The New Normal

Building a life after changing one.

Last Thursday, in the back of an Uber somewhere in Queens, I completely forgot where I was. Not metaphorically — literally. For a solid five to ten seconds, I had no idea where I was, where I was headed, or why. After four straight weeks of planes, trains, cars, weddings, and hotels, my brain finally short circuited.

I (obviously) figured it out, but it made me so genuinely excited for today, July 7th: the first day in a month I get to live a semi-normal day.

Semi-normal, because what is normal when you’ve spent virtually no time in the city you just moved to? That’s something I still have to figure out. The past few months have been about changing my life. The next few are going to be about building one.

This newsletter has always been my little corner of the internet to document what I’m wearing, loving, and learning, but much like my life I’d like for it to have a little more structure go forward. Some weeks I’ll talk about what it is I'm actually doing behind the scenes here at October Eleventh. Other weeks it'll be dating in your 30s, making friends in a new city, hosting parties, finding a decent croissant in Dallas, or whatever seemingly insignificant moment I've managed to overthink into an essay that week.

There will be fashion, of course. Travel diaries, when they happen. But mostly, this will be about the everyday things that make up a life — the routines we build, the homes we create, the friendships we invest in, the careers we navigate, the cities we grow into, and all the little decisions that shape who we become along the way.

Every Wednesday, my hope is that you’ll leave with one idea worth thinking about and a handful of things to consider bringing into your own life.

So, without further ado...

Loose Threads

The odds and ends from my week: recommendations, observations, and whatever else is taking up space in my brain.

• Regretfully, watching Love Island USA. I'm too far in to stop now, but I would like the record to show that it’s the worst season of this show I have ever watched (and I have watched a lot). A pathological liar named Sincere? You’ve officially lost me, LIUSA.

• I'm hosting a New York-themed housewarming party this weekend, and I'm so excited to be making Ina Garten's B&W cookies for the second time (they're that good) and attempting a DIY version of the famous American Bar chopped salad.

• And, of course, I have to share some of my wedding month MVPs:

  • Stuart Weitzman Lexington Mule 85s

  • My digital camera (Canon G7X Mark iii — it really does take the best pictures)

  • Anna aka Honey I Baked (@honeyibaked)

  • Laura Mercier Setting Powder

  • The song WHERE IS MY HUSBAND! — a bop we will be hearing on wedding dance floors for decades to come

  • You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love — great plane soundtrack

  • My Khaite x Oliver Peoples sunnies

  • The physical therapist who dry needled my neck after week three

  • Maybelline SuperStay Lipstick (full wedding guest makeup routine here)

So You Uprooted Your Entire Life. Now What?

There’s a fantasy we all indulge in when life is about to change: that the change itself will change us. The new job will make us more ambitious, the relationship will make us happier, the apartment will make us more organized. We start treating major life events like they’re software updates. As if packing enough boxes or changing zip codes will automatically download a better version of ourselves.

And, if it wasn’t already obvious, I called it a fantasy for a reason.

After quitting my job, packing up eight years of my life in New York, moving back to Dallas, and then immediately spending four consecutive weekends at weddings all across the country, I finally woke up today with nowhere to be. No airport, no hotel checkout, no suitcase sitting open on my bedroom floor — just a normal Tuesday that should have felt like the beginning of my new life, but instead felt just like kind of another day.

I hit snooze more times than I should. I scrolled Instagram before getting out of bed. I made my same lazy morning coffee (Stok cold brew + Chobani sweet cream creamer). And I sat down to write this newsletter, as I do most Tuesdays.

We love stories of reinvention because they’re cinematic. Someone quits their job, moves to Paris, cuts their hair into a bob, and suddenly becomes the more effortlessly cool version of themself they’ve always wanted to be.

Real life is much less glamorous. The milestones may change, but the ordinary doesn't. You still have anxiety-riddled Mondays at your dream job. You still have laundry to fold in your new apartment. And you still have moments where you wonder if you're doing any of it right.

Changing your life happens all at once: accepting the offer, booking the flight, signing the lease. Building your life happens much more quietly: finding the coffee shop you’ll go to everyday, learning your way around the nearest grocery store, buying flowers because you decided that’s something people with lovely homes do, and eventually realizing you’ve become one of those people. It’s taking the evening walk, joining a book club, learning your neighbors’ names: things that would never make it on an Instagram grid but, collectively, they’re what lives are made up of.

And that’s the part I’m excited about — finding my favorite neighborhood spots, hosting friends in my new apartment, and creating routines that make a new(ish) city start feeling like mine.

None of it will happen overnight. And, honestly, that’s for the best. The life you build slowly has a way of feeling more permanent than the one you try to create all at once.

So maybe reinvention was never really the goal. Maybe it’s just making enough small decisions that, one day, you look around and realize this is your coffee shop, your neighborhood, your people. Not because everything changed overnight, but because, little by little, you built a life that feels unmistakably like your own.

Before next Wednesday . . .

A small invitation for the week ahead. Not homework, not self-improvement, just something to make your life a little richer.

This week, try a new coffee shop. Break your routine a little: order something you wouldn’t normally, leave your headphones at home, or bring a book instead of your laptop.

Routines are built one ordinary Tuesday at a time. Maybe this will become part of your new normal.