Becoming the Stars of Our Own Lives

Romanticizing Your Life Is Delicious, Not Delusional

June Art: Drawing & collage by Shelley Burbank. I used Prisma markers and collage. Based on a photograph by Anthony Skelaoui in Vogue, Aug. 2023 with additions of collage elements of flower and script paper.

In this issue:

• June Art

• A Letter from Shelley

• June Pappus: Becoming the Stars of Our Own Lives

• Flash Fiction: She Waited, And When He Didn’t Show

• Writing News

• What I’m Reading

• Living in Guam

A Letter from Shelley

I’m leveling up my style & romanticizing my writing desk time.

Dear Friend & Loyal Reader,

Can you believe we are halfway through 2025 already? How are things going for you so far? I so hope you are enjoying your time with meaningful work, projects, hobbies, books, family, and friends.

I’ve taken up some fitness classes and am enjoying meeting new people, even if we are just “workout” buddies a few times a week. I think C is happy to get me out of the apartment, too, so he can enjoy peace, quiet, and television of his choice. He can watch all the Yankees highlights and Sci-Fi shows he desires while I “sweat my way to fitness.”

Since I’ve been in Guam, I’ve become rather addicted to watching YouTube “challenge” videos. People doing 75 Hard. People doing 75 Soft. People making up their own challenges. My favorite by far is a young woman by the name of Natalie Marie who is challenging herself in several areas for six months: hobbies, fitness, health, beauty products, and organization. I just love her down-to-earth attitude.

In a recent episode, she listed all the things she’s “buying into” in 2025. One of them is a life-approach I dearly, dearly embrace: romanticizing your life.

I go in-depth in this month’s pappus essay. Warning: this is not short. I’m not good at the short essaying. I suggest choosing a time when you can grab a cup of coffee or tea or snack and settle in for the longer read.

I’m also sharing a flash fiction story instead of a journal prompt this month. Do you like the journal prompts? Do you use them? If you want more of them, please hit reply to this email and let me know. Otherwise, you might be getting more short stories instead of prompts. Fair warning.

XoXo,

Shelley

June Pappus

A pappus is the seed fluff drifting on a current of air, carrying the seed to fertile soil in which it can germinate. Let’s grow!

Becoming the Stars of Our Own Lives: Romanticizing Your Life is Delicious, not Delusional

It’s fun to romanticize your life. Here are some thoughts.

The Time I Cried in a Dunkin’ Donuts Parking Lot

Many years ago, my husband and I bought a house in a small, rural town in Maine. When you buy a house in Maine, you soon realize you need a pickup truck. Because we thought owning three vehicles for two drivers was excessive, and because my husband drove 108 miles a day, round-trip, for work, the truck became my mode of transportation for school library volunteering, grocery shopping, errands, and newspaper writing work travel.

The truck, an extended-cab F-150, was huge. Bright red. Much too big for my comfort.

I hated driving that thing. Oh, it was good to have the 4-wheel drive in bad weather. Also, sitting up higher than the vehicles around you has it’s perks, but maneuvering that thing into parking spaces gave me nightmares. One day I pulled into the tiny parking lot of the Biddeford Dunkin’ Donuts. When I came back to the truck, someone had parked their car very close to my passenger side door, making backing out difficult.

Reader, I cried.

Literally. Tears falling and heart thumping, I backed that truck slowly as I could and inched as close as I could to the vehicle parked behind me while turning the wheel as much as I dared. I was sure I was about to scrape one of the cars beside me. Inch. Inch. Finally, I made it, tears streaming down my face. Honestly, remembering this horrible moment, I realize I’d be fine if I never drove another gormy truck again.

However, and this is how a red F-150 relates to romanticizing one’s life, there were moments when driving this truck felt cool. I’d switch the radio to a country music station and roll the windows down on a nice summer day. I’d be wearing some cut-off jeans and a tee. The wind would blow strands of hair, escapees from my ponytail, around my face, sometimes sticking to my lipstick. I’d drape my arm out the window and sing along to Faith Hill as the truck’s tires ate up the narrow, hilly back roads of southern Maine. It was lovely.

I wasn’t delusional. I didn’t believe I was starring in a country music video. I just felt like I could be. I wasn’t pretending to be someone else. I was ENJOYING the moment, the romance of it, of being that denim-shorts-wearing woman and driving that big red truck down a country road.

Maybe it’s moments like these that drew me to storytelling in the first place. I still remember some moments from when I was a kid. Not big moments. Quiet ones. They felt . . . full. I’d be overcome with nostalgia for the moment I was still experiencing. Maybe it’s sentimentality.

I like to think it’s just part of my romantic nature. I could have channeled this romanticizing tendency into poetry or songwriting or art, but I loved stories. If I could romanticize my own life, surely I could invent characters who could experience similar moments on the page for readers to enjoy.

What is Romanticizing Your Life & How Can You Do More of It?

I missed the era when “Romanticizing Your Life” became a trend on social media. Apparently this happened during the pandemic. I’d noticed things like Cottage Core taking off and loved the aesthetic: the dreamy settings, the home-baked breads, the Victorian-esque picnics in the park.

From what I can tell, the trend might have been started by (at least it was exploded by) a TikTok influencer named Ashley Ward. In 2020, she posted a twenty-six second video of her lying on a blanket on the beach with a voice-over advising, “You have to start romanticizing your life. You have to start thinking of yourself as the main character.” This video has been liked over 542,000 times. People now talk about “main character energy.” Hashtags were spawned.

In 2022, even the New York Times published an article about it.

However, like everything trendy, there’s been push back. Creative people often embrace contrarianism. Going against the trends feels more exciting, more authentic, and often more interesting. So, as Natalie Marie (on her YouTube channel by the same name) alluded to, some people are posting about trends they are no longer buying into. Of course, when everyone starts posting about this same trend, they are buying into this new trend.

And then creative people like Natalie go in the contrarian direction and post about what they ARE buying into.

One practice she’s still buying into is the notion of romanticizing your life.

Okay, so here’s my perspective on all this. We are the stars of our own lives. I believe that romanticizing your own life, experiencing your existence as if you are the star of your own production, is playful, fun, and healthy. As far as we know for sure, this is the only life we get, or at least the only life we have right now. Romanticizing your life is one way to get the most out of it.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life . . .”

—Henry David Thoreau

Sucking all the marrow out of life. Not losing any of the flavor. Savoring.

Good ol’ Henry David Thoreau got the idea of romanticizing his life when he went to live at Walden Pond and wrote his famous book (romanticized version of reality) about living simply and meditatively. In other words, he was quite a master of mindfulness, albeit one who ate at his neighbors’ tables when the beans ran out.

For me, romanticizing is savoring. It’s noticing. It’s watching your own life unfold. It’s recognizing the small, quiet moments that make up a life. It’s also directing your life in a way that is meaningful to you. It’s appreciating what you already have, the moment you are in, the person you already are even as you work to improve and learn and grow.

Do writers actually write better in coffee shops? Maybe some do while others don’t, but I suspect many writers enjoy writing in coffee shops because they are romanticizing the fact that they are writing in a coffee shop. They “see” themselves there, all serious and tapping at the keyboard, sipping their coffees and looking around at the setting and nearby customers. Yes, it’s good people-watching, but isn’t it also about self-watching? Just a little?

Nothing wrong with it! It’s healthy!

How about folding laundry? Yes, it can be a chore, but what if you took a moment to be in the moment. Listen to the static when you pull a sock away from a shirt. Smell the fabric softener. Gather an armful of warm bed sheets straight from the dryer on a chilly winter morning. If you really want to get into it, you can even take inspiration from Marie Kondo, who, now that I think about it, also falls along the Thoreau-Ashley Ward timeline with her admonishment to “choose what sparks joy.”

It’s not that anything changes materially when you practice romanticizing your life. The change is internal. Psychological. Mindful.

No Delulus

One word of caution is this: Don’t go so far as to start pretending your are someone or that your life is something other than it is and then BELIEVING it. Delusion is when you are not able to differentiate between what is real and what is imaginary. Delusion is the opposite of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is about paying attention to what’s there. Delusion is imagining what isn’t there.

I’m not a therapist. These ideas are just my opinion and rambling thoughts. Of course if you feel yourself slipping in any way away from reality, go see a professional!

This happened to me once. I allowed myself to be influenced by a person who delved into some spiritual practices that, for me, became dangerous. While some of these practices, like meditation and Reiki, were helpful, I began to feel weird and uncomfortable and frankly, scared. This person didn’t just live in “the real world.” They believed they could do things in a kind of other dimension and that there were spiritual forces at work all around us.

Now, religion does this, too, if you take it far enough, so I’m not going to get too deep into the topic. Perhaps my evangelical childhood set up some neural pathways in my head that made it easier for me to become overly influenced. The reason doesn’t matter. At a certain point, I recognized the danger and set some boundaries.

I’m thinking of that television show YOU which involved a smart and obsessive and troubled young bookstore owner who deludes himself about his relationship with a pretty, semi-talented writer. He ends up taking some horrible, shocking steps to make reality jibe with his delulu. Not cool.

10 Ways to Romanticize Your Life

If you are looking to romanticize your life, here are some ideas that might work for you.

• Journal. Maybe not every day, but when a moment strikes you, capture it in your journal. Make writing in your journal a romanticized moment, too. Find a pretty notebook. Get a pen that pleases you. Spray the pages with perfume. Press flowers in there, if you want. Draw. Add ribbons. Or go more masculine with a leather book with the wrap-around leather thongs. Write poetry or lyrics. Doodle.

• Make your bed first thing in the morning and straighten up your room. Smooth your bedspread and plump your throw pillows. Take a moment to enjoy the pretty appearance of your freshly-made bed. Pick the dirty clothes off the floor and put them in the hamper. Remove dirty water glasses from your bedside table. Arrange items on the table so they are in a pleasing configuration. Enjoy the sensation of having already accomplished something that day, of taking care of yourself and your space. When you return to the room later in the day, you will walk into a neat and organized room. Even better? When the weekend rolls around, you won’t have a disaster area to clean up.

• When you are doing some mundane, simple task like washing dishes or folding the laundry, find some way of making it more romantic. Choose a pleasant/sustainable dish soap. Hand-knit or crochet a dishcloth or two or buy one you like at a craft fair. Put on some of your favorite music and notice all the sensations. The scents. The feel of the water, bubbles, fabric, etc. I like to listen to Patsy Cline when I vacuum, dust, and do any sort of deep cleaning. It’s like I’m channeling a 1950s housewife without the crinoline skirt and rolled hair. (There’s one chore I’ll never be able to romanticize and that’s cleaning the bathroom. Taking a bubble BATH? Yes. Cleaning the bathtub? Sorry. Just gross. Nothing romantic about it. Prove me wrong!)

• A tea or coffee or cocktail hour ritual. Set a time of your day when you enjoy a beverage and turn it into a romantic scene in the movie of your life. Have your special mug or glass, your favorite fixings, a pretty cloth or paper napkin, maybe some flowers nearby. Bake some scones or cookies. Put together a pretty charcuterie board. Add music if that suits you. Share this time with a friend or loved one or keep it as a solitary, special time in your day that is just for you.

• When you go for a walk, notice the world around you. Are birds singing? How does the air feel on your skin? What can you hear and smell? Check out the trees and flowers and shrubs and gardens and walkways and window boxes and storefronts. What do you think about your neighborhood or the neighborhood in which you are walking? Oh! You are walking on the beach? Perfect romanticizing your life vibes.

• Cooking can be a pleasurable experience if we observe how we are slicing the carrots, chopping the onions, rinsing the lettuce leaves. Hear the sizzle of the butter in the pan before you toss in the onions and garlic? Sniff the lemon before you squeeze the juice over the veggies. Wear a cute apron! Carefully arrange the food on the plate the way a chef in a fancy restaurant would do. Wipe the edges. Serve your food to the table like you’re a master chef. Sit down to eat your meal as if a master chef presented it to you. Savor, savor, savor.

• Glow up your skincare routine. This is something I need to work on myself. Instead of blearily slathering on some night cream and calling it good, consider taking your time to gently exfoliate and spread the cream or serum over your face with the tips of your fingers, appreciating the cool or warm sensation. Use a pretty headband or cap to hold your hair back. Enjoy the scent of the products. Appreciate your beautiful, human face. Look at how you are aging. Think of how amazed your younger self would be to see herself now, older and wiser and with sharper cheekbones.

• Read outside your home. Take that new beach book to the beach, slather on some coconut-scented sunscreen, and enjoy the immersion. Pluck a classic from your shelves, pack a picnic, and spend some time reading in the park like you are a character from a E.M. Forster novel. Take an hour or two to peruse the shelves of your favorite bookstore and then take your newly-purchased tome to the coffee shop or nearby cafe. Indulge in a fancy coffee while you read. (I’m giddy just thinking about this!)

• Get together with friends. While you are with them, appreciate their quirks and loveliness. Be attentive to their words and feelings. Share your own ideas and stories while being open to their opinions. Focus on fun and sharing and laughter, not changing anyone’s mind or influencing them about anything. Just appreciate and love your people in that moment.

• Snuggle with your partner. You know how sometimes when it’s a special occasion like an anniversary or a dinner out that you’ve been planning for awhile and everything just seems a little flatter than you expected? What if you also took the regular, everyday moments to snuggle up with our loved one on the couch and really looked at them? Listened to the timbre of their voice? Noticed how they’ve changed over the years and yet are still the same person? Cool, right? Light a candle. Turn on a favorite old album (yes, you can still do that. It’s not all playlists all the time) and pour some wine or non-boozy beverage you both enjoy. Reminisce about your past. Recall your journey from young lovers to older ones. Be thankful for the world you’ve created together. For your joined life. For your time together on this earth.

Maybe romanticizing your life can’t happen every day, but it might be fun to try it out now and again. Experiment with it. If you end up feeling anxious, stop! If, however, you enjoy those moments, keep practicing. There are worse habits.

Flash Fiction

I wrote this flash fiction using this month’s artwork as my prompt, something I like to do with other artists’ and illustrators’ work sometimes. Who was the woman with the scarlet lips in the scarlet wrap? Why was she so dressed up? Why did she look pensive? Why only one earring? LOL. I didn’t answer that last question, but this is the story that bubbled up for me. Hope you enjoy! Please hit reply and let me know if you liked it. And feel free to use the art as your writing prompt this month.

She Waited, And When He Didn’t Show

#womensfiction #flashfiction

She waited, and when he didn’t show, she gathered the full, heavy skirt of her scarlet gown and made her way up the flight of steps to her balcony seat overlooking the parterre. Below, patrons slid past one another, men in tuxedos and women in beautiful finery.

She studied the program and the crystal light clusters hanging from the ceiling. Ever since the scene in her favorite film, Moonlighting, the one where Cher and Nicholas Cage fell in love to the timeless arias of La Boheme, she’d dreamed of dressing up one night and going to the Metropolitan Opera House to see a performance. Now, here she was, and though it stung that Patrick had stood her up, she felt a heady mixture of adventure, anticipation, and delight swirling inside of her.

It didn’t matter about the boy.

A few days earlier, she’d met him at a work function, a marketing meet and greet with social media influencers. Patrick had something like 200K followers across several accounts. His schtick was silly book reviews while doing sports: skateboarding, snowboarding, golf. Anything to show off his abs.

Carrying a small appetizer plate in one hand and a drink in the other, he approached the small cocktail table where she stood sipping a watermelon gin and tonic. “Hello there,” he said. He offered her a beet and feta appetizer skewered with arugula and a walnut in a stack. “Beet salad on a stick?”

He had a crooked smile and great hair. She laughed and shook her head.

“Name?” He popped the appetizer into his mouth and studied her as he chewed.

“Lainey. Lainey Bishop,” she told him. He suggested they procure her a second gin and tonic. She tried one of the appetizers. He told her he was from Boston and that he’d be in the city through the weekend.

An idea surfaced. She’d purchased two tickets to the opera hoping to cajole a friend into joining her, but he was fun and from out of town. Maybe he’d enjoy an evening at the Met. “I have an extra ticket to La Boheme on Thursday evening. I don’t suppose you’d like to join me?”

“You know, I’ve never been to the opera.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his trousers, gave the idea a few seconds of thought. “Sounds like something I should experience. Let’s do it, Newyorkle.”

She grinned. He’d already given her a nickname. Considering the G & T’s and the beet sticks, you might even say they’d had dinner and drinks, too.

Life moved fast in the city.

The agreed on a time to meet in the Met’s lobby and exchanged numbers. When he didn’t answer any of her texts over the next few days, she figured he’d changed his mind. She found she really didn’t care. He’d been a bit narcissistic anyway. Not someone she really wanted to get to know. Maybe he’d sensed that. Or maybe he’d never really intended to meet her at all.

The room was almost full, and she expected the curtain to rise any moment. Anticipating, she leaned forward. The orchestra tuned their instruments. The hushed chatter of the audience rose and fell in waves. —Shelley Burbank, June 2025

Writing News

I’ll be using this graphic to advertise the Strawberry Moon Mystery novella . . . when I figure out how I’m going to offer it to readers. I think it will be on KDP, but I’m scared of the learning curve.

If you’ve been following my writing journal (www.shelleyburbank.wordpress.com) at all, you probably know that I’m making real progress on the novella “Strawberry Moon Mystery.” I’ve written over 8,000 words this month and am one or two scenes away from finishing this second draft.

I know how many words I’ve written because I’ve moved my writing to a word processing and author system tool, called Novlr. Here there’s a writing studio. Novlr is also a learning environment for writing craft, provides a platform for authors’ websites with even the lowest tier of paid subscription, and is coming up with new and better ways to publish and market Novlr authors’ books.

So far, I’m really enjoying the platform and have become a lifetime/co-owner of the company. That’s right. They’re building it on a coop model. Pretty cool. The pro membership includes ProWritingAid proofing. The planning area gives you the option of setting up cards that represent the chapters or sections of your piece which allows you to plan, arrange, and rearrange as needed. The analytics section tracks words written, words deleted, days you’ve worked, writing streaks, and allows you to set daily and monthly goals.

There are also free lessons on craft and other writerly topics, articles, and a Discord community. (I’ve tried the writing sprint…fun!) I haven’t yet downloaded my work or created an ePub from the studio, so I can’t speak to that yet. But I’m excited by this product. Lately I seem to be on a positive streak with writing products after several years of missteps (hello stupid plugins).

If anyone wants to try Novlr Pro out for 30 days, use my code and explore the site. This helps me earn points as a co-owner. Code is FS-TSP-DD.

As usual, I’m writing every other week on Type M for Murder. Here’s one on focus.

I’m still keeping my social media to a minimum, but as I finish up Strawberry Moon, I’ll most likely have to spend more time on socials to spread the word that it’s available. It’s very unclear whether or not being on social media moves the needle on sales, but as I’ve used it for both Final Draft and Night Moves, I’m somewhat worried about how I might make sure all my readers know about the novella and find new readers, hopefully, without my Facebook and Instagram accounts.

So . . . I’ll use them for marketing even as I long to ditch them completely from my life limit my time spent scrolling.

What I’m Reading in June

I’m focusing on Women’s Fiction this summer. So far I’ve read an older novel by Danielle Steel called The Mistress. I’m kind of dying to recreate the book cover in a photo because I have a dress that exact green color. And then maybe do one like Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Speaking of TJR, I’ll be reading her new novel about women in the 1980s U.S. space program, Atmosphere. I have Gillian French’s Shaw Connelly Lives to Tell cued up and sent some people to her author event at the Bangor Public Library this week in my stead.

Living in Guam

I snapped this pic of an almost too vivid to believe sunset from our balcony a couple weeks ago. This is unfiltered.

We continue to acclimate to life on Guam. I’ve joined a couple of fitness classes at a nearby location (keeping some details private so if you know, please keep that to yourself) which gets me out of the apartment and shaking my bootie twice a week.

I signed up for the library adult summer reading program, and C and I went to a Music Bingo event on base. We are in the transition period between dry and rainy seasons and are told to expect a few typhoons in summer and fall, no telling if they will be big or small but we need to stock up on bottled water and nonperishable foods just in case.

So far, we had one week that was fairly cloudy/rainy but since then the sun has been out almost every day. The humidity only gets more oppressive, not less, but I’m finding it manageable, enjoyable even. I guess the tropical climate agrees with my older self.

We are going to try out a Chinese restaurant tonight for our Friday dinner. I’ll probably post about our experience on Shelley’s Journal.

Happy June, Lovelies! Enjoy your summer (winter if you are in the southern hemisphere) and stay healthy, calm, focused, and beautiful.