A celebration of teenage angst
Recommended reading for a walk down memory lane
Firstly, a friendly PSA that I am hosting this event in Dublin on 8 May 2025. Together, we’re going to take a walk back in time to our teenage years.
Remember that notebook you had? The one where you drew the letter ‘S’ in that super cool angular way? The one where you poured out your hormone-fuelled heart and soul into what you know now to be the cringiest poetry/diary entries/song lyrics known to humanity? Or maybe you saved the good stuff for your Tumblr or Facebook status updates. However you expressed all your biggest teenage feelings, we want to hear it.
Angst from the Archives is a comedic reading of the most dramatic writing. Readers can share anything (poetry, songs, letters, journals, diaries, essays, stories, Facebook status updates, tumblrs, etc) as long as it’s something they’re not proud of. The worse, the better.
Get a ticket or get on the angsty reader roster here.
The best thing I’ve heard lately
“His tongue was out there tryna greet the food.”
Recommended reading from an angsty 2004 Trish
2004 Trish had big feelings and dreams. She had a Rolling Stone subscription, watched Almost Famous countless times, and had complete disdain for her dad. She had an abundance of audacity, a CBGB shirt, listened to Definitely Not The Opera on the actual radio with her friends, dreamed of being a VJ like Strombo, and plotted several runaway attempts (with varying levels of success). In celebration of my upcoming Dublin event and the love I have for the earnestness of big teenage feelings, I thought this month I’d share some of my own Angst from the Archives.
There’s something really wholesome and heartfelt about the fixations we have when we’re young. It’s easy to look back now and roll your eyes at yourself, but I often wish I felt as strongly about anything today as I did about these things when I was young.
When my hair was an unnatural shade of red and I was singlehandedly propping up the Canadian eyeliner economy, I was obsessed with Hunter S. Thompson. I wore a tank that said ‘we can’t stop here, this is bat country’ and dreamed of the benders I’d go on when I grew up. I’m now in my 30s and have still never been to Vegas, but can now appreciate Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for what it meant to my adolescence.
“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”
Gonzo journalism became the goal (the first of many things I came to realize I’d missed the boat on by a few decades) and I internalized, perhaps too strongly, a ‘buy the ticket, take the ride’ mentality.
I’m not sure where I came across Beijing Doll - I must’ve seen it reviewed in a magazine I thought I should be writing for - but it felt very edgy and cool at the time. Living in a town of a thousand cousins and no entertainment to speak of, it was completely unrelatable but entirely aspirational. Consider it a cute time capsule for when things were simpler and CDs skipping was a real concern.
When I was young, I had a sort of book dealer. Her name was Pauline and she was a friend of my mom’s who would occasionally drop in for coffee. Before they got into the goss, she’d hand me a novel I’d invariably never heard of, sourced from some connect she had in a city with book stores.
Pauline hooked me up with plenty of good stuff over the years that I’d never have been able to find for myself. She gave me the Australian classic Tomorrow, When the War Began and Sabriel among many other edgy YA books that ranged from science fiction and fantasy to coming of age stories. Sophie’s World/Sofies Verden was a Pauline special. It doubles as a coming of age novel and a history of philosophy and while it was a bit denser than my usual fare, I loved it. I loved that Pauline, the most educated woman I knew, thought I had the capacity to comprehend and enjoy it. Plus, the philosophy part made me feel very cerebral, which aided and abetted my self-imposed status as dEePlY mIsUnDeRsToOd.
Next month, as my broken hand heals, we’ll get back to the good stuff, but in the meantime, the angsty teen in me infecting the family computer with Limewire diseases sees and loves the angsty teen hidden in you.
With that, I leave you wth my grade 12 yearbook sign off: keep on rocking and keep it country.