1: Something from nothing

A long-winded introduction to Thanks, We Hate It

Haley: I approached Anna a few weeks ago with the seed of an idea—a coherent thought I kept circling back to amidst all of the confusion eating into my mental real estate. I wanted for us to write in tandem again. I didn’t care what that looked like—just that we would be back to making something from nothing again and holding one another accountable in the process.

To tell the truth, neither one of us was doing too ~great~ at this time. COVID-19 bled into everything, unsettling my life like it has the lives of so many others. I was laid off from my bookselling job in March, rejecting my offer to assistant-teach English in Japan with the JET Program and deferring my admission to the University of Montana’s MFA Program in Poetry soon after in May. With everything I’d been working toward for a year off the table, I’ve been relatively adrift ever since, unsure of how to fill this year of life in the midst of a global pandemic. I’m tutoring writing again, but I’ve spent months now hunting for full-time work, my future a vague and uncertain thing. While I am lucky in the most important ways—my loved ones are well and I have an unbelievable support system behind me as I sort my life out—all of the Ls were beginning to add up. 

Okay. Now I am panning the camera back to this slightly more directionless version of myself asking my best friend to go out on a creative limb with me. In spite of all of the noise closing in on us at that point in our lives, we found a bit of quiet together at that moment. What mattered was that we had something to work toward—something productive, familiar, and shared. We began flexing our atrophied creative muscles, rediscovering parts of ourselves that had been scattered for a long while. We were going to write together again.

Anna: This is the first time I have opened a word document for any reason other than working on my dissertation or job applications for at least a few months, and it’s both odd and relieving. Last autumn, I moved to London to do my master’s at the London School of Economics. Regardless of the pandemic, it was a tumultuous period of adjustment. When lockdown was no longer a whispered possibility but a scary reality, I made the decision to stay in the UK at my boyfriend’s house just outside of London. I finished off the semester completely online, all of my friends and family an ocean away. Finishing a dissertation and a degree amidst the instability was a challenge I had not foreseen when I first arrived in the UK. Now, I am looking for a job that will hopefully sponsor me to stay in London, but I am aware that the obstacles in my way are many. I want to acknowledge that although it has been a difficult year, I am extremely fortunate and privileged in most ways. My family and friends are healthy and safe, and knowing that makes the distance more bearable.

When the pandemic hit, it became clear it would be a long time before Haley and I saw each other again (7 months and counting!). While I will say I miss spending quality time with her, our relationship actually transitioned pretty effortlessly from in-person to Facetime. During one of our recent calls, Haley suggested that we start a joint writing project. Both of us want to write more and build portfolios, but beyond that, I just miss our own little discourses and hearing her thoughts in long form.

H: Anna and I have been platonic partners in life and writing since our friendship began five years ago at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Anna’s decision to transfer into my Masterpieces of French Literature and Culture course cemented our friendship not even a week into our freshman year of college. From that point onward, we were inseparable. 

A: We have been best friends for just about five years now (happy anniversary, babe), but I honestly can’t even really remember what my life was like without her. From the start, everything clicked so instantly, so seamlessly, that it felt like we both had pieces of the other in us and we finally knew who they belonged to. Finding someone with such similar passions and interests while I was on this weird and often uncomfortable cusp of adulthood was a revelation. We would talk about politics, art, books, childhood, existential fears—everything. Haley, maybe more than anyone, has taught me so much about the world and myself.

H: The feeling is incredibly mutual. Part of what originally fed—and still feeds!—this friendship is our shared love of writing and literature. We blackened Moleskine pages with our chicken scratch, spent too long talking about lines in novels or poems that made us pause, and endured long-term love-hate relationships with essay writing. 

A: As little fledgling writers, we would read each other’s poems and short stories, encouraging the other to write more or submit them somewhere. I remember reading her poem “How to Butcher Poultry” and feeling like I had been hit by a train. It was mind-blowing knowing that she could write like that, so much so that I don’t think I could properly convey at first how much I loved it. She employs imagery and vibrant word choice so masterfully, every single time.

H: Anna writes toward her own experiences with an unabashed sense of vulnerability in her essays, poetry, and even in her academic work. To someone like me, a writer who often engages with the personal through a lens of abstraction, she writes with an unparalleled sense of bravery and openness. Anna’s incisive self-reflection and honesty serve to move any reader lucky enough to come across her work.

Eventually, we both pursued majors in English – Creative Writing, served as peer writing tutors in the Writing Fellows Program, and became a part of the masthead at Illumination Journal, UW-Madison’s Undergraduate Journal of Humanities. During our three years at Illumination, we grew from digital staff writers to Essay and Poetry Editors, our writing growing up with us as we published op-eds, poems, short fiction, and reviews. While each deadline may have felt like a gun held to our head at the time, the structure they provided forced us to write consistently. Now that we’re no longer writing at gunpoint, we’ve found that we’re hardly writing at all. 

At its core, Thanks, We Hate It is a shared pretext to keep us writing. We want to forcibly jumpstart our productivity and creativity by holding ourselves to writing on a schedule. We look forward to the day it will not be a pretext, and we’re getting closer to that day by just beginning again. In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that the working title of this creative endeavor was Thots with Thoughts from day one. If that tells you anything about us and how we are approaching sharing our writing (and, thus, ourselves) with the world, it should be that we are not trying to take this (and, again, ourselves) too seriously. One of our main goals is to continue building our writing portfolios through this process, so changing the title to something slightly more professional was a natural consequence of practicality. Thanks, We Hate It feels like us, reflecting our current state of mind as well as the state of the world. While there is a lot to hate, we are working to accept the things we cannot change and change the things we cannot accept inside and out of the confines of this project. And that’s on ~practicing gratitude~.

Beyond this, Thanks, We Hate It will also serve as a new form of correspondence in our long-distance friendship. Consistent and meaningful communication has always formed the foundation of our relationship, but with 4,034 miles and a global pandemic between us, it has never been more important. By opening up the insular discussions we have one-on-one to a slightly wider audience, we hope to allow ourselves and others to feel less alone during these (sorry in advance!) unprecedented times. Externalizing our thoughts and feelings in this way will require us to become accustomed to consistently sharing the often-silent parts of ourselves, practicing vulnerability and hopefully connecting to others as we seek to do so. 

A: So, here we are. Because truly what the world needs more of in these trying times is the navel-gazing of two twenty-somethings. In all seriousness, I hope this can be a space to flex our creative muscles and discuss things that we care about. Hopefully, you care about them, too. 

H: So, here’s what you can expect from us. Thanks, We Hate It will be a weekly newsletter available each Wednesday. We will alternate who writes week by week, putting out our own thoughts and responding to the previous writer’s output in turn. Thanks, We Hate It will consist of freeform writing—anything from essays, op-eds, reviews, and recipes to creative writing (if we’re feeling nasty). We may even potentially repurpose our previously published or unpublishable material! Who’s to say? Not you! We will also feature “Things We Don’t Hate,” a round-up of foods, music, books, activities, places, podcasts, films, TV shows, video games, quotes, intrusive thoughts, what-have-you that kept us company that given week. While our interests intersect a great deal, you can expect a good amount of variation here week to week as, contrary to popular belief, we are not the same person.

A: As time passes, I see more and more how different we are in our tastes and personalities. I was blinded a bit at the beginning of our friendship by how many things we had in common, and I almost was nervous that if any of our interests or ideas didn’t match that it would somehow threaten this beautiful thing we were cultivating. Instead, it has been so rewarding to support each other in the areas we differ in, and still the ones we share, too! While we both majored in English, Haley also minored in Graphic Design (check out our lovely logo!). She is an incredibly talented artist and appreciates art in all of its forms. Now that we’ve graduated, she is looking to possibly pursue an MFA in Creative Writing and/or go into publishing, copywriting, or communications. Beyond studies and career prospects, she has the best music taste and knowledge of anyone I know and has introduced me to more albums than I can count. Actually, she has the best taste in pretty much everything. Haley possesses this sharp instinct for the best of the best—the kind of writing, music, movies, books, and more that change your life a little bit. I trust her recommendation more than just about anyone else’s.  

On the other hand, I double-majored in International Studies, focusing specifically on culture and globalization. I tried to combine my undergraduate interests in grad school, culminating in the master’s program in Media and Communications that I just finished at LSE. Now that I’m done, I am balancing my existential crises with applying to jobs in media, journalism, and publishing. Other ways in which Haley and I differ:

• I am vegan; Haley is not (don’t hate her—she is doing her best!).

• Along those lines, I love cooking and reading good food writing. (H: Anna is essentially a chef de cuisine; she is being modest) Haley is more of a utilitarian chef (see: green smoothies and Maruchan ramen) but an adventurous and appreciative eater!

• I like to party until the wee hours of the morning; Haley (usually) must be enticed to join me.

• I live in London (for now); Haley lives in Minnesota (for now). ~Everything changes~

• I watch more TV shows; Haley watches more films (yes, Haley changed this from “movies” to “films” because she is an asshole).

• I am a Sagittarius; Haley is a Capricorn. We are both fun, functional, and dysfunctional in our own ways.

• I am terrible at singing; Haley isn’t. (H: DEBATABLE) ((A: It’s not))

• I often gravitate toward music like rap, hyperpop, urbano, R&B, and reggaeton, and Haley is more inclined to listen to indie, rock, folk, new wave, and lo-fi. 

Try to spot the differences between us week by week! A fun challenge!

H: Ultimately, Thanks, We Hate It serves as a way for us to push one another to consistently create while celebrating the work we put into maintaining a friendship born out of and bolstered by writing. Finding someone in this world like Anna, whose outlook on life and creative work both aligns with my own and encourages me to expand as a writer and person, has changed me for the better. We are aiming to continue to change for the better by providing structure for our mutual personal and creative growth, inviting others in, and holding ourselves accountable in the process.

If what we’re trying to do here resonates with you—or you’re unendingly kind and want to support us regardless or you want to bear witness to our potential writerly downfall or you’re curious to see whether or not we can keep this up—please stick around. We’re not writing in a vacuum—we’re viewing this as a correspondence, and we would be incredibly gratified if you corresponded with us. You’re more than welcome to crash with us in this shared space indefinitely as we navigate living and writing in tandem during these strange and very hate-able times.