some things must be meant to change

 i just spilled dr pepper all over myself and had to change. 

i'm back.

there was a while where i didn't want to write on this blog at all. there was a longer while where i considered deleting everything i'd ever written and wiping the entire blog from the internet. sometimes i wonder if i'll ever figure out who i'm trying to be -- beyond "myself," which is an entirely unhelpful answer when I'm not sure who Myself is trying to be either. sometimes it feels like i'm getting closer, cutting a little more to the quick of my interests, my beliefs, the things i care about. but then i remember how many times i've felt like that before, and i wonder how many more plateaus i will hit before the finish line. is there even a finish line? is it all a dream? sometimes i feel less that i am cutting to the quick of everything and instead am being shaped by the flow of tides over my skin, the sandstone canyon rather than the river itself.

if it helps me answer my own question, that's why i didn't end up deleting everything off of this blog. it's been difficult to accept, but i'm learning that there may not be any such thing as a true magnum opus, but rather a bunch of little artifacts, marking points of every person you have been. i wonder how many artists were truly satisfied after they finished their "magnum opus." I can't think of many. Everyone keeps working, keeps changing. The river keeps flowing. The sandstone keeps changing.

That being said, when I moved to new york, i felt much more ... like an image. i wanted to be consumable, wanted to try to market myself in a certain kind of way. before i moved to new york, too. i think i didn't understand how one could do that, didn't know how it worked, and wanted to experience it to understand it. it really comes through in my writing, i think. it also doesn't help that i moved to new york at 23 years old, on the cusp of one of the big ego transitions of life. i don't have as much fear anymore about sharing myself, but it's because i understand my own boundaries a lot better, and i stopped expecting everyone to play along with me in good faith. most people won't. 

rereading the post i made earlier this year on Lack, I was startled by its similarity to something i wrote in my journal only last night. i've been sick the last four days, and laid up in bed i started my period, and my mother was getting major surgery on monday. i cried for hours every day, and lamented my ability to write new music, to complete any tasks, wondered if i could ever do something meaningful in comparison to all of the beauty and seemingly endless output of my friends... and yet i was just focusing on the lack again. the rat race cranial infestation gnawing at my brainstem. every day i experience something that feels like a beautiful song. i laugh with my friends. i stroke my cat and he purrs. i stare at my ceiling and listen to an album i have never heard and am overwhelmed with enough emotion to tranquilize an elephant, and i wonder where the art has gone. whence my spirit has fled. it's sitting next to me. it's studying my naked form, preparing the sketches for the final portrait. 

it's unbelievable to me that it's not even been a year. that i still have three months until 25. slow down, shapeshifter. take time to count the feathers that fall.

things i like recently:

1. Natural Born Killers
2. Tonstartssbandht - An When
3. practicing electric guitar
4. being alone in my room
5. Dr. Pepper
6. shoegaze/slowcore
7. Totino's pizza rolls (not new for me)
8. Nana 

ok actually let's talk less abstractly about some of these things i've been doing. 

i think Nana is one of the most heartwrenching but beautiful stories about young womanhood I've ever seen. even in its surreality it is unflinching in its relatability. 

second thought. lore moment: never once got on /mu as a teenager or really until this year (this month actually). i figured i should listen to the albums on here since they're kind of the alternative music canon. but i'm genuinely blown away by how widespread the influence of /mu has been on my life given that i was never on here

like

so often in my life when i have been recommended an album that was truly mind blowing i wondered how the person found such good music and where to find more of it

and it turns out 90% of those people in my life were totally just /mu enjoyers 

no shade because i definitely would have done well to have been listening to a lot of these albums five or more years ago rather than stumbling about blindly and taking recs from my friends

in the last year there have been a few cultural institutions that i found out had a much larger scope of influence than i previously knew and every time it's perspective-breaking

super interesting.

if covid is so good why isn't there a covid 2????

a/n: this was written some ten months ago and left unfinished. i like what i had to say, though. 

january 10, 2022: okay, the last two weeks of my life (starting with the new moon in sag and ending this eve with the waning of the full moon in gemini) have been a series of indescribably intense ups and downs and events one after the other after the other until more or less right now as i sit in bed with my cat and a can of sapporo. the big can, obviously. the one that's shaped like a weird glass? my deli on the corner started stocking asahi and sapporo because my roommates and i always come in and ask about it <3 something so simple but so heartwarming and comforting...

there r many things to say about the course of the last few weeks, but i don't feel like getting into all sorts of details about it right now. epic highs and lows of high school football type situation. i will say that since moving to the city my life has been a nonstop carousel of friends and events and circumstances, each one more shocking than the last. 

february 5, 2022: never finished writing once i started that draft (recurring theme i see!). more highs and lows but much more internal than external. spending money i don't have on a credit card i need to pay off (not run up!) because i still haven't gotten hired in the last month and half. savings almost all the way depleted and i have the audacity to sit around and wonder why i haven't had any crazy ny experiences (not even true but i think i mean exploring new bars and clubs and places. but cannot stress enough how much this isn't even true) -- you know when you're broke and you are still going out and you feel this latent guilt that you really shouldn't be spending any money anyways but you're going to do something so instead of trying anything new (even if it's cheap) you go to the same places over and over again? yea. 

february 17, 2022: never finished writing again once i came back and noticed i still had a draft. so now i'm going to say third time's the charm and try to finish this out. i think that in the process of trying to adjust to so much change so quickly over such a brief period of time i was becoming numb to the beauty/excitement of everything i've been experiencing. my day-to-day experience here is something that three years ago you couldn't have convinced me would be in my future. Every week there are at least two shows within two miles of me that I'm dying to see, and a million more i can't go to or don't know about. i play music alongside peers i've followed for years artistically. i have the most beautiful bedroom i've maybe ever had in my life, with two big windows that open to a lively and beautiful street, with big trees and stained glass windows. Every night I get to snuggle with the best cat in the whole world and watch mad men with two of my best friends (now roommates) of six years. 

there's a psychological question that goes something like this: do you see in terms of lack or abundance? when you look at your life, do you see all of the things you don't have, or do you see all of the things you can still achieve? and i think about all of the dreams i've had, and how i've come so far and achieved goals and dreams i never ever thought as a child I would. but of course, as you grow and achieve, the goalposts inevitably shift. and that's okay! it keeps us reaching upwards, soaring towards the stars. but icarus' wings melted not because he flew towards the sun, but because of the haste of their construction. because he was ill-prepared to do so. it takes time to be ready to get everything you want, and you have to get it in bits and pieces, or like a little kid on halloween night, you'll eat all the candy way too fast, get a tummy ache, and be left with bitter disillusionment about sugar and sweets.

and get this -- my bff is moving into an apartment two blocks down from mine, the air is starting to get warmer, soon the leaves will unfurl on the trees. i am traveling this summer for music. i am seeing friends old and new from all over the world. i am going to a state i have never visited and sharing my birthday in a friendship reunion in a beautiful alienesque landscape. i am on the track to get a career job, one with a salary and benefits and stability. how could i have dug myself into such a hole where i only saw the lack? 

thoughts on self-expression

 good afternoon, everyone. diving right into a thought process here

(soundtrack: depressive silence - depressive silence ii)

I've been lucky enough in my life to experience many beautiful moments, to ride the swells of beauty and pain in waves. the memories i hold dear are rich in sunshowers, lush trees and stained glass windows, beams of sunlight and midnight skinny dipping and racing bike rides down to the river on sweltering, humid days. laughing with people i love while listening to 10,000 Maniacs at sunset. 

romanticism, put sweetly. 

but as i've gotten older -- maybe -- i feel like it's harder and harder to be that way. sometimes i feel (probably incorrectly) that no one wants to hear my romantic fantasy anymore. it's sort of like playing pretend, except it's not really pretend, because the moment is present -- but the fantasy, the game is imagining the final credits rolling behind you at every moment, choosing the song playing in the movie soundtrack. my friends and i, we used to score everything. every midnight drive, every skyline view, every random hangout or walk for coffee had a soundtrack to it. 

i don't think i've lost that skill forever, but i've felt like it's fallen out of practice. when you make every moment special -- when you romanticize everything you can, even in the corny ways, the american beauty plastic bag in the wind -- everything becomes more special. at least to me. 

headphones are one good thing. everywhere with earbuds, resist taking both of them out. control your ambience at all times. choose the song that plays right as the airplane lifts off of the ground. listen to movie scores and classical music in the sunshine, listen to hard hitting music when you're angry. make playlists for the most mundane acts, the more quotidian the better. 

playing dress up with yourself is another, wearing an outfit that (even just for you) expresses some sort of character... i've held on to dresses and heels for so long waiting for the opportunity to go to some fancy jazz club and pretend to be some mysterious patron. new york is good for that, i think i haven't taken enough advantage of it yet. it's pretty easy to dress however you want and show up to some random manhattan bar where you know no one and pretend to be whoever you want. and if someone catches on, it doesn't even matter, because what do they care anyway?

but more than all of this -- i've been missing that feeling of "today's going to be something special", i've been caught up in a million ways moment to moment on paying bills and finishing projects owed and trying to get myself in some kind of emotional order -- 

realizing as i write all of this that the biggest problem is myself with this. the fantasy is my own, and it's mine to build. maybe i haven't been opening myself up in the same way. maybe it's time to rebuild my little castle in the sky lol 

anyways, list of what i'm into rn

• speed grapher (2005 gonzo anime)
• devil may cry 5 (i just finished it i'm obsessed w it)
• final fantasy vii (only on disc 1 tho)
• yakuza 0 
• his dark materials trilogy by philip pullman
• cargo shorts
• weed over alcohol
• cutting out alcohol for that matter (it's started making me anxious?)
• tempo changes in dj sets
• going to the beach
• smoothies

micro-seeds of fantasy

 warming up my brain today by remembering all of the fantasy worlds i threw myself into as a child. every day i remember more books i read that really defined my mental biome (i was, definitively, a book kid, and all of my neural architecture was formed more by books than anything else for sure). at the time i remember thinking that the things i liked were pretty common, but they come up much less than i would have expected them to as an adult so here's a list of the one's i've remembered (no particular order because i dislike list hierarchy)

warning there are spoilers in like every one of these postulations so read at your own risk!

w.i.t.c.h. graphic novels / books (there were graphic novels and written books of the same stories). 

the book versions always had three or four full color gloss pages of the graphic novel at the front and back of the book, and i would treasure those pages, looking at them over and over again until i had pretty much burned all the images into my brain. my parents didn't really believe in graphic novels (or someone didn't, maybe my babysitter, idk) but i was rarely allowed to get a full comic book and was relegated to the novellas only. so i would treasure and obsess over the few pages of illustration i was permitted. 

these books were definitely a huge part of my "i like girls" core charge, i knew i was more of an irma type but i wanted so badly to be cornelia because i thought she was so pretty and kind of bratty in a way that i found very compelling. in hindsight, she was definitely an early archetype for (one of) the kind(s) of girl(s) i found myself crushing on a lot in middle/high school -- blonde, bossy, studious, maybe snobby or otherwise just popular. she was the one with earth powers which i've also always thought were the coolest because you can make flowers grow and volcanos explode and generally just do the most with? (other examples are toph from avatar and persephone. goddess of the spring behavior)

anyways i also remember being annoyed that everyone aligned me with will vandom bc i used to hate being automatically affiliated with characters just bc they had red hair (although in hindsight i was and probably still am a lot like will vandom). hay lin had the best clothes and the coolest character in general (she's still a fashion inspiration to me tbh). 

eragon

i've definitely talked about this one before but it gets brought up less than i expected it to as an adult. this one seems to be the most common though? i loved the first book so much and like most other people had issues getting thru the second one but i loved saphira and the dragonrider bonding so much. my name in pictochat was always icedragon bc of it

artemis fowl

okay, this is one that really feels like it fell by the wayside. i never saw the movie and i presume it was pretty bad but i LOVED artemis fowl. it was like if the hobbit and all my high fantasy books met die hard or something which to me was awesome... also i loved anything that was about a 13 year old genius because i definitely thought i was something of a genius when i was 8 years old. artemis fowl really had  everything, from spy story action scenes to code breaking to elvish to mystical lands. the biggest thing i probably took away from this was my love of jade (the stone). artemis' bodyguard had a younger sister who was also training to be a bodyguard (in the family line of bodyguards who had always protected the fowls, i believe) and she had a long braid with a big jade ring braided in at the end of it that she would use as a weapon. i always wanted to do that with my hair.... thinking.........

the golden compass

i could go on about the golden compass for. an unreasonably long time. i always wanted a pantalaimon of my own and would dream about finding one of the rare tears in the veil of our reality into another... i used to practice how i would use the subtle knife (meditation) and talk to my imaginary daemon at home. i still believe cats can see the doors between worlds and that using Dust to represent a universal energy is one of the most elegantly written allegories I've ever seen... I think i finished His Dark Materials when I was starting middle school and it opened my heart and spirit to the nature of the cosmos, and of love and loss and eternity. the words exchanged between lyra and will on their final meeting pretty much defined my idea of love (and still do until this day). 

spoiler alert i'm going to post the quote here so don't read it if you want to read the amber spyglass or something also i'm gonna talk about stuff in the book so just skip ahead maybe if you want to read it still

"'I will love you forever; whatever happens. Til I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I'll drift about forever, all my atoms, until I find you. I'll be looking for you, Will, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you... We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they wont' just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight...'

She wondered whether there would ever come an hour in her life when she didn't think of him -- didn't speak to him in her head, didn't relive every moment they'd been together, didn't long for his voice and his hands and his love. She had never dreamed of what it would feel like to love someone so much; of all the things that had astonished her in her adventures, that was what astonished her the most. She thought the tenderness it left in her heart was like a bruise that would never go away, but she would cherish it forever.”  

also, there is a scene with pantalaimon -- when lyra has to go into the land of the dead to honor her vow -- and in order to do so, she has to sever her bond with pan, which is this series is an actual physical (although not tangible) bond that causes immense pain to sever, but which is also another brilliant allegory for relationships with others, with the self, with comfort, and taps into themes about womanhood, references old witch initiation rituals, about motherhood and codependency and the fear of death and rebirth and etc etc. that section of the book moved me in ways i was too young to comprehend when i read it, i only knew that i wept about it for days once i did. the way that lyra's scar never disappeared, but healed in a way that was new but strong in its own rite, i felt the ghost of that effect on me.

i could go on for paragraphs more, but his dark materials might be the single greatest piece of literature i've ever read. the infinite meaning of the allegory, the way that philip pullman is able to present so much complexity without being reductivist or taking a simplified stand -- and the fact that it's written for children and is able to do so much... the way some people talk about Neon Genesis Evangelion, this trilogy was for me. genuinely a travesty that so many people only know the remakes for film/TV. 

okay ALSO HOW COULD I FORGET the alethiometer ???? the title object for the first book. the alethiometer is a golden compass-type tool but instead of directions and magnets it's a ring of symbols, a divination device of sorts. each symbol has a plethora of potential meanings (described by lyra as "levels", sort of each one at a different depth than the other) and only those with the natural gift can interpret the alethiometer, because it's based so deeply in intuition. there is no point where lyra knows why she can interpret the alethiometer, she's just able to ask a question and understand the answer through some jungian intuition. and when the power leaves her, she's not in control of whether or not it comes back, and it's another truth she has to accept.... a parallel with this other series i'm going to mention later called a great and terrible beauty.... 

homestuck is relatively self-explanatory, only because if you follow me anywhere else online you've definitely seen me talking about homestuck. not only was it some of the first media i consumed that handled LGBTQ stuff in like.... a normal way? like without the weird pomp and circumstance that usually comes with mainstream gay characters (oh my god they're gay now they have to come out or be bullied or have some sort of life crisis or whatever). they would just be like "hm i wanna date this girl so i'm gonna do it" and there was never like a whole. "omg but i'm also a girl is that wrong" thing. except for the one storyline where the characters are struggling with their being gay but it makes sense for those characters and it's also so not their whole personality. that was one cool thing about it that i really appreciate and was definitely part of the reason that it had such a grip on tumblr when i was on there. 

aside from that, it was just... brilliant? one of the funniest things i had ever read (and maybe still to this day). the music is my single biggest font of inspiration still, the animations were great, and the storyline could put christopher nolan to shame in every capacity. i also think that the classpect system in homestuck is the most effective personality test there is and is also so cool. dude the classes are each affiliated with nuanced ways that a person operates in the world and in their relationships with others and the aspects have so many layers to it sort of like the alethiometer in the golden compass -- which oh my god i forgot to write abt give me a second --

basically there's rich web of ways that these traits can be defined and play out, but which still overall fit into a relatively well-defined grid. it's definitely a comic that can be read lightly and enjoyed as a bit of entertainment, or which can be deep dived into eternity for all of the allegory and mystery it offers as well. if i could only read one thing for the rest of my life this would be in contention (also because it's 10000000000 pages long lol)

a great and terrible beauty was another book that had a profound affect on me as a girl approaching womanhood in the world... in the way i understood my own spiritual power, mystique, freedom, and, not unlike the golden compass, the way i understood love as well. 

(((((  huge spoilers incoming ))))) 

a tragic love story -- star crossed lovers, doomed to fail -- never fails to tug at my heartstrings, and every major piece of media i consumed with this trope absolutely RUINED me as a tween. so a great and terrible beauty (the third book of the trilogy) was devastating enough to me that even though i recently reread the entire trilogy, i never re-finished the last book because i couldn't stand to see the failure of their relationship -- i think he sacrifices himself to save her? after three books of dancing around each other, not being able to confront their feelings, whatever, and then they go to the cave of sighs and they walk in each other's dreams together and have one spectacular moment of spiritual union and then... pain dude

also another book that had a lesbian relationship (as any good witch book set in a british boarding school in the victorian era must). their relationship was very good because it also was not overly pathologized. pip and felicity are best friends the whole first book and it's hinted that they're in love with each other and then it evolves in this very tragic way .. doomed by the failures of the world to understand them and the determination to triumph in their love or however you like... regardless, one of the best depictions of the gentleness/devious innocence/brutal tenderness of young wlw relationships, as well as the way they can be torn apart like wings from a butterfly by those who lack understanding around you. all of that is kind of a side story in the book but it was very important to me hahhaha

uglies which was a trilogy w the sequels Pretties and Specials was also pretty profound to me, i read it before hunger games and it was sort of similar to hunger games but it presented a lot more complex and difficult to stomach questions. i feel like it never got big like the hunger games for this reason (much more grey moral boundaries), although the hunger games as a series --

okay so hunger games was super key. one of the rare ones on this list where the movies felt as important to me as the books, although the movies dropped a lot of the nuance of the books. probably the first media i consumed that really effectively talked about loving someone after trauma / that didn't downplay the sometimes lifelong impact thereof, that some things can change forever, that love/relationships can go through inconceivable challenges and things don't always get wrapped up in a bow at the end. also 

although the movies became super corny in how they addressed all the districts/ the nuance of the commentary the books were smart in how they played into the different districts, i always thought it was cool that district 12 was still a coal mining town and how the book drew on such real difficulties that are faced right now still in coal country. near and dear to my heart. actually now that i'm thinking about it that book was a crazy commentary not even on a dystopian future but on how the entire american lifestyle is currently held up by so few overworked and undervalued blue collar labor forces.... pro union book tbh

there were a few other things i really liked and kept up with voraciously but that in the long run i don't feel had as mind-blowing of an effect on me... very entertaining but maybe not earth shatteringly so

• spiderwick chronicles
• actually not even true because i thought the one (the fourth one maybe?) where the sister is depicted in the coffin on the cover... i thought she was so pretty i would stare at her for hours 
• a series of unfortunate events (this one is surprising bc i feel like it could have had such an effect but i think by the end of it bc they were coming out as i was growing up it didn't pack the punch it would have)
• egyptology, dragonology, fairyology
• twilight obviously i was obsessed with but i don't think i like. learned from it i just liked twilight (if i learned anything they were toxic behaviors)
• molly moon i remember so little about molly moon but did anyone else read it? i remember it being really good i just didn't have all of them
• emily windsnap (was that her name? the mermaid)
• alanna song of the lioness (okay this one did kind of have an effect on me def made me more of a tomboy than i already was)
• i had a crazy Michael Crichton phase where i read like every book he had ever written except the dumb pirate one bc i didn't trust it like that. but i did read his medical thrillers that he wrote while studying to become a doctor under a nom de plume bc they were pro abortion
• princess diaries book series

okay, wait. i'm going to talk about the princess diaries book series for a second because i might be the only person i know who ever read them. THEY ARE NOTHING LIKE THE MOVIES!!! the movies are so tame and PG rated but the books are so funny!! and also twisted!! in the way where i really want to reread them rn, they read like bridget jones' diary or the devil wears prada, sort of light adult humor beach reading. but in the book princess diaries her dad isn't dead he just had testicular cancer?? and lost a testicle so he cant have kids anymore lol? and her grandma is a chain smoker and a total rude hag and not at all julie andrews in any way??? also the relationship with michael goes on for like 9 books and is super up and down and dramatic and she definitely does NOT fall in love with chris pine in a genovian garden against all odds and save the crown and the Thermopolis family line. also she doesn't live in San Francisco she lives in New York City and the whole thing is so much more psycho from bottom to top please if anyone else read these let me know because they were mind blowing to me and also so much fun

anyways. this feels like an effective warmup and it has gotten the juices flowing around a little more in my brain... as i grew up i knew less and less people who had read the same books as me / who read much at all let alone fantasy/fiction/YA fiction (which i still read sometimes for reasons) so i kind of just. forgot that that's sort of the font of all of my personality and knowledge. nice to reconnect. makes me want to read more anyways lol hopefully i'll have some more down time to do so in the future.

much love also please say smth if you ever had a weird connection to any of these or even more so PLEASE drop a suggestion below if u have smth u think i would like i always want to read more good fiction

oops it's been three months :x

i didn't mean 2 be gone so long i've just been experiencing a lot ig

i'm not sure as i begin to write this exactly what it is i'd like to write about. i've found myself shifting in the past year towards a version of myself that feels honest but different. sometimes it feels like there's no plan at all in my mind, and each isolate decision i make has created a sweeping current to carry me to a yet unknown destination. i'm not sure if that's how i've always operated. i think that the best way i can explain how i've operated in the past versus now:

past: elevated concept of future, lofty and naive goals, decisions day by day aimed deliberately at ends that would ultimately (with maturity) prove unachievable for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was an unwillingness and/or inability to understand self and a desire to view the world as fantastical rather than with pragmatism;

present: future goals are much more humble, less rigid in their steps to accomplishment, and in a way more abstract. i operate less on a rabid path to linear success and instead work to understand myself, and the way the world works/will work in the future. decisions i make day to day factor less into a long term achievement timeline and instead focus on fulfilling spiritual/internal goals. any "career" oriented goal only answers the need to create stability for my future self. artistic goals are internal. 

the reasons

for these changes aren't all clear... i know it happens when u get older. i've been thinking about that now that i've been getting older for a full 24 years (crazy how that happens) and the ways in which i thought i was so mature and wise at various checkpoints in my life. at 18 i thought i knew everything about myself; at 21 i knew enough to know that i hadn't known everything about myself at 18 but i thought i was good forreal that time; now at 24 i think i know enough to know that i've hardly known anything about myself for a lot of my life. has anyone reading this felt this? i'm fairly sure i'm not the only one, but sometimes (especially in this city) i feel like everyone knows so much about themselves and has such a strong Self. it can feel like i'm the only one who doesn't know exactly what they like and who they want to be. but, to clarify,

i suppose i mean that coming out of college i hadn't been outside of a rigid academic structure since i was three years old. and i experienced a lot of pressure to succeed, always above and beyond in every aspect of school, work, extracurriculars, that i spent a lot of energy trying to make everyone happy/to succeed, and maybe spent less than i should have actually understanding where to go with myself. the feeling i remember most after graduating college is the day i realized that for the rest of my life, all i have to do is make enough money to pay rent and not die, and everything else is completely up to me. there's no actual rules, and nothing bad happens if i don't climb the ladder of success like mount everest, because once you leave the structure of school no one cares! 

it's a simple realization, in hindsight, but for me it felt somewhat earth-shattering. and don't get me wrong, it's not that i didn't have a slew of niche and hyper-fixated interests from a very young age. it was more the realization that there wasn't some kind of timebomb attached to everything. that the whole algorithm of success is more of a myth than a path to be followed. 

the next thing that happened was the most recent, and i'm still riding the personal changes that have come with it -- coming out was a huge shift, but not in the ways i might have expected (i didn't expect many changes, honestly, explanation incoming). without going into longwinding backstory, i've known i am gay for a long time. but per the need to fulfill everyone's expectations, etc etc, convincing myself i was bisexual, that i could be happy finding the right guy or something, i really pushed myself into the closet for years and didn't really let myself date women at all (which honestly resulted in my hardly dating anyone ever but that's another story),

but two months ago i was fed up, and i made some offhanded tweet 

thinking not much of it other than how much i never wanted to date a man again

and felt such a weight lift off of my shoulders in every aspect of my life.

it was like an iron blanket being lifted from my body. suddenly i didn't care about so many arbitrary things, so much needless guilt gone, weird parasocial burdens i had been carrying gone. i unfollowed probably 100+ people on instagram who i had felt obligated to keep following, i got rid of the good 20% of my wardrobe that i had been holding onto even though i hadn't worn the clothes in years. in general i found myself less paralyzed by decisions and less need to hide myself behind fantasies of who i wanted to project myself as, who i was supposed to be. 

since then, honestly, it's been sort of complex. in some ways i feel like i'm meeting myself again for the first time in years. i'm seeing so many ways i've restricted myself. but some of the other things have been surprising -- because it's not like now i'm cutting loose, going crazy, etc, but almost the opposite. like i don't need to impress everyone the same way i did before, so i'm realizing i like to be calmer, more quiet sometimes, i like spending a lot of down time with myself and the people i'm close to, i don't like going out all the time or nearly as much as i thought i did. i like to be the caretaker more than i like being taken care of. and that can all be difficult to deal with, because i feel in some ways like i don't know who i am right now, even as i am more honest with myself than i have been in a very long time. i'm learning to figure myself out.

sometimes it's hard. sometimes i wish i didn't have to think about anything at all ever. but ultimately it's rewarding. learning 2 be happy

anyways

meta-blog

❀ i've been thinking a lot about what not means to blog, and in general what it means to share your life on the internet. where is the place for honesty, when does honesty become overexposure, when does overexposure become beneficial, and how many people really care at all???

i remember once having a conversation with a friend about trust. I mentioned that i trust everyone to some degree, because what's the alternative ? living a life full of suspicion? immediately my friend turned to look at me and said "that's not good, you shouldn't trust everyone." i was floored, because i'd always thought of my honesty and open-heartedness as a positive trait. but they were right. there's a fine line between being open-hearted and naive, and i've stumbled across that line more times than i'm able to actually count. what does that mean for me? is the alternative being silent? is it dangerous (in its own way) for me to put myself out here, in this internet space, giving people access to my life? i suppose blogging has always been about full-court exposure, caring only a little about what people think of your choices. that's always been writing in itself, to a degree. but when it comes to the internet, people can carry anything and hold it and use it against you. i really admire people who can be themselves (or so it seems) on the internet without a lot of holds barred.

❀ photo of me in spring of 2017 in seattle wa outside of a venue that i believe is dead ❀

but am i wrong? are those people, too, constructing a facade? a character to be viewed online? by writing this blog, am i myself crafting a facade, even if it is a facade built from honesty? how real is the very concept of being "seen" and "known" by another human being, when the only lens anybody can view anything from is their own? 

i am torn between caring too much about what others think of me and not caring at all. but here's the thing. 

no one fucking cares about you that much. 

and i mean that in the best way possible, everyone has their own life to worry about, their own internal monologues to recite, their own anxieties to battle about being seen/known/liked/hated and at the end of the day, there's only so much space to think about anyone else at all. so why does it matter, why should it matter??

i think sometimes why people don't like blogging / react negatively to honesty is because they're scared. scared of being seen honestly or talked about in a way they can't control. i get that because i'm the same way. but at the end of the day, honesty is the only cure. like time, it cures all ailments. name a problem that started because of honesty? yes, maybe it causes conflicts, but only catalyzing those that would have emerged 10 times stronger later after being left unaddressed. you're free to disagree with me, but i've rarely experienced a moment in which honesty was not a good (if not the best) policy except for maybe little white lies which honestly are hardly even dishonesty because it's kind of what the truth should be ? in a non-harmful way? (actively toeing the line i myself just set lol)

anyways this has been a hard lesson for me to learn but it has genuinely provided me with so much relief when i try to remind myself! think about it, who do u really admire the most as u get older? i'm sure it's different for everyone, but for me, i'm drawn to the people who care the least about what others think of them. and here's the thing -- everyone has their moments where they worry about what others think of them, but only you can choose to let it affect you. coolest people i know acknowledge their haters and end it there. 

besides, you can't have made it until you have some haters. literally a fundamental part of being a Cool Dude TM and being a great artist is having haters! if you're making truly revolutionary/fresh/exciting music it fundamentally MUST get someone's panties in a bunch. i'm working on retraining myself to want people to be annoyed with me/ have problems with me when i post the stuff i really care about, because otherwise i'm just saying something that's already been said before and is far too easy to swallow. 

and you know what else? i'm sure there are a ton of people out there in the world who hate people for not being true to themselves, for saying what's already been said a million times, for being unoriginal. i've seen it with my own eyeballs. so basically what i'm saying is that random people who do not matter (because nothing and no one can matter to you unless you decide it does -- even death, dude, if you decide not to care about death, even the end of the world cannot sway you from your truth) will hate on you no matter what you do, so you might as well do the things that make you feel fulfilled and happy. 

related phrase of the day: "nothing can hurt you if you do not see it as hurtful. nothing can destroy if you do not see it as destructive." - "Little Murders", really good movie that is on Criterion and you should watch it! also i sampled it in this song

completely unrelated phrase of the day: "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" OwO such a good phrase

the one-shot cure-all to breakups (2022 edition)

 okay, so i have some confessions to make (mostly to myself). i've been completely out of my own pocket. ever been in the mindset where you're somehow both aware of the forces affecting you and completely unaware of how they're actually taking their effects? november and december were a mess. m*lly and benders all weekend, shows every night, too many ubers, and poorly advised emotional decisions. SO! here is my TRIED and TRUE methodology and cheat sheet for stumbling your way through your next big breakup! 

shortlists

the rebound stage

inevitable rebound with quirked up white boy with a little bit of swag (ill-fated). this is going to be very fun and then it is going to suck so bad. but look at kim kardashian and pete davidson. it's a law of nature, and the fun part is going to be so much fucking fun until it ends and makes everything ten times worse for five days. the good news? once the rebound ends, you're ready to move on.

no one is immune to the rebound effect. no matter if you were dumped or did the dumping, being in a relationship is growing accustomed to having someone else to hold you. every time you have a thought, an opportunity, an idea or an emotion, whether good or bad, you have someone to turn to with that feeling. so of course the natural response is to turn to someone else, and revel in the new familiar sharing feeling. BUT IT'S A LIE! you have to learn to hold your own feelings again, and even if you know this, you are going to fail. you are going to fall too heavily into something that should have been a hookup. unless you're, like, some kind of master or emotional supersoldier. and even then i don't really buy that. i've done it kind of twice in a row already.

the friendship thing

be friends with your ex~! have fun! go to the bar a week after he leaves you and nitpick the reasons that your relationship failed so spectacularly, get wasted before sunset on shitty beer-shot combos (the kind that come in plastic shot glasses), call your dad sobbing at 7:30pm on the fire escape, and then go sit in a drunken stupor of silence at your friends' house until 5am. call an overpriced uber home and repeat something of this ilk at least two more times. when you can no longer make it through the hang time with ex without crying in front of them, you know it's time for the next step. 

(this is the point where u go no contact, by the way, or minimal at most. he's going to do something so incredibly stupid and you're going to be so glad it's not ur problem -- even if you forget that at first.) which brings us to step 3,

remind yourself it happened

don't get me wrong -- do what u must do, as a rite of passage, destroy some photo of the two of you, or burn an old t-shirt, but this is the later stage. you're going to have moments when you feel hopeless, and when you feel different, and when you feel all of the sparkle has gone out of you or all of the excitement has rushed out of your life. of course it feels that way. there's a reason change is represented in tarot by the figure of death. and big changes really feel different than small ones. the point being, if you're like me and you're the kind of person to beat urself up about random things (and if you're not, u might become one!) that is normal. of course u feel weird. of course u feel anxious. of course u feel empty. but i think that these ideas of feeling "empty", of a post-breakup self, have become so aggrandized that they've lost their nuance. feeling it is a different story. so yes, let yourself experience your feelings, but also remind yourself why you're experiencing them. it's like a bad trip. remind yourself that these changes are not permanent, remember it will end. this is how u start to grow. 

let yourself have fun

but your way. don't force yourself into the light unless you want to . do what you want. stay at home and finally watch that series u wanted to watch but never did. list of shows i've been watching:

1. mad men
2. succession
3. aggretsuko
4. sense8
5. sex and the city
6. downton abbey
7. cowboy bebop
8. spongebob (from beginning 2 end as hillenberg intended)

watch yourself reconnect with urself and the world. it's like watching one of those dollar store sponge capsules that turns into an animal shape after 15 minutes in water. marinate ! lately ive been feeling off at parties, shows, feeling like i don't remember how to act or fit in. so i leave when i start worrying more than i'm enjoying myself. if i get 2 drunk i lay off it for a day or two. it feels boring, i feel boring sometimes and i feel embarrassed that i'm not the last to leave the party, the most wild one there, something i don't even understand my own drive to do other than believing that's what everyone wants from me (more anxiety). but listen to the parts of yourself you trust, and brush off the ones that you don't. allow yourself to make stupid decisions, forgive yourself for making mistakes, and remember that this is a period of growth and true growth often doesn't feel easy. 

a/n: i began writing this in january of 2022, and left it incomplete, as it was still too raw to approach objectively. at this point in time, i feel more confident in the truth of what i'm feeling, and what i've written here. who knows what time will continue to bring