week 34 & 35
here
i wrote most of this last week but it wasn’t complete and then idk. i felt no motivation to continue. idk!! i was feeling anxious and weird last week. i wrote a sentence to that effect last week and then couldn’t go on for a few hours. here are some things that i thought were creating the nebulous anxiety.
i believe one of the chefs at work got angry at me and for a bit, i didn’t really feel comfortable there. i think the discomfort was at least partially the feeling that i could neither be sure about it nor do anything about it.
i had a dream where i ran into a grad school friend who just stopped replying to my texts at some point. i tried for a long time to start a conversation again. she still follows me on instagram so idk what the story is. anyway i don’t really remember the details of the dream, but i think she was saying that she hadn’t ever really had a chance to reply in the last five years and things got away from her. i think i was pretty mad in the dream.
there are so many things coming up that i have not prepared for. (i wrote this over a week ago but it’s still true.)
i’d accidentally stopped taking my meds and was adjusting to being back on them.
one customer during my shift last week was really upbeat and not mean at all at all, but kept having like little responses to things. like she came in when i was about to put something in the basement so i asked if i could be right back while she was looking at the menu (this is the kind of place where people usually look at the menu for a few seconds and take it to go, not a restaurant restaurant) and she was like, “at least let me sit down, i just got in the door!” and when i asked if she wanted her receipt, she said, “of course! i paid for it, didn’t i?” i don’t know why but that activated my fight-or-flight. it took a couple days to feel better.
idk what else to say. i saw a friend at the movies and it was medium-awkward. i wonder how she feels when she hangs out with me. when she was on her way to me, she said something i thought was a joke i didn’t totally get so i laughed and she said something like, “i don’t really see what was funny but it’s okay, you can laugh”. the last time we spent time together before that, she made some comment in passing about how we’ve always been “distant friends” which i had a bee in my bonnet about.
i saw my brother and it was really, really nice to spend time together even though i had to disappoint him about something. he said it was okay and he understood so i am maturely trying to believe that’s true.
i was very productive for a bit and something that was really helpful was a thing called interstitial journaling where you write short, timestamped notes of what you’re doing. it really helps with brain fog and iiiiiii (sort of) got to sink zero which was a huge, huge win. unfortunately, the sink is somehow immediately full of dishes again.
i guess i’ve “realized” that i’m somewhat fucked up over my childhood. i don’t know how much i will elaborate here. i guess my beliefs that i am annoying and the cause of some of the stress and unkindness i’ve received are extremely deeply rooted. i mean, i already knew that but i don’t know. sometimes you have to realize something a lot of times.
the GRE was today. it really was supposed to be a few weeks ago but here is what happened. i wanted to check if i could reschedule for free and it seemed like i could so i (thought i) did. a couple days later, i signed in to my account to take a practice test and saw that i hadn’t rescheduled and that it would cost $60 to reschedule. i thought it was because i didn’t complete some step in the rescheduling process in time so i called to ask if they could prettyyyyy pleeeeaaaase waive the fee because i thought i had completed the process before the deadline where the fee starts. however, seemingly it actually was not free at any point. the website is really confusing. anyway, had i understood that, i would have just taken it as scheduled. at the point of the phone call where i was finding it out, i felt it was too late not to reschedule because i hadn’t prepared. i probably might as well have kept it because i didn’t end up studying that much and i still had a minor meltdown the night before. oh well.
earlier in the week, i had a thing where i closed thursday and friday (both until 2am), which is my usual schedule. but also saturday 7am, i proctored the SAT saturday on like three hours of sleep (i think i agreed before i’d started this job) and covered a closing shift that night (planned before i realized about SAT and the guy who asked me told me it would be 11pm-2am but what had really happened was the morning person told him that if he’s desperate, the ABSOLUTE latest she could stay was 11pm. so i went at 7pm and did a full shift, still on three hours of sleep. and then i also closed sunday which is my usual schedule and only until 1am. it’s crazy making minimum wage because the extra shift basically amounts to $100 extra and even that’s only because the minimum wage here is more than twice the federal minimum wage. gas is like $5/gallon. how is everyone living.
but so i think that weekend was a big part of why i temporarily lost interest in doing things. i wasn’t exhausted so much, but i felt concretely that my efforts were a drop in the bucket. it’s like when you’re counting cash and you start with the larger bills so once you’re counting the singles, it could be really tedious if there’s a lot of them and they don’t even move the dial. in general i think pennies matter, but it’s hard to feel that way. whatever. i got some rest and feel better.
Day 1 (of last week): Everybody Knows by Leonard Cohen
Day 2: i forgot to pick a song
Day 3: Sea of Love by Cat Power
Day 4: i forgot to pick a song
Day 5: CHANEL by Tyla
Day 6: The Gambler by Kenny Rogers
Day 7: Train Song by Vashti Bunyan
Day 1 (of this week): i forgot to pick a song
Day 2: i forgot to pick a song
Day 3: wasn’t caring
Day 4: wasn’t caring
Day 5: Bless the Telephone by Labi Siffre
Day 6: i forgot to pick a song
Day 7: Head Over Heels by Tears for Fears
I’m Reading: Beloved by Toni Morrison (with an introduction by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers)
it was really sunny and warm a couple days ago and i walked around and listened to it as i like to do
I’m Watching:
Homeland
i don’t know why i picked this when my issue with Beef was that it was too bleak. a character was killed that made the rest of the show seem pointless. i guess killing off a main character can be pulled off but it’s always a risk.
Psycho
it was really good! i heard there were a hundred bad sequels so maybe i’ll watch them sometime.
The Birds
i didn’t get it?? i didn’t like it. i don’t know. it’s okay that there wasn’t an explanation for some things, but it didn’t feel like a story. like it have any satisfying character journeys nor did it show whether they ended up succeeding nor did it give any answers about the mysterious situation. you have to do at least one of those!!
I made/ate: vindaloo with rice i DIDN’T forget to salt for once, french fries, hummus, lots of outside food
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.