It's the Diva Week Birthday Issue!!!!!
Spring bucket list, Forever 21 Birthday Special 🥳💃🏻💖🥂👸🏻✨♈️💋💿⭐️👠🫶🏼🎶🎉
HELLO new subscribers! Welcome to Nicstalgia, your Pop Culture PhD and cultural literacy guide to navigate the nostalgia industrial complex. Quick orientation: About Nicstalgia • Website • Instagram. So happy you’re here!!!!!!! 💖 💖 💖
Today is my birthday!!!!!!! This past year has been fun, eventful, challenging, bittersweet, and insanely stressful, yet here we are. I am really happy, love my life and the people in it, and feel more aligned in my purpose and direction than ever before! 😊 THANK YOU for being here and a part of the journey 💖🤸🏻♀️
When I think about this upcoming year in my life, naturally I think about where Nicstalgia will go next. I’ve been consistently writing this newsletter for longer than any job I’ve ever had. It’s by far the most fulfilling project I’ve ever worked on, and there’s still so much room to grow. I feel like a 20th century grandparent whose accordion wallet dramatically waterfalls open with JCPenney pictures of their six grandkids, except mine are: The Chasm, Physical Media Renaissance, The Nostalgia Industrial Complex, Pop Culture Advent Calendar, 2000s Comedies Prominently Featuring iMac G3s, and Flip Phone Summer. I have a couple things in the works and am inspired to a freakish degree!!!!!!!!!!! So I’m making it a goal for myself to grow my Substack from a hidden gem to a cult classic. And you can help!
If you would like to support Nicstalgia with a paid subscription, I’m running a Forever 21 Birthday Special!!!!!! Until Sunday, April 12th at 11:59pm, get 21% off of an annual subscription for $46 (regularly $59). That is only $3.83 per month, which is comparable to a Forever 21 liquidation sale. If you love the rush of a good deal, now is the time.
If you wanna be in my figurative MySpace Top 8 among highly esteemed Nicstalgia readers, it’s $143 – or more, I’m not gonna stop you. (143 comes from the popular AOL Instant Messenger shorthand for “I love you”. Popular girls would put “143” plus their boyfriend’s name in their AIM bio to show people who they were dating. I actively avoided my 8th grade bf, so I never did this, but believe me, it was a thing.)
If you would like to give a one-time gift ($5+) instead of a recurring one, I will comp you a free subscription for a month. If you are already a paid reader, I’ll extend your subscription for a month. I will continue doing this even after the Forever 21 Birthday Special is over. Yay!!!
It’s also the optimal time for my dream dinner party, in case you missed my Very Aries answer in Eat Your Feelings:
Back by popular demand – it’s the seasonal bucket list (SBL)! I don’t think I’ve made a proper one since last summer?! So for the uninitiated, the seasonal bucket list is about having fun, trying new things, being present, and exercising your free will. I try not to have anything work- or project- related on the list, because SBLs are not meant to have striver energy. It’s not a checklist, spreadsheet, or concrete plan – you just gotta go with it.
My Spring Bucket List
💃 Perform in dance video. This one’s complete already!
🚉 Book a weekend getaway. This one’s also complete already!
🚆 Take a day trip to a town I’ve never been before. I’m excited for this one.
☕️ Host monthly coffee hangs with friends. Not “events”, not “meetups”, not “community”, but informal Central Perk kinda vibes.
🎥 Make a mini life doc on my camcorder. I’m told fairly often that my life is like a reality show, so let’s go with it.
🪡 Practice sewing. Classes are expensive, so idk about that, but I have a lot to make! Not sure why half of my self-directed DIY projects involve sewing when it’s not my strong suit, but when I have a vision, I have a vision!
🎬 Enjoy a variety of entertainment. There’s so much to do in New York! I’m going to plays, live shows, a gallery opening, and a drag show!
👚 Reorganize everything. Self-explanatory.
🎯 Try archery. I mean, why not.
🍓 Go to a new local farmer’s market. I always stop at the same fruit stands because of their convenient location on my existing routes. But I would like to make going to the farmer’s market the main event.
🧢 Make more pop culture merch. Graphic design is my passion!!!
Huge thank you to the paid subscribers who support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Matthew, Emily, Gina, Taylor, Alejandra, Jess, Lindsay, and Bea! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐
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This week’s episode: Performance rehearsals have commenced, the song I never want to hear again, my new favorite probably healthy drink, and how I’m making it through the rain. Next week I’ll give you my MARC BY SOFIA mini review, among other things.
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