My first arbitrage was flipping decorative erasers I bulk-purchased in Southeast Asia to my fellow East Bay elementary schoolers for a premium. Fifty cents got you a cute transparent eraser with a smiling animal suspended in its center; a dollar, sweet-scented stretchy putty that was advertised to remove graphite but whose true calling was ending up hard-stuck to the inner recesses of classroom desks. For customers who could not pay in legal tender, I tolerated barter, trading my wares for whole wheat honey buns and “Cry Babies” (sour cherry shaved ice) that could be purchased with pre-loaded cafeteria dollars. I eventually got busted — my makeshift marketplace was distracting kids from state-approved arithmetic — but not before I developed a real penchant for making a quick, easy buck. When I look back on my gig work in the years since — catering wine country weddings in addition to my full-time job, semi-legal hawking of homemade financiers, 2.5 years of writing SEO-optimized recipes for a salary that amounted to less than minimum wage after foreign taxes — I realize it was never really about the money (which I’ve always been mediocre at finding good uses for), but about the reward of seeing and seizing opportunity and experience where others can’t or won’t. More on that later.

II.

Most of my friends know that I lived and worked in Japan as an English teacher for a couple of years. Fewer of them know that one of the three high schools I taught at was basically a real-life sports anime. I was an instructor at a dormitory school for the nation’s top velodrome cyclists, which meant that 70 or so kids, hand-picked from across the country for their unusual excellence in careening around a track slanted at 36.3° at a casual 50 mph, were sent to rural Kagoshima to train as professional athletes, occasionally sustain horrific road rash, and even more occasionally learn some English from me. Japan has notoriously poor language education, despite its notoriously strong everything else, so only one of my pupils was an academic standout. When he passed EIKEN Grade 1 (the highest-proficiency English test, akin to a grad school-level TOEFL score or the inverse of JLPT N1) as a first-year student, we were interviewed for the local news. My student was charming and eloquent; I made a mediocre joke about the declining value of the yen that still makes me cringe.

III.

I have reason to believe that, following the passage of California’s 2020 accessory dwelling unit (ADU) reform bills, my work at a leading housing start-up briefly put me in the national top 10 for most ADUs permitted. If I had more motivation, I would collect the data to BOTEC this out properly, but I cannot be bothered. That exact unwillingness to hash out numerical details is why I no longer work in permitting.

IV.

I wrote and directed short plays in high school. Seeing my stories on stage did insane things for my self-confidence, and I’m pretty sure I’m still riding that high to this day. I’m romantic about words because they pay my bills and fan my ego, and my affection really started at a summer camp hosted at the dusty estate of long-dead American playwright Eugene O’Neill, where people encouraged me to sprawl out on the dry grass, pen family dramas, and begin to nurse a lifelong delusion that I have something important to say.

V.

I don’t feel at liberty to claim any intelligence because I graduated from a mid-tier state school and never progressed beyond pre-calculus, but I’m trying my best to overcome this insecurity and admit that I can play certain games well. For example, at that mid-tier state school, I graduated first in my major, summa cum laude, with distinction, as an honors student, in 2.5 years — 1.5 years ahead of schedule. I worked two part-time jobs at once (three, actually, for a few short weeks), received full scholarships for two study abroad programs, and still managed to make time to join a sorority, fulfill the demands of respectability politics, and emotionally terrorize my boyfriend.

This, while not globally impressive, took great effort, and I want to own that I’m proud of how hard I worked and proud of the legible outputs that hard work produced. Reflecting on my time in college is a good reminder that I am capable of extreme determination and hardiness when I need to be, and I’m grateful that past me took it upon herself to make that known.

VI.

Shortly after becoming a freshly minted adult, I got the bright idea that rather than going Dutch on dinner dates with vape-smoking, rainbow keyboard-owning enrollees of the SDSU Fowler College of Business, I should attempt to date upward — in both tax bracket and age. Due to my astute observation of Pornhub categories and brazen disregard for personal safety, I possessed both the knowledge that being “barely legal” was a selling point and the requisite recklessness to capitalize on it. Thus ensued a particularly hectic (and equally meaningful and formative) time in my life.

There are plenty of stories to share, and maybe one day, after AGI has negated the need for human labor (and thus, employability), I’ll divulge in full. But for now, here is a brief outline of a single excursion.

Man picks me up for an overnight in Beverly Hills. I am swept up and alarmed by my sudden plunge into high culture. We listen to strange instrumentals in the car, which is discernibly fancy, though I lack the sensitivity to explain exactly how. We go out for Easter brunch, where I eat less than I want to appear demure and shake hands with a celebrity chef while wearing items from the Forever 21 sale rack. Man suggests swimming, but I didn’t bring a swimsuit, so we pop into a store for him to buy me one. He asks if I want to do more shopping, which I decline in a show of modesty and consideration, but I’ve misunderstood — wanting is a demonstration of taste, and fulfilling wants is a demonstration of masculinity. We swim. We go to another restaurant, where we eat small, decorative food off small, decorative plates, which sort of matches how I feel. I try my best to add value to the conversation, though it’s hard because I have not lived very long. Man is very nice to me anyway.

Through experiences like this, I learn raw facts about the world: Pitchfork is a music publication known for its album reviews; “modern” refers to art from the 1860s–1970s, whereas “contemporary” means everything after; there’s no personal income tax in Abu Dhabi. I also learn about the human condition. Everyone, no matter how big or how broken, wants the same things: to feel smart, to feel safe, and to feel loved.

I have since abandoned pursuits of this nature, though I still regard practitioners of the lifestyle with the highest respect, and perhaps a little envy. At the conclusion of this particular outing, I was deposited in front of my freshman dorm in a vintage Cadillac by a Spanish-speaking chauffeur who politely addressed me as “Ms. Last Name of My Date,” but hit on me nonetheless. I would have liked to rush inside for a quick shower and primp, but I didn’t have time — I was late for my 10 AM, which I rocked up to with Rita Ora’s “Big” blasting in my ears and a band of crisp bills burning a hole in my pocket.

VII.

After years of waffling, I took a small step forward in besting my capitalistic tendencies by signing Giving What We Can’s 10% pledge, a commitment to donate 10% of my income to highly effective charities until I retire. In the end, the thing that pushed me over the edge was holding a Lesley Stowe Raincoast Crisp® up to the window while tripping on psychedelics, weeping at the sunshine pouring through the mosaicked fruits, nuts, and seeds, and feeling enormously guilty for tearing through such overt luxury without a second thought. I looked around me and saw villains: millionaires, or soon-to-be, with no regard for people outside their circle; race science entertainers who asked me to look at IQ bell curves and internalize their assumptions; social climbers so steeped in normative ideas of worth that their conception of selflessness failed to extend beyond not asking a friend to Venmo back — and realized I was falling victim to the same insidious, self-superior, myopic greed. I felt disgusted by my rapacity and dispirited by my cowardice. I felt overwhelmingly touched by the inconceivable abundance of my daily life.

When I ate the crisp, I knew something in me had crossed over. Though it was several more months before I signed, I eventually did with relatively little fanfare. The “I’m motivated to take this pledge today...” question on the sign-up flow, which had previously scared me with the grandiosity of its premise and presumption of being a long answer field, I answered simply: I love this world and its people. I want us to be well. What a gift to contribute toward that goal.

After signing, I cried softly in my $1,200 HÅG Capisco office chair. At one in the morning, I texted my friend “i signed the pledge :)” to which he replied “BEAST MODE.”

My concept of the quintessential American family includes gathering around the dining table to play cards, warmed by an honest-to-God wood fire and the ambient presence of children giggling and prattling in the other room. This is the setting in which I start the year, in a small town an hour or so outside of Pittsburgh, melancholic with the knowledge that our time as family is drawing to a close.

We take the Miata up the coast to Rockaway Beach for the king tide — the highest tide of the year — where everyone studies the ground. A ripple of excitement runs through our group at the discovery of a mutant starfish — six legs! — and we pass its body around for show and tell. Someone asks if it hurts the anemone to be stepped on, to which we surmise surely — but what can we do about that? We drive into the forest for beef stew at our friends’, which I let myself eat because I am not so vegetarian yet.

Brewster Kahle feeds me ice cream at the Internet Archive.

February

I practice saying ‘no’ even when I think the asker is worthy of a ‘yes’. I bow out of a party to be merciful, then fall ill for a week and bow out of several more out of necessity. I recover in time to walk the double-cross trail, a 15-mile route that provides a great vantage point for two things: 1) a stunning tableau of the city’s two bridges and 2) the uncomfortable fact that every single one of my eight friends who shows up is male. I resolve to befriend more women.

At my father’s birthday brunch, the waiter gives us free pancakes, which means we’re now flush with the abundance of pancakes and waffles. A feeling of plenty trickles into the evening, when we go glamping on the Russian River. Though there is not much to do besides swing in hammocks and walk our dog — and though we are incapable of starting a fire without lighter fluid — it feels nice to experience something new with my parents. I resolve to make more of this happen, too.

I full-body cry during metta meditation, then feel so whole-hearted that I immediately make friends with three strangers. For the rest of the night, I am magnetically charismatic — animated, lovable, so super shiny. Upon reflection, this spells the beginning of low-grade mania, but at the time, I just call it equanimity.

March

I fly to San Diego, my college town, where I am 18 again: aimless, sun-drenched, twitchy. I sample the same coping mechanisms I employed as a teen: gossip, shopping, Korean soft tofu soup.

I neglect to return a gesture, a critical misstep I spend the next several months agonizing over.

I fuck up some more, in 4K, unmistakably, and contend with my adolescence. It hurts to admit my carelessness, so I fail to do so with meaningful vigor.

April

I nurse my wounds with a girls’ trip across the PNW. When I’m not scream-singing pop hits or running through the redwoods naked, I’m mourning the lack of a bedroom door I can close. I waste the peak of my high weeping through the aftershocks of my recent separation — a real sin when my friends are convening with the Universe just outside. I make up for it later, fully present as we scrounge the Airbnb pantry for scraps, cobble together a meal of oiled pasta, leftover radishes, and kimchi, and squeal our way through Scattergories. Post-trip, we name our shared photo album “four beautiful women who got into a little car accident” to commemorate, as you may have guessed, our little car accident. In the months to come, as my dread ratchets, I reflect on this period as the last good time.

I start a new job.

May

I fly to Lisbon, where I try my best to feel Euro-chic, but mostly feel lonely.

I go on dates with an admirable, kind person who fades from my life within the season, but leaves a lasting impression nonetheless. Though our lives are not good candidates for intertwinement, the brief time they overlap is significant and rewarding.

I try to be a good friend and a good partner. I crystallize my belief that connection is the only thing that matters, which is why the pursuit and retention of it leaves me lightheaded — I am more aware than ever of what I am trying to preserve.

I meet a boy who excites me so much, I keep nervously dropping my belongings in front of him.

June

I fly to London, an okay place, then take the train to Oxford, an okay place made excellent by my friends who live there.

I have an incredible Vibegala — luxuriant, twinkly, vivacious — and only minorly hurt feelings in the process.

I make bigger mistakes and have harder conversations. My map of the city is pockmarked with reminders of lost things.

I shoot guns for my birthday.

July

I’m rattled by a breakup that feels both surprising and inevitable. Having made good on my intention to befriend more women, I have no shortage of girlfriends available to say the wrong thing.

I grow restless and indiscriminate, agreeing to ever more in flight from boredom and morosity. Over the summer, I try painting, bouldering, skinny dipping, spikeball, Topgolf, tabletop games, skateboarding, go-karting, chocolate making, tubing, kayaking, jewelry metalworking, cliff jumping, and skydiving.

I pick stone fruit with my parents on a sunny day and make cobbler with our harvest.

August

I fly to Guatemala. On day two, I trip while running and puncture my shin on the cobblestone. It bruises purple, which softens to yellow over the duration of the two-week trip. I cry from stress during the day and from laughter at night. I appreciate the levity of our 20-person group, even though it feels far away at times. By the trip’s end, I feel ready to face life again, steadied by time and distance, cleansed by the exertion of hiking at 13,000 feet, and comforted by evidence of the enduring nature of friendship.

September

I start to really like the boy I met in May.

We celebrate my best friend’s birthday with a big group trip to a cabin four hours north, which includes spraying mystery liquid up our noses, spending hours in the hot tub, eating berry pie, and listening to EDM while watching fishtank videos intended for cats. The vibes are excellent — the days feel carefree and endless, like we are the children of rich, absent parents who’ve bought us all the gadgets we could ever want. Though there’s still enough tension between us to warrant fighting until five in the morning, there’s more than enough love to make the weekend one of the best of the whole year.

October

I fly to New York, a pretty good place, then take the train to Jersey City, an okay place made excellent by my friends who live there. On our mutual day off, we drive upstate to pick vegetables and traipse through a sculpture park, then come home to make pasta pomodoro and pet Lucky Charm, the cat.

I don’t play when it comes to Halloween, so I force us to clock in for a twelve-hour shift at the costume-making factory. We bicker all day but without any malice, and reward ourselves for a job well done by splurging on bubbly drinks at dinner. It is a joyful, silly time — I can’t help but dance through the grocery store aisles.

We dip from work early, jumping on the I-80 at 4 p.m. to journey toward the largest corn maze in the world. The maze is pleasant — impressive, even — but the real star of the show is the corn bath: a giant pit full of dried corn. I take off running into the bath and hear a voice behind me go, “Oh, she’s off!” followed by peals of laughter. Reunited in the corn, we make corn angels, bury ourselves up to the neck, rub our faces into the kernels despite the germs. We’re the only adults playing instead of supervising, and I am beaming with hysterical glee.

November

I fly to Barcelona, where the color returns to my cheeks. I am moved to tears by the Sagrada Familia, I take another big step in learning to love the club, I eat at least two pastries every day. I tweet something wholesome and upbeat in an attempt at virality, but sense that I actually mean it.

We go backpacking in below-freezing Yosemite. It’s gorgeous and immersive: we see a rainbow, we pump water from a stream, we poop in holes we dig ourselves. On day two, we finish our summits (Eagle Peak, El Cap) by 3 p.m. and make a last-minute call to hike out instead of camping another night. For a few hours, I feel invincible. Then we hit the downhill, and the fear of falling to my death slows me to a crawl. When we finally finish our second six-hour stretch of walking, I enjoy five minutes of elation before a wall of depletion hits me. My friends ask how I’m feeling, to which I respond, “Organ failure.” I am revived by a bean burrito from the Taco Bell drive-through. A few weeks later, I put “more backpacking” on my 2026 bucket list.

We have a magical day complete with pickle tea, antiques, a glowing red sun, spreadsheets, and a legitimate Mongolian yurt. I’m aware, even as it’s happening, that this day will stick with me.

December

I have my second first day of work at a new old job. I am assigned a certain project because it seems “Britney-shaped”, which delights me to no end. How incredible to be known — and at work, no less!

I spend a weekend in Mountain View playing dress-up and eating regional Asian food, experiences that feel foreign and familiar at once.

We take over a beautiful home in the Mt. Tamalpais forest for two nights, where I make full use of my senses: eating, playing, snuggling, circling, getting my pressure points beaten into release. I am charmed by old friends and charmed by new friends. When it’s all over, I wish we had one more day to relish the cozy bubble we created.

In my most impressive scheduling feat of the year, I line up seven holiday events seven days in a row, a period my boyfriend(!) nicknames “Britsmas” (the evening I spend with him doubles as Johnukkah). For Christmas, he gives me the experience of making a giant, foot-long waffle cone at two in the morning, a gift that honors 1) my preference for consumable presents, 2) my love of ice cream, and 3) my belief that food should be big. I am giddy with affection.

Luke is palatable in almost all regards: small town kind, big city sensible, brand name smart, poor kid humble. He’s thoughtful, with the type of well-flexed perspective that accompanies early proximity to suffering. He fits in anywhere: electronic festival, Broadway musical, Volo dodgeball, metta meditation, nude beach hang, gossip sesh with the girls, Ranch 99, Lighthaven. He’s responsible but unstructured, sensitive but tenacious, understanding to a fault. He cares deeply that you have a good time.

We met on Cuties, TPOT’s premier dating platform. Or, more accurately, I met Luke on Cuties; he ignored my message and met me months later when he attended a circling workshop I co-hosted. I “liked” Luke (as in, pressed the button) because of his hot face and top-tier dimples, which the ticket booth operator at the Duquesne Incline called “the cutest she’s ever seen.” But I liked him (as in, was endeared) because of this killer line in his bio: “I am not good at holding back my love.”

We clicked immediately. One of the earliest photos we have together is a mirror selfie in which I am visibly ill, cupping Luke’s face with my left hand while he hugs me from behind, unperturbed by my active germs. It’s fun to reflect on how easily comfort came. It’s fun to reflect on what blossomed into the most profound, triumphant, healing, frustrating, full-throated relationship of my life.

In the end, Luke and I didn’t actually date for very long — around nine months. But to our credit, we did spend the full year thereafter breaking up and getting back together again. Amidst this tumult, I invented shorthands to spare my friends from a relentless stream of on-and-off updates — it was either a “Luke up week” or a “Luke down week,” which I reported with the light gloss you might use to describe an interesting weather pattern. It’s La Niña this year! Luke is disappointed in my actions today!

At the height of our tension, fights played out like movie scenes: Ubers where I’d jam myself against the opposite door, ignoring the plea in Luke’s attentive silence. Barbs that he bore primary responsibility for my decline in self-esteem. Tight-jawed insistence that I used to be vivid and endless, and now I was just a girlfriend. Truly, I have never said the words “recursive” and “untenable” so many times in my life. I have never slammed a door with such intent.

Luke wouldn’t mention all this, I’m sure, because he’s kinder and more resilient than me. But I was frequently dramatic and impolite, and it feels important to confess that.

To the extent that I made clear my grief, though, I also asserted my adoration. Here, I’ll do it again right now: I love Luke with tremendous and unmistakable clarity.

I have never birthed a child, but I hear from new parents that the arrival of a baby evokes a brand-new caliber of love, as if one’s whole life was mere preparation for more perfectly loving this incredible, infallible being. That’s kind of how I feel about Luke.

Together, we were silly and gushy and needy. We went to restaurants and parties and shows. We hung out with our friends. We cooked dinner. We asked each other for help. We enjoyed intense psychological safety — arguably too much — which permitted us to engage in horrifically couple-y behavior like speaking in katakana-ized baby voice and sneezing directly into each other’s mouths. I wrote fanfiction about our hypothetical child, who I named “Plum” during an acid trip. Luke adopted education reform as a special interest, then attended an information session for the elementary school he wants her to attend. We spent two full days ferociously addicted to Bloons Tower Defense 3. (Okay, maybe those last few were specific to us.) We got to be awful and gross and too much. We got to be excellent and interesting and beautiful. We got to matter.

Luke thinks a lot about love, and his big conclusion is that it’s a verb, not an inert feeling. That philosophy underscores his actions. Here are a few of them that made feel especially loved:

• On a bumpy 6 AM SEPTA ride into Philly — a ride that I insisted we squeeze into our half-day layover because I needed to eat a soft pretzel in the city where they were invented — I was starting to get tired-cranky after a particularly painful redeye. Every time I started to fall asleep, my head lolling forward would cause me to jerk back awake. When we reached our destination, I woke up and realized that I felt surprisingly rested. It turns out that Luke had held my head up with his hands for the remainder of the journey. This, of course, prevented him from getting any sleep himself, but he prioritized it anyway. Because Luke valued my rest above his own, I am now the keeper of a stunning, 4K memory of biting into the best soft pretzel I’ve ever had, complete with a level of fidelity that only a well-rested brain can capture.

• For a long time, I was spending $16/month to host my blog on an outdated Weebly site that supported neither mailing lists nor RSS. I had a huge ugh field around moving to Substack because there was no automated porting feature, and I was irrationally worried I’d mess something up and accidentally lose my last two years of writing. Upon learning about this dilemma, Luke spent his day manually copy-pasting, formatting, and backdating my entire blog for me. In the process, he (re)read every single one of my posts. He’s served as my editor for the last dozen or so. Past partners have largely ignored my writing, so Luke’s careful shepherding of my thoughts really touched me.

• After several years of healthful serotonin production, God smote me by suddenly increasing my propensity and capacity for despair. For the first time in my life, I started to experience genuine, concerning hopelessness. I felt like I was locked in a perpetual wince. Sometimes I had the intense urge to ram my head into a wall, which I only held back from because I lacked the requisite energy to deal with the consequences. During these times, Luke came to stay with me or let me stay with him (even though it was technically against the rules of our new platonic state of affairs) and made me pasta and bought me tissues and punctuated our workday pomodoros with long, comforting hugs. I’ve lost track of the number of times Luke has picked up the phone, listened to me vent, and talked me off a ledge. I can’t think of a time when he counseled me with anything other than compassion and patience. By seeing me at my worst and still choosing to come closer, Luke cleansed me of all suspicion of self-defect. His open-armed support bolstered my sense of deep okayness, and his steadfast enthusiasm for sharing in my life has helped me return to joy, over and over.

Getting soppy now, so bear with me — before Luke, I didn’t view myself as someone who could inspire head-over-heels love. I just wasn’t the type of girl who warrants wifeguy behavior. Sure, I was cool, respectable, nice, good even. But I wasn’t worthy of obsession, nor sacrifice, nor adoration. Luke changed that. Luke loved me to pieces. Luke took it for fact that I was special.

Do you know that TikTok couple with the redheaded woman and charmingly submissive boyfriend? How he slips on her heels and looks so damn happy just to be with her? That is how I experienced Luke’s disposition toward me — devotional, almost, but sans the humiliation kink. Just undoubtedly happy to be there.

There’s a Barbara Streisand lyric that goes, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” I didn’t really get this until I allowed myself to need Luke. In the past, I was independent as a defensive measure; after being loved by him, I am independent as a side effect of liking who I am. Being the recipient of such defenseless, proud adoration — being able to request that level of affection — helped me trust that I am worthy of love. Luke didn’t make me feel perfect; he made me feel valuable.

I once described Luke on a first date, to which my date responded, “Why aren’t you just married to that guy?” I liked that, because I think there are worlds where we are.

To answer the question, Luke and I aren’t married because he wants a monogamous life partner and I do not. Luke and I remain best friends because we are cosmically linked. My favorite poem, In Lak’ech, includes these lines, “You are my other me. When I love and respect you, I love and respect myself.” Luke is the most me of all the other me’s. Loving him amplifies all other loves in my life.

If you’re also someone with a lot of love to give; if emotional intensity excites you; if you like your eggs fried on cast iron; if you like your chocolate chip cookies salted; if you’re vegetarian for the animals; if you enjoy mischief and wordplay; if the acronyms ACX, 4-HO-MET, and BCS3-L1 mean something to you; if you want to touch souls; (if you believe you can touch souls); if you want to raise happy, secure, genetically engineered superchildren; if your perfect day involves friends and movement and heart-to-hearts in the park; if you, too, are bad at holding back your love — if you’re anything like me — you’ll adore Luke. You might even fall in love with him.

On the plane home, I listen to an 80,000 Hours podcast on how to not lose my job to AI, and the host advises verbatim, “Something like providing bespoke tea tasting events in SF would be both hard for AI to do and would see increasing demand.” I gasp at the specificity — if that’s not a sign to throw my hands up and pursue an entrepreneurial, bohemian life, what is?

A different S asks how I’ve managed to stay on such good terms with my exes. I share my best guesses — for starters, I’m affectionate. I tell people I like them, outright, and then I keep telling them, earnestly, and then I tell other people about how awesome they are, exuberantly. It is very easy for me to like people, even if they don’t like me — this is awful, and also the only way to be.

For finishers, I’ve never been one to close a door. However many conversations someone wants to have, however many times we need to renegotiate, however long it takes to feel resolved, it’s a gift to be invited into someone’s life, whether to create something or end it.

In Guatemala with 20 friends, I spend the evenings cackling, spitting out water as the group discusses such classics as losing your virginity to Arnold Schwarzenegger and the market rate for my butthole. We play other games, too, my favorites — Contact and Person Do Thing — and sing songs and cook dinner and solve riddles. One night, we write poetry, and everyone’s work is so effortlessly good that I have no choice but to believe that we’re geniuses. I’ve never been interested in traditional markers of intelligence; the only measure I care about is expressiveness.

Very few people here are employed, which agitates me more than it should. (Okay, maybe half of us have jobs, and maybe half of those are “real jobs”.) I’m envious of free agents, so I engage in Negative Self-Talk™. Look at all these people: braver than me, wiser than me, freer than me. I’m behind on my career and I’m behind on my career break — fuck!

Thursday goes awfully. I dissociate. From the corner of the ceiling that I’ve clustered my consciousness into, I observe myself, reckless and amateur, fucking up in slow motion. I’m definitely not supposed to say that on calls. I’m definitely not inspiring trust in my competence. I’m definitely not handling things well. I crack a joke at dinner: “I keep shooting myself in the foot. But it’s okay, I don’t like that foot that much.”

Someone describes me as a “free spirit,” which makes me laugh, because I am the only person here who can’t name a single Buddhist teacher. In a weird way, I am proud of my ignorance — I could find the path, but I’d rather brute-force my way to bliss.

When I fight with L, I’m unreasonably triggered by his insistence that I’ve been needy, and that my neediness is “coercive.” When he edits his language to “you’ve been making threats,” I’m able to accept the premise and offer an honest apology. (Asking for things? I would never! Taking them away? Maybe…) We make up before Atitlan, the big lake where expats burn sage and practice yoga and compare diets. It is the perfect backdrop against which to contemplate how mean I’ve gotten. Every now and again, L and I grow quiet and just look at each other, and I wonder if he is also grieving the other universe, the one where I managed to be normal.

I refuse to cliff jump from the 12m platform, even though that’s basically the whole draw of the village, but work up the courage to fling myself off the 6m one. When I look over the edge into the cerulean blue, a voice in my head reminds me: “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” Before we leave, I jump off a second time for good measure.

On Friday, we wake up at five in the morning to hike Acatenango. The gear rental spot is chaotic and portends difficulty. Oh, will it really be cold enough for thermals? So we actually need poles? Wait, do the headlamps mean we’ll be hiking in the dark?

On the way up, heads pounding from the elevation, R shares something vulnerable, and it makes me feel special that he chose to tell me. When he starts his sentence, he’s looking down, but by its end, he’s looking me in the eyes. The mountain makes us humble, but it also makes us proud.

The next day, at four in the morning, at least three phone alarms sound simultaneously. It’s time to summit. O is a saint, so he lingers near the back to support stragglers despite his obvious ability to climb faster. When he sees me struggling, he offers to carry my hiking poles and my water bottle, then yells affirmations at me through the wind. Seven-eighths of the way there, I shout that I’m good here, and he responds, fatherly and firm, Nonsense, you’re going to the top.

When we summit, it’s so cold that we have to announce it over and over: Holy fuck, it’s cold. Why is it so cold? Jesus Christ, it’s freezing. My hands are literally going numb. Dude, there’s ice in your beard. It’s so fucking cold, oh my god. At 13,000 feet, I am eye level with the sun, which is big and orange and bad at its job of providing warmth. I cry and announce that I am so happy. D gives me a big hug. I tell the group that I feel a lot of love for them. If I could go back, I’d say it outright — I love you guys.

We can’t stay very long, on account of the cold and the thin air and the breakfast burritos waiting for us back at camp. In my treadless running shoes, I slip the whole way down the mountain.

By the time I reach the bottom, I am coated in a layer of dirt. My knee is bleeding again. I am dirty and spent. I am weary and pleased. And I am very alive.

Each month, deluge, again: faltering on the tightrope between health and collapse, ramming the back of my head into the plastic BART seat to keep from screaming, slicing into my index finger with a jewelry saw, watching copper dust catch in the pooling blood, hugging homeless people to feel closer to God, being slutshamed by the hotline operator, repenting on my literal knees, loving so fiercely I glimpse hate, wanting so desperately I become feeble.

But there’s joy, too; softness — I’m not the type to pretend otherwise: being a girl with other girls, plummeting 13,000 feet to unlock new understanding of the sensate body, affirming the beauty of faces I like, executing clear-cut opportunities to be helpful, bowling over exhaustion with awed excitement, encouraging strangers to skinny dip in public, slurping hand-pulled noodles, being surprised by the tightness of your embrace, bracing for impacts that never come, reaping the rewards of choosing gentle, kind-hearted people.

Two thoughts I like.

The first comes from my friend C, after sharing my belief that there are some things you can’t recover from: “I don’t know, I guess I just think it’s a long life.”

The second comes from my coworker, after telling him that even though I'm happy to be a generalist, I still wish I had found "my thing" the way others seem to have. He said that he could relate. And then, he offered me this: “But I think that being open to the full range of experience is a passion too.”

In May, after a slow, solo supper, I wrote a thread about how I never really know where I’m headed, how I truly could not have guessed at all of this: my success, my failure, this density of meaning. And I’m very curious about what will come next.

One day, I looked up and I had a career. One day, I looked up and I had a community. One day, I looked up and owed people things: deliverables, explanations, civility, grace. One day, I acquired responsibilities, and one day, I was never without them again.

For most of my life, I’ve resisted obligation and dependency. I don’t want to do anything I don’t want to do, and I don’t want to ask you to do anything you don’t want to do either. But connection requires reliance. By acknowledging our interconnectedness — in accepting my importance in your life — I enfranchise myself, and I honor the regard you hold for me.

In the most charitable frame, it’s kind of pretty, like a meditative chant — a serious sound that comes from deep within its maker. But in a less charitable and more truthful frame, I find it unnerving. It is not the noise of a sane person. It is the noise of someone who feels cornered into making it, like a trapped animal squealing. It doesn’t sound prepared or voluntary. It sounds like something demanding to be let out.

In Midsommar, Florence Pugh’s Dani Ardor, having just retched from the shock of seeing her boyfriend sleeping with another woman, is shepherded to a private room where a group of women absorb her distress by mimicking her screams. One of the women holds her face, one cheek in each palm. Two others, her hunched shoulders. The rest huddle around her, expanding and contracting as she vocalizes. Together, the mass wails in unison: rhythmic, pained bellows so rawly unusual they inspire laughter when heard out of context.

Though the scene depicts manipulation, I can’t help but hope for something like it anyway: the opportunity to pass my grief to a more capable group.

I think I have a high pain tolerance, but there’s no real way to know — I can’t access your pain, nor you mine, so we can’t compare them in any objective sense. Sometimes we try to anyway, like through the classic “stick your hand in ice water and keep it there until it’s unbearable” test, but even standardized experiments have a fundamental flaw: if two people endure different lengths of time, we don't know if it's because one has higher tolerance or because they're simply experiencing less pain to begin with.

In the ER, the pain scale is a mainstay: "On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being no pain and 10 being the worst pain imaginable, how would you rate your pain right now?" This, too, of course, is an ambiguous heuristic.

On his podcast, Hank Green suggests an alternative: “I just don’t think numbers are a good way, and I don’t think words are a good way [either]. And what does that leave us with? Sounds. You should be like, ‘Okay, can you tell me what your pain sounds like?’ Because if I go like eeeeee, you know that’s very different from arrrrggggh, which is very different from rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr. And those are all very clear kinds of pain.”

Before I suspended my disbelief around enlightenment, I used to cringe at people who sigh audibly on the exhale of a deep breath. Now I’m one of them.

The other evening, though I was professedly happy and well, I screamed at the ocean so loudly and unbridledly that I lost my voice. These days, it feels like everything is tumbling out of me: love, hate, adoration, spite, gratitude, rage, despair, frustration, contempt, shame, mania, elation, self-pity, bitterness, love, love, love, love, hate.

I often revisit a Sasha Chapin line, “I…felt every emotion I was capable of experiencing, in an emulsion which hung about my skin.” When I reread it, I picture myself tangled in yarn, as if encumbered by an aura crocheted by an amateur. In this vision, I lift both arms to determine how much yarn is attached to me. I try to guess whether untangling it will take a lifetime, or two.

—

I like words a lot. I’ve based my career and personality on learning how to use them well. But they are blunt instruments, and there’s no nobility in denying the effectiveness of a whimper.

Outside the door of my Airbnb, there's a section of cobblestone that I've nearly slipped on thrice. If I were with someone, I would acknowledge each instance with a giggle. But since I am alone, I barely emote when it happens — just involuntarily part my lips in surprise. This is similar to what life is like in your absence. I still feel everything, I just don't have reason to express it.

I've been meeting lots of new people, just like I wanted. I like many of them, which pleases me.1 The new people supply me with new adjectives to describe myself: vibrant, encyclopedic, attuned. I try them on, despite how gaudy they sound. It helps a bit, knowing that I’m still capable of reinvention.

My friend K tells me that I'm "obsessed with living a progressive, rational, theoretically consistent lifestyle" and that my attempt to do so has “completely destabilized and destroyed” me. K is being mean for effect. I receive the specificity of his diagnosis as a sign of care. He’s really been listening to me. He respects me enough to be hurtful.

In a cobalt blue café marketed toward the brunch crowd, I eat Turkish eggs and read photographer Dina Litovsky’s reflection on collecting images for New York Magazine’s cultural commentary on the "West Village Girl." These lines stand out to me: "She is not performing complexity, and in a culture thriving on micro-analysis and virtue signaling, that can read as naive. But it’s a choice.”

I switch to my novel. In My Year of Meats, a small, foul-breathed Japanese man is crying into the bosom of an African-American mother figure. She holds him tightly, like a loved one, despite how foreign he seems. He is moved and weeps. She is moved by his ability to be moved. I think I am searching for a definitive release like that.

I hunt for one in the afternoon, paying €50 to listen to a curly-haired woman croon over a gelatinous, crunching beat. I drink cacao and eat date balls — foods for the rich and psychotic — and cry hot tears in seated lotus. The social container demands that we hug each other, and I oblige happily.

I consider what it means to lose and reinvent you. Or maybe the reverse: to reinvent and lose you. I picture new people giving you new adjectives. I picture a new person giving you a family. I stop picturing things.

Sometimes, in fitful moments upon waking, I say your name out loud the way one might address God. I say it the way an infant might call for their parent, or like a person might vocalize a sudden, high-conviction realization.

There's a plea couched in the way it tumbles out of my mouth. I say it hoping you will show up to deliver me from this discomfort. I say it before I'm smart enough to know better.

I asked M if he thinks of himself as a kid, and he said no. This is absurd to me. How can you not see that we are children? Sometimes at work, I’ll get asked a question and want to respond, why do you think I would know that? I’m just a kid! But I guess to most people I am not a kid, I’m an adult woman, so instead I say, I’m not sure, let me find out for you.

The younger, more successful man I was dining with had the same take as M, strongly held — of course he feels his age. The intensity of his take was communicated through his initial refusal to even consider the question, given its banality, but was quickly followed by a polite and stumbling correction that he’d make an exception, though, this once, on account of his interest in sleeping with me. (He didn’t actually say that last part, that’s my storytelling, but it would have been fine if he did because I also wanted to sleep with him.)

The logic is such: you are your age, and thus your feelings are the feelings of someone your age, and thus you do indeed feel your age. Less garbled: you can’t not feel your age, because it is what you are. It follows that not feeling your age is a narrativized wrapper you’re choosing to adopt, and so you must want said wrapper, or else feel cornered into believing in it, which begs the question: Why? Why are you choosing it? In my case, why am I choosing to feel younger than I am?

Two related theories. The first is that I am shirking responsibility. I don’t want to be held accountable, I don’t like working hard, and I don’t want to increase the likelihood of encountering evidence that I’m incapable of doing a thing I want to do. It doesn’t seem fun to measure myself against the benchmarks of a successful adult, I prefer the ease of being a run-of-the-mill young person, and I’m repulsed by the necessarily psychotic, egotistic exclamations of founder types. I’m deeply worried about overstating my abilities and find it safer and less stressful to assume I have none.

This was workable for a good long while, because I was young for a good long while. But now I am less young, so it’s less cool to act as if I have literally nothing to contribute. I grew up thinking I was mature because I could cook food and follow instructions and arrive on time, but I see now that I’ve always been immature when it comes to assuming responsibility for anyone or anything besides myself. I have a deep fear of being relied upon, not because I am scared of letting others down, but because I loathe accepting when I’ve done something wrong. It is a self-centered and unsympathetic manner of being, and one that I wish to correct.

The second reason why I choose to feel young is that I can’t handle the thought that I’m running out of time. I score low on the neuroticism scale, but my one pervasive stressor is time, or the lack thereof. I am always worried about time: running late, making others wait, having to wait for others, running out of time, not having enough time, disrespecting others’ time, using my time poorly.

If I am young, wasting time is a forgivable mistake. The resource is plentiful, the territory is expansive, an occasional lapse is permissible, just try again! But if I am old, or just older, my decisions carry more permanence. Is now the right time to start caring about my biological clock? Am I leaving enough time for another career pivot? At what point do I stop being seen as an investment and start needing to be worthwhile as I am? Am I squandering my only chance to be an upstart, a force, an ingénue, the main character? Will I look back on today and wish I had committed to something sooner? Will I mourn the years I spent hedging, delaying, keeping my options open, refusing to begin?

As the cool kids (of whom I am no longer one) would say, I am starting to feel the AGI. I’m bracing for the world to look super different and feel moderately worse, at least temporarily. And in a more general and potent sense, I am growing nostalgic — crying to “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac with brand-new awareness. Now that I’ve finally collected enough years to lose track of them, I am starting to wish I could experience certain ones all over again.

Last month, I spent ten days in the Pacific Northwest — the first bit with friends from university, the second bit with friends from high school. The two halves were joined by a joyful interlude wherein my friend from adulthood, coincidentally in Vancouver and making the same drive to Seattle as my cancelled Amtrak booking, was available to shuttle me across the border.

I cherished these ten days. It was my longest true vacation in years. A verbal montage, to recap: flower bouquets, flaming cocktails, Emergen-C, drugs, gimmicks, pregnancy conspiracies, rain, pop anthems at home, pop anthems at the club, streetwear, birthdays x2, harbors, ferries, day drinking, izakaya, coffeeshop hops, nanaimo bars, Glossier boy brow, drugs, ice cream x3, hot tub, Scattergories, forest bathing, drugs, interventions, revelations, the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen, Anora, pastries, shopping, friendship.

After this extended stretch of exploring and divulging and getting way too heated playing Catan, I cried while saying goodbye to my friends at the airport. In fact, all of us cried together, in a huddle, the first time we’ve done so since graduating from high school.

I used to want more time so I could do more: cover more ground, travel widely, meet new people, fall in love as many times as permitted. I still want to do these things. But, increasingly, I want more time to just keep doing more of this.

Just this, please, or maybe just that, from not so long ago, that would be enough. Maybe those high school summers spent eating frozen yogurt on park benches, or those childhood bike rides to the animal shelter to coo at puppies, past that lake I almost crashed into before I learned what handbrakes are. Or when we’d pile too many people into too fast Hondas playing Doja Cat too loudly on the way to KBBQ, blowing vape out the windows. Our buzzy conversations in kei cars and camper vans and on gondolas and gravel trails. Maybe the first time an audience clapped for my words, or the second, or third. Tripping down the tallest mountain in Hokkaido, gasping at tea fields ocean-endless in Fukuoka, giggling post-heatstroke flat-backed on tatami after miles and miles of movement. Those early days with the forgotten strawberries and money checks and rooftop picnics. Our macaroni curve bodies and tacit neglect of alarms. Your breezy side silhouette superseding my save file of San Francisco. The soft embarrassment of realizing how much I like this, how much I like you. The welcome ache of never forgetting, of recalling, tensing, lurching, of being subject to this depth forever.

Life started playing at 1.5x speed a couple of years ago, back in the Kagoshima days, when every day felt like summer vacation and I learned to cope with separation and FOMO by spending all waking moments trying to maximize splendor. Actually, upon reflection, what changed was less speed and more volume (both in terms of space and sound), where each unit of time contains so damn much — is so chokingly full and attention-demanding — that it crowds out all peripheral noise. I’m living so much life it’s awesome. I’m living so much life it overwhelms me.

This blog keeps getting vaguer and vaguer, in part for privacy, in part because I lack the energy to write about all the things worth writing about. But this is not for lack of trying, just lack of talent and sustained effort.

In an attempt to be specific, for once, here is this moment: I am in the Pat Graham Reading Room on the 8th floor of the Vancouver Public Library, which is filled with rows of white desks, grey desk lamps, bright blue plastic chairs, and hoodie-clad students drinking lattes and squinting at MacBooks. To my right, floor-to-ceiling windows are letting in cold-cast daylight, the kind that comes with rain, which is currently falling in fat, infrequent drops. I am full from orzo paella and liege waffles dipped in pistachio rosewater white chocolate, which I enjoyed for Sunday brunch with four of my closest friends from university (the fifth having departed before dawn to catch her flight), the final meal of our annual girls trip.12 I am slightly too warm in my quilted orange coat, tingly-brained from too many late nights padded with too many cups of tea. My nerves feel frayed. I desire a hug, but only from specific persons. In the back of my mind, a slideshow of minor worries: overdue texts, upcoming housemate search, fraught social dynamics, progress to be made that I don’t yet know how to make. Front of mind, as I type: the fleeting nature of all good things, gratitude that any are happening at all, the warmth of reminders I belong. I am sweet with melancholy, the way I often am in private moments after prolonged activity. I am touched by this wistful perfect I happen upon over and over.

Last year at a Christmas party, someone asked me this question: If 1 is absolute misery, like the verge of ending it all, and 10 is peak euphoria — deep-seated bliss, what range of emotions do you typically occupy? I answered that 90% of my life takes place in the 5-8 range: pretty good, pretty stable, occasionally strained, frequently pleasant, not much to write home about — the response of a baseline happy person.

But over the past season or so, my range has widened, dipping into the 3s and beginning to grasp what 10 might feel like. I’m learning what it means to lead a high-variance life — to feel more than ever, to grieve deeply and acutely, to be moved by the sudden and frightening stakes that accompany caring.

3 is the night I cried so hard and so long I missed the party altogether, even though I really wanted to go, through my tears insisting that you go without me, please, I can’t be the reason you miss out forever. 3 is keening on the thin, speckled grey office carpet: fearful, pathetic, unable to rise to the challenge of my own life. 3 is understanding why a reasonable person might not forgive me; 3 is knowing I’ll be paying back these debts for the rest of my life.

9 is our servers adoring us even before we tip well. 9 is belting Mr. Brightside in the club, over-ordering because we can, yapping in a perceptively American manner. 9 is being a mirror for how far each other have come. 9 is that weekday afternoon we sang YouTube karaoke overlooking the tiled canal, in the safety of familiar company and the thrill of an unfamiliar city, after tea and cake, after praying for something in your shape, the first time I haven’t quieted myself in company, the first time I understood a person is a world, the first time I trusted that you really do want all of me.

10 is still too sacred to say out loud.

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Speaking of changes, in tonally similar news, Luke and I broke up (more on that at some later point, in softer language). This has been suboptimal, even if ultimately wise. One silver lining is that the predominant feeling between us is still love, so give him a hug if you see him — he deserves one.

After the official separation, I spent a few weeks convincing myself that the high-level components of my life were in need of correction (because why else was I failing in so many regards?), which led to a parade of needlessly time-intensive processes like seeking redemption via my job market value and researching containers, both literal and figurative, where my only obligation would be to sit (e.g., overnight Amtrak journeys, Vipassana). Most aspects of my life currently mirror the structure of these last few sentences (hard to explain concisely, requiring parenthetical supplementation).

My original January blog idea (the one I failed to write) was to publish my 2025 bucket list and invite the whole internet to check off the boxes with me. But then I became melancholic and began to doubt whether I’d be able to mount the sufficient bubbliness needed to field acceptances with the gratitude they deserve, which made asking in the first place moot. So instead of writing, I spent the month prone and pining, pretending that sending screenshots of my NYT Mini solution times is an appropriate substitute for actual human connection.

For three consecutive weekends spanning January and February, I occupied myself by going on hikes, one of which was a 15-mile trek across SF on the Double Cross Trail. These were bright spots; moving through space toward a destination is one of the only forms of leisure that feels productive enough to not induce guilt. When I wasn’t tending to my step count, I was performing lies of omission, giving in to wiles, and oscillating between feeling nonchalant and shattered. For the first time in my life, despite being immediately adjacent to doomers for more than a year, I was moved to take seriously the line of reasoning that AI might end in catastrophe, and — even worse — that I might have a role to play in preventing it. This happened because I finally forced myself to read arguments. Unsurprisingly, believing a crazy conclusion is easier when you’ve read the preceding 10,000 words of reasoning that led to it. Speaking as someone who loves the world and hates responsibility, both possibilities (extinction, obligation) are awful if true, and contending with this new game state has not been a boon to my sense of optimism.

Rejection has also been on my mind more than usual, probably because I’ve experienced a lot of it recently — both getting rejected and doing the rejecting. “No” is a tough concept, especially when you really want something, or have already conceived a whole future around “yes.” It feels cosmically unfair that upendings can happen in just a minute or two, especially juxtaposed with the otherwise eternal state of continuity. And even when it’s not divinely terrible, it’s still pretty bad: awkward, embarrassing, pathetic, tense — the sort of oof that makes me fold inward. I’m a “rip the bandaid off” type of girl (and have no doubt I will bully myself back to a high-valence state soon), but I’m trying to be patient while a scab forms.

On the bright side, I remain a simple and easy-to-please person (or at least that’s the story I’m choosing to tell). On the dark side, that means that things being mildly complicated and unsatisfying upsets me more than most — not only does everything suck, so do I for believing they do! Though many a neospiritual friend has reminded me that sitting with emotions tends to go over better than banishing them to a shadowy reservoir of unmanaged pain, I am icked by sadness and self-pity and eagerly want to rid myself of these features. I wish that we could all just get exactly what we want, and feel really bad when I am a limiting factor in reaching that end state. For now, though, the best I can do is stave off the urge to lop my hair into a bob. For now, this is enough.

On the plane ride over, I finished Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America, the kick in the pants I needed to fork over a larger end-of-year donation than I planned. Did you know that the federal poverty level is $15,060 for an individual, and that 37.9 million Americans live beneath it? I didn’t, and I’m humbled to now know.

I’ve spent a good portion of this past season feeling distant from other Americans — in part because of the election, in part because of the vanity of small differences — and wishing to close the gap. If Taylor Swift is right and it’s possible to know everything at 18 and nothing at 22, then it makes sense that I believe incorrect things at 25.

There’s a misconception among coastal elites that living in a big city gives you an edge, or is somehow “more real” than living in a small town. Unsurprisingly, that is bullshit. Like all things, inhabiting only one part of a whole means missing out on the rest, and value is subjective. Questions I’ve asked this past week that expose how many fundamentals I’m missing: How does a well work? How do you install drywall? What is it like to drive a truck? Why are water towers high up instead of on the ground? Is there a reason the cats have part of their ears cut off? What happens inside of a septic tank? How do you fly fish? What is the point of Minecraft? What is believing in God like for you?

Last night, I met lots of new people around my age, most of whom were married, parents, homeowners, or all three. I mentioned that those life situations felt alien to me, and someone in the group advised me not to worry because “we’re playing entirely different games.” I thought this was kind and wise.

I’m sympathetic to this idea that we’re playing different games — or at least, the same game but with different objectives. It’s likely that maneuvers that seem nonsensical to me are actually wise under a different set of rules, and that being behind in one game is the advantaged position in another.

I was impressed by how quickly this person realized that he inherited the “build a family, buy a home” directive, and how readily he rose to meet it. In contrast, I have been slow to understand that I have also inherited a directive, slower to understand what it is, and even slower to decide if I want to take it on.

2025 is on the horizon. I am cautiously optimistic it will bring me a meaningful level of clarity. It is strange to have come closer than ever to a set path, and then, having been close enough to inspect its qualities, refuse to walk down it. It is strange that going so far sets you back farther.

This past year of choices, including my passive and unconsidered ones, has uncovered consistency among my revealed preferences. As Carolyn Elliott would say, “Having is evidence of wanting.” Perhaps this — my mewling, my restlessness, my feigned idiocy — is something I want. Perhaps I desire to be unfocused for a while longer. Perhaps this is great fun for me: being a girl, disengaging higher functions, baring myself to whim, leaving room for the possibility of a more arresting feeling.

As a teenager, I was stereotypically, suburban-ly interested in social justice. I helped raise enough money to build a well in Swaziland. I visited hotel chains for free shampoos and soaps that I passed on to homeless shelters. I trick-or-treated for UNICEF, or for the Trevor Project, or for canned goods to donate to the food bank. I used words like “praxis” and “pedagogy.” I was righteous and annoying, and I cared a lot.

My freshman year of university, I was 30 minutes late to my first-ever lab meeting because I was too busy crying about ethnic studies being banned in Tucson, Arizona — a decision that had been made six years before I needed to weep about it. I worked at my school’s intercultural center, which gave my anguish credibility, and forced myself to watch awful things because I worried that looking away made me complicit. Many people around me were angry. I advocated for police abolition at a conference in 2018, two years before it was trendy. I was angry. I dismissed most solutions as “bandaids.” I prayed that everyone would try just a little bit harder, care just a little bit more.

One of my favorite YouTube channels is “Special Books by Special Kids.” I’ve been subscribed for at least a decade. It’s a channel that interviews people with rare conditions: siblings with fetal alcohol syndrome, burn victims, a mother with craniofacial differences. I cry every time I watch — sometimes because their lives are so hard, sometimes because they are so full despite, always because they are beautiful.

Today, most of my charitable endeavors fall under the umbrella of effective altruism. EA entered my life because it’s straightforward and appeals to my logical sensibilities, but it’s stayed in my life because it doesn’t hurt as much to look at every day. If my soft heart and American savior complex destine me to keep trying to help others forever, I need to believe that what I’m doing is working in some small way.

2. I lived in Kanoya City in Kagoshima, Japan for 1 year and 8 months, from September 2021 to April 2023. I love talking about it but don’t because 1) I don’t want to be the annoying girl who won’t shut up about her time abroad and 2) I am reluctant to admit I am just as Japan-pilled as the rest of you.

Japan was the first time in my adult life that my to-do list felt finite. Much of this was baked into the structure of my life. For starters, I was on the JET Program, which meant I had zero career mobility (goodbye, pressure to ladder climb). I didn’t get to choose where I lived, and I wasn’t allowed to move (goodbye, pressure to optimize). I was limited by my language ability (goodbye, pressure to take on high-coordination projects). Most importantly, I knew I was leaving within a year or two (goodbye, pressure to “build a life”).

The only things left to work on were myself and my close friendships, which blossomed during this era. It was kind of like being in school again, by way of having a predetermined routine and social group, but with adult privileges like more money and better taste.

Everything was a delight: Snoopy-branded toilet paper, free trips to promote local tourism just for being a foreigner, onsen and sushi for prices that can’t even buy a sandwich in SF, and the beautiful, spacious countryside sprawling before me every single day.

And when I got to do things I liked, which was often, I felt like I really deserved to — I really was allowed to have that much fun. I mean, I wasn’t going to get rich off a teacher’s salary (so why save?) and I wasn’t interested in taking on life-altering, location-specific commitments (so why entangle?). Enjoying myself, moment-to-moment, became my central purpose. And I was really good at it. I mean, what else could I do? What else did I have to do?

You know when you exercise in the morning — maybe something kinda epic like a 10-mile run that wraps before 9 AM — and when you finish you feel like you’ve already done the big thing of the day? And anything else you accomplish that day is just a bonus? Being in Japan felt like that. It was a big enough thing that I didn’t need to do anything else. The hard part was done; the rest I could just enjoy.

When I left Japan, I swore that I wouldn’t go back for another decade — been there, done that, and there are so many other things I want to see! But these days I find myself missing the elation of embodying the “Thing, Japan” meme. Let me know if you want to swap rooms or go halfsies on a few bucolic months in the inaka.

3. I rarely feel lonely, but I often feel disconnected. I’m jealous of people who have really excellent friend groups — groups that rise to the level of community and seem to provide a real and robust sense of meaning. I’m also skeptical that those people are truly experiencing the level of belonging they claim they are, maybe because such deep connection seems like a faraway reality to me.

I should be clear: I like my friends. I love my friends! They make life so much better! But loving them doesn’t feel like “the point.” Neither do most things other people seem to derive meaning from: family, pets, sports, the club, video games, reading, learning, art, technology, the quest for a life partner.

I’m not sure that I have any passions. Admitting this feels dangerous, like I’m revealing that I’m missing something fundamental that everyone else is either born with or adept enough to pick up along the way. I fear that I am either 1) illegible, even to myself, or 2) so simple that there’s actually nothing to know. This is probably autistic to ask, but I’d appreciate you contributing to my sense of self by leaving me anonymous feedback about how you perceive or experience me here.

4. I practice noticing beautiful things. It’s a habit I picked up from my first boyfriend, an exceedingly stylish person whom I was often mad at for spending too much money on pants. (Years after we split, I was startled [and proud] to see his face on a massive ad display in the windows of a Hayes Valley storefront.) I liked many things about him, but one I wish I expressed more was my admiration for his ability to make everyday life noteworthy.

Now that I’ve copped to being a Japan enjoyer, I can tell you about a Japanese word, zakka, which translates to ‘miscellaneous sundries.’ Zakka are things like staplers, paper towel holders, throw pillows — but elevated, cuter, or more aesthetic in some way. For example, pretend the stapler is lime green, the paper towel holder was designed by a famous architect, and the throw pillows are dyed with turmeric. Picture things you might find at the MOMA store. Evoke the essence of Marie Kondo asking you to consider whether your contact lens case sparks joy.

My time with this person was full of zakka — literal nice objects, and the philosophy that everyday things (and events) can be sources of pleasure. Think: We’re eating eggs, but we’re eating eggs with forks that are carbon-light and metallic pink. We’re watching TV, but we’re watching TV on Takeout Thursday™, a two-person event series designed to break up the monotony of COVID lockdown. We’re going to the grocery store, but we’re going to the grocery store wearing garments exclusively made from proprietary waterproof fabrics.

My ex-boyfriend wasn’t rich or supremely well-connected, so it’s not like he had access to things that you and I don’t. He was just good at curating the best of the regular things and loving them into treasures. He was well-liked because he was funny and light-hearted and effortlessly, gregariously cool, and also because he liked many things and thus had many entry points for relating to others. I was always impressed by how much fun he had living a life very similar to mine — how much fun he was able to make for himself.

Juliet (of Romeo and Juliet fame) says, “I’ll look to like if looking liking move.” This is my intended disposition toward all things: I look to like, I hope to like, I aim to like.

The funny thing is, when I look for good things, they often appear. Thank you, B, for being the first person to model this for me.

5. Many people know me as a writer. I like this because it’s so damn chic. I dislike this because I don’t feel deserving of the label, and I’m prone to forgetting that there’s no accomplishment bar I need to fill before I am.

This blog is kind of embarrassing, but I am also really proud of it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever made, and I’m grateful I feel that way whether that belief is respectable or sad. This blog is the most honest work I’ve ever done. It’s the most accurate “I was here” graffiti I could muster. I wrote it for you, but I really wrote it for me. I wrote it to remember that I exist. It worked.

6. In the spirit of being honest on the internet, the past few months have been up and down for me. A couple of my hobbies have fallen to the wayside (this blog included — this is the first time in three years that my self-mandated monthly post has come late). Delayed gratification is harder than usual. Someone I love finds it difficult to spend time with me. I finally understand that a bad day doesn’t necessarily comprise bad content; sometimes, I am capable of bringing the bad to otherwise perfectly fine happenings.

Amidst this, I’m starting to think about 2025: the person I’ll be at its start and the person I hope to be by its close. Of all the adjectives I have strived to be in the past — happy, smart, interesting — the only one I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend is “generous.”

I know I love someone when everything that’s mine is theirs — when the boundary between their happiness and mine dissolves completely. I want to love the whole world like this. I’ll know that I do when I’ve given it everything I have.

As always, please let me know how I can be of service to you.

writes: ‘Shoulds’ are a cloak we’ve grown used to the weight of. I take this to mean that ‘shoulds’ are so ingrained that we forget we're operating under them. They tend to sound like this: you should go to a top university; you should become a corporate hotshot; you should put energy into getting married before it’s too late; you should pilot the robot even though you're a traumatized 14-year-old who just wants your father's approval. Yours might vary depending on your region of residence, ethnic upbringing, and whether or not you are the main character of a popular 1990s anime.

I thought I had mostly graduated from ‘shoulds,’ having escaped popular conceptions of what a respectable career path and romantic life look like in my early 20s. However, the truth is I am still beholden to many shoulds; they are just harder to pin down because they’ve evolved to be slightly kookier than the normal line-up. Things like, you should be bolder in pursuing a soul-affirming lifestyle (despite the inevitable challenges associated with deviating from the norm) because you’re one of the lucky few with the requisite privileges to make such an existence not only viable but enjoyable, and sitting here languishing in the ease of an unexceptional existence is an enormous waste of the exquisite fortune you’ve been granted. And then: you should not be so conceited as to think you are capable of exceptional things.

After some light self-assessment, there are two main ‘shoulds’ that underscore my life, and both clash with the fact that New York unsettled me.

The first ‘should’ is the belief that I should be interesting. The obvious strategy to become more interesting is to experience as much as you can, which has been my approach for several years. Corresponding behaviors include saying “yes” to anything that doesn’t conflict with existing plans, being resistant to eating at the same restaurant or visiting the same destination because “there’s still so much left to see,” and needing to try everything twice: once to say you've done it, and again to register whether or not you liked it.

I can supply reasonable defenses for my desire to be interesting, such as “It’s commendable to be a citizen of the world” and “Being a human is about experiencing the fullest range of sensations possible.” But the truth is simpler and more damning: I want to be interesting so that people will want me around. Being interesting is a guarantee that I will belong, that I will be a value add, that I will be liked. For others, subbing in ‘beautiful’ or ‘smart’ might hit harder — ‘interesting’ is just what resonates for me, likely because it’s the dimension where I believe I have the highest probability of success. (Beauty and intelligence largely seem like genetic gifts, whereas interestingness feels fairly malleable.) 

My second big ‘should’ is that I should be having fun. This works in two ways: First, whenever I'm not having fun, I should be actively working to change that. Second, I should be able to control my emotions and attitude enough to enjoy the situation I'm in. In other words: I should be enjoying myself basically all the time — either because I'm capable enough to create the experiences I want, or because I'm emotionally mature enough to find joy in whatever life gives me. The first imperative stems from my pedestalling of independence, which my therapist would probably attribute to my upbringing (and she’d be right!). The second comes from paying too much attention in sociology class and adopting a worldview that demands I be devastatingly grateful for my blessed life, which makes me feel guilty for sometimes being sad despite the obvious abundance that surrounds me. 

Both ‘shoulds’ explain my resistance to admitting that I was overwhelmed by New York (and not in an inspiring, ambition-generating way that made me itch for stardom and/or artistic excellence, but in a way that made me reconsider a settled life in small-town America where the beer of choice is Miller Lite and the postman knows my name). 

Shedding the self-imposed pressure to fulfill the mid-20s obligation to spend at least one season in New York helped me realize that I desire a calm, contained life much more than I previously thought. And being loving and accepting toward myself helped me realize that not wanting to do certain things doesn’t mean that I am uninteresting and un-fun; it means that my knowledge of what is interesting and fun to me is becoming sharper than ever. 

Over the past 30 days, I did lots of neat-sounding things, as is my MO. For example, I experienced the loudest sounds I’ve ever heard at Portola Music Festival, then shattered that record two weeks later by stumbling upon an insane street in Harlem where people park their cars in rows, mount stereo boxes to their roofs, and engage in what I can only describe as sonic warfare: music cranked as loud as it can possibly go, all different tracks, blasted in every direction like lasers in a booby trap. I hiked a section of the PCT, got lost, and accidentally crossed a four-lane highway. I saw Hadestown on Broadway, ate Michelin-starred food, and reunited with one of my closest friends from high school who is now a professional textile artist and competitive rock climber. I roofied my boyfriend, twice, on purpose (ask me to tell you the story in person). I took a cruise around the bay dressed as the statue of Priscilla Chan that Mark Zuckerberg commissioned to revive the ancient Roman tradition of making statues of your wife. All of these were great and felt like ‘me’; yay for activities!

I also did plenty of mundane things that I normally wouldn’t mention, but also liked. For example, I watched YouTube videos of people building useless robots, treated myself to the overpriced but very good goat cheese from the bakery next door, and finished season 2 of Ted Lasso in a hunched position that kinda made my neck hurt. I left a party early because I was sleepy and wanted to lie down, even though the cool thing to do would’ve been to rally. I worked a normal amount of hours at my normal job. I washed my sheets. I slept in. Yay for these things too! 

‘Shoulds’ are sticky, and I don’t think I will shed the pressure to be interesting and fun any time soon. But I am expanding my definition of interesting and fun to contain activities that aren’t stereotypically flashy. 

Last Sunday, we celebrated my friend M’s 26th birthday in the backyard of her childhood home. We ate dessert first — three cakes: raspberry cheesecake, apple cake, and rotweinkuchen. Afterward, we had pizza, made crafts, and opened gifts. By most standards, it was a normal birthday gathering — no theme, no gimmicks, no hook. But it was still interesting and fun to me, because my friend is interesting and fun to me. 

Don’t let an outside jury decide what you find interesting and fun. There is only one god who produces reliable answers, and it’s you.  

When the Simulations first came out, everyone did a bunch of crazy shit, exactly what you’d expect: flying, fucking, euphoria-mining. Younger generations, the ones who barely spent any time in a corporeal body, still tend to loiter in the less grounded experiences. But older people, those who entered Simulations from their 30s onward, are inclined toward things that could have happened in our original world.

One might think that the wild, previously impossible stuff would remain gripping forever. But after a certain amount of hedonism, most people return to what they used to have, just a rosier version of it. 

Baseball Simulation 7 delivers that exactly: a normal baseball game, but the very best version of normal. 

We’re watching the game as a family, which is to say that in this Simulation, we have a daughter. The Simulation informs me that she is the light of our lives, which we were hoping would be the case but couldn’t confirm until it happened. Her name is Plum. I am very relieved that I like her. 

In fact, I like her so much that even though she is whining for Cheez-its in a way that’s not particularly likable, I can’t help but be touched by how closely she resembles us: a nose tip that crests over itself to form a pearl (you); barely there eyebrows (me); round, glassy irises that catch the light (you and me). I like her so much that it heightens my liking of you: your crinkly-eyed laugh, your simple allegiance to love, your frustratingly generous worldview. Our daughter is pouting and the weather is too warm and within me is a grace no other Simulation has evoked. 

I fish out the plastic baggie of Cheez-its and hand it to Plum, who softens within the span of two crackers. Your presence feels more familiar and reliable than ever. I lean back in my chair. I watch Plum, who looks so small in her seat. I watch the players, who look so small down there on the field.

The Simulation shows us a realistic game: a double play, a few RBIs, and a clean foul ball catch from a middle school-aged boy who jumps up and down after it lands in his mitt. I reach for your hand. You squeeze mine back. I observe our fake daughter, who is the best and worst parts of us. The home team wins. 

I leave Baseball Simulation 7 a five-star review and the following feedback: Perfect, just enough to remind me how much I would have cared about all of this.

As for me, an office worker with a respectable average step count of 9,495, I am 5’2”, stocky-legged, slightly hunched, and soft around the edges. 

Clearly, I am not an Olympian, but the photo reminds me that we share something in common: our bodies have been molded for and by our chosen activities.

The Olympians have opted for world-class athleticism. I have selected more leisurely pursuits: cuddling, lounging, jogging, dancing, being squished, giving massages, and eating something sweet every single day. 

*****

Though I am only peripherally aware of it, my online diet feeds me the exact sludge that made the Surgeon General call for a warning label on social media platforms: slinky coquette women leaning into schoolgirl aesthetics, EDtwt threads reminding me that nothing tastes as good as being skinny, the sense that everyone except me flashes V7s and teaches rooftop kundalini yoga. 

Japan, where I lived for two years, exposed me to different images. Kyushu, with its abundance of hot springs, has a public bathing culture. And public bathing means seeing, whether you like it or not, a lot of naked women. Onsen were the first places I saw unclothed everyday women in multitudes.

Which is why seeing 80-year-old, sagging women was so helpful for me. Seeing nude elderly people crystallized my understanding of the body as a living and dying thing. The body is not so different from a fruit: an object given moral bents only by the stories that we tell about it; an object that will shrivel, inevitably, regardless of how it looked at its peak. 

On the less extreme side, being exposed to other young women with my body type, noticing them being normal and happy and not predisposed to harping on the disproportionate girth of their honking calves, made space for me to be normal and happy and slightly more restrained in harping on the disproportionate girth of my honking calves. It turns out I am normal. It turns out most of the photos online are outliers. 

*****

I was 24 years old the first time I truly touched a woman. I showed up to a contact improv workshop with a nice man I met online, then spent most of the class on the opposite side of the room from him, strategically smooshing my center of gravity into three other women. 

Practicing contact improv helped me realize that women are fun to touch—and for very different reasons from how men are fun to touch. And though that sounds sexual, I don’t mean it that way, though I don’t doubt that’s enjoyable too. I mean objectively. 

In my younger and more vulnerable years, I regarded my body as a failed attempt to be good (desirable, athletic, coveted). I especially worried that it’d be disappointing for partners—that I’d fall short in both looks and sensation. 

Since then, I’ve danced with many women, and I now understand that it is not possible to be bad to touch.

It’s pleasant when women are thin and delicate, evoking the same tenderness that I get from cradling a small animal. It’s pleasant when they are full-bodied and supple, with flesh that begs interaction like yeasted dough. It’s pleasant when I can sense the curvature of their bones as we pull away to create tension or press against each other for support.

It’s especially pleasant when they are squishy.  

Experiencing other female bodies gave me the perspective I needed to trust that my body is fun to touch, too.  

*****

Over time, I have come to understand my body as a functional tool, a machine designed for a purpose. And while it is not top-of-the-line, it works. It is the flesh prison equivalent of a 2000 Honda Civic—nothing to write home about, but more than capable of taking you from point A to point B—and I am not the type to complain about things that are working. 

When I am content with my physique, looking at my body does offer some aesthetic pleasure. But no matter its condition, using my body—stretching it, exhausting it, resting it, giving it, trusting it—brings me sensorial pleasure: all-over, sturdy, manifest satisfaction. 

Think of the difference between looking at a picture of a delicious meal and actually putting it in your mouth and swallowing. 

Of course, the meal, beautiful as it may be, holds the ultimate intention of being eaten. Of course, the body, beautiful as it may be, finds its true expression not as the source material for idle critique, but through the raw act of living.  

*****

Last month, on a group trip with 20+ internet friends to Mexico City, my new friend Nibras told me that I give good hugs, some of the best she’s received in recent memory. This made me wonder, if my body is capable of notably good hugs, what’s left to fix? What higher purpose for a body than to make others feel safe and loved in its embrace?

Tuesday in Taipei

People told jokes
in languages I never learned. 
Peripheral and mute, 
I sat there and thought about
the bird from last New Year’s Eve 
whose body I heard break 
when it fell from the sky 
and collided with the asphalt.
​
I am playing
that game where you wave at 
strangers in passing cars
in the hope they’ll wave back 
and losing.

When the bird died, I placed 
both of my hands over my mouth
in shock. It was so incredible 
I couldn’t speak. Most of my days 
pass like this. Spectacular 
and silent. Magnificent 
and untellable.

1. AI might kill us.

2. Tarot is a legitimately useful tool.

3. Women are scary.

While there, I asked a member of the kitchen staff what he thought brought this particular group of people together. He lowered his voice a little and told me how the venue had always been accepting, how they hosted LGBTQ+ retreats before it was cool and never minded when teens wanted to indulge in a bit of marijuana. I think this was his covert way of saying, “Though it is hard to deduce exactly which weird thing bridges you all, it is not difficult to deduce that the thing that bridges you all is weird.”

​As is the case with any conglomeration of zany, inebriated people, Vibecamp was replete with interesting interactions. Some of my favorite instances:

• [Redacted, for legal reasons] 

• [Redacted, for personal reasons] 

• Getting blasted in the face with a power hose while passionately smooching Luke in front of an audience of a hundred or so, complete with shameless straddling and a self-defense umbrella countermeasure, all underscored by Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” (thanks, Bashu) 

• Maeby’s dancehole set, where the music selection was questionable, the DJing ability was slight, and guests were encouraged to dance as badly as they could. I growled and clawed like a werewolf, gyrated cathartically and pounded my fists on the floor in unison with a stranger, and even managed to twerk for ~3 seconds until my self-awareness kicked in and I was reminded of my deep fear of looking stupid. 

• “Wail and Gnash” hosted by bayesian asian, an all-emotions-welcome pity party for incompetents having a less good time than expected and desiring a venue at which to grind their teeth in like-minded company. Also a stellar phrase that has since re-entered my vocabulary.

• Grappling 101, which mostly involved being shrimp-shaped and doing somersault-esque things, but also afforded me the chance to exert my full strength, make animalistic exertion noises, bite my opponent (apparently “against the rules”), and obtain cool-looking scratches from hurling my body into the sharp grass one hundred times in a row. 

• A random dude, who, on the way to “Speed Rejection”, apparently wanted to get started early and asked me point-blank if I wanted to sleep with him that night. I said “no thanks”; he said “okay, no problem”; we both got metaphorical high-fives from the divine keepers of establishing and respecting boundaries. ​

But though I enjoyed this smattering of entertaining, hard-to-recreate-elsewhere moments, I felt melancholic for large swaths of the weekend. I arrived itching for something spicy: hedonic, connective revelry, or if not that, then at least easy conversation to fuel a much-needed reset. At Wail & Gnash, I explained it as such: “I desire either rapture or peace and am experiencing neither.”

My discontent was rooted in narcissism. I’m embarrassed to own up to it, but I think I was expecting to feel a bit more…sought out?

Vibecamp made me think a lot about my relationship to the internet, and — as pompous as it sounds — the internet’s relationship to me. I have 7,000 followers, which has gifted me a void that talks back, a dozen or so mutuals who I’m legitimate homies with, and a small handful of “fans” who formed adulatory parasocial relationships with the veneer of my personality that I parade online.

Because of the internet, I know someone in practically every major city who is willing to house me or feed me or allow me to integrate into their social scene for a night just because I once tweeted something they liked. I regularly receive heartwarming messages that bolster my decision to never log off (and once or twice have received a heinous, effortful death threat that made me question that decision). Best of all, every few months, I’m contacted by a random man from a Midwestern city who is dying to know what my toes look like, which is a distinct honor.

I’ve invested a lot into the internet, and the internet has invested back in me. For some reason, I thought this might win me some points at Vibecamp. But it didn't, not really. Or at least not enough to overcome the “not super approachable or receptive to making new friends” vibes I was sending by hovering near-exclusively around the person I arrived with.

For a specific subsection of attendees, Vibecamp seems to be the event of the season: an indispensable chance to cement one’s worth, claw out of lowbie-dom, find love, meet God, win friends and influence people. Thankfully, it was not that high-stakes for me. Disappointingly, my lack of eagerness to please might’ve actually backfired.

It turns out that in real life, status is still obtained through normal methods like being nice and asking questions and listening when they’re answered. Nobody cares if you’re sort of witty when they have no way of knowing unless you tell them, which would be an absurd thing to open a conversation with. My problem was that I expected people to like me by default (the way they sometimes do online), forgetting that I first needed to earn their interest.

I assumed that Vibecamp would be an incredible time because everyone would know me and I would know everyone and we would all circle-jerk to our being worth knowing. But Vibecamp ended up being a useful, reflective time because it helped me realize that even when presented with a gazillion fun events curated specifically for my subculture and a few hundred people I’d hypothetically get along with really well, there was very little I wanted to do besides sit in the grass with my boyfriend and talk about our small life 3,000 miles away.

My big takeaway is this: when it comes to feeling connected — feeling known — it doesn’t matter if you have a thousand followers, or once shared a smoothie with so-and-so microcelebrity, or founded a Web3 collective that we totally all agree is revolutionizing capitalism and not a scam or whatever. What matters is having 1-5 people who are really excited to spend time with you in the physical world, where there is no number affixed to your lapel proclaiming your rank or webpage detailing all the triumphs you’ve triumphed. 1-5 people who interact with you as unrehearsed flesh and grunts and still ask for more.

Optimize for finding those 1-5 people. The rest is noise masquerading as music.  

​It’s not a perfect metaphor — SpongeBob is worried about dying and I’m worried about failing to live well — but the theme of desperation is similar. I’m running out of time, the forcing factor is my looming death, and this inescapable truth is the single biggest source of my grief.

My primary cope for the scarcity of time is trying to use it better. I try not to waste time on activities that I deem “unproductive,” like splashing around in the bathwater of melancholy or going to restaurants that have less than four stars on Google Reviews. I also seek out emotive experiences — things that will make me feel something. Sometimes this equates to wackiness, like attending a feet-themed party or organizing a skinny dipping event to benefit The Fistula Foundation. Sometimes this translates to being honest for an audience, like hosting circling workshops and attempting to make my inner world comprehensible through this blog. But mostly it’s just doing as much novel shit as I possibly can.

I’ve found that one of the best ways to intercept novelty is to leave the house, which is why I schedule as many hangouts as I can. In fact, I’ve started joking that given how prolifically I do it, hanging out seems to be my central reason for being alive. I’m on track to have 100 discrete hangouts in 90 days. Even I’m a little in awe of that number.

My abundant tomfoolery is made possible by several fortunate circumstances (having a manageable job, being extroverted, possessing executive function, etc.), but I like to think it’s viable due to my superior logistical abilities. Student life, working in operations, and managing construction projects trained me to anticipate and react to dependencies, i.e. to figure out how to get things done and keep it pushing. For instance, if X is important but can’t happen without Y happening first, I know to hop on Y ASAP. I’m also pretty good at guessing what Y might be. Or, if X is imminent and will trigger Y, I know to get ready to welcome Y (or even better, to get ahead and begin anticipating Z). Real life has a lot more complexity than simple chain reactions, but the base premises are the same. What needs to happen to get the thing I actually want to happen? How can I prepare for all the likely scenarios (and a few of the unlikely ones, too)? Am I doing things in the most efficient order?

When you excel at this style of planning, you become both God and Sim, ordaining the activities that you are meant to do in the order that you are meant to do them. Life is a series of successive tasks laid out for your methodical completion. It sounds droll, but there is real peace in feeling like you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing. To illustrate with a real-life example: since I need to go for a run tomorrow, I set out clothes tonight to reduce friction, which prompted me to make a calendar event to do laundry three days from now, which reminded me that I should wake up at 7 that day to begin the load in time for breakfast with a friend at 9, which compelled me to add eggs to my grocery shopping list, which made me think it’d be convenient to check out the new antique shop that recently opened next to the supermarket beforehand, which gave me the smart idea to wrap up tomorrow’s run nearby the store so I don’t have to stop back home first, which meant I should tuck a reusable bag into the running vest that I just laid out. And so on.

In most cases, this works without a hitch, like yay, as a result of thinking this through, I’m using time better! That means I can hang out even more! But sometimes it falls apart — it's raining, or the friend needs to push back an hour — and that's when I fall apart too. I am someone who gets unduly affected by plans changing, particularly ones that I spent a lot of time constructing and anticipating. For example, switching happy hour locations a few times as we search for a spot that can accommodate our last-minute assemblage? No big deal. But an anomalous kitchen fire shuttering the hole-in-the-wall I found by scouring forums in foreign languages and planned a day trip around, in a distant locale I will likely never be within 100 miles of again? Devastating.

A mild version of the hypothetical kitchen fire occurred when my friend Wes and I forgot where we parked after ecstatic dance. This was poor timing because I was on my way to see a play. As we speedwalked through the suspected vicinity, the minutes I was going to be late slowly ticked up: first 5, then 10, then 15. A normal person might have experienced light anxiety, or maybe a touch of disappointment. Personally, I opted for thinly-veiled panic. Then despair. Then I started crying and refused to go because "there was no point anymore."

Wes is an incredibly solid dude, so he responded by hugging me, driving me home, and buying us both new tickets for a showtime the following week. I’m thankful to him for being extraordinarily classy, and for not requesting an explanation. But here’s what was going through my head anyway: behind my dramatic reaction was a lot of personal gunk. I had been worried about lapsing on my ability to enjoy being by myself and losing my connection to the world of creative storytelling. Going to the play solo symbolized the fact that I still cared about both. In the lead-up to the show, I comforted myself by imagining the usher’s look of surprised gratitude upon seeing such a young person attending theater by herself. I daydreamed about taking my time to read the playbill cover to cover, hot tears streaming down my face at the show’s climax, and going to an izakaya afterward to journal pensively about my reflections and achieve peak edgy quirkiness. And I needed to happen exactly like that or not at all.

One interpretation is that I should simply loosen my grip on things, which is a well-received suggestion. I feign easy-breeziness for about 90% of things. But for the other 10%, I can’t release the compulsion to make the moment count — to push it in the direction of perfect. It’s nonsensical to spend an hour assembling a very good 15 minutes, but it’s usually worth it. All the best times take time.

My workplace recently invented a Hot New Typing System: serious goose vs. silly goose. It’s pretty simple; you’re either one or the other. I learned about the concept at the same time as six of my coworkers, many of whom have objectively important, high-stakes jobs that involve allocating millions of dollars a year. To my surprise, every single one of them said they were a silly goose, despite the fact that they have jobs that require you to be sterile on Twitter and directly correlate to having a diploma from an elite university. Meanwhile, there I was, wearing Vibram FiveFinger shoes (the most unserious of all footwear) with a star-shaped sticker stuck to my face, thinking to myself, uh yeah I’m probably a serious goose.

Being serious undeservedly gets a bad rap, which is why so many people hesitate to identify with it. After all, silly is fun! Silly is chill! Silly gets invited to the party! But serious is thoughtful. Serious is sincere. Serious gets invited to the reconciliation, the bedside, the conversations that matter most. I’ve come around — I’m proud to be a serious goose.
​
The way I understand it, this brief sliver of together is the only thing we get. We should respect its preciousness by taking it seriously. We should enjoy it while we can.
​
“[W]e should be careful
​
Of each other, we should be kind   
While there is still time.”

- Excerpted from Philip Larkin’s “The Mower”

​Outside, heat waves emanate off the rust red deck, the one I daydreamed about lying on a week ago. I heave the sliding door open, sticky in its frame from last year's storms, then slip gingerly through the opening. As I walk, I take care to keep my bare feet moving to avoid burning them. I take a seat, the ground hot against the underside of my thighs. I look at our terracotta pots, where weeds tower over limp succulents. I gaze at the turquoise water of the swimming pool. On its surface, two insects are clinging to one another, drowning, flailing their appendages. I am impressed by their will to live. Magnified by the water, the shadows of the bugs are enlarged. Their reflections remind me of specimens under a microscope, wriggling and unaware against a monochrome background. The sun shines zealously. I retreat inside.

In my childhood mirror, I am fatter than ever. I stand with my heels together, spine straight, and look at the place where my thighs meet. I turn sideways and hold my lower stomach in my hands like a pregnant woman handling her belly. My fingers are gentle, but I am disappointed there's something to wrap them around. I face forward. I picture an imaginary rectangle boxing in my shoulders and pelvis. I compare myself to a brick. For a moment, I think of gymnasts on cereal boxes--sturdy, stout, robust--then I remember that does not describe me. I draw in my breath and search for my ribs. It takes a while to spot them. I vow to eat less.

In the evening, the restaurant I suggest forgets my father’s order, twice. My mother and I eat timidly, slowly, in case his food shows up soon. It doesn’t. While we wait, father warns me about fraudulent scams. The FBI maintains a list of over 60, and he has read through each of them carefully. My mother notes that the restaurant serves white rice, which is the least healthy variety. They check their phones. It never ends, they remind me, referring to the list of things left to do. It comforts them to say aloud, like confirming a universal truth. The sky is blue. The earth is round. It never ends. It never ends. It never ends.

An hour passes. We take my father’s food to go.

On the drive home, despite knowing better, I say something mean and unwarranted. I am sick and tired of hearing prophecies about the end. I am sick and tired of preparing for them. I am upset because I have learned to make decisions for others’ benefit, and am only now realizing that they don’t care at all.

I cry about this later, briefly, then at length. In the kitchen, I tell my mother about my grief. She says nothing, shutters the blinds for the evening, then ascends the stairs in silence. I try to be angry, but only muster remorseful. Children, in their naivete, are so ungrateful. Here, I am a child again. 

II.
​
I wake up next to a man I love, then celebrate this by trying to meld our bodies into one. I fail, inevitably, but the attempt satisfies me. With this taken care of, the business of maximizing Sunday begins.

There are only two things I’ve been stringent about since my return to the City: evading the MUNI fare whenever possible, and having a pastry every weekend. Le Dix-Sept Pâtisserie, ten minutes away, sells them for $8 each, barely less than my hourly salary this time last year. I buy a chocolate pistachio brioche and try to feel giddy about being newly rich instead of feeling guilty. I mostly succeed. It’s all so luxurious: taking Ubers, watching theater, eating berries that someone else has washed for me. I am bowled over by gratitude.

When L orders, he says something funny and makes the shopkeeper laugh. My chest twinges. I am enamored by his likability. I scoot my chair closer to his so our thighs can touch and take his hand in mine under the table. We make our pastries kiss, then follow suit.

E’s house delivers more pastries, as promised: kouign amann, custard buns, the famed Arsicault croissants. I meet new people and catch up with old friends. We talk about spacesuits, unhip fetishes, and this week’s rotation of sorrows. N tells me about his adult problems. I tell E about my young adult ones. Friendship, I’m learning, is mostly about trading confessions. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.

The afternoon is a wash, undeserving of more than this sentence. Dinner is vegan sushi. We go as a party of four: two guys, two girls--me and L plus two friends he met at a love algorithm party. The guys know each other, the guys and girls know each other, the girls begin the night as strangers but are soon overcome by the mysterious bonds of sisterhood and quickly begin agreeing on most things. The table discusses gear, chivalry, and moving too fast. We eat fake tuna and yuzu cheesecake. We try to be honest and sound smart. We mostly succeed.

After-dinner drinks are floated, which L and I decline in favor of absconding. We’ve been overusing the word “abscond”, not because it’s definitionally accurate, but because pretending to be coy provides a certain thrill.

​L takes me to his new apartment, which is a grand total of five blocks south from his previous place. I am its first-ever guest, at least for this iteration of tenancy. I wander through the apartment in my underwear and picture myself living in it part-time: eating fried eggs at the breakfast nook, brushing my teeth under the bathroom’s fancy ceiling heater, falling asleep in the bed I’ve come to like more than my own. It’s perfect, except for the central heating being broken and the taps producing exclusively cold, cloudy water. But in addition to chilly and dehydrated, we’re excited. The cabinets have built-in sliding trays, the deck is big enough for furniture, and the landlord forgot to mention that the backyard extends down an extra two levels. When L goes look look, just like you have and reveals the lemon tree at the very bottom of the yard, I am moved by the symmetry of our lives--how all of our good things also become each other’s. 

Concrete examples include:

• Should I tell my partner this is what I want from our relationship?

• Should I ask for a promotion/raise/money from strangers?

• Should I reach out to a parent/ex/estranged meaningful person?

• Should I state a goal explicitly, rather than relegating it to the comfortable status of hypothetical bucket list item?

​The answer I give is almost always yes, if — and this is a critical if — the telling alone would make you feel good. What do I mean by this? If you would derive value (relief, closure, healing, vindication, understanding, etc.) simply from making your desire known, then yes, you should say it.*

If the telling is merely a means to an end — a tool to more adeptly claw toward the actual thing you want — your problem is a classic one of unknown probabilities, and you should run some mental models to determine how likely it is that sharing will hasten or secure (or perhaps, inhibit) your preferred outcome. If sharing would not be a win in and of itself, then the question isn’t “Should I say the thing?”; it’s, “What methods, sharing being one option amongst them, should I employ to increase the likelihood of my intended result?”

Broadly, even in those cases, I think that telling tends to prod you closer toward success (and toward a better understanding of how to define “success”). It is hard to land on the moon without first establishing that is where you’d like to go. And it is hard to know whether others want you to land on the moon — or maybe even accompany you there — unless you ask them.

I made a fun flow chart for you: 

I recently separated from someone and felt a strong pull to leave him with some final, warm words — to impress upon him all the things I was grateful for. He quipped that he doubted my ability to say anything of true comfort. I responded that the niceties weren’t for his sake; they were for mine. And they were.

There’s often utility in naming our wants, even if they’re never quite realized. There’s comfort in being seen exactly as we are. I think it’s a good idea to share as much as we can, if we want, for as long as it feels good. 

*I asked my friend if I needed to include a caveat that this obviously omits edge cases such as scenarios wherein the benefits you derive from sharing pale in comparison to the potential hurt you could inflict. He replied, “No, you should Ayn Rand it.” This footnote is my compromise.