Hello, hello! It truly has been a very long time since I last checked in here. Does anyone still read this thing? Around 2016, I turned my focus from this blog to my YouTube channel, which is now mostly dormant. And I have Timothée Chalamet to blame for that.

In one of the (many) Timothée Chalamet interviews I watched or listened to, he spoke in what I would consider an abstract way of his fear of being "boring." I still don't feel I 100% grasp what he means by "boring," but what he said got me thinking: are my videos helpful? Do they add value? Are they entertaining, if nothing else?

And even before I fell down the TC rabbit hole, I'd long thought my videos were becoming less and less interesting, helpful, valuable. Simply said, I was running out of original, fresh ideas. There are (and were, before I even started) so many people doing the same thing I'm doing on the internet, and I don't feel that I need to be adding onto that.

Timothée, in another interview, stated that he uses social media as "another expression of self" rather than self-promotion. John Mayer shared a similar, if not less positive, view of social media back in 2011 when he quit Twitter. (Never fear: not only is he back on Twitter and other forms of social media now, but he hosts a mostly weekly Instagram show called "Current Mood.") John made what I thought were very valid points about social media taking over one's mental energy and draining them of their creativity.

Overall, it seems there is a growing sentiment towards going back to a simpler time. Natural beauty. Whole, organic foods. And, maybe more for environmental reasons than anything else, a greater focus on reducing and reusing rather than recycling.

In a paragraph, in the three years since I last really wrote in here, I've: moved back to New York City, started a new job, seen Harry Styles in concert!, gone back to London!, seen John Mayer in concert!, visited the Canadian Rockies! (2017 was an exciting year), gotten my own place, visited Washington, D.C., seen Gary Clark, Jr. in concert, seen James Bay in concert. Most of which has been documented on my Instagram.

But in my everyday life, I've pared down my beauty "routine" to a place I'm mostly happy with, in terms of number of products and "cleanliness." Since 2013, I've worked on switching over to more natural beauty products, and while I'm not 100% there yet, I would say 80% of the products I use are free of chemicals that I find questionable. This year, I've also made more of an effort to consume things in a more sustainable way, whether that's in the foods I buy and eat, or the materials of the products I buy. It's early days yet, but I've been earnestly seeking ways to cut down on the plastic that comes into my life, and I've begun collecting my food waste and dropping it off with GrowNYC every week to create compost.

And in my everyday life, to go back to Timothée Chalamet and John Mayer, I've missed creating. Writing, mostly. If you haven't already noticed, my blog is called "Maxine Writes." There are some things about me that will probably never change: I will always love consuming pop culture, I will always love food, I will always love music, I will always love traveling, and I will always love writing.

So here we are.

I don't know how many people are reading or have ever really read this blog, but I'm writing in here because I love writing, and that's really all that matters, right?

I hope to make this a regular thing, but I want it to be mindful writing rather than content that's pushed out for the sake of this blog being active. And I don't really know what form this blog is going to take. Will it be about clean beauty, sustainability, music, Timothée Chalamet, life in general ... all of the above? I guess only time will tell.

But thank you for reading, if you're still with me at the end of this long soliloquy, or after years of being away. Thank you, thank you, thank you.