#124 - Rabbit rabbit it's officially autumn!

Well hey hi hello there! It’s been a minute. This is I think the longest break I’ve taken between ‘stacks in the past two years and getting it together enough to actually follow through and hit send evaded me for the past three weeks. That’s not to say there aren’t drafts—there are plenty—but after taking my birthday week off, it felt like I had to come back with something important or worthy to say/report and while I was the only one putting that pressure on myself, I succumbed to it anyway.

Well that and there was flooding in Brooklyn on Friday and there’s nothing quite like New York City-flavored climate catastrophes to really set the world on edge because it’s just soooo reminiscent of apocalyptic movie scenes and movies are real life now in some ways because we mostly learn things through screens and I’m worried everyone is losing their grip on how humans behave in the real world vs. how characters behave in media but also that no one actually CAN think for themselves anymore because we’ve atrophied our brain muscles via looking everything up instantly online rather than spending even a moment in the lingering curiosity of trying to figure something out.

Thankfully, there haven’t been any reported casualties (so far) from the floods. And it once again shone a gigantic unavoidably bright spotlight on the fact that New York City’s mayor actually hates his job and this city and he only took it to become Top Cop eventually and he hates public policy or helping his constituents even though…that’s the job he ran for and allegedly wanted.

My rage for Eric Adams knows no bounds, actually. I feel like it’s so deep I can’t even articulate it, because he shouldn’t be mayor. He literally does not live in this city, he lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey (a place that faaaamously has traffic problems) so it wasn’t a surprise to me that he didn’t actually hold a press conference or declare a State of Emergency about the flooding until 11:40am on Friday. You know, the time after everyone had already gone to work and dropped off their kids at school.

School? Closed! Subway? Every line shut down!

(Except, my beloved, the J train! Shoutout to the J train I am petrified of standing on those elevated platforms because they sway a bit too much these days but I literally have a tattoo about that train so, in my heart forever blah blah blah.)

I’m just so tired of leaders not…leading. Like the reason they get paid more is ostensibly because they’re doing an undesirable/hard job. Managing people is actually super hard and putting together teams of people who actually want to/care about their work is a skill and Eric Adams is a grifter, surrounded by grifters.

He wants me (and all of New York City) to believe that he, a mayor who cannot take a shit without making it a photo op, didn’t take photos of himself visiting flood locations all morning? Because that was his excuse, by the way, as to why it took him until 20 minutes before noon to actually speak to New Yorkers about the cities plans to mitigate the disaster—he was spending all morning visiting flood sites in Brooklyn. No photos, no reports from people in those areas about him—he’s the only one saying that he did this.

That he spent the morning of the flood driving around the flooded streets.
I don’t believe you, Eric!!! None of us do!!

Anyway, I can’t make this whole thing a long rant about Eric Adams (but please, I beg, read this entire New Yorker longread about him & his administration && their corruption and lies because I can’t even begin to describe how low my jaw was hanging by the end of it) (also, speaking of the New Yorker, how glad are they to have left Feinstein off the controversial/ableist cover this week? Friday was a toooough day to pass if you were a person who had a famous clip of being an absolute asshole to child climate activists) because there’s too much there and my heart rate is already kicking up and instead I just want to talk about the more important things: me and my opinions.

I mean, I’m kidding, but I’m also trying this whole new thing where I’m just delusionally confident about everything all the time? I’ve tried the whole “I’m a terrible person with bad intentions who is impossible to be around and tolerated at best by those around me” vibes for a good 30 years, so I’ve decided that I’m just…not gonna do that this year. It’s boring! It’s boring, I’m bored, [snore sounds honk shoo mimimimimi].

My outfits? Impeccable!

My impulsive decisions? Probably not harmful to anyone, actually!

My ability to describe my emotions in hopes it will help others tap into the depths of theirs and maybe help them begin some form of grieving process for the lives we were all promised vs. the reality being presented to us because of like 10 dudes in boardrooms who want to hoard all the money and have no imagination when it comes to alternative energy policies? The cornerstone of my art and the most precious gift that I have been resisting offering to the world!!

September was fun because things just kind of kept clicking. Mid-work meeting I would be scribbling down sentence fragments, I felt myself open up and immediately received messages ~from elsewhere, and I started listening without trying to hang on to whatever random thing I was reminded of mid-conversation. (If my tangent was important enough to bring up, it always came back later.)

Some of these little thoughts feel worthy of an entire expansive essay, but I don’t want to hold onto them in the meantime.

People say facilitation is a nebulous skill—it’s not. Calling it nebulous just protects them from having to learn a skill.

How much of YouTube is just girls waking up, going to Starbucks going to target showing us their drinks. It’s been 10 years and they can’t wait to try the new fall flavors! Is the staticity admirable in some ways?

Stans think they’re important to the celeb and part of the fame. It’s the closest they can get—because the dirty little secret is that everyone kind of wants to be famous in some way. And a good chunk of those people feel shame about that fact.

These men do not possess power, they are possessed by power.

Ugh, please don’t tell me I have to fix an institution when I could just demonize an individual. It’s like soooo much easier to do the latter.

Capitalism requires suffering and feels unchangeable, so it takes a lot of effort from within to feel like any institution is changeable.

Switched on? Low to high level sadness about the state of the world.
Switched off? Playing a losing game of wealth and material hoarding that fails to fill the gaps in spirit caused by doing so much harm to others with our every action on a daily basis.

Breakup rubber band theory — pre-breakup you get exhausted trying to stretch your boundaries and get out of this center hold you’ve been in for so long but it’s like you’re running against a rubber band and the second you get exhausted it snaps you back to where you were. But eventually, the elasticity gets worn out. The snapback won’t be so sudden or harsh. The thing about breakups is that they feel impossible until they happen, and soon after the former version of our lives feel as outlandish as being single once did.

Too many of our politicians are failed theatre kids.

People want to be told that it’s not worth the effort because they don’t want to put the effort in.

The reason that I believe in this is because I wish the world was a more generous place.

They want us to be social on our phones rather than real life because it’s the only way they can inject advertisements into our social spheres.

So much of people’s behavior these days can be explained when you think of it as a shame eruption.

Most people are living excuse to excuse.

That last one has really stuck with me.

Earlier this year, the Jenny Holzer quote about people wounding themselves because they don’t know what else to do became my anti-mantra. I think it’s a brutally succinct quote, and reading it helped me understand the cycle I was trapped in more thoroughly.

I’m like really good with excuses. To the point that they don’t even sound like excuses, people just assume I’ve already thought through every angle to reach this conclusion because my conviction when speaking hasn’t waivered since I was a “this one is going to be a lawyer” kid.

But those excuses just enabled me to hide, to not create or speak my mind, to remain petrified of the world around me. And they were also convincing other people of those non-truths and I was sick of accidentally Rasputining people with my anxiety.

The world is awkward and weird sometimes. It’s not me or my anxiety causing/perceiving it that way, it’s just a truth. We don’t always behave how we wish we did, we all have regrets about missed opportunities to express our ~true feelings when it would/could have mattered most~, unpredictability leads to instability, etc. Few of us face unique torture from the world, it just is up to us to express our needs in order to find the proper support channels.

Life is tragic, but it’s also unspeakably beautiful and mysterious and full of potential and idk man I really thought I was gonna die before I hit 29 so every year since just feels like a miracle. (I’m even like going to the dentist this month to fix the whole teeth sitch I created while living carelessly, please clap.)

I want to stop wasting time, I want to stop being afraid, I want I want I want—so I will, I will, I will.

September was a whole month. It…passed. Not fast or slow, I think I felt every day of September.

Totally nailed my birthday this year btw. Finally stopped beating myself up for not having a ton of friends who live in this city, did not succumb to some self-imposed pressure to go out for drinks, and only cried once! Instead, me and my best friend woke up early because I’m just a morning person now and there’s no turning back, and we took the train into SoHo because Manhattan is best experienced when empty and I got my birthday sunrise while the M train clattered over the Williamsburg Bridge. We window-peeped/critiqued all of the major designers (the only one who came away unscathed was Marc Jacobs because he has chosen a perfect shade of green for his bags this year, like it’s good enough to make me forgive him for the fact that I will have to see that dreaful The Tote Bag for at least another six seasons), we smoked spliffs on cast-iron steps while dogs came up to greet us during their early morning walk, we sat at the tiniest table in the world at The Butcher’s Daughter, and took a single bite of the worst cookie I’ve ever tasted in my entire life it was like chewing 5 Gum after it’s starting to disintegrate idk how they even achieved that texture!!! We got back to my place and were baffled as to why we were so tired—thankfully Apple is constantly monitoring my whereabouts so we realized via the Health app that we had walked 7.5 miles lololol whoops!

I stopped resisting my actual wants/wishes. I didn’t forsake my own happiness for what would ~appear~ to others as a perfect day. It was my perfect day and I got to spend it exactly how I wanted—Seamless delivery and all!

Other things that happened in September? I went inside of a SoHo house and did a surrupticious bathroom photoshoot with the bestie because I am not Cooler Than Cool and will actually indulge in the ~unique elite expiriences~ I am presented with (my review of the bar was that it was more spacious than a typical NYC bar but also like could have easily been the coolest bar in Miluakee, nothing particularly cityesque about the vibes, also Edison bulbs in the year 2023???). I listened to John Wilson on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, finally started watching his show on HBO, was reinvigorated by the ways he sees this city, saw a comedian who made some funny jokes about him and called him the King of Ridgewood, went to a bar to and ended up discussing the show with the bestie and while we were talking about how she had to turn off the How To earwax episode because she tried to watch it while eating—John Wilson walked by our table, sat at the table behind us, and smoked a cig.

Now am I 100% sure it was John Wilson? No! I’m like 85% sure. The only reason it’s not 100% is because 85% of dudes who live in Bushwick/Ridgewood look/dress exactly like him. But there was like an aura, and the right glasses, and the right location, and idk it wasn’t anything but it was cosmically very strange and he had on some real nice linen pants, big fan of the outfit, also super seriously—is he single???

Idk, sometimes it just really hits that the world is smaller than we realize.

And also maybe for my art to be more ~serious, I have to take myself seriously? Or at least not throw away my bolder ideas for the sake of appearing neutral or something. Writing is the only place I’m not blasphemously opinionated but it’s the most permanent record of my thoughts so I have to get over my fears and deal with the fact that putting myself out there DOES mean feedback will be more personal and it will be up to my strength/resolve to continue through it.

Good art isn’t for everyone. Art is about reactivity, not about people pleasing.

And writing is art, and napkin doodles are art, and the conversations that leave me bent over nearly puking from laughter are ephemeral and not meant to be experienced just so that I can capture a watered-down experience of it later.

I don’t want to compulsively document everything for the sake of record, I don’t want fame or longevity beyond my years, I don’t want to charge money to read my random thoughts that aren’t even copyedited, I don’t want numbers and stats blaring at me each time I open this website because they want me to start charging money so that they can skim money off the top and earn their own passive income.

(The next person who tells me that I should sacrifice a morning coffee in order to subscribe to their Patreon OOOOO they can fuck straight off. Truly stop making your (freelance!) livelihood your audience’s piecemeal responsibility how dare creators try and guilt audiences I know the rules of engagement are broken but like, c’mon. If your most compelling reason to support your work is that it’s “not that much money overall” maybe spend some of that income and talk to like a marketing expert because holy shit I’ve never heard something less compelling in my life! And for art??? Don’t you have something greater to say, to point to? Not exactly inspiring confidence!!)

Anyway! October is HERE! There was a pumpkin-flavored coffee in my hand and a sweatshirt/short combo happening on my walk this morning which means the weather is PERFECT and while there are many things left to figure out/fear/overcome I’m comforted by the fact that literally all I can do is take life one second at a time. And if I spend enough of that time wisely, I’ll live a fulfilling life. For me. And by gifting myself joy and ease, I can provide for others rather than acting as some sort of love scavenger who enters most situations with highly repressed ulterior motives that make me feel like a (secret) bad person!

No more excuses babeeeey! Time to live life and see where the fuck that takes us!

My room is in fall/winter position (aka my head is no longer next to the radiator/hot pole), my desk mat matches my keycaps again, and I feel weirdly ready to take on the next few months in a “can’t wait to see where this goes” kind of way. Which is much preferable to the, “oh shit, where’s this going?” vibe my life has had for a long time.

Okay, well, with that—have a GREAT October y’all! Remember to effusively compliment the Libra’s in your life (even & especially when they don’t ask for praise directly)!

✌️ 💛 🎃

From the vault

Last year: #63 - It’s October Again

Two years ago: #13 - A case for fun tech

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