BLOG #09: WRECK THIS JOURNAL
Redpill journal. I’m really stanced like Morpheus here, lol.Like, almost three full months being a full-time freelancer. I have finally accepted the fact that as my own manager, it makes sense that people will continue to tell me that I’m killing it, or say other colloquialisms of the like to me, because part of my job now is making sure I’m wearing eyeshadow or at least chapstick and a smirk whenever I leave my house so people know that I am alive and working. Every photo taken of me and then shared around is both friend-making and work-getting. And I’ve been making some pretty sick new friends even though work feels do-or-die and hustlenomics every day. It is exciting and I chose this because I wanted to be excited. I am having fun. And every day I beat the significant urge to do something permanent and probably ugly to my hair.
If you read my past blog posts since reinvigorating Responsible Gun Owner post-my-last-job, they resemble the stages of grief, in a way. Grieving no longer having a job and thus having no structure to my life 5 out of 7 days of the week (despite looking like this, I am very type-A), and accepting the public parts of freelancerhood. I tell myself I have reached acceptance because I can turn all my intrusive thoughts into mantras: “I don’t want to be here because I hate you” is actually “I don’t hate you, I just hate all of this stuff that we’re doing to look cool when we’re just being ourselves.” We should focus on being ourselves. But we should make sure that the things we can’t control, aka, how many people will like you or want to hire you or be your vanity-friend (like a vanity project magazine, for example, but interpersonally; be careful with this) because you wore Junya that came out during the Bush (“double-yuh”) administration to the party (even though you would have done that anyways because swag been), don’t infiltrate how we see ourselves. We can be seen and we can see ourselves and then we can also be ourselves. The latter two, seeing and being, can be as mutually or non-mutually exclusive as you’d like. We as in me. I am assuming other people feel this way and just don’t like to talk about it. As I write this down it all feels super obvious and juvenile like when Kylie Jenner said 2016 is about, like, realizing things. I like that she and I have this in common. I hope the “duh” parts of my rumination toward relinquishing control of public image as it relates to the self feel as profound as Jenner’s very simple and very profound feeling that, in 2016, she was going to realize things.
One thing I’ve realized: well, it’s actually a feeling that exists twofold for me, in the form of a question from me to myself. Have you ever had the feeling that so many things have happened to you in a very short period of time that the speed/precision/gumption required to write about them in the moment, or right after, disappears because each isolated thing is so weighty, but also, and perhaps more complexly, have you ever felt the guilt afterwards, not toward not-writing about your life, but surrounding the fact that the sheer magnitude of things-that-happened-to-you means that you are someone who just lets things happen to you, zero control? Have you ever had that feeling? (Don’t answer).
While I was letting things happen to me, though, I did make a list of these things. I wrote them down even if I couldn’t write about them. They live in my Notes app in a document called “Things that have happened to me that need to be essays.” If any of these become essays, well, here I am holding myself accountable.
1. Seeing a person in a short film screening whom I used to see casually playing queer Jesus. Aka “Queesus.” They slept over one morning and when I went to get a glass of water, I came back to find them cross legged and mediating on my bed. I don’t remember what happened next in this situation, but I do know I wanted to laugh at its sincerity.
2. Listening to one-minute-long selection from a larger epic I wrote in 2019 about twincest, in my own voice, from an MP3 player tucked into a plant poised beside a Charlotte Knowles bag.
3. Meeting two people in “arts” and “culture” (between my age–3 years older) who didn’t know Prince changed his name to a symbol.
4. Witnessing a guy I matched with on Hinge (messaged me first, set a date for the first date but never followed up, after a check-in post-holidays, he told me he was actually no longer interested because he got engaged to an old sweetheart back home for Thanksgiving and was going off the apps)…back on Hinge.
5. Being invited to three separate events by people with anxiety because they know you “know people there.”
6. Not-arguing with a date who genuinely asserted that Bowie was better than Prince because his “sound was more expansive,” (!!!!!!!). He also admitted he didn’t really listen to Prince (!!!!!!!!!!!!!). I should have called the NAACP but instead I decided to not argue with the objectively misguided. This was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
7. Running away from a date with a guy who thought “DJ music” was a genre. He had the most crippling adult ADD I’ve ever seen in my life, to the point where following the conversation was very difficult. I asked him if he had ADD or was just nervous. This inspired a 5 minute long (yes, I timed it) diatribe as to how smart I must be for being able to pick up on his ADD because he’s, like, really good at managing his symptoms and remaining on topic. I did physically run away from the date, forgot I had two whole Fernet-and-Cokes and that I was wearing heels, fell and sprained my ankle while a sexy French woman was admonishing her boyfriend for what I assumed was cheating. They came up to check on me, then resumed fighting.
8. Rolling my eyes toward a woman at the doctor’s office who was sitting down in the waiting area despite being on line to speak to the man at the front desk. I rolled my eyes at her because I went right up to the front desk upon arriving at the doctor’s office, waited for the man at the desk to finish his phone call, and then was told that she was on line before me, so I told her to “go ahead” with a smile, and she said “I was just sitting down to give him his space on the phone.” The doctor who called the woman back for her appointment was a psychiatrist. (I know this, because I see her as well). I see this one as an essay about the ways white people inhabit rooms, specifically the guilty ones who over-apologize and “give space” because they feel like being in the waiting room at the Medicaid health clinic is a great way to, uh, *checks notes* “check my privilege.”
I finished a journal I’ve been working on for, like, 4 years, last week. There’s a lot in there about hating people, being scared, and occasional song lyrics for the band my best friends and I started during the pandemic. I have a new journal, it is red, I purchased it last September after taking an incredibly low-dose edible and didn’t realize it’s the one that has graph paper instead of lined paper. I am filling it with documentation of my dreams, because I do that now (both dream and write my dreams down), my more particular to-do lists that include the approximate minutes it takes to do each task, and tasks like “tweeze neck hairs.” It will also, ideally, include the sketches for these essays, when I write them. I read now, like at readings, so if you host readings and any of these ideas feel like something you’d like to hear me read in public wearing my bra over my clothes or something, let me know.
I found this page in my old journal and it reminded me of how beautiful caring is. The blurred part is a copywriting strategy I was developing for some friends who wanted to work with me on a company they were developing, but the little Rambo prose makes me smile, because it comes from being overwhelmed by the weight of every little thing, and finally finding a day to be ready enough to sit down and let it out. Abstractly, in the case of past-Maya on this day. In the beginning of the end of my 20s, however, I’m much more literal.
To finding a day to be ready.
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