10 Life Lessons (Of The Tough Love Variety)
A birthday gift from me to you. Plus! The best of the summer sales.
Greetings Spendthrifts,
I am great at giving advice, if I say so myself. Taking it? That’s another matter entirely - do as I say, not as I do, as the saying goes - but when it comes to telling other people what to do, I excel.
And as my birthday happens to be coming up soon (I’m accepting Net A Porter credit donations if you feel so inclined), and birthdays are a time when I tend to take stock a little, it occurred to me that it might be fun to share some things I’ve learned over the years in this month’s newsletter - a sort of reverse birthday gift from me to you (seriously it doesn’t even have to be that much credit, whatever you can manage is fine).
Now my initial plan was to offer a life lesson for every year of my life so far - but that’s 30-plus nuggets of wisdom and frankly, I’m wise but not that wise. So I’ve settled on ten all killer, no filler life lessons I’ve picked up over the years, most of which I’m afraid to say, are of the tough love variety. Substack also informs me this newsletter is clocking in at a whopping 5,000 words i.e. my longest ever newsletter, so perhaps it’s best I kept it to just ten, eh?
Keep on scrolling for my thoughts on the perils of bitching about your friends (besides the obvious), who you ought to trust with your career, and how to complain properly. Oh and some medical advice! Because if there’s one thing writers are qualified to dispense, it’s medical advice.
Also coming up in this month’s issue (behind the paywall):
A few high summer purchases I’m eyeing up for my summer vacay
A tight edit of summer sale finds (only the best stuff)
A Tracee Ellis Ross-inspired styling trick that I am OBSESSED with (and which only costs a fiver to recreate)
And finally, I’m interviewing author Tony Tulathimutte about his award-winning and widely lauded novel Rejection at Bard Books on August 20th. Paid subscribers will recall my 5-star review of his provocative, highly entertaining and ferociously Online book from February’s newsletter (here’s the Guardian’s take on it for the rest of you cheapskates*) so I’m properly thrilled to have a chance to grill him about it in person. There’s only a handful of tickets left though, so move fast if you want in.
* Might start referring to paid newsletter subscribers as Spendthrifts and free subscribers as Cheapskates… Just kidding!! Or am I... No I AM kidding, I love you all equally (but I love my paid subscribers a tiny bit more).
I wrote about my love of the AmiGo app in my April newsletter, the endlessly useful travel app that’s quickly become my go-to for trusted travel reccs and insider tips… think of it as like Instagram, if Instagram were designed solely for finding (and sharing) travel recommendations.
Right now it’s invite-only (although you can skip the waitlist with my code OTEGHA), which means you get curated, discerning personal recommendations from people you already know have great taste, instead of, like, randos on TripAdvisor. Lots of my favourite Instagram follows and Substackers have profiles on the app, including the endlessly globe-trotting designer Maryam Nassir Zadeh, New York based stylist Beverly Nguyen, and London-based food artist Imogen Kwok.
I’ve been adding to my profile all summer long, and recently updated it with a bumper crop of reccs from recent travels, including some top-notch Parisian vintage shopping; a few must-visit Cap Ferret restaurants (including a place that served me the best plate of mussels I have EVER had in my life); and lots of London spots new and old - including a few recent discoveries that have given me a modicum of hope for the future of London’s nightlife.
It’s also proven indispensable for planning my own upcoming summer vacay - I’m using it to research everything from where to stay and what to eat to which beaches are furthest from the madding crowd (I’m headed to Formentera for the first time!), all of which I’ve saved in AmiGo’s Trip Planner, rather than risk losing them to the chaos of my Notes app. Download AmiGo here, and prepare to be as obsessed with it as I am!!
OTEGHA’S TOP 10 LIFE LESSONS*
*Disclaimer: author cannot be held responsible for any adverse effects that may arise from application of the lessons herein.
Ask for favours, but not too many. You risk becoming a pest. I mean this mainly in a professional context - if someone grants you a favour or is helpful to you in some way, don’t then take that as your cue to bombard them with requests. I have definitely done this myself in the past, but it’s a little rude, a little annoying, and unless someone explicitly keeps the door open for that sort of thing, be mindful of how much or how frequently you ask of a specific individual (especially if you’re not able to reciprocate somehow). Spread it out a little, y’know?
Once you hit your (mid) thirties, you can either eat what you want or look how you want. You cannot have both. I am still adjusting to this new reality.
You don’t have to make a best friend out of everyone. I feel like right from adolescence, women (or at least the women I know - myself included) have a tendency to dive headfirst into these super intense friendships with other women. I remember my mum used to caution me against this as a teenager, and I would get so annoyed - “you don’t understandddah!!” I would whine as I rushed upstairs to begin rolling calls to the various girls I’d literally just spent all day at school with. And honestly, I think that sort of thing is fine when you’re a teenager, good actually! At any rate, it’s certainly the norm. And that kind of intensity is one of the most special aspects of female friendship that - excuse the gender essentialism - I think most men never get to experience! But the older I get, the more I think of that line from Romeo and Juliet: “These violent delights have violent ends…” whenever a friend starts nonstop yapping to me about a brand new gal pal they’re spending all their time with, which YES I’m aware sounds a little dramatique, and NO I promise, is not borne out of jealousy. Time and time again when I read, hear about or (ugh) experience friendship breakups, often a common thread between said ruptures seems to be that they simply moved way too fast. One or both parties engaged in platonic lovebombing (because once you’re out of your early twenties it’s so thrilling - and so much rarer! - to find someone you just click with). And it’s easy to assume that because of say, a shared sense of humour or interest in the same niche bit of culture, or the fact that you and your new pal reliably have the same opinion on this or that bit of The Discourse, that you’re also aligned on a bunch of more fundamental things, or that you know each other far better than (as it turns out) you actually do. But realistically, I think those sorts of learnings can only really unfold over time - a period of years, not months. So I’m here to tell you: it’s absolutely fine to really get along with someone and not immediately convert them into your marathon-phone-call-spend-every-weekend-together-share-your-deepest-trauma-over-cocktails BFF. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be open to forming new friendships (never that!) - just that it’s also fine to take a bit longer to get to know someone and to exercise a bit of restraint, even when the giddy feeling of an all-consuming new friendcrush is sweeping over you. Let friendships deepen over time. Doucement, as the French say.
If you bill yourself cheaply, people will treat you cheaply. Let me tell you the story of how I learned this one: