Tear

Tear is one of the hardest words to hear. It comes with unpleasant sound and sensation - the sound of an long stream of rrrrrrs propelling towards a conclusive crx -- the feeling of tension releasing with pain. A tear is when strength fails, and when an irredeemable fragility is revealed. A tear cannot be repaired the way a break can. 

Tear is also not the easiest word to read. Should I pluralize? Is tear two words? Of course, you should know from context in the first sentence which one is being written, because tear is a beautiful word. Tears are overflowing emotion. Tears are the clear blood that flow from your body into the world, bringing your insides out. Tears are for goodbyes and reunions, for all the love and beauty you hold and release. 

And for pain. Nothing is all good, and nothing is all bad.

This idea won't translate well. It's not really an idea anyways. Just a coincidence.

(It's tearrifying!)

(This pun has torn through the seriousness of this writing. Ouch.)

More life in years.

This post is from January 1 of 2014. Now it's November of 2021. There are a couple more years to fill in.

2015 - Fall in love for the first time. Graduate from college. Take trains across China. Move to the Bay. Start my first job.

2016 - Grow into a post-college person. Sort of thrive in my work, sort of hate it. Navigate the continuation of my first love; on and off, almost falling in love with someone else, and finally moving in together in SF.

2017 - Quit my first job! Raft the Grand Canyon, make clay in Cuba. Move to Santa Cruz and do improv and run through the woods and along the coast. Fall in love for the second time, and slowly end my first long-term relationship. 

2018 - Move back to Oregon, then to Washington DC. Self-study energy policy. In some ways, the most free I've been. Job hunting is a major stressor.

2019 - Find my first energy jobs - a startup that implodes 6 weeks after I join and contract communications work at a trade association. 

2020 - A pandemic starts and I start a contract with a very influential energy policy person. I run through the cemetery, and play Age of Empires. In the Fall, I get a full time job with said influential energy person.

2021 - I work a lot. I finally go back to Oregon for a spell. The pandemic wears down my sense of self and time. I finally start working on regaining it now, through occasional therapy, reading, career coaching, friendship-building... 2021 is almost over, but I still think I will need to rewrite this in 5 years with some perspective. It is not a lost year, but it's about as close as I can imagine getting. My allergies destroy me for multiple months in the spring and fall. I can't let that happen again. I will move to the ocean if I have to.

"That would have been the advice to my younger self: be naive and open-minded."

This is a quote from an interview with Daniel Craig doing promos for his new Bond Movie.

I finished On Freedom this morning. Maggie Nelson writes about how exploring freedom meant facing down anxiety - that rang so true. I spend so much energy looking for what is essentially a system of constraints: my own value structure. The task that should follow, but that I instead have to do in parallel, is to build a meaningful life around it. This is to mitigate the otherwise boundless freedom that I feel I have, and the lack of purpose or connection that I feel if I exercise it.

Another feeling I had when reading it was how thrilling it is to think about big ideas, but how rarely I do it. I don't give my ideas their proper value; I worry about them being wrong; I worry that thinking them through will be unpleasant, when in fact it is the most thrilling thing that I can do with my life! 

I could have such beautiful ideas. My ideas could inspire other people. My ideas could create new systems and institutions. My ideas could be prescient, or off-base, and they would still have had value.

Yesterday at DnD, Grace asked what I did over the weekend. I drew a total blank. I had nothing to report. I couldn't picture a single moment from the weekend. A few minutes later I realized I had seen Dune with two of the other people at DnD! I had gone to a housewarming party! I had walked across town with Rennie talking about how we value and struggle with our long-term romantic partnerships. These were all really nice experiences, from deep interpersonal connection to excitement and awe to the sun on my skin and a drink in my hand. Even riding my bicycle to the party was a blessing. Getting dressed for the day was a pleasure (lately it is frustrating, because my boobs are so big and many of my clothes don't fit right anymore, but that day it was a pleasure!).

It's so frustrating that I had lost all memory of that in a matter of 4 days! The good things! Gone!

My job is so draining these days. I start the day stuck in my bed, feeling that if I leave it (even if I have two hours before I would start work!) then the obligations begin. 

I end work with nothing left in my tank; I lay on the couch and watch TV or Age of Empires (or I play Age of Empires, which does give me a feeling of having creative energy without having to tap any internal reserve.)

I find myself frequently thinking that I should delete Instagram and Twitter, but they are the main way that I procrastinate on work, so how can I do that?! If I go out for a walk for 15 minutes I feel so much better than spending 15 minutes on Instagram. 

Welp, I just deleted Instagram and Twitter from my phone, so that should help. At the very least, if I want to waste time on my phone, I'll have to practice Chinese on Duolingo. Or I'll go on LinkedIn or Facebook but I don't waste that much time on either - I think we can live with those.

I really need to use this blog more. 1) I can try out my big ideas 2) I can remember what the fuck I did two days ago 3) it scratches a vague self-actualization itch, probably by doing 1 and 2. Maybe there are just two reasons.

So strange to start this writing-and-thinking moment saying "I'm so free" and end it by saying "I am a slave to social media and work!"

But, like working on freedom invites anxiety, to be anything is to be sensitive to its opposite, I think. We simply deal in contradictions constantly. Life is discovering new contradictions to inhabit.

"struggle against all that creates harmony by elimination"

 This line in a letter by Elena Ferrante reminded me of when I would paint new graffiti on a bathroom every night in college for a while.

I didn't even take pictures (and maybe the paintings weren't much to be proud of) but the fact that it would all be painted over later made that not-so-important. They just had to be good enough to form the first layer of another twenty years of art, if the school ever stopped painting over it.

People got a little frustrated with me - they said the fumes from the paint leaked into the student store; but of course it wasn't the fumes from my paint, it was the fumes from repainting.

Then some acquaintances went to to try to help and made a gross mess of the place - splattering paint everywhere, gumming up the grout, writing "redrum" across from the mirror. I lost my taste for the project.

Anyways, a good line by Ferrante, congratulating her publisher on 15 years of business. 

I forgot a good/bad friend's name

 He changed it on Facebook to his middle name, and I couldn't remember what I used to call him.

I looked through pictures of him for a comment or caption that would have it, but none of them did.

And I looked at another and another and finally I remembered.

I don't remember if I gave him an alias here. I'm forgetting the aliases anyways - sometimes I have to read them in multiple posts before I remember who they are!

Anyways, he did something very bad at the end of school, and then did something that would otherwise have been fine, but because of the very bad thing, this second thing was basically unconscionable.

I never told him that, because even years later I loved him. I was on acid a year after we graduated and I wanted to call him and tell him that if he really needed me, I would be there. That I would always be there, even though I haven't been, even though I never even told him why we aren't friends anymore.

He likely knows why. When he messages me on Facebook (the last time was May 2020) I respond, like a friend. But if he hadn't done those very bad things we would have seen each other since we graduated. I would have talked about my life and my decisions with him. 

If and when I see him, who will we be to each other? Should I write him a letter, telling him that what he was to me in college was very important, one of the most important, but that what he did at the end is a huge problem?

He hurt my best friend. And then nearly came between me and her. And the fact that I haven't fully cut him off is a testament to what he did for me sophomore year, and how much I appreciated it. But I might as well have. I basically have, without telling him. Does he know what he lost? I know what I lost.

When will I despair

"I do not want this to be a column arguing for despair. No emotion is more useless, and it’s wrong at any rate. If we fail to keep warming below the longtime global goal of 2 degrees Celsius, well, 2 degrees remains better than 2.5. And 2.5 is far preferable to 3. And humanity would much rather have 3 than 3.5. And so on, and so forth. There is no point at which giving up makes more sense than fighting on." - It Seems Odd That We Would Just Let the World Burn 

 I have to say, I have been despairing lately. Even though I am flying to Oregon in less than two weeks, a part of me is sure that the town that I grew up in is gone, totally gone, remade by a new climate. I think this feeling is maybe a little much. I think the trees are still tall and their canopies still wide. Even though the blueberries and blackberries are ripe a month earlier than they were when I was a child, they are still blue, still black, still in the back yard and along the roads.

I was telling myself Ezra's argument yesterday, when I was very sad. But I am not working to defend the global average temperature. I am working to defend the clear summer days. I am working to save the forests near my parents' house. I want there to be water in the lakes. Eventually, these goals will no longer be in reach. Maybe the summer days are already gone. I don't know if it will be at 2 degrees or 3 degrees, but when the rest is gone, what will I be working for? I know all of this is terribly selfish. There are people who are refugees because of climate change - they aren't mourning at 10% change in the growing season (actually maybe that is a big part of the problem!) or the trees that would have become logs anyways. 

When I see the West Coast again and it still looks like home, maybe I'll want to work again.

Journaling and Journey come from latin the word for "day"

 I am having a birthday party.

A pandemic birthday party? A post-pandemic birthday party? A vaccinated birthday party?

Well, that's the plan. June 12. 7 pm. 

Invites are out. Responses are few.

I'll be 28 - I remember SB's 28th birthday. I gave him Daytripper and Hanabi - two gifts that landed very well. It was the last day we spent together in perfect romance, before I had any pain or doubt about it. And now it's three years later. 

That's kind of a dead-end of thought. Not really where I meant to go. 

Back to the birthday - I am stressed about it. I'm stressed about seeing a single friend but multiple?!?! Actually it will probably be easier. I gotta remember I can lean on SB. He is a great host and party-goer. He talks to quiet people and even though he's shy he introduces himself to strangers. And he did a lot of cleaning this weekend - more than me. The pizza will be a hit. We have all of the necessary equipment. 

Nonexisting

 Journaling has been impossible. I open the book and struggle to summarize the very recent past, even the simplest narratives with firm characters, places and events. 

Things are not really happening. Anything I do is just to get to the next act of the play. My desires are dormant, and my human-ness is just brownian motion against the rooms that I am in, and the person I live with.

Maybe I hated Twin Peaks: The Return, because it is too much like Pandemic Life. Everything happens in slow motion, but time means nothing. People are stupid and distracted. Violence is ubiquitous, expected but still surprising.

Sometimes I cry about how I feel, and I'm not sure if I'm feeling self-pity, or if I am just looking for a way to express my sadness. Am I the only one I can feel for? I don't mourn my depression for my sake, I am sad for the people around me who could be experiencing the joyful, creative person I can be. 

This still feels indulgent and self-defeating. I don't see a way to feel better, but I believe that I can make myself feel worse. I am so careful not to make myself feel worse, because there is no way to regain lost ground, not permanently. 

Before a meeting I will be staring into space, lost in the many things I feel I have to do, in a loop of not-doing. During a meeting, like my spine popping in a twist, suddenly I can describe to the others how and when I will do everything they need. I smile and blast energy through the cybersphere. Sometimes it feels like violence. It must be a lie, but in the moment it feels very true; automatic, encoded, the only possible way to be.

SB watches Eric Rosen play chess downstairs. The bling of the Bits, the chipper text-to-speech, is all very familiar.

What is next?

I daydream so much. I daydream about a home that I feel ownership of. I daydream about work that creates community and safety for people I know. I dream about a collaboration with the land, with the cycles of nature. I daydream about a family. I daydream about sex and love and connection and uncertainty. I live in imagined scenarios that play in a stutter, slowly advancing from finish to prosperity. There is not very much real work in these dreams. I dream about what it is like when it is done. 

My brother is safe and happy, and strong. That makes me so glad. 

My parents also seem good, though I have so much trouble understanding them. I want to see them, and reconnect. I want to think more generously about them. I want to fixate less on their flaws. 

SB is a great partner. He is honest, and playful, and brave and sweet.

Edith is a great friend. Sometimes being friends from far away is confusing, and I have trouble because I feel like I have to decide between sharing my true reactions and my utilitarian reactions - the ones that I think she wants, or will advance us past the muddy moments. The answer is always to ask a question, rather than share an opinion. 

This has been a successful moment of introspection. Thank you.

Of course

 Of course the most perfect thing someone can do is write a book. 

One's body is not the soul-made-physical - it is simply not related at all. But, living in a physical world, it is painful to exist so mostly as a nonphysical entity. Writing a book is an act of self-creation, binding your soul, infinitesimally, in the physical world. It is your snapshot soul. A measurement taken of a quantum being, defining its state in that moment.

What nonsense, you may think, and you are right. 

Does it matter what the act is, what it does, or what the intention is behind it? Is the book only what we think it is?

Sorry for the drivel, it sounded better in my head.

Things I want to do in my lifetime

 I was thinking: where could I have a running list of things I want to do in my lifetime? 

A Google Doc? No, it would just get lost.

My notes app? No, I would end up writing other notes on top of it.

And then, I remembered this place!

So. I'll add to this later.

Things I want to do:

1) Start a cooperative business.

2) Live in a beautiful home with a big family (but not a family I had to birth)

3) Work on something that made an impact on climate change.

4) Support journalism.

5) Help educate young'uns.