#–– letter to self

[soleil-de-minuit]

Second piece :)

[leavemeslowly]

I hope you will never experience the heartbreak I am describing. I hope you will find someone who compliments you and cherishes your personality and is not ripping you apart. I hope your heart is light in your chest and you often marvel at the wonderful world surrounding you. I hope you are actively involved in your life and not a mere observer. I wish you all the best. I am writing things down, hoping that you had never experienced these feelings and brokenness that followed. I hope you love and you laugh. You make the world a better place.

[dangselene]

This is the best song I've ever written

If you even care

ExtraDial - to whom it should

[unwelcome-ozian]

[danae-inprogress]

A letter/a gentle reminder to myself

Dear self,

You have the power and the ability to create the life you want to, intend to, and dream of. You are the creator of your reality and you know it.

It’s finally time to step out of your misery for good. For once and forever.

You have potential. You are young. You are healthy. You have money. You are socially acceptable. You are beautiful and you have a personality that constantly improves.

Identify what you don’t like about yourself and accept it. Then, fight it. Then, take it down. Day by day. Step by step. Be patient. Be disciplined. Be hard working. It’s the only way this year.

Do it for yourself. Not for others. Show only what you’re comfortable with. Fuck the rest. It’s truly your time.

Each day find a few things you don’t like and work against them. Become a better person, a better partner, and a better friend. Also, find your strengths.

Finally, and for good… conquer your fucking world. It’s time.

PS. I wrote this short letter to myself on March 13 - a day I felt particularly low and disappointed regarding my goals and manifestations. It oddly helped, and I thought of sharing it here as well.

[endofapaige]

A Letter to my Twenties

Dear my twenties,

As I write this now you are merely a week away, and fuck has your presence hit me like a truck. I will be honest, you are looking promising, but there are things I do wish you will bring me.

You have a lot to live up to really, my teens bought me some very good grades, some really fucking good friends, albeit a lot of these didn’t last, they were still very big parts of my life. I wish for more consistency in my twenties I think, I seem to have gone through a lot of mental phases in my life and I believe to have outgrown that now. I want the friends I have left to last forever, I love them dearly; I want to stop flip-flopping in my passions.

As I leave my nineteenth year, I really do believe things are going well. I have a lot going for me with university this time around, but it will be you that will take me to graduation. It is you that is joining me as I finally begin to care about things again. I am writing regularly; I am editing for a fucking newspaper! What a dream. It will be you who will watch me as I cry and stress and ultimately get to the place in life I want to be.

I don’t know what that place is yet, I am still toying with careers, but no matter where I end up, you will take me there.

You will see me be happy. Happier than I have been in my life, as I take control back of the things that I love and find the place in the world that I belong in. You will watch me build that life, make that name for myself, get that success I have wanted since I was a child.

You will see me cry. More times than I would like probably, because at the heart of it, being twenty is terrifying me when I still feel sixteen. I will have to face the world, grow up truly, You will be with me when I move out of my family home. You will be with me, likely, when I experience pregnancy and motherhood, though I hope you bring me this much closer to when you are handing me over to thirty. You will watch me get rejected, and rejected, and fail more than I ever have in my life as I set myself up for life. I am going to hate it, but you will watch me get through it.

My teens brought me love. My first, my biggest, hopefully my last. I hope you stay true to the latter. I hope you bring me marriage, and happiness, and comfort in my love. As you approach, being in love is hard. I am doing it because fuck I will not let it go no matter how irrational my thoughts become, no matter how many petty fights we have, but I hope you bring me the peace that follows.

I find it odd, I do, moving into another decade of life, walking around and telling people ‘I’m twenty’ when I feel (and look) much younger. I thank my teens for everything it brought me, getting me into writing, letting me experience the world in a way that got me to where I am, protecting me from so much. I hope you bring me as much comfort in myself as I have in my surroundings right now. I thank my teens for getting me into a good job and a good degree, though it was hard, I am ecstatic with where I have ended this era.

I hope with my twenties, I can celebrate everyone else in my life too, I am in the decade where my friends are getting married and starting lives and succeeding just like I am, I want you to bring me every chance to celebrate these things with them and do them all right alongside everyone I love.

I never thought I would be where I am. Doing the things I have always adored, experiencing so many new things, in love and genuinely happy with life as I find little ways to improve myself. It has always been little steps, and I think finally I may have gotten the hang of it. If you try to do too much at once, you will shut down. I give that to you, well to me, remember that fact as you take me through life, especially when I feel like I cannot possibly do it all.

I will be welcoming you into my life in style. It is cold, God is it cold, but where better to freeze your tits off than in Winter Wonderland? I’m excited for my trip to London, it’s my first birthday entirely without my parents. That thought terrifies me, and I feel awful as I am also leaving my dad behind on his birthday. But it is nice, it is nice to be able to make my own adventures and my own memories as I enter true adulthood. And then I will reminisce on my childhood in tune with Matilda: The Musical. It sounds perfect, doesn’t it? I hope it is so.

I have always looked forward to growing up, and now that I am here, I am scared. But all I can say is I hope it is worth it. Even if it is the hardest decade of my life, I hope at the end of it all I am exactly where I want to be. I think I have the passion to make that so, I just beg you help me along.

Welcome, get comfortable, and please be nice as you kick my teens into the corner of my mind. It’s very nice to have you here, well almost.

Ash x

Ps. It’s been very nice to swear while I write again

Pps. It has been a while, how are you all doing?

Ppps. I probably won’t catch you before, so Merry Christmas!

[janebitt]

to my december, 2025 jane <3

Hey. How have you been? Have you been eating well? Have you been sleeping well? I hope you wake up every morning just so happy to exist. I am sorry if I had not lived up to your expectations, but it was hard. But you know what? Thinking of you gives me the strength to keep going, so thank you for existing.

2024 was a crazy year, wasn't it? We loved, we hustled, got burnt out, got back from it, found warmth in people, said goodbye to the places that held so many memories, sometimes wished for the world to just pause, we fell out of love, did a trust fall with God, studied hard, gave our best on the day of ‘the exam,’ got hurt nevertheless, but most of all, we endured. There were also so many things we learned, like letting go of people gracefully or just waiting for the morning rays to wash the grief of yesterday. I am proud of you, so much. Just remember that you do not need to hear stuff like ‘I am proud of you’ or ‘You did well’ or ‘It’s going to be okay’ from others for those things to be true. Your value does not depend on what others say or think about you. Hmm?

I wonder what crazy stuff would have happened in 2025. Did you ace those interviews? Did you get into the university of your dreams? Did you finally find the people who’d cherish you the same way you cherish them? Did you manage to get out? I am curious to know everything, but, no matter what had gone well or not, you got me, always. I’ll be right there with you, through all the highs and lows—and so will God. I really hope you are shining wherever you are right now. I hope your heart aches a bit less when you think of everything. I wish nothing but the best of the best for you. You know why? because you deserve it. all of it.

I don’t know why I am writing you this letter, but I felt like it. To say that I am sorry and that I am proud of you. I want you to know that you are the greatest treasure you’d ever have, and do not compromise your needs for anyone. ‘Anyone’: not your parents, not your siblings, not anyone. Give yourself the love you earn for, tell yourself the things you want to hear from others. After all, that’s the greatest lesson we learned in 2024, right? To stand by ourselves.

I love you. always. xoxo.

[innovacancy]

Sprints The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA 25 September 2024 more photos and some words here

[old-daylight]

Hold on!

Look how many poems you are yet to write. Look how many beautiful moons you are yet to see. Look how many beautiful pieces of music you have yet to listen. Look how many soothing letters you have yet to write to yourself. Look how many unfinished writings are looking for you to lift your pen for them. Hey, you are yet to dream the most beautiful dream of your life. You are yet to dream of living a life. You are yet to explore the beautiful adventures lying in between life and death. Hold on for a while. Hold on life unfolds itself beautifully. Hold on for a while until you realize that life is too beautiful to miss living it. You will no longer be trapped in this tough feelings for life. Hold on, you will be able to dream of living a life again. You will be able to go into the wildest imaginations of your thoughts again. Just hold on for a while.

HOLD ON, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO DREAM AGAIN. PERIODT. 

[dustedmagazine]

SPRINTS — Letter to Self (City Slang)

“This is an exploration of pain, passion, and perseverance.”

Karla Chubb, SPRINTS

After three years of playing during which they released two EPs, the Dublin-based band SPRINTS has issued their first full-length recording, Letter to Self. Rather than reaching for the catharsis of relatively nonspecific raucous vitriol, which typified their inception, SPRINTS uses the LP to zero in on emotional illness and feminist issues: bodily autonomy, shaming and sexual assault among them. Karla Chubb, the band’s singer, guitarist and principal songwriter has crafted songs that capitalize on the band’s capacity for noise-laden yet often melodically memorable music-making, and on her own ability to bellow lyrics with harrowing emotionality. She isn’t the only one shout-singing, and one of my favorite parts of the record is when what seems like one moment to be a chorus of howls will move seamlessly into harmonized, if rough hewn, vocalizing. Guitarist Colm O’Reilly, bassist Sam McCann and drummer Jack Callan are a tight unit that unerringly support the charged rhythms and distressed harmonies that exemplify SPRINTS’s sound.

“Adore, Adore, Adore” has a slow burn with sprechstimme from Chubb in the verse followed by a plaintive chorus,”They never call me b-b-beautiful, they only call me insane.” Like the best of Letter to Self, amid a thicket of distortion, and with the edge of a scream, lies a memorable hook. Another standout is “Heavy,” for which Chubb discusses emotional illness, with the lyrics, “And I can’t sleep, And I can barely breath … Do you ever feel that the room is heavy?” Double-tracked vocals give the chorus a vertiginous demeanor appropriate to the mood, as does the sliding, soaring lead guitar riff on the verse. Similarly, “Shadow of a Doubt” describes an isolated person in unrelenting nervousness. It erupts into a chorus begging for a respite from a siren in their head: “Can you help me stop the screams?”

“A Wreck (A Mess)” is about domestic abuse, in which the female narrator blames herself for being the target of male aggression. But Chubbs’s songs never sound preachy or opine easy bromides as answers for societal ills. The song is filled with nervously repetitive rhythms, gearing up to a chorus in which the narrator loses her moorings. The sentimentality found too often in the media is drenched from the song, leaving its victim isolated, with quiet feedback lulling to end it with a sense of foreboding. “Cathedral” addresses “Catholic guilt,” with a young woman being shamed about relationships and sexuality. Once again, the narrator fights back, unrepentant and willing to call out hypocrisy where she sees it.

The recording closes with the title track, which details the perseverance necessary to survive the previously detailed traumas. “I gave it all, But you were never happy ... If I took my life, would you be happy?” Chubb screams. But the outro is, from a musical standpoint, surprisingly gentle, even hushed. It closes, “I’ve always had the willing, Now I’ll find the way, Any habit can be broken, Any night can become day.” The narrator’s desire for transformation reveals a hopeful, but tenuous ending to an emotionally fraught and musically ironclad journey. One wishes more concept albums were so authentic.

Christian Carey

[thebowerypresents]

SPRINTS – Music Hall of Williamsburg – September 28, 2024

“I’m sending in the photos from the SPRINTS show a few hours ago. In case you want to include any details, the band played Letter to Self, their new single, “Feast,” and covered “Decepticon” by Le Tigre with guest singer Julia Vassallo of Slow Fiction (Slow Fiction opened the show and are touring with SPRINTS again; the two bands toured together back in March). During the final song of the set, vocalist Karla Chubb got in the crowd and crowd-surfed back to the stage.” —Edwina Hay

Photos courtesy of Edwina Hay | thisisnotaphotograph.com

@thesearenotphotographs

[spilladabalia]

Sprints - Shadow Of A Doubt

[leavemeslowly]

as i grow older, i realise more and more that emotions that have been ripping me apart all these years were never really mine. they belonged to my family members, my friends, or to people i have met just in passing. i thought i was a blank canvas. not mine but theirs. i did not know who i was. never knew it was possible to learn about myself.

there was never any point in pretending. i only learned about it after such a long, long time.

the dam had to be broken. i had to be torn apart by what was always there. splitting me open, flooding me and swallowing. i had to be destroyed to understand who i am.

i sometimes think i am not truly me anymore. that person from before stayed on the other side, and i had never gotten to know her. i had never let her live her life the way she deserved to. i wish i could wave at her. Smile, at least.

if she had stayed, maybe we would have been in a different place. maybe, instead of separating, we would have connected and been whole.

[chaunceyandchumleysdad]

I'm kicking off the weekend with my new favorite band from Dublin, Sprints, from their recently released debut album, Letter To Self.

"Can I please be an Up and Comer!"

[shelovesskiez]

To self,

Dear me I hope you'll learn new things, explore the world, don't take things too seriously, spend your time wisely, enjoy your life while livin'. I want you to cherish your loved ones and accept that maybe no one's gonna accompany you forever yet the memories you have are precious and worth keeping. Watch more sunrises,sunsets, spend more time with your loved ones, go to beaches and travel more in future. Don't hold yourself back say what you want, do whatever you like, enjoy the process while being in it. What's the point of having a heart if you end up being cold? So never lose the warmth you hold if possible,share it. I've many more things to mention but I think learning by experiencing is much better, I hope you'll experience everything. As a quote says - "Men have their weal and woe, parting and meeting and the moon has her dimness and brightness, waxing and waning" .

At one point your shadow will eventually leave you but your soul won't.

[deshommesetdesmots]

Parfois, rester immobile, ça signifie surtout ne pas reculer.

Blanche, coincée ici.