Note 2 Self

Saskia Starck
  • 5.0 (8)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Weekly

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. 6d ago

    Victoria’s Secret and Ask Me Anything: Wedding Planning

    In this episode of Note 2 Self, Saskia returns from a wedding in Atlanta feeling more excited than ever for her own, but also increasingly aware of how much invisible work a bride can carry while everyone else gets to experience the celebration. It raises a bigger question about wedding planning: how do you create a day that feels like you and your partner without taking responsibility for every detail and everybody’s happiness? First, Saskia unpacks her complicated response to the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. The nostalgia, nightgowns, performers and spectacular wings still pull her in, but the narrow body ideal and conversation around models returning to work shortly after giving birth make it difficult to separate the glamour from the system selling it. Has the show meaningfully evolved, or has it simply updated the casting and language around the same fantasy? Then, Saskia answers wedding questions from Note 2 Self listeners. She shares where to begin when planning feels overwhelming, how she and Jeffrey chose a wedding over an elopement, what made them emotional about their venue and why the guest list has become one of the hardest decisions. Because planning a wedding is not a test of how many people you can please. It is about returning to your partner, trusting the decisions you make together and creating a day that feels recognisably yours. Follow Note 2 Self for new episodes every Thursday. - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow on TikTok

  2. Oct 15

    Verity, SNL, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves

    In this episode of Note 2 Self, Saskia is moving through a chaotic week with her face peeling off after a chemical peel, bridal fittings underway and a house-music festival she cannot stop watching… from her apartment. Then Shane Gillis’s SNL monologue brings up a much bigger frustration: the tired idea that the way women dress and the way their bodies exist are available for male commentary. Saskia unpacks why a “joke” does not sit in a vacuum, and why women feeling hot, strong and fully themselves at the gym has nothing to do with men watching them. Saskia then turns to the new film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s Verity. The film’s battle between two competing truths becomes a way into certainty, stability and the stories we tell ourselves to justify our actions. Saskia reflects on the story she has been telling herself about security, and whether the version protecting her might also be limiting her. Because feeling safe does not automatically make something true. Sometimes the story helping us live with our choices is also the one keeping us from seeing another path. Follow Note 2 Self for new episodes every Thursday. - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow on TikTok

  3. Oct 8

    The Invite, Dom Dolla, and Three Lessons for Lasting Love

    In this episode of Note 2 Self, Saskia is thinking about the people and practices that keep us connected. After dancing with 35,000 people at Dom Dolla and turning a night out with her sister and cousins into a family bonding moment, she reflects on why time with family feels so different once the relationships we inherited become relationships we actively choose to maintain. She then pivots into some heartwarming pop-culture picks before diving deep into Olivia Wilde’s The Invite, a painfully funny portrait of two couples whose public identities begin to crack over one increasingly chaotic dinner party. From a forgotten bottle of wine and an unexpected proposition to the film’s quiet final piano scene, Saskia explores what the story understands about resentment, attraction and the ordinary patterns that can slowly erode intimacy. Finally, she shares three relationship lessons she and Jeffrey took from the film: if you stop communicating, you lose connection; attraction cannot carry a relationship that lacks emotional depth; and the need to be right can become the enemy of connection. Because love does not stay still. Like a plant, it keeps growing and changing, and it needs care, attention and curiosity about what it is becoming. Follow Note 2 Self for new episodes every Thursday. - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch on YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow on TikTok

  4. Oct 1

    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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. 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

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5
out of 5
8 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
    76
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Saskia Starck
  • Show Website
    Note 2 Self

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