#68 - Rabbit Rabbit Babes, Time For Smug Season

I popped awake at 5 this morning. I’m not entirely sure why but I’m going to foist at least some of the blame on Goob. Not to like, sell her out, but she knew exactly what she was doing hopping on and off the desk and fucking with stuff just gently enough for it to rattle but not fall. (She saves the falling for the real dramatic events. This is the same cat who smashed two french presses in the span of a month.) She’s been so good recently and extra cute because we finally came to a mutual understanding that she likes her head pet real hard so now I give my cat a noogie in the morning and she purrs and purrs. Weem got a new microfiber blanket so they’re both truly living their best and most content lives!

Cat update: done!

It’s weirdly nice out. I don’t think 60degrees is the normal/average temp to enter November in. I’m worried about how dry everything has been, but I’m also selfishly hoping for an extremely mild winter. It started to feel like autumn in the last two weeks. I’ve drank steamed apple cider a few times and I gotta say—one of the best drinks ever. A hot drink that cools down to an equally delicious cold drink? Sign me up!

(I love Variety for the spaciousness and the outdoor tables but once a friend pointed out how sour their cold brew was I can’t get over it. Their drip coffee is mildly better.)(I went on a quickly-abandoned hunt for the best coldbrew in Bushwick this summer and can conclude that actually most of it is…bad. And that’s terrible because it’s regularly over $4. Give me the option of iced coffee back! Coldbrew is fine but it’s only truly different/delicious enough for the hassle when it’s nitro!) (The best coffee I found was at Black Star in Williamsburg. Locally, it’s the iced coffee at Knickerbocker Bagel.) (My favorite bagel place name of all time. So satisfying to say!)

I used to get americanos everywhere but now I optimize my orders around whatever makes me stand around awkwardly for the least amount of time. I hate waiting in general but that’s okay because I live in New York where everyone else does too. And some days it does make me want to scream a la Carrie Bradshaw, “oh you’re so busy!” but I also think the heart of this city is constantly being pepped up by massive amounts of cocaine. New York is an uppers town, baby! It’s everywhere and all the time! Even in the vibes. We’re an antsy people. Not a lot of steady hands out here.

So, it’s November, it’s week 46/52. I feel like this year has felt like a constant growth spurt for me in terms of understanding myself and my emotions (something I was always very good at appearing like I’ve always deeply understood—nothing throws people off the scent like explaining in detail exactly why you’re crying, little do they know you are constantly overly emotional because you have no baseline understanding of what calm and secure feels like!!) and at this point, the metaphorical legs of my soul are achy and crampy and I’ve gotta start getting used to ducking through metaphorical doors. (In college I made an autocorrect shortcut in my phone to change ducking —> fucking and I just had to undo it because no matter how many ways/times I tried to replace the word it jumped back and “fucking through metaphorical doors” is very different, congratulations text replace for being edited for the first time in a decade! Apparently I really don’t use the word ducking that much!!)

I think it’s time I settle and be okay with the strides I’ve made. Recently a friend suggested that everyone needs to get more smug about themselves. (The original context was about boob size—because we always want what we can’t have—but I think it’s excellent life advice in general.) There is no actual harm in being full of ourselves. It’s actually really good and normal to be proud of accomplishments. And I gotta tell ya, living in between Big World Narratives through this ongoing (and now underacknowledged) pandemic while rent rates soar due to a fucking algorithm is tough and I think we could all do with being a little prouder of ourselves for making it through in whatever shape we have. It’s okay if something took a long time, or a journey just started. That’s actually good and great and fine and wonderful and I think you/we should all be smug about ourselves and our lives. It’s not unkind or uncouth! I actually think kindness (like true kindness and not the kind of kind where we’re all secretly keeping score of just how nice we are) is something to be really fucking proud of. It’s hard to be the bigger person! It’s hard to remain uncynical and generous!! But it’s worth it. It’s so so worth it.

I’ve felt so depleted by realizations recently. It’s hard to shake off the crushing weight of what could have been. It’s so easy to blame other people for situations, for not knowing better, for not doing it the way I would have done it. But that’s just living in regret, and there is no possible growth in that space. It doesn’t help me to blame others, but it does help me when I actively look for their humanity and motivations. And when it boils down—a lot of people are just so scared. And fear is such a powerful motivator—it can’t help but forcibly take the steering wheel and sometimes it feels like it steers us directly into a ditch because hey at least going in the ditch was a choice and I didn’t have to keep worrying about when I was going to crash. I don’t want to be afraid, I want to be excited. I want to stay in that space of discovery and empathy and create extremely generous stories about what was happening and why people do the things they do. Because I really think that humans are trying their best, and sometimes we’re just ill-equipped.

There was a joke online this week that got to me.

What are you going to be for Halloween?

Enough.

Fuuuck I want to be enough. And hey, maybe I just get to decide I am and call it a day! It reminded me of one of the quotes that no matter how many times I read it still feels like someone stabbed me in the spleen.

“The San Francisco therapist kept telling me I shouldn’t be terrified of creative experimentation.
“I don’t know what’s going to come out of me,” I told her. “It has to be perfect. It has to be irreproachable in every way.”
“Why?” she said.
“To make up for it,” I said. “To make up for the fact that it’s me.”
― Suzanne Rivecca

Perfection does not actually grant us any protection. You can reach the pinnacle of any craft and there will always be critics. It’s okay to be occasionally reproachable. And in my best moments, I know that and live there. And on other less secure days, I want to ask everyone I’ve ever met for a list of all the ways I could improve and be less annoying. (Because that would be the least annoying ask ever, right?)

Spending a lot of time on ~self-improvement has certainly been a good & fine goal for me, I certainly needed to allow some self-love to occur and gaining a sense of self-worth is uhhh alarmingly overdue but hey, we did it and I’m here! I stopped being so apologetic for being myself, but it’s never going to be a poof! cured moment.

Enter: the concept of smugness.

I learned to set the bar lower in order to clear it, but I don’t know if I ever got over the urge to slightly (ever so slightly) berate myself for not making the bar higher, for not being able to do it sooner. The best and most loving parts of myself know that an accomplishment stands on its own and I don’t actually need to pass judgement or pick it apart for all of the ways I could have done it better—but the best and most loving parts of me are not always floating near the surface. And that takes practice (ew) and patience (whyyy) so I’m trying to actively speed up the process by being a bit more full of myself.

Smug.

It’s such a good word. You can basically hear the crooked smile.

Anyway, I’ve got myself a little three-step plan for increasing my smugness.

1. Get an ego!

Why not? What’s there to lose? I’m already putting myself out there in increasingly vulnerable ways I may as well act like I know what (and why) I’m doing the things I’m doing!

1. Stop worrying about being annoying!

It’s fine, everyone is actually entitled to be annoying. It’s very human. Everyone gets lightly irritated with each other sometimes, it’s totally fine. I refuse to think of myself as an embarrassment any longer.

Also like, who benefits from that? Who benefits from any of our insecurities?! (Is it five dudes in a boardroom? Fuck that! Fuck them!!)

3. Be smug as hell!

Who’s stopping ya? Because it’s certainly not me!

Get smugged up! Body, mind, spirit. It’s okay to know you’re right. It’s okay to do things for yourself. It’s good to spend time alone. It’s great to know you’re going to have a great night no matter what ends up happening. It’s so fun to move through the world with confidence I kind of can’t believe I didn’t try this sooner.

Try a new style! Wear shoes that make you taller! Learn a new skill and then demand everyone in your life take notice of it!

Welcome to November babes!!! I hope it’s filled with rich earth tones, fancy chocolate, perfect cups of coffee, and a whole lot of joy.