Hi! If you found your way here, welcome — I am genuinely glad you came.

In fact, ff you have made it this far you are either genuinely curious about what this newsletter is, or you are stalling on something else, and either way I respect it.

Here is what Aspirationally Yours is: a weekly letter about the life you imagine and the life you have, written from somewhere in the middle of the gap. Three things, mostly. The first is dream rooms... curated rooms with three versions of every product, the dream (the one you would buy if you had unlimited time and a different personality), the doable (what a person with a normal budget and a job actually buys), and the deeply realistic (what you already own, or could replicate from what is in your house). The second is honest book reviews from someone who refuses to call anything a tour de force, will tell you when she gave up halfway through, and recommends books she did not personally love when they are right for the right reader. The third is dispatches... what I am learning, figuring out, getting wrong, and occasionally getting right, including the slow-moving project of moving across an ocean. More on that as it unfolds.

Here is what it is not: a curated lifestyle brand. I do not have one of those. I have a corner of a couch where the dog has flattened a cushion into a permanent dog-shaped indent, and I have made peace with this. The aspirational part of the title is doing real work. I am not the woman in the dream rooms. I am the woman writing letters to her.

The practical bits, kept short. One letter a week, straight to your inbox. No paywall on the regular posts. No upsell two emails in. No “limited-time offer” panic-emails for things you did not ask for. If this turns out not to be your thing, the unsubscribe link is right there at the bottom and I will not take it personally... there are a lot of newsletters in the world and we are all doing our best to keep our inboxes from collapsing in on themselves.

If that sounds like something you want a weekly version of, the subscribe button is around here somewhere.

Aspirationally yours, Jess

Why subscribe

Because you read the About page this far, which means you are at least curious. Subscribing gets you the weekly letter in your inbox, plus full access to the archives (which is currently small but will grow, the way archives do).

The inbox part

Every new letter goes straight to your email. No algorithm deciding whether you get to see it, no “we miss you” prompts if you take a week off from reading. If you would rather read on your phone without the email-app middleman, the Substack app handles that, and reads aloud if you would rather listen than read.

The community part

There is a comments section under each post for the readers who like to talk back. I read them. I reply when I have something to say. It is small and slow and that is the way I like it.

To learn more about the tech platform that powers this publication, visit Substack.com.