Emily For President For Ever

5 years of hits!!!!

Today is officially Emily For President’s fifth birthday, anniversary, solar return. Five years is a longer time than I thought, and I feel differently than I expected to feel.

I started E4P in my childhood bedroom. I had been miserable during the pandemic and launching this newsletter was my first step towards building the life I wanted after the world started to open up again. 2021 was also the year I moved to New York City and started working at what I thought was my dream job, and I spent so much of that year trying to fall in love with life in the way I thought you were supposed to in adulthood. Perhaps my life doesn’t look radically different now, especially to external eyes, but I feel like a different person than I was back then. I was 23, still a kid but determined to be taken seriously.

In the process of growing up, I let a lot of people tell me who I was and treat me accordingly. But I had E4P and my friends, and that gave me a place to work through a lot of weird emotions I was feeling about myself and the world. It allowed me to offer the most sincere part of myself to others—the part that earnestly and entirely cares what each of you do and have to say—and so I mean it every time I say I love E4P with my whole heart. It’s a gift that has never stopped giving, that has united or reunited me with some of the most incredible people, and that is not something I have ever or will ever take for granted. In times like these, when the ruling entities want us isolated and scared, finding community with others can offer resources, support, or just simply kindness.

That’s why I don’t want to give up Emily For President, at least not completely. But I’m not 23 anymore. I no longer feel like I have something to prove, and I also no longer have most Monday nights free. I love being nosy on main and researching literally everything always all of the time, but putting together E4P at the cadence I have been releasing it over the past five years (for the most part…) is just not feasible anymore. I know I don’t need to explain any of this to anyone, but I feel the need to hold myself accountable because that’s how E4P is for me—it has always been this serious.

I’m excited to see what the next five years hold for me because the last five have been transformative. Perhaps not always in the ways that I wanted, as I’ve learned a lot of lessons that have really fucking hurt, but hey, c’est la vie. Through whatever, though, I do want to still maintain this newsletter forever and ever, which is why this is not a goodbye so much as a see you a little less frequently. And let’s be honest: you’re welcome for that.

Happy birthday, Emily For President.

---