I’ve been really procrastinating starting this one because I had the idea to go over all the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year and evaluate how they’re going since the year is halfway over, and my goals should theoretically be half achieved. I then questioned the decision to be so open about my shortcomings on the internet, so instead, I decided to start clearing out my inbox. After deleting about 2,000 emails and realizing I still had another 12,000 to get through, I gave up and decided to do this instead. My entire life is just giving up and moving on to whatever seems easier.
This week has been emotionally exhausting to me, and I can tell because I have spent a lot of money in the days since I last sat down to write one of these. I got a new set of pans, a pair of striped pants, cat urine remover, and a spot in an upcoming yoga teacher training. Saving money is always so easy until I realize that there are things in this world that I do need, and more importantly, want. Spending money and stressing out always seem to go hand in hand for me, but I haven’t quite figured out if shopping is the coping mechanism or the trigger. Honestly it’s probably both, and the fact that I know that means I don’t need a therapist because I am basically already a trained psychologist. My top tip for feeling better is closing the four Chrome windows with 27 tabs each that you have had open for over 3 months, as eventually, the digital chaos will start to cloud even the sharpest of minds. As I type this, I keep being confused and then relieved at the lack of open tabs in my peripheral vision.
I just looked out the window and there’s a giant dumpster and one of those trucks that beeps to announce its existence even when it is sitting still, sitting in the middle of the road. It’s kind of annoying but still preferable to the time I looked out the window and saw the mangled outcome of a suicide laying on the ground. But I promised a review of goals, and so a review of goals we shall have.
One of my top goals for 2021 was to reduce the amount of time I spend staring blankly at my phone, but I actually find myself on my phone more now than ever. Somehow I’ve become a person who needs constant stimulation from no less than three sources and cannot go a single second without looking at a screen. I’ve been consuming content (content is synonymous with internet media at this point) so aggressively that I forgot what my brain is actually supposed to do. I no longer have trains of thought, I have disembodied wheels of thought sent careening through my gray matter, slamming into each other and catapulting one another out of my head for sometimes weeks at a time. I was recently in a bookstore (vintage), trying to make good on another one of my goals for the year, when the guy ringing up all 18 of my hardcovers told me about how he had canceled all of his streaming services in an attempt to gain back a shred of autonomy over his life. He also told me to let him know how I liked one of the books I was buying because he was trying to decide if he wanted to read it or not. At this point, it’s been weeks since this conversation, and I don’t know how eagerly he awaits my review, so I am of course too scared to go back until I finish it. I haven’t started reading the book he asked about yet because I have 17 other books and the attention span of a doorknob. It’s a vicious cycle, much like my stress shopping habit. Social media destroyed my attention span, and now all I can focus on is digital squares. Why am I so dependent on this rose gold rectangle of anxiety in my pocket? I always feel like I’m forgetting something, and the thought of my phone dying is more stressful to me than the thought of losing any of my close friends or family. Somehow I manage to almost lose my phone a minimum of 7 times each day, and each time I decide I’ll never see it again, and proceed to experience all five stages of grief in rapid succession. And literally why? Nobody is ever trying to contact me and I only ever feel worse after unlocking the screen. I still have an iPhone 7 because I like Touch ID and don’t like change. I refuse to enter the current technological decade unless Apple comes out with another phone in some shade of pink.
This brings me to my second goal, which was to read five books this year. I chose the number five mostly because I wanted one of my goals to be at least semi-achievable. After years of setting and forgetting goals to read more than that, I finally realized my true ability and motivation levels. Not to brag, but I have actually completed this goal. I then moved to a much smaller apartment, left my books packed up for one week too many, subsequently lost most of the reading momentum I had gained, and now am halfway through three different books and making very little progress on any of them. I’ll try to finish one of them (the shortest one, obviously) by next week. I have to write that here, or I’ll never do it. I am a champion at lying to myself but have completely lost my (previously profound) ability to lie to others.
I also have been loving to lie to myself about going for a run. One of my goals for the year is to run a 5K. I do not remember why I set this goal, but I roped a friend into doing it with me, so now we have to be ready to run five kilometers on thanksgiving morning. We tried to make running plans together one time but it ended up not working out and honestly I was not that mad about it. What I wish I could say is that I have more time to prepare for when we do finally decide to sprint up and down a large set of outdoor stairs together, but what will really happen is that I will have more time to sit on the couch before we huff and puff up the stairs one time and decide that it is time to go home and drink. By now, most people with any sense of logic and/or common sense are thinking that I should run by myself, which did occur to me, but that kind of motivation is so hard to come by these days. I have not gone for a run alone, but I did do four burpees alone in my living room last week, which is not the same, but did make me feel momentarily better about myself and my current level of physical activity. Worst case scenario, I run a 5K in November completely unprepared. That is a future me issue, which is my favorite kind of issue to ignore.
I made a goal for this week in particular to write two poems, because I was doing that a lot this time last year, and then I moved to a different state and forgot how. Moving was really good for my mental health in a lot of ways, but really bad for my self-improvement journey in a lot of other ways. Though I guess no longer being so depressed that I think literally everything about me is terrible and needs to be better is improvement in itself. I did not write the poems that I told myself I would, and now it is Friday so I have to or else I will have failed. So here are some poems real quick once:
gin and tonic vibes
I just found a scratch on my toe and an “antiq pooper” on Craigslist
I can’t decide if I want to buy a house
or just want a claw foot tub and a patio
to drink booze on in the summer
the weather is so nice I forgot to feel bad
I wish I didn’t have to go through January
or February or trauma to grow as a person
I never went to prom
I’m so gassy and tired
of thinking so hard I want
someone to dress me like I’m a doll
or the star of some twisted music video
I want to attend an event
with a charcuterie board
I want to wear pink fluffy dresses
and run around cities I’ve never seen before
does it overwhelm you to think about the
square footage of the earth you’ll never touch?
As always, I will leave you with a photo dump from my week. If you enjoyed this and have not already signed up to get these newsletters delivered to your inbox on a weekly basis (for free - I know my worth), there’s a button down below for just that purpose.
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