Tess Rafferty

"Did I waste a lot of time on infatuations, both requited and not? Of course. Money? Most definitely. Opportunities? Possibly. Was it all worth it?

Today I’m going to say, “Yes.” Yes, because those moments of going headlong into something won’t come around often - if ever - again. Life becomes more methodical, planned out. And when it isn’t, it’s rarely the unexpected joy of spending a weekend in a hotel room with someone you just met. The surprises that hit you as you get older are rarely welcome and almost never come with an or**sm."
READ THE REST HERE: https://tessrafferty.substack.com/p/head-over-feels

Congratulations! You made it thru the first week of January!
"The first week of January is the worst week of the year. Hands down. We need the holidays to be over: We’ve OD’d on sugar and merry and seasonal sloth-dom. Our serotonin is as depleted as our bank accounts. We’ve had so much Holly we’re no longer Jolly. And yet, we’re not yet ready for the dull rote of what comes next. We never fully got that magic we were anticipating, that we want so desperately to believe in. Maybe that’s a reason to hate the holidays: It fools you into believing magic exists, and then reminds you that it doesn’t. Or maybe the believing is the magic."

Magic The first week of January is the worst week of the year. If you’ve grown up Christian-adjacent in an even remotely stable family, the Christmas calendar is hard-wired into your brain. I know there are plenty of reasons why this isn’t the case for many people: Other faiths, family dysfunction, ec...

I'm sharing some of my favorite substacks that I've written on the ridiculousness of January.
"I’ve long hated New Year’s. We take a shiny new 365 days and load all of our insecurities and dreams and expectations into it, like it’s a woman running for public office. And much like her, the new year can’t possibly live up to that no matter how overprepared it is. We attack the new year with lists of resolutions and projects and plans for our health and this idea that we should have renewed focus to do it all, as if the last six weeks of family and friends, hosting and traveling, gift buying and meals, hasn’t sucked every last ounce of energy and patience and enthusiasm out of us, like some sort of Harry Potter Dementor in a red suit."

2020-Too Soon If, like me, you were getting to the end of 2021 as a mere courtesy, then I know how shocked you must have been to finish the year only to learn another one was going to come right after it. Again? But didn’t we just do this? Honestly, it feels like an LA County election. “But I just voted for P...

‘We have a bias problem’: California bill addresses race and gender in venture capital funding Official website of Senator Nancy Skinner, representing California Senate District 09.

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"The third season of this beloved show has not been talked about as much as the first two. I think one of the reasons for the silence has been that people found it uneven and yet they didn’t want to tear down something they had loved and that has given them so much. And maybe that’s the most Ted Lasso thing of all."

Aloha, Mr. Ted Now that it’s gone we’re all going to have to rely on each other a little more for our kindness. We can learn to BELIEVE that even though we’ve been broken, we’re not beyond repair.