The sun came out in defiance of that little groundhog a few times last week. I have a small sunburn all over from sitting out in its glorious rays, basking like the little lizard I am. I’m sure I’ll pay for these and other stolen moments with the sun in my old age, but for now I will always tip my face towards that which makes me feel alive again. While enjoying this warm moment in the dead of winter, I felt most of my anxiety about the immediate horrors in my life literally melt away. The sun is truly glorious in that way.
The moment I returned to my desk at home I was reminded of the long list of things to do that I have wrought upon myself. Everytime I leave my desk and come back to it I become more and more convinced that I am severely undiagnosed. It's probably ADHD, but who knows. There’s notebooks quite literally strewn about the entire room. I have three cork boards with varying writings scribbled on notecards and sticky notes pinned to them, and two white boards with random ideas and to-dos. I am trying to write my first novel, and for better or worse a second project has taken residence in my brain and needs to get out. On top of that, I have other creative aspirations I am putting time and energy into which means that if anyone else walked into this room I would probably be put on a 72 hour hold somewhere. I yearn for a life where I can paper the walls of an office with whatever it is I am working on, where I can blast whatever music is getting me through writing dry spells, and fully commit to the kind of life I know I am destined for.
How can I allow myself to create things that make me happy and excited about the future when it seems like there is no future to look forward to? There are news updates every few hours that make it feel like there is going to be nothing to be left to be excited about in a few years. The fascists that finally had their takeover of the entire government and it is quite literally their mission to crush everyone and eliminate everything that doesn’t serve their psychotic religious ethnostate narrative. Literally looking at social media is like an exercise in restraint because I absolutely cannot afford another expensive phone right now so chucking mine across the room is not something I can do.
It (read: america) genuinely feels like one of those moments where the rot is too obvious. As if the writers were giving us just a little too much exposition to really hammer the point home that things are not what they usually are, or even what they seem. The rot is wrapping itself around your toes and winding up your legs while you stare at a light in your hand in more horror than you thought possible. It creeps its way around your torso until it finds the soft flesh above your heart and pierces its way down into its new home. And the light becomes a little less scary, a little more normal. Maybe you were overthinking the whole ordeal. You’ll probably wake up and be fine.
Call me insane, call me some sort of hopeless romantic, but I think that seeking out the true beauty and wonder in the world in spite of the horrors forced on us by our oppressors is an act of rebellion that we can all take part in. Despite the fact that I truly feel like there are so many bad things coming for us down the road, the cardinals sitting outside my window as I write this make me happy. Little spots of sing-songy red flying around on an incredibly gloomy day are enough to make me a little happy, a little inspired. Seeking that out is not easy, and most days it is the hardest thing to do.
I’m a person who has heard multiple times in her life that “it's not that deep” or “you need to chill” which is always wrong and the quickest way to get me to never seriously engage with you as a person again. I love reading other people’s thoughts and ramblings on substack and blogs. My favorite bits of the internet have always been people genuinely interacting with each others thoughts and being able to see what other people are saying about pieces of culture that I am seeing. Watching the internet fall into a hellhole of disingenuous twats that think being nonchalant and unattached is the epitome of being cool has been one of the more frustrating things in my adult life.
I personally think its way more corny to think you're above it all. That you’re too cool to be openly passionate about the things and people you love. Where is all that nonchalance going to land you in a few years? How will it serve you when you finally find something that makes your heart warm and gives you a sense of purpose? And on top of that, you look fucking dumb. In my mind, if you aren’t genuinely into at least one thing in your life then you are the one wasting your time and energy being human, which is boring (the most egregious of all sins).
Motherfucker, give me passion. Tell me all about the things that you deeply care about. Talk my ear off about your opinions about the book you’re reading, that rabbit hole you found on reddit when you couldn’t sleep, the movie you saw for the first time yesterday that you’re shocked you never saw before. I want to know what you think and why you think it, and I hope that you hold a similar space for me. I have blown hundreds of dollars on gas in my life driving around with my friends while they talk to me about the things in their life that they are in love with and vice versa. I love sitting somewhere and realizing that we’ve chatted the day away and actually are late to other things, because that means that we were sharing our most vulnerable, real sides of ourselves with each other and I think there is no more beautiful way to spend ones time.
I’m going to continue writing incredibly self-indulgent things that will be seen by a handful of people because this shit makes me happy. I love writing and I can’t just post everything that I’m working on, so I’ll write these little posts and do other things I can share until I get a book deal and can share everything with everyone.