Only ___ can judge me.

 I turned ye olde blog private because I was in the running for a high-profile job. I didn't get it! Did they find the blog (because if anyone could, they could, wink wink), or was my aversion to bureaucracy palpable through the Zoom? I was ambivalent about the organization. It would have been so exciting, but in a very similar way to my current job. So, the impetus to change, to leave the devil I know, was less than it would have been if it had been a new world.

The experience made me value my current role more: recognizing what I take for granted, and how I limit myself, and how I could embrace my opportunity more fully. I didn't fight for the job, but I did take it seriously. It helped me see that I could step outside of the professional role I've been in for five years (with many changes) and have another adventure. 

Part of me wants the next thing to be in journalism or education, or art. My ex is passionate about education. We just broke up last week - a week ago right now, actually. I don't want to write too much about it. I think there wasn't anything either of us could have done. The chemistry wasn't there for me. I don't need a husband or a family. I need magic. I need personal expansiveness. I need inspiration. I thought I could find those things with him, but I lost them in myself as I invested in our relationship. In the end, we would have been a lovely family. But today, that's not what my heart asks for. Is this fair? Is this true? The truth is there were a number of overlapping and intersecting problems for us. That in itself was a problem: that I couldn't disentangle one challenge or block from the next, when I was with him. Where to live was a big one. And now that we're broken up, I'm pretty happy in my current spot. Rents spiking hasn't helped with the idea of trying out solo-living. I started reading old posts - themes from 2021 persist.

I mean, there was never a chance that I was going to write a whole blog post about work, right? Two more weeks of it until two weeks off! Lots to do, but also those two weeks will go very quickly, since I have one all-day event this week, a flying-day next week (two, if you count leaving in the evening on Friday), and two-ish staff retreat days. So basically one full week of work days. I may dabble in labor over the break. Strategic planning should be so fun, but when I try to do it during work hours I get distracted or stressed.

Back to what I might want for the next "thing." My play for the last two years has been oriented around creative workshops and parties. Turning that into work could be a big mistake. Going into politics, insanely, feels appealing too. I would learn a lot. Why not fail at something, next? I can't just keep being an improbable success! That's not sustainable.

Or I could write more, for real. I would learn from that. But would I stick to it, stick into it, sink like into sand suspended in water and breath through my skin?

Only way to find out is the hard way.

My upstairs landlord is rolling her walker over my ceiling. I am sorry she is so sick. And I am very sorry that it wakes me up most nights at least once. It used to be more often, 3-5 times a night, but I think I'm less anxious and emotionally repressed and she is less active.

On the couch today, after my reading club finished its discussions, my co-hosts and I discussed how bad it would be if a mildly risque party we hosted got back to our professional networks. I find it hard to take their concerns seriously. I have 356 (soon to be 357) entries on crimes, emotional turbulence, drugs, immaturity, and growth that are freely available on the internet. Sexy Earth Day is nothing.

I fell into a rabbit hole of rereading old posts. I am torn about sending my SF Bestie any part of the blog. It's such a behemoth, but she does love stories about Reed.

Bedtime comes! I spent about two hours scrolling on Youtube shorts this evening instead of reading, painting, and writing. This vibe-download is my penance. I'll tell a whole story someday again. Future Julia will read this and remember (almost) discussing David Graeber's "What's the Point if We Can't Have Fun?" And eating cookies and showing everyone the dandelion-root tea. The sunset over my computer screen, from the chair I used to call Dertron. Its fat red corduroy is covered by a gold blanked.

3rd Time's the Charm: Day 5 of COVID

I told my colleagues I was going to ease back into work today. Why?

I've gotten distracted by 5 different things since the last sentence. My sick brain has no sticking power. I wanted to start a new post because I learned, while rereading this blog, that I first heard "Y Lloraras Como Yo" back in 2020. Apparently, I had a tango music phase. My ex and I took a few lessons before the pandemic hit, but the post is from July 2020. Well, in this 2024-present tango phase, it was the first song that I had on repeat, that I learned all the words to. I didn't think of it as old ground, though.

So, five years of pandemic, and the virus has gotten me thrice (at least). I probably had asymptomatic cases in Mexico City, December 2023, and when I moved here, July 2023. Inshallah, this round wraps up without too much trouble. I'll take the next vaccine in May 2026 to try to break this summer habit.

Q1 2025

I told my new San Francisco best friend about this blog. It came up as we were painting our friendship jackets, somehow. Do I send it to her? Tonight, after printing Sexy Earth Day posters and writing my boyfriend's birthday card, I felt like this could be my medium. I am a bit under the weather with stress and allergies, though, so we'll see how far I go.

Maybe I didn't publish the 2024 New Year scheming because I was afraid to jinx my schemes. Well, I never got to the ceramics, but I did host two different versions of Golden Gatekeeping - the map idea (and one version twice actually, with different names) and a party where everyone brought takeout from their favorite restaurant as a picnic (with the original name-too good to waste). The Woman I admired from two posts ago is now my friend, and I'm writing this from the Art Club at her space. I go to Tango once a week or so, and sometimes more. I did eventually have a situationship, but not with that guy I hooked up with after Martuni's. And then in November, I met my now boyfriend!

I finished the Doulingo course on Chinese, and I'm working on Spanish now a bit. I hosted a handful of reading parties this summer, and logged 180 hours over 25 books this summer. I completely replaced by Age of Empires addiction with reading. 

Writing has been more uneven. I journaled a ton in early 2024, but stopped as the travel picked up. I went to Fair, but I was still recovering from COVID at the time. I didn't go to Burning Man - so I rolled over a week of vacation for this year and am forcing myself to take it.

It's a trip to think back to when I didn't know the Woman I Admire (what a great term for her - WIA). To when I hadn't had sex in more than a year. To when I was just starting to host parties - before I had a wall of posters and dozens of Partiful events. Before Mossy Minds was at least quarterly. My life here is so rich.

And yet, I'm only going to be home for 5 complete weeks of the next 12. Today the ice breaker at F&N was "what are you trying to fix?" I'm trying to fix my work-life balance. I've never felt like it was off by this much before. The travel is also interfering with my work work. I feel so lost, even at the height of my influence.

When I explain my job to people, they rarely express that they expected me to have that kind of role. Maybe it's because I'm a bit apologetic in my description. Certainly, no reader of this blog would imagine what I do now. That I spoke into the microphone at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. That I shared a lunch table with Patti Poppe. Things I might consider meaningless in the context of this story of my social and emotional life. But maybe they mean more to me than I realize - imagine them going away... imagine a job where people didn't seek me out for my expertise, where legislators didn't ask me to write them bills... Now I've said way too much. I've spent five years immersed in this professional context. I am thinking about changing it–I am tired right now. But also, I must acknowledge how lucky I am, how much I still have to learn doing what I am doing.

So, this is me now. So solid at 31, yet still with my little questions and struggles. Still wanting things that are hard to get: a forever home, a true love; and also building things that take time to build: community, a career, art and language skills.

The nice thing about setting goals is that you can look back and be satisfied. I am usually so afraid of goals because I'm afraid of falling short. Let this be a lesson to me.

New Year Activities - written at the end of 2023 - why didn't I publish?

 The Artist's Way ends with an instruction to wish boldly, across many facets of life. One is told to write 10 wishes in the categories of Health, Possessions, Leisure, Relationships, Creativity, Career, and Spirituality. I kicked off my sabbatical/2nd half of the year journal with this exercise, though I added to the lists over time as I couldn't manage all 10 at once. I achieved a lot of my wishes - I was designing my new life, so the wishes helped direct me. 

I will do the same exercise in my new year journal (probably the yellow Portuguese one). But I want to start by mapping out all of the activities and creations I imagine desiring. Then I can turn them into wishes. Some already are. I can also decide which ones I want the most, and which are just passing fancies. As I consider joining a ceramics studio, that is a question. My friends remind me that I can quit. I remind myself that whatever money I spend on tools will not affect my life.

So - 

Ceramics - twice a week I go create. I will make gifts. I can make prizes... which means I can have contests... or bribe people to participate in things. Though V reminded me that just inviting people and letting them show up or not is the best way to do things.

Dance - Go to Mission Fusion, tango, or alternative once a week or more.

MGM continues on a roughly monthly basis

Craft parties - where everyone uses the same technique/supplies to make their own thing

• Accordion books? Of wishes?
• Valentines
• San Francisco city maps!!!! Like everyone starts with a rough outline of the city (maybe I trace a real map?) and then draws in their memories and homes and favorite hangs.
• Golden GATEKEEPING!!?!? LMAO!!!!
• And, they can be reused in the Valentine's event to map out a perfect day in the city. Or core memories together. God I'm good.
• Mom suggests printing out a big version and putting it up on a wall for everyone at a party to add to. 

Dates/Sex - hopefully find a friend with benefits or two for a few months. Maybe something serious after Burning Man. At the solstice parade that I went to everyone was supposed to write something that they wanted to let go of. I put something like "reluctance to express sexual desire." If I meet hot people, why not tell them (in a no-pressure flattering way that still clearly conveys interest.)

Learning - Grind on Chinese until I can have a conversation with YD's mom. Get deeper work knowledge. 

Teaching - onboard new people at work. Volunteer as a tutor of some kind? Homework helper?

Writing - more essays. Taking things from outline to draft to finished. Not just scribbling, scribbling, and more scribbling.

But also writing letters to friends. Always that.

Reading - Recoltes et Semailles - could I start a french reading group? is Recoltes et Semailles too intense?

Festivals - Fair and Burning Man again

Abudanza!

I revisited this blog this month because a woman that I admired sent me her early-twenties record of exploration and it charmed me. With this site, I too can charm myself whenever I want (or cringe, though always less than I expect to).

I was surprised/concerned to log on and see that over the last month or two this site has had the most traffic of its life. These are secrets! Kept in public! Don't anybody dare tell them! (kind of serious). 

I thought about sending her back this blog, but it has no artistic thesis like hers had and I decided that was a good enough excuse not to send it. Once I sent it to a friend and she said it was rude to invite someone to read work you hadn't edited. Well, I didn't write it to be "work" but I suppose it has become "a work" by virtue of scale if not scheme. I sometimes default to not sharing. I can always share later. 

We had coffee - this inspiring woman - and I. She seemed to offer me some things I wanted, but I was too shy to accept. I will try to deserve them before taking her up on them. 

I am being coy. She runs a community-building endeavor, and she sort of offered to let me host or create in its space and umbrella of existence. Instead, I set up a practice session at my house. A warm-up. She expressed interest in a weird couch based on my DOTU story... I'd love to make a rocking couch for her. I just need to find a couch, buy a little bit of wood for the rockers, and track down an angle grinder. 

What would it take for me to want to host something in her space? It lacks a level of coziness that my plans require - easily solved by a few couches, though they won't necessarily fit. I would bring tea and snacks. It is very doable. I want to already. I want to be her friend.

Should I move on to other topics? I might get laid before the new year. It's all up in the air. But it has been interesting. The woman mentioned about told me to go to Martuni's to make out with a friend. We didn't make out there, but we did more than that at his apartment later.

This potential sex drove me to tell my good friend about my persistent crush on him. Are you confused yet? Two different men - extremely different men. The Martuni's evening is actually the end of this story, for now. 

But before Martuni's, me and a man I might have sex with had a lovely afternoon walking through the park and having dinner. He bought dinner, then texted me to look at the beautiful moon, then our mutual friend implied he was interested... All of this prompted me to act on my long-standing crush on my best friend in the bay. I thought "maybe we (me and good friend) won't be single at the same time again for a long time." So I did it. Edith and others have encouraged me to tell him, and I've been telling them about it to get that encouragement. It finally worked.

Another reason I told him is that I had been "practicing" telling him by writing letters and then I decided again to "practice" and opened my notebook to find 3 pages of "practice" that got progressively less-hinged and I realized I did not need more "practice." The actual revelation was very simple. After a good meal at Happy Family Gourmet. In the car, in the dark, before I went back into my home, bringing up his "type" and our friendship, and then just saying "I have felt bad lately because I have a crush on you." Should I have said that I was telling him about the crush out of a sense of guilt? I did my best. 

His response was very kind and measured despite his being totally surprised, apparently. I told him to tell me that he didn't think about me that way and he refused - he said he had thought about it but that losing our friendship would be too horrible. I thought this would leave me still wanting him, but instead, it feels like a kind of generosity. I had been so sure that he wasn't attracted to me and that that would be the end of it. 

Instead, I have made him tell me that he truly values our friendship. I have been surprised so many times that it's the case. When I ask him why we get along, why we are friends, he says it's because I put the effort in - so you can see why I would be confused. But when he isn't stressed about work we do have a lovely time together. He likes driving out to nature, eating Chinese (or other) food, nerding out about language, talking about life, listening to music. He'd prefer to nerd out about using the piezoelectric effect to drive sound waves to position lasers, but I cannot offer that. Talking to the inspiring woman, she asked why I had a crush on him. I listed his admirable qualities in a very unconvincing way until I stumbled upon a piece of the truth - that in the time I spend with him I feel fully present. That the simplest pleasures become my whole focus with him.

An exception that proves the rule - on Friday, we had fancy dim sum and I treated it like the last chance for him to change his mind about adding a romantic element to our relationship. Actually, I never verbalized what I wanted from him. Of course, there are many things I want from him and many things I would be happy with - what we have right now being one of them. But I never expressed that openness; I just told him that I had a crush on him and let him react. Was that a mistake?

We talked a bit more about it at lunch and when it became clear that there would be nothing between us that would lead to my getting laid before the new year (an arbitrary goal that has emerged just because there is a possibility of it) I texted this other guy while my good friend was in the bathroom to set up the Martuni's encounter. 

Shocking! Well. I was about to leave town for six days in the mountain compound. I had to act fast.

Six days is too long, by the way, of course. I knew that but I felt I owed my aunt all of the time I could offer with her, and then my cousins are coming down this evening. So today, now, as I write, is the only time I have unbuffered with my parents. And you know how I am electing to spend said time. Every time I overexpose with them I know I am reseting a clock of curiosity that is really struggling to tick already. Too much familiarity, too many little annoyances, and I am left with no desire to understand them or to be understood by them. 

Maybe through games or activities I could unblock it a bit. They are excessively industrious, taking on projects of various proportions around the place and attacking them rabidly. It makes me indolent. Their restlessness drives me to read and nap and stare at a red-tailed hawk circling the valley. 

Today it is incredibly stormy though. It started last night with blustering wind - now we are approaching howling, and the rain is driving. The bare branches of the trees are dancing. The ground is puddled. The south-facing windows battered with drops, the northerly ones dry. The house is in a cloud so thick you can see less than 100 feet - and at night it was even thicker. It was so strange to feel the wind whip my silk pants, but even though I could see the air, even though it was thick and lit by my flashlight, it didn't seem to move. Why didn't it swirl? How did all the droplets move invisibly at 10+ miles per hour?

So now mom is reading, I am typing, dad did some work and is now toodling about on laundry and other tasks. I have a bath bomb to use. More books to read. It's 10:30 in the morning. I must have other stories to tell. A part of me has wanted to work a bit during this time, and I have written some ideas down. I was so drained for the last three weeks though that I think a hard pause on work is needed. I am reading High Tension, about the formation of electric monopolies and rural cooperatives. It is giving me more ideas, and more excitement about being part of this century-long saga of electricity. 

Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre. I have decided to test that theory. Five days in and I am not dead.

In Mt. Pleasant

Eating a mushroom and cheese scone that a temporary housemate brought home. They could become a permanent housemate, if they want me. And if I want to stay on this coast.

I finally made a pros and cons list for moving away. So far the biggest pro is: no more allergies. The biggest con: DC is so damn bikeable - anywhere else will probably be worse.

K still hasn't texted me back. Maybe asking about thanksgiving was the wrong call. Eventually I'll ask if he doesn't want to be in touch. It was an intense little affair that we had. It was hard to keep it light and easy to think about falling in love. And yet, it was hard to imagine how we would go about it - across the continent, with our strange history, with our recent breakups. The answer is not to go about it at all - to both move on and grow in our ways, and then revisit the question. We both admitted to thinking very intense questions, like about kids - at least we were both carried away, but where are we now?

I bought a lot of stuff recently. One thing I bought is going to the wrong quadrant of town - a rookie mistake. Hoping that either UPS will fail to deliver it or when I bike over to knock on Tuesday they'll give it to me. 

My COVID test came back negative, so I am free to roam the house without an N95. I was already being very casual because I took so few risks lately, and I was nearly the only one home. Almost a week of my 4 week stay here is already over, and the house is still pretty empty. I'm not sure I'll really have time to get to know people. If I come back for 20 days in January, I maybe I can do better.

###

Forgot to hit publish. Now it's Monday morning and I need to work.

I called K last night, based on Edith's sage advice. We just chatted, and said it would be nice to talk on the phone sometimes to get to know each other better. He's been having some feelings about his breakup - it was a month more recent than mine, so no one should be surprised. Overall a nice conversation.

Edith says I should go ahead with the Creative Community.

Maybe a Google Form for interest and preferences is the first step.

 

In New Orleans

Shocked to discover I wrote on this blog in 2020 and 2021. They are lost years in a few ways; waiting to be rediscovered, perhaps.

I am more used to writing pen to paper these days, and I did try to spin up an alternative digital home a few weeks before SB and I broke up, but in the short interim between today's outing and this evening's I thought, for whatever reason, that this was the place to be.

I had a whirlwind of a day. As happens almost every time, I was betrayed by a microdose. I dismounted from my bicycle after a peppy ride talking animatedly to myself in French and wondered - "oh dear, am I really sick?". I was dizzy and a little nauseous walking into Couturie Forest. My throat, which has had a little tickle since Thursday, was tight. 

I wandered in, and up to the "highest point in New Orleans" - a joke I think, because the levee by Lake Pontchartrain is higher per my recollection. Three 9-year-olds lead me up (I followed them) and when I caught up to the laggard he warned me that his friends were up ahead. As he did, the friend yelled "scream if you can see us" down to my interlocutor. 

The top was anticlimactic and I wandered on, seeing a striking growth of wood ear mushrooms. Then I happened upon a triad of unreal live oaks and their unreality reminded me of the little pill I'd taken an hour before.

I laughed to myself later that my condition was "an accident, I forgot." Is it funny? I laughed to myself a lot today. I found myself terribly good company. I told myself jokes only I would get.

Oh, another great moment from before I remembered about the drugs! I came across this bird blind that just faced a fence basically. A big wooden wall with four cutouts, and little benches behind each one. And I thought, "how silly," as I walked around it, past the sign about songbirds. Then I paused and realized I heard quite a bit of song and thought to myself, "well, it works!"

Is that funny if you're not tripping? Maybe someone heard all of the birdsong and thought "it's coming from the fence" and so decided to build the wall facing the fence.

In addition, just to the side of the bird blind was this cypress tree that was bent over in a graceful arc, so that its top brushed the ground but it wasn't broken at all. I thought of it as a very dramatic tree, keeling over in emotion. I took a picture. Would sober me have seen a fainting tree? Maybe.

It was a blessed day, with bathrooms appearing at ideal intervals, never getting too hungry, never feeling tired. Early on I had a moment of fear, recognizing that I wouldn't have chosen to do drugs so close the breakup and thinking for a moment about whether I would be sad about Shelly but I managed to get myself off of that track - I'm sure I saw something silly in the forest.

A few other silly moments to record here or with a pen, but I want to get to the restaurant early.