👀

Every week in Raw Material, I’ll also be sending out a more general journaling prompt on transition and change, along with any recent insights or experience I’ve had on the topic and how we can navigate life’s changes together and maybe (*maybe*) I can transform my relationship with social media in the process.

Like all of us, Raw Material and the Monarc Chronicles are works in progress—the prompts and Chronicles will adapt to you. Please feel free to send me feedback on what helped, what you liked or disliked, and what you’d like to see!

Consider these newsletters a gentle invitation to join me in the exploration of the in-betweens.

With love and thanks for reading,
Clara