Fancy meeting you here.
Well, hello there. I’m Kimberly Harrington (above, left). Not Kim. Never Kim.
I’m a creative director, a writer, an author. I’m a curious overthinker who’s creating a new life and feeling her feelings and I’m inviting you to come along, lord help me. I’m a mother. A woman over 50. An ex-wife. Also: A dumb bitch. A relentless trying-to-be-better-er. A born-again slut. And a life-long late bloomer.
I didn’t have kids until my late-30s. I didn’t become a full-time copywriter until I was 35. I didn’t start focusing on my own writing until I was 47. I didn’t publish my first book until I was 50. I didn’t have a satisfying, varied, and truly hot (non-monogamous) sex life until I was 53. And Cheryl Strayed posted this comment on my newsletter about turning 54: “I just love your writing so much. And this one is especially spectacular.”
My work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Cut, and McSweeney’s, amongst others. Some pieces I’ve written have gone viral, been the Most Read on the publications above, landed me on best-of / end-of-year lists. Some have even resulted in invitations to appear on CNN, PBS Newshour and public radio, which I’m sure just coincidentally also marked the first time my friends ever bragged about knowing me. As a copywriter and creative director I’ve worked for ad agencies, design studios, non-profits and big brands you know including Nike, Apple, and Netflix.
I’ve written two books, AMATEUR HOUR about motherhood and BUT YOU SEEMED SO HAPPY about marriage and my non-traditional separation. I will not be writing a third book about this new life of mine. This newsletter is it. I’ve found that writing about my life in book form — while seemingly thrilling and a privilege and all that jazz —breaks my brain and makes me miserable, and all for not very much money. It’s not great! At least for me personally! I’d love to not do that again!
Writing this newsletter, where I have more control and flexibility (and can delete whatever I want), for an audience that wants to hear from me, has been eleventy thousand percent better than dealing with the publishing industry, Twitter, non-newsletter comment sections, and Goodreads. Fuck Goodreads.
When you pay for a subscription it shows that you value my voice, my brain, my work, and you want me to keep this show running. That’s all fine and good, you might be thinking, but what’s in it for me? What’s in it for you? Wow. Do you even hear yourself?
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PAID subscribers ($5/mo or $55/year) will get those same posts PLUS:
• Access to the full HONEY STAY SUPER archive
• New essays on more private and intimate topics
• Previously unpublished work cut from my first two books, AMATEUR HOUR and BUT YOU SEEMED SO HAPPY
• Writing that isn’t published anywhere else including new essays, humor pieces, opinion pieces and timely work, and What’s Sticky? posts
• The ability to submit a question for Ask Me Anything
• Commenting privileges on subscriber-only posts
FOUNDING members ($100/year)
• This is a subscription that allows you to support my work by kicking in some extra dough, allowing me to do more of it. Do more work, I mean. Not do more dough. But I will totally do more dough if that’s what you’re into.
Questions? Ask!
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for reading me. Thank you for sharing posts and sending me nice notes and supporting my work by emailing it to your buds with a comment that I suspect is something along the lines of: “THIS”. And special thanks to the readers who’ve reached out many times in the past year and said, essentially, hey ding-dong, I’d pay for a subscription if you ever decide to do that, derp.
