What I Packed for a 4-Day Beach Trip

Plus, a note on my "hard launch."

Last week, I did something I hadn’t done in a while: I took a quick, easy trip somewhere warm with zero ambitions beyond chilling. There was no itinerary. I didn’t explore. I hardly opened my laptop and didn’t even crack a book. I also wasn’t alone, which was perhaps the biggest plot twist…

To use Instagram-speak, my social media dispatches from the trip served as an unplanned “hard launch” of my boyfriend, which, if you are a PAID SUBSCRIBER and avid reader of this newsletter, should not have been so shocking… Cough cough. But, apparently, I skipped the required “soft launch,” i.e., sneaky, sexually charged photos of an anonymous male limb (??), and dropped a big hunky bomb without warning, instead.

emiliapetrarca

A post shared by @emiliapetrarca

The number of DMs I got in response—and their boldly explicit nature—was hilarious, flattering, and a little insane. It made me realize how much I’ve opened up my life in the last year and a half and how that makes my readers and followers feel entitled to the personal details of it.

Of course, I asked for this. I’m just digesting it all, and dragging another, more private person into this weird world is nerve-wracking. On vacation, I had a vivid nightmare in which he angrily pleaded: Enough with the photos.

Thankfully, responses to the “hard launch” have been overwhelmingly positive, including from my boyfriend, who remains unphased by the whole concept. <3 I’m very happy, and it’s nice that you’re all happy that I’m happy. I finally found a man with a full tote! I guess it’s just funny to me because I was pretty happy before, too. Last year was one of the best years of my life, and I was single for most of it. Was that so hard to believe…?

I wasn’t going to dedicate a whole newsletter to this, but there seems to be some interest… There’s no way in hellllll I’m giving away all this personal information for free, though. Below the paywall, you will find details about my trip to Rockhouse in Jamaica, including how it went and what I wore.