week 33 v.2

tricked y'all into thinking these would be consistently on time, didn't i

okay so last week, i said i’d say more about what i do and don’t want. i don’t know that my lack of desire generally is really at all enlightened. it may just be my depression. anhedonia, as they say. i do want to “get more out of life”. that’s the center of my new life plan which i willllllllllll share soon. i love to say the same thing over and over and i know you all love to read it. it’s called a motif. but so like i waaaaant to be less socially limited and more creatively fulfilled.

i guess this newsletter addresses both, but it’s sort of time limited for just this year. maybe i’ll do a monthly one for my 30s. and then a yearly one in my 40s. and then i’ll start writing books. or something.

i want to create more. like, growing up i thought i could be a writer or actress. i’d been told by teachers from elementary school to high school that my writing has style. i’m not bragging about this! it’s just something that i’ve remembered and valued. i think i’m pretty limited for substance though. like, i’m mining my personal life for content here and reflecting, but i guess these are short and could be deeper. i should work on this now since i just committed to writing books after my 40s. can’t get out of that now.

i have also often have movies in my mind when i’m thinking about or imagining things. and i know what camera angles and directorial choices i’d use. i don’t want to have a different life but i guess i’d like an additional one? or not even that, but i want to just inhabit an actress or something and be along for the ride during for like her first ever audition, growing relationships with other artists, thinking about the psychology of her character, trying her hand at being behind the camera, getting to direct Infinite Jest* or something, etc.

actually, i think being interested in acting is itself a manifestation of wanting to try on other lives which you could interpret as my unhappiness with my own life, but i think is really an expression of my nosiness. i guess it can be related to both. i often have anxiety about being perceived. a couple people at work said i was the nicest person they’d talked to all week. you know what that made me feel? really anxious. what if i’m not nice next time or don’t come off that way for reasons unknown to me? and then it’s like i lied by making it seem like i’m nice and creating an expectation for what i’ll be like going forward. i know this is a disordered way of thinking, but so far i don’t know how to change it. but and so also, if i could just be along for the ride in others’ lives, i wouldn’t have to worry about that and also i can gather more data on where expectations come from and how to fulfill them. mostly it’s the nosiness though.

unrelated, but something dominating my thoughts this past week is this weird instagram argument i had. i know i need to redelete instagram but i haven’t. it was in the comments of a post about a movie and there was some back and forth about the demographics that do a certain thing. one person, allegedly an expert in the topic, was saying that it was all members of one group of people. i’d read stuff (unexpectedly) contradicting that and replied to her saying so. she ended up getting blocked by whoever’s comment thread it was, so she DMed me to tell me how wrong i am about [a bunch of stuff i didn’t say]. i don’t know why but i thought we could have a real conversation and replied. it devolved and she called me bitch a few times and kept accusing me of lying about what i said/meant, saying i, like all white people, want to litigate what i said vs. what i implied.

it made me really sad in general because like. i’m virtually never lying or fucking with people. i am virtually always acting and speaking in good faith. it’s very confusing for me when people react to me as if i’m being different than how i am. more specifically to this situation, it also made me sad because i initially assumed this was someone who was a little insecure due to being early in her career. when i googled her, i saw that she was seemingly respected and well-liked, had a PhD (as well as a Master’s she earned the year i was born), and had taught at Rutgers for decades. she’s someone i probably could have admired and whose insights i would have valued. why would she respond like that? it’s not that i was a troll, but even if i was a troll, just block and move on. why wouldn’t someone like that be confident enough to be mature?

i also witnessed another instagram comments argument that made me sad. someone said that when you’re best friends, annoying moments in a marriage don’t get you down and someone else replied acting like annoying moments are a huge problem and that the commenter doesn’t respect herself for putting up with it or something. they went back and forth. you’d assume the person who responded is insecure about being single or unhappy with their life or something, right? but i looked at her profile and she was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, in a relationship, and eating caviar like every month. why aren’t you confident and happy??

idk. i have an amazing life, but there’s a lot i need to work on personally. maybe i just need to rid myself of the illusion that anyone is well-adjusted and mature. i mean, i’m sure some people are somewhere out there. i don’t know why i still haven’t actually, because i’ve been disappointed many times before. i guess it’s a lifelong journey.

*i’ve never read Infinite Jest but i really believe that i could adapt it into a movie. unfortunately, that would be illegal because you need rights seemingly even as an amateur idk. also, you know who has them? Mike Schur. the The Good Place. the Parks and Recreation guy. i know.

• Day 1 (of this week): i forgot to pick a song

• Day 2: I Used To Hate My Body But Now I Just Hate You by Fenne Lily

• Day 3: I Thought I Saw Your Face Today by She & Him

• Day 4: 500 Miles by Peter, Paul and Mary

• Day 5: The Quiz by Hello Saferide

• Day 6: Angel Baby by Rosie & The Originals

• Day 7: Franklin Shephard, Inc. by New Broadway Cast of Merrily We Roll Along

• I’m Reading: Beloved by Toni Morrison (with an introduction by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers)

  • it’s awesome

  • this is one of the things that i’m clearly seeing a movie in my mind

• I’m Watching:

  • Beef

    • idk it felt unkind somehow? like bleak to be bleak. i guess it was artistic but it just felt like a season of White Lotus. i feel like talking about like class warfare is sort of becoming a thing where certain things are trendy to say/depict but no actual communication is happening. i didn’t hate it, i love the actors, there were some interesting monologs.

  • Merrily We Roll Along

    • i loved Daniel Radcliffe, he looked hot. i watched it twice. i guess trying to calculate how we got to a specific moment is my cup of tea. sometimes it felt like characters were being too explicit or like saying the message direct to camera, but i guess that has its place, especially since it’s told backwards. Mary seemed sort of opaque or underdeveloped on first watch, but on my second i felt like it was an intentional running theme that she didn’t speak when she should have.

    • the end feels optimistic which i feel sort of undercuts the premise. like if choice after choice led him to where he is at the start, but he can just fix it, does it not matter what choices he made? maybe it says something about me that i think only a pessimistic outlook would be right. and, to be fair, what would be the purpose of meditating on all your choices that led you so far off track if not to find your way somewhere better?

    • go watch it on netflix maybe to show netflix that there’s demand for proshots?? and if you like musicals obvi

• I made/ate: pizza, fried chicken, mediocre dumplings and green beans from a new restaurant that replaced a beloved (by us) donut place

• Here’s how happy I am: 6/10

• weekly monthly check in: am i okay?

• here’s some things i want to do before i turn thirty (maybe!!):

  • dye my hair blonde

    • finally got to the point of asking my brother to do it, but he said he fears my hair is too long for him to do it without damaging it. broken heart emoji

  • read Portnoy’s Complaint

  • read Infinite Jest

  • read Man’s Search for Meaning

  • get a nose ring

  • cook at least two recipes in Russian

  • see the Milky Way ✓

  • see the Northern Lights ✓

  • ride a flamingo paddle boat

  • get abs

  • visit SIL ✓

  • visit everyone

• here’s some things i want to do ever

  • see whales

  • do the Barklay Marathons

  • hike the Camino de Santiago

  • learn to fish, take care of clothes, go camping, bake, cook, sew, speak a third language with a third alphabet, get a PhD, garden, make fruit preserves, make all manner of pickles, hunt for mushrooms and recognize which ones would kill me, knit, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.