#igloo mag

Where the cool things are (for the first time).

This is a thing now, and we can't believe it. Inside the first issue of The Igloo, you'll find some of our favorite posts (including an article about Grace Helbig and an interview with Hotmessmoves), as well as some new things like an essay comparing Orwell and Kanye (yes, seriously), and a flowchart that will help you decide which member of the Igloo Crew you are. So get reading because we are incredibly proud of this.

Word Time With the Igloo

By Ellie Boroughs

I have never really had a bedroom that felt like it was really my own. My parents got divorced when I was 5, so I spent my childhood moving back and forth between bedrooms. For a while, my dad just lived in a duplex, and there were only two bedrooms. When my brothers and I spent the night, they had their own room and I slept either in my dad’s room or on the couch. In the house my mom rented, my room was decorated in a way that was never really comfortable for me. It was also on the first floor and everyone else had rooms on the second. As a child, it wasn’t a room I ever wanted to sleep in, so I usually didn’t.

Confidart

By Emily Dombrovskaya

In my whole childhood (and I still consider myself a child to some extent), I can only remember two instances of positive feedback for my art. Once, when my fourth grade art teacher, Zhanna Stepanovna, complimented me on the detail with which I had drawn the leaves of a birch tree leaning on an orthodox church, an incredibly Russian scene. And once again, when my grandfather glued a landscape I had sketched to a square of hardboard he found in the house. Needless to say, I am not an advanced or confident visual artist.

But I’ve always loved art. I’m very lucky to have parents who, sacrificing their mental health, took me to many exhibitions as a screaming toddler, trying to leave something bright and beautiful in my head. Still having no visible talent for art, I decided to do the next best thing: become very educated, know and understand art with the sensibility and intuition only known to the artist and myself. In the first chapter of the Great Gatsby Nick Carraway says that the greatest thing you can be is an educated person (wildly paraphrased), and I hold that as the highest truth available in my life.

By Ellie Boroughs

You will always figure it out eventually, so do not let your fear of being wrong or not knowing keep you from doing something. Take risks because every person has been where you are, and if anyone tells you otherwise, they are in denial.

It is genuinely okay to not like someone. You don’t have to force it because you think you should like them. You won’t like everyone and not everyone will like you.

If you are on a long walk with friends, and your feet start to hurt, it is important to stop and make sure they aren’t bleeding because bloody feet are not fun.

Be honest.

Kisses in the rain don’t have to be romantic to be the good type of memorable.

Alone time is essential. Sometimes, you just need space to think and recharge and that is 100% okay.

Believe in just going out and doing something, especially if the thought of failure scares you because even if the experience is bad, you’ll have a great story, and chances are you won’t have anything to regret.

Take a break from the stress and just have a spontaneous solo dance party.

You can survive on 5-6 hours of sleep a night, but 4 will just make your week horrible.

Make as many jokes as you possibly can. Someone will always find at least 1 of them funny. And if other people are happy, isn’t that all that matters?

Make sure to listen to other people more than you make other people listen to you because the other side of the story is always as important as yours, even if you disagree with it.

 You can be outrageous as you want as long as you show no shame. It is impossible to make a fool of yourself if you are fine with being a fool.

By Alex Botashev

We are sitting on the shoulders of giants, and in the midst of a world so vast and so amazing – with science that is so beautiful and so poetic, history that is so immense – looking back into stars that were and thinking about stars that will be; who are we to complain about anything?

By Ewa Niżałowska

I became fascinated with teenagers in elementary school. Walking to class, I would linger in the hallway to watch the high school students pass by, attempting to act casual and hide my admiration from them. I don’t really know what it was about older kids that appealed to me so much, but they always seemed enthusiastic and passionate; they had a witty remark in store for every occasion, and, unlike my classmates, they were actually doing stuff with their lives. But, above all, they were just really cool. I couldn’t wait to be 15 or 16 and be part of this exciting world, spend time with people who really got me, and become the most punk rock person on Earth. It’s not like I was using this fantasy of being a teenager as an escape from the horror of being in fifth grade or whatever—quite the contrary, I enjoyed every moment of not having to worry about dating or pimples—but in the back of my mind, I knew there was a cooler version of me out there: the totally rad, rebellious teenage version that I was about to become.