Hi there! Have we met before? Just in case, I’m Carmen.
This is a little awkward, you see it’s my first time hosting Friday Open Thread. I’ve been writing at Autostraddle for roughly a year now, but I haven’t had the opportunity to hang out with you one-on-one! Since we’re all family, can I be a little honest? I’m pretty bad at ice breakers and small talk.
But, here’s what I’m really good at: Daydreaming! I sit at my kitchen table, but in my mind’s eye I’m already road tripping along an open road and across a sunset. Am I at my desk trying to get through a midweek slump, or am I soaking up summer rays poolside in a cute bikini with a glass of rosé? You decide.
What’s my other favorite activity, you ask? OK. This is nerdy and embarrassing, but dammit I love making lists! I’m an anxious person. Lists help to quiet my mind and put me back in control. If I feel overwhelmed or panicked, I grab a post-it or blank piece of paper and get to work. There’s something oddly freeing about taking whatever is keeping me up at night and methodically writing them down one at a time. Once I can see them, I can conquer them! Absolutely nothing feels more satisfying than crossing off an item on a To-Do List. It feels like I can just soar through the clouds, you know? An addictive, fleeting moment of Type A perfection.
Living at the intersection of daydreaming and list-making is the thing I am here to talk with y’all about today: Bucket Lists!
Summer is sun tickled skin, and all the ice cream you can eat. It’s weekend getaways with friends and drinking craft beer underneath the twinkling lights of your back porch. When the ground warms up and the days get longer, everything feels overflowing with new potential. August is its own kind of animal. Its energy is urgent. The sand is winding out of the hourglass. I look up and there’s three weeks left to Labor Day and suddenly all I can think about it is everything that I didn’t do. The picnic I never got around to planning. The hike I forgot to take. The farmers market blueberries that never stained my fingertips.
Well my friends, the summer’s sun may be waning and painting the sky pink, but we are not finished yet! Fuck the limits of time and space. Let’s band together, scrap up every last morsel of Summer 20GayTeen, and send it off with a BANG!!
What do YOU want to do with the time we have left? What can you write down on a post it today that will send you into September smiling? What are your wildest adventures not yet trekked? What’s your cute, cozy alone time #goals that you still haven’t set time aside for? Write it down. Write them all down. Jot them in your phone, on a piece of paper, the back of a receipt, whatever. Do It Right Now. And then hit up the comments and tell me all about it! I can’t freaking wait to cheer you on! Across the universe, we will travel!
I’ll get us started:
Carmen’s 2018 Summer Bucket List (So Far):
1. Read Carmen Maria Machado’s “Her Body and Other Parties”
2. Drink As Much Hibiscus Iced Tea As Humanly Possible
3. Squeeze All The Life Left Out of My Bathing Suits ??☀️?
And hey, while we are here, what else has been going on for you this summer? Did you have a crush? Did you kiss your crush? Did you discover a new custom slurpie flavor? Paint your nails a cute color? Go fishing or some other cool outdoorsy activity that will make no sense to my city slicker brain?
It’s Summer 20GayTeen! Time to spill the (iced) tea.
How To Post A Photo In The Comments:
Find a photo on the web, right click (on a Mac, control+click), hit “Copy Image URL” and then…
code it in to your comment like so:
If you need to upload the photo you love from your computer, try using imgur. To learn more about posting photos, check out A.E.’s step-by-step guide.
How To Post A Video In The Comments, Too:
Find a video on YouTube, copy the URL, and paste the link on its own separate line in your comment. You no longer need to use the “embed” code!
