Content note: There’s some depressing stuff in here about climate change, fascism, etc.
February 7th
A Spiritual Practice for Quarantine
wake up, take your meds
stretch & pee & check your phone
stretch & sigh, ignore your phone
brew some coffee, clear some cobwebs
set some goals & test your brain
watch the news, turn off the news
feel grateful you’re not on the news
don some ruby lipstick no one will see
take butt selfies in bed
suck cock every lazy morning
scribble notes to future selves
let haters tire themselves out
slither into slim-cut sweatpants
comb your hair for no one
read a book for pleasure
drink a boozy revelation
squint your eyes until you see
a pale unfocused vision
of the You you want to be
April 19th
Life all feels so absurd when you’re living through a global pandemic and a fresh wave of fascism and the end of the world due to climate change. I really don’t know how we are supposed to deal with it. There’s not even a frame of reference, a touchpoint in human history we can point to and learn from where we idiot’ed ourselves out of being able to even inhabit this planet anymore. It’s all new and a lot of it is bad.
I think one of the only things you can do to cope with all this is to do what the existentialists did and accept the liberating but terrifying meaninglessness of it all. I can’t affect humanity’s problems on a scale that would be effective, so I may as well feel pleasure and create joy where possible. I don’t mean it’s okay to be selfishly hedonistic all the time. I mean that we’d go nuts if we never allowed ourselves to be selfishly hedonistic. We’d be squandering the best parts of the very world and civilization our anxieties are trying to save.
May 29th
Lately I keep looking at real estate listings of 2- and 3-bedroom houses and condos in Toronto and New York and dreaming of what it would be like to furnish and decorate my own office in my own home. There would be lots of framed photos and art. An altar featuring citrine, blue topaz, and perfumed incense. Big white bookshelves displaying books, old journals, striking sex toys, and a rainbow of vintage typewriters. A smallish piano and my ukuleles and guitar. A luxuriant daybed for lounging and naps. A big plush armchair for reading in. Stacks of empty notebooks waiting to be filled with thoughts and ideas. Organized drawers containing my entire sex toy collection. A sex toy charging station à la Piph. Sophisticated coasters for having drinks at my desk. An array of fine pens and pencils. Tons of natural light, plus several lamps for atmosphere. Ahh, bliss.
June 9th
I bought a secondhand digital piano yesterday. Been wanting to get back into songwriting. It has been about 3 years since I’ve written a song. It’s just so weird because in high school I wrote multiple songs per month. It no longer feels like a skill I can access. I try playing and singing improvisationally but everything sounds terrible and doesn’t flow out of me the way it used to.
I think if I asked younger-me for advice on this, she would advise me to spend more time just idly messing around on my instrument(s); inspiration can’t show up if you’re not there to greet it. But I can’t shake the feeling that I was connected to some divine source of musical ingenuity and I no longer have a stable connection to wherever that came from.
I guess part of the reason for this is that my life now is fairly settled and content – I am married to the love of my life and our relationship is stable and healthy, so the main sources of interpersonal angst and sadness I used to pull songwriting inspiration from are just absent. I guess this means I have to carve out new ways of being a songwriter, ways that don’t rely on romantic drama. Writing from fictional characters’ perspectives is often helpful for this, I’ve found.
July 7th
Things to remember when I hate myself and feel like a failure:
- I will have had 2 books published by the time I turn 30.
- I am happily married to the love of my life, who is perfect for me on every dimension I can imagine.
- I live comfortably on the money I make as a self-employed person/freelancer in the sex media field. Dreamy.
- My work means a lot to people and they tell me so nearly every day.
- I am working through my traumas and flaws with a therapist, and I’m making good progress.
- I have a cozy home that I love and have put a lot of effort into making it feel as comfortable as possible.
- I achieve an amazing amount every single week for someone living with an invisible disability/chronic illness.
- I have made a lot of art that I think is good, and I will make a lot more.
- There is always more to learn, to see, to experience.
- Every single thing in life could change in an instant so the only thing to do is appreciate it when you have it.
July 26th
I’m emotional tonight, for a couple reasons. Firstly, today 11 copies of my first book showed up in the mail, and I got to hold it, and read it, and sniff it, and take selfies with it… I am truly so fucking proud of myself, and the pride feels unusually tangible to me today. It’s a really good book and I think people are going to like it.
The second emotional thing that happened is I went for drinks with T___, who I met several years ago because they were friends with L___ when I was dating him – and they told me that basically they never really liked him that much. They felt he was “a sad man who sucked” and didn’t treat his partners very well. (Uh, can confirm.)
My mind is honestly kinda blown. All this time I had believed what L___ said, which was that the two of them were very good friends, maybe even best friends – and I had felt that L___ must have some essential goodness or coolness because T___ thought he was cool, but in reality all this time they’ve seen him the same way I saw him on my most self-righteous and self-possessed days: as a sad, selfish, confused and confusing dude who wasn’t a very good boyfriend at all.
He was a person who frequently represented himself as perpetually right and good, as if his way of doing relationships was the best way or the only good way, and as if I was in the wrong for ever taking issue with anything he did. He was an extraordinarily bad boyfriend to me but framed himself as a generous and tolerant caretaker and protector.
Our relationship was this fraught mirage, always seeming like it had the potential to be so good and healthy and satisfying but never actually allowing that reality to materialize. He paid lip service daily to the kind of boyfriend he wanted to be, and wasn’t. He was a complete and total fuckboy, who would’ve been appalled to hear himself referred to as such. The only reason I stayed with him after he seriously hurt my feelings was that I believed deeply that he was desirable and special and “a catch” and that I was incredibly lucky to be with someone like him. That’s all it was. I mean, yeah, NRE makes idiots of us all, but I really think most of my poor decision-making in that relationship was directly related to me 1) assuming his inherent worth because he was a man who expressed an interest in me, and 2) thinking so poorly of myself that I couldn’t see how valuable and desirable I myself was. I didn’t know I deserved better, or that I was allowed to expect better, but I did and I was.
