vibe check
mais oui coucou we meet again
Hello!
I feel kind of awkward starting up again after all this time away. Although I suppose I always found a way to start these off with an apology, anyway. So as per tradition: oops my bad!!!!!!!!!
Glad you’re here, as always.
I’m going to do my best to just get this done and not judge it and send it out because for seven months I have been writing shit just to delete it and I think I would like to...not do that anymore.
It keeps happening like this: I halfway write something for this newsletter intending to circle back to it later, and then when I do I find that I thoroughly hate whatever I wrote and by extension myself and also every thought and feeling I have ever had. It is unproductive and, um, no thank you.
Well, sometimes I don’t hate it – I just can’t decide what I think about it, or if it is still relevant, or if it will make me seem pretentious or self-important (things I obviously worry about far too much). I will look at something and think, so far so good, and then mere hours later look at the same thing and think, good god what unself-aware asshole wrote this? And then even still, the next morning I will look at the same damn thing and think, actually...maybe it is fine?. And so on and so on until one is driven mad (which is what I am now). I suspect this reaction of mine is an obvious combination of being A Textbook Overthinker, existing in this current version of the internet/social media/media, and just having to be creative in the relative isolation of *this moment.* Perhaps, even, it is due to the fact that we all seem to be operating on very different versions of reality these days, and maybe I’m struggling to orient myself within that splintered world.
It also boils down to this: I am just so tired of having thoughts. Just absolutely exhausted, honey!! Been feeling like I’d like to tap out of having a brain for a moment. Or at least, using it to do “big” “important” things. Just for, like, a second!! I would love to take a brief vacation from having a brain and a body and a consciousness. I would love to end the whiplash that comes in between worrying about having “enough” “career” “milestones” to impress people at my 10-year high school reunion next year and then whether or not the planet earth will continue to exist. I would love for the inside of my brain to just feel like the gay clubs on Chromatica night. Or like rolling around on the floor playing with a dog. Or cry-laughing at something your friend said that you won’t even remember in a week. Good, stupid, harmless fun. But I feel like I’ve settled in between worlds – trying to meditate while doomscrolling with the other hand. Instead, I feel like the inside of my brain looks like this:
Demented! Absolutely horrifying! And that’s being alive, baby!
I put a lot of pressure on myself to try to make these into some sort of profound and complete cultural commentary that I have no business or expertise in (or desire to ?? lol this one’s for my therapist 😘) making anyway. (I think this is because I love Maybe Baby so much and that’s a lot of what Haley does there.) I want each newsletter to be a gorgeous, fully-realized little creature that pulls at everyone’s heartstrings and makes them piss themselves with laughter and think about being alive but in a cool/fun way (but has it ever done this lmao – note to self ask therapist!!). Which is silly because...this is just an email.
And yet, would you believe that I’ve been writing this little by little for a few days and I already feel that voice creeping up behind me saying, “Just delete it – it’s not good enough”?
Would you believe this is just an email?
(Would you believe this has taken me days to write lmaoooooo)
I am afraid that it is corny. I am afraid that it is stupid (or worse – offensive). I am afraid of taking myself too seriously, of bumming people out, of being misunderstood.
I’ve been trying to edit some poems I’ve been writing and photos I’ve been taking and I’m experiencing a similar impasse: an inability to decide my own thoughts and feelings about my own thoughts and feelings. I think they’re corny and then I think they’re kinda good and then I think I am tired and then I turn on an episode of The X-Files and assume a mental fetal position.
I am trying to be less precious about it. But it is difficult to want to be less precious with things in a world that feels increasingly more fragile and, well...precious.
some pictures i’ve taken that I may or may not like depending on what day it is
john’s joke of the week
This part of the email is brought to you by John Jennings Randall.
My coworker said the Irish can drink like a fish which offended me because I know a lot of good sober fish.
postscript
thanks for reading this little diary entry lol ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
love you hope you had a nice summer
bye!!!!!!!!!!!