Note 2 Self

Saskia Starck

This is Saskia, and this is Note 2 Self — your weekly dose of everything that’s simply too long to text. Consider this your personal invitation into my inner circle, where I share my thoughts and quiet reflections that usually live inside my notes app. Each week I explore modern life through conversations about relationships, culture, mental health, identity, and the stories that shape how we see ourselves and the world around us. Part personal journal, part cultural commentary, Note 2 Self is a space for honest reflection, thoughtful conversation, and the occasional pop culture deep dive.

  1. 1d ago

    Europe, Becoming a Bride, and What Travel Reveals About Home

    In this episode of Note 2 Self, Saskia returns from Europe after a trip that began as wedding planning and became a question about the life she wants to build around marriage. After a sleep-deprived, slightly sick start in Paris, she and Jeffrey head to Bordeaux to tour wedding venues, where one ceremony space leaves them both in tears and makes the wedding feel real for the first time. From there, Corsica offers four days of mountains, ocean, incredible food, and enough quiet for Saskia to hear what city life has been drowning out: she is exhausted by the pace of New York and craving more nature, space, and stillness. In London, she reunites with her mom, tries on wedding dresses for the first time, and discovers that becoming a bride feels less like a cinematic transformation and more like another identity she is learning to define for herself. Back home, Return Flight Theory gives Saskia a lens for understanding why travel can make a familiar life look different. She can appreciate the home she and Jeffrey have built while still listening to the possibility that the next version of their life may need something new. Because every feeling does not require an immediate decision. Sometimes it simply asks to be noticed. Follow Note 2 Self for new episodes every Thursday. - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow on TikTok

  2. Sep 24

    The Mandalorian and Grogu, The End of Oak Street, and Why We Need Escapism

    In this episode of Note 2 Self, Saskia is leaving for Europe, running on hay fever and a million unfinished tasks, and laughing at the timing of a very human spiral. Just two days after recording an episode about coming through a hard period, she found herself turning every uncertainty in her life into one enormous snowball. Then a friend stopped her with a simple reminder: not every problem belongs in the same lane. That conversation opens into the worlds Saskia reaches for when reality gets too loud. She dives into The Mandalorian and Grogu, the tiny green character who made her sob on the couch, and The End of Oak Street, an Anne Hathaway dinosaur film so absurd she is still trying to decide whether the joke was intentional. But underneath the plot holes and Star Wars lore is something more personal: why fantasy and sci-fi can return us to the imagination, presence, and freedom we had as children. Saskia reflects on inner child work, reconnecting with her eight-year-old self, and the creativity that has started to return as her adult self loosens its grip on the wheel. Because not every escape is avoidance. Sometimes stepping into another world is how we come back to this one feeling more like ourselves. Follow Note 2 Self for new episodes every Thursday. - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow on TikTok

  3. Sep 17

    Growing Up Australian, Building a Life in New York, and Who I’m Still Becoming

    In this episode of Note 2 Self, Saskia is reintroducing herself in this get to know me episode. But getting to know someone is never just a list of facts. It is the contradictions, detours, and dreams that keep changing shape. Saskia shares what it was like growing up in Australia, from being born near the Daintree rainforest next to a crocodile-infested river to watching Sex and the City at fourteen and deciding that New York would one day be home. Nearly ten years after arriving with two suitcases and not knowing a single person, she reflects on the city that stripped away the performance and brought her closer to herself. She also opens up about leaving acting, finding storytelling again through podcasting, the line between expansive and punishing ambition, and what therapy taught her about anxious attachment. There is calm love with Jeffrey, the irreplaceable intimacy of female friendship, the freedom she finds on a dance floor, and a rapid-fire round involving olives, slow walkers, and an extremely specific blanket rule. Because knowing who you are does not require a perfect answer. Sometimes it means staying curious about your contradictions and re-introducing yourself again and again as you continue to become someone new. Follow Note 2 Self for new episodes every Thursday. - ⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow on TikTok

  4. Sep 10

    Bethenny Frankel at Burning Man, Earle Meets World, and the Difference Between Stuck and Still

    In this episode of Note 2 Self, Saskia wonders whether the “rut” she has spent much of this year trying to escape was actually a season of stillness she needed to move through. After months of questioning her future, unpacking old emotions in therapy, and trying to think her way out of survival mode, she reflects on what began to change when she stopped demanding an answer. But first, she has thoughts on Bethenny Frankel at Burning Man. The problem is not her age or her outfits. It is what happens when an event built around presence and decommodification becomes a continuous content opportunity. Then, Earle Meets World opens a bigger conversation about Alix Earle and Alex Cooper, the complicated power dynamic between a young creator and her mentor, and why the show’s sister relationship may be its most honest story. What connects all of it is the pressure to turn every experience into something legible immediately: content, progress, certainty, a finished answer. But some chapters ask to be lived before they can be explained. Maybe not every quiet season is a rut. Maybe clarity meets us when we stop chasing it and learn to be alive inside the unfinished journey. Follow Note 2 Self for new episodes every Thursday. - ⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠Follow on Instagram⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠Follow on TikTok

  5. Sep 3

    Let’s Marry Harry, Marriage, and What Begins After the Wedding

    In this episode of Note 2 Self, Saskia watches Netflix’s Let’s Marry Harry, a show that packages marriage as the prize at the end of a notorious f*****y’s redemption arc. But by the reunion, that redemption looks far more like a television storyline than meaningful change. The wedding is over, the cameras are off, and the question becomes much more interesting: what actually makes a marriage work? Instead of letting reality television answer that question, Saskia asks several married friends what changed after their weddings, what they wish they had discussed beforehand, and what they believed about marriage before getting married that they no longer believe now. Their answers move beyond the cinematic version of love and into the reality of building a life together. Marriage can change how conflict feels, create unexpected pressure to follow society’s timeline, and make the ordinary acts of love more meaningful than the grand gestures. Most importantly, it asks us to remain curious about the person our partner is becoming. Because marriage is not the prize, and the wedding is not proof that anyone has done the work. Marriage is what begins afterward, when two people keep choosing honesty, curiosity, and each other through every new version of their lives. Follow Note 2 Self for new episodes every Thursday. - ⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠Follow on Instagram⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠Follow on TikTok

  6. Aug 27

    Outgrowing Friendships, Getting Over an Ex, and Loving Without Losing Yourself

    In this episode of Note 2 Self, Saskia is thinking about connection: how we find it, how we grieve it and how we let it change us without disappearing inside it. After an emotional week, an SG Lewis set that takes her straight back to being 18 and the realisation that Burning Man will have to wait until 2028, she turns to Furious, the Emmy Rossum thriller exploring female anger, silenced voices and the complicated line between good and bad. That same question of connection follows Saskia into three listener questions. She reflects on why adult friendships become smaller but often deeper, what an ex’s new relationship can and cannot rewrite, and the slow work of combining a life with a partner while protecting the freedom to remain yourself. From letters that are written but never sent to the relationship lesson she and Jeffrey had to learn about creating an “ours,” this is an episode about making room: for grief, change, intimacy and the person you are still becoming. Because connection should expand your life, not limit it. You can let people in without abandoning the parts of your life that are just for you. Subscribe to Note 2 Self for new episodes every Thursday. - ⁠Watch on YouTube⁠ - ⁠Follow on Instagram⁠ - ⁠Follow on TikTok

  7. Aug 20

    Nara Smith, Body Counts, and Why Every Choice Becomes an Identity

    In this episode of Note 2 Self, Saskia is trying to understand why every choice a woman makes has to become evidence of who she is. Hustle in your career and you are a girlboss. Get married and you are a wife. Sleep with too many people and you are a slut. That question follows Saskia from wedding planning into something much bigger. She shares why she and Jeffrey are spending as much time designing their marriage as they are planning their wedding, and why tradition alone is not a good enough reason to build a day, or a life, around something. Then she unpacks the debate that erupted under her Emily Ratajkowski clip and the obsession people have with the term “body count,” before turning to Nara Smith’s rejection of the tradwife label and the contradictions she cannot resolve. Saskia wants to take Nara at her word, but finds it difficult to believe that a creator could benefit from the tradwife interpretation without understanding the story her content was telling. Finally, the novel Yesteryear brings the whole question into focus through a woman falling apart while trying to live for everyone but herself. Because freedom is not choosing the perfect identity. It is allowing ourselves to be many different things at once, to contain a multitude of contradictions, because we are people, not brands. Show Notes - Emily Ratajkowski clip from Note 2 Self - Nara Smith on Call Her Daddy - Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke Subscribe to Note 2 Self for new episodes every Thursday. - Watch on YouTube - Follow on Instagram - Follow on TikTok

  8. Aug 13

    Charli xcx, the Dreams We Abandon, and What Makes Us Feel Alive

    In this episode of Note 2 Self, Saskia shares her personal experience with a medical intuitive reading that brought her face to face with her eight-year-old self and the words she did not realise she needed to hear: “You’ve abandoned the dream.” What begins with a sudden pain in her stomach opens into a deeply emotional exploration of inner-child work, creativity, home and the dreams we carry from childhood. Saskia reflects on seeing her late grandmother during the session, reconnecting with the home she still holds in her heart and recognising that her childhood dream did not disappear. It simply changed shape. That same question appears from another direction in Charli xcx’s new album, Music, Fashion, Film. The album does not provide neat answers. Instead, it follows Charli as she questions her relationship with art, the line between performance and her real self, the influence of fame, her role as a wife and what any of it is ultimately for. Through the album’s closing words from David Cronenberg, Saskia reflects on how much time we spend evaluating ourselves, afraid to put ourselves out there and afraid to fully live. Because no one lasts forever, and perhaps there is freedom in that. What matters most are the people in our lives, and the art we choose to share should feel like freedom. We can try new things, keep reinventing ourselves and stop treating every creative impulse as something that will define us forever. Show Notes Saskia’s medical intuitive reading was conducted by Laura Wilson, the naturopath she has worked with for several years. Learn more about Laura and her services: https://www.laurawilsonnaturopath.com.au/Follow Laura: https://www.instagram.com/laurawilson_naturopath/Please note: Medical intuitive readings are a spiritual-wellness practice, not a medical diagnosis or treatment. Saskia is sharing her personal experience and what the session brought up for her. Subscribe to Note 2 Self on YouTube for new episodes every Thursday. Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/note2self_podcast/Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@note2self_podcastWatch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@note2self_podcast

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5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

This is Saskia, and this is Note 2 Self — your weekly dose of everything that’s simply too long to text. Consider this your personal invitation into my inner circle, where I share my thoughts and quiet reflections that usually live inside my notes app. Each week I explore modern life through conversations about relationships, culture, mental health, identity, and the stories that shape how we see ourselves and the world around us. Part personal journal, part cultural commentary, Note 2 Self is a space for honest reflection, thoughtful conversation, and the occasional pop culture deep dive.

Information

  • Creator
    Saskia Starck
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    73
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Saskia Starck
  • Show Website
    Note 2 Self

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