surfing!! and the great outdoors

so so stoked on surfing. turns out you can just abandon school and go do the things you actually love. bought a beautiful log up in rhode island and super excited to catch some waves this year. also want to go fishing once the river levels look a little nicer and it isn't so hot out.

realizing that i might just be fundamentally incompatible with a lot of people at school. i always question whether or not i'm too quick to judge / need to have a more accepting view. but when i give things chances i realize that they lack depth or values or maturity or something and it just is more exhausting than anything else. and it's not even like i have my life together to be saying these things, so the bar is truly on the floor.

move-in cycle

i literally cannot take moving in and out of college, work, home, etc. again. it is so tiring physically and mentally. i just want to be able to settle in a place and stop moving and have my things. i am done with cars and storage and throwing and buying and guessing again and again what i need and don't need. and i don't want to go to target ever again, tbh, and i don't want to be in a city where there's nothing but parking lots and people overflowing. and i'm so very tired and anxious and exhausted before things have started and i feel frazzled and all of that pre-school summer healing is just gone. someone pray for me or something

a strange summer

it took me 4 months to read infinite jest

an insanely mind opening book that changed my perspective on writing and novels. the one thing that bothers me is the excess of mental gymnastics (though i know part of it is intended). he's an impressive writer, he knows he's an impressive writer, but most importantly, his audience is filled with young writers / intellectuals / blah that *want* to be impressed.

we end up with his "encyclopedic" knowledge being more like a weirdly athletic show of word-and-name-dropping that falls flat for readers who are actually well-versed in whatever he's talking about. the way he writes ab math has always been jarring (in and out of IJ), and i'd imagine those with actual expertise in tennis, chemistry, optics, etc. might feel the same in those sections (am aware that dfw messed around in tennis, math, etc. but it just all feels so washed-up because by no means was he extraordinary or even excellent by adult levels in any of those things, but he writes as though he was).

outside of being mildly annoying, i feel like we can see this performance in its most damaging sense when he writes about women, queer and poc characters, or attempts to use aave. saying this not to be about knee-jerk, somewhat neoliberal idea about identities and pc ways to limit what someone can write or have thoughts about (e.g., sometimes what he says is reflecting the opinions / tendencies of the narrator). i think there are spots where he clearly tries to flex his know-everything muscles and fails quite badly.

just thoughts, because there is so much amazing IJ discouse out there that i would agree with.

two month delay

this blog post took two months to get to... i finished my internship and got back home this weekend! it was such an amazing experience and i feel like i've grown so much.

now it's time to go back to my website fixation...

beach break!!!

been settling into things! happy about work and feeling like a real person. long weekend means time to go to the beach! it was beautiful out and it's great to relax with less guilt. good things ahead, i hope.

been so busy

moved for the summer and everything's been so hectic. work, study, cooking, cleaning, etc. studying hard on weekends but not sure how epic things will be a couple weeks down the line. pretty anxious, tbh

time to try hard + moving anxiety

so much pressure to learn more, faster. really feeling like i need to realize my full potential or something like that. also, summer relocation is coming up, which i've never done well with. feeling anxious as usual but nobody really takes it seriously (not that they could help me?)

the slow crawl towards vegetarianism

when i was in high school, a lot of my friends would go vegetarian for a month or so. i never intentionally hopped on that train, but i'm slowly noticing how i don't feel compelled to eat meat anymore. though conscious about intersectional environmentalism etc. etc., some of it is just changing preferences. the ways we change over time are so slow and yet so big.

graduation!

so proud of my friends for graduating this week! commencement always makes me feel so wistful. the weather was beautiful.

song of the day

some beach patterns

this morning's fishing was unsuccessful... but there were beautiful patterns on shore!

i was looking for a job and then i found a job...

(and heaven knows i'm miserable now)

after many months of uncertainty i re-secured my summer internship (long story), but it doesn't seem to be relieving any of the stress i'm currently feeling.

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