Ingrid Goes West

I started this post a year ago (5/5/2019!) after settling down for a day to watch Ingrid Goes West. I don't even know how this movie had crossed my mind, but it seemed familiar as it stars Aubrey Plaza, in a role very different than that of her Parks and Rec character, and Elizabeth Olsen, who I love in the Marvel movies. I'm not here to offer a critique or synopsis of the movie, though I do recommend it. I might have to rewatch it to figure out what I meant by some of the commentary I wrote a year ago. For example, "Quite frankly, I'm very tired despite not doing anything or going anywhere all day, and I'm dreading the thought of hitting "Publish" on a post that I know is sub-par, writing quality-wise." This much is still true, except now we are in the middle of a coronavirus induced stay-at-home order. Times change, but apparently a lot of things in my life stay the same. Unedited text from last year's draft will be italicized for context.

What I do want to do is explore some thoughts re: the key message of the film as a critique of social media, particularly Instagram. I vaguely remember using Instagram a long long time ago, and even then, barely engaging. But even without Instagram, I see startling similarities in my life to Ingrid's, in that the inability to connect in real life leads to a crippling dependence on my phone. This of course is a key driver to the plot of the movie, but what separates Ingrid and me is the film's key message: the condemnation of the influencers and influences.

There are no heroes in the story. Ingrid, determined to find the joy she sees splashed across her Insta feed, psychotically copies the life of Taylor, her muse, but when Ingrid is exposed for her fraud, she realizes that Taylor's life is just as superficially constructed. Authenticity is a sham! Unexpectedly, her disillusioned suicide attempt brings her the online attention and validation she had hoped to gain by copying Taylor's lifestyle. The film ends abruptly — Ingrid's desire for influence is fulfilled, but not the bigger question of dependence on social media.

Such is the way of the social media profile. To craft a persona, to build an identity — who cares if none of it is really how it is all the time. That aspirational highlight reel designed to inspire jealousy and sell a product; it's easy to get caught up. After all, who doesn't wish their life were picture perfect?

I've restarted using Instagram in an effort to stay connected to friends during the COVID-19 quarantine. In a way, the lockdown has been good for my social anxiety, since I don't find myself mired in FOMO and guilt over not being as social as I think I should be. Everyone else is presumably doing the same thing I am, which is staying at home doing nothing. I've also found myself with more time on my hands than I really know what to do with. The job I was supposed to start at the beginning of April didn't work out because of corona-times, among other reasons. I'm not too anxious about this either, since a lot of people are also now unemployed due to the crisis. As far as joblessness goes, this is actually one of the best times to be unemployed.

But this extra time has forced me once again to reflect on who I am and what I want. The brief foray into consulting was clearly a wrong move. Though the two month gap on my resume feels awkward, I'm glad I had that experience sooner than later. I can't imagine going into consulting and hating it at a later point in my career. I feel reassured that education policy advocacy is the right field for me at this time, but the opportunities are so limited for where I want to be. I'm not an entry level applicant anymore, but I'm nowhere near experienced enough to be an independent advocate or high level director. Maybe I should take a step back and consider grad school more seriously for this year. Maybe I should consider going into teaching (a whole other mess unto itself).

Thankfully, there are things outside of work that I have had time to explore to expand my personal interests. I started an apartment garden in a planter on the second floor walkway outside my door. My room is filled with ferns and plants. I've been painting again, starting with portraits of all of my friends' cats. If I can get around to it, I want to clean up, fix, and ride my bike more. And of course, I'm getting back into blogging. These things are genuine expressions of my identity that I'm growing into, not just the travel and polaroids with friends memorialized on my Instagram.

Moreover, I want to be clear that this blog should not be taken as a means of influence either. I've had a friend recommend that I could do thinkpieces and discuss my ideas if I want more people to read this blog, but that's not the point. This blog is not about finding myself. This blog is about making myself. I am a brand new person, free to be and believe and do and love and explore whatever I like. I am neither trying to influence anyone or be influenced by anyone. My life is an open book that few people will ever find or read. The purpose of this blog is to express my thoughts in conversation with myself, a digital diary to capture my exact state of mind at a point in time, and to dull the aching grind of the process of living a bit. This blog reaffirms my internal validation, that I myself am enough, with or without being seen by other people, for better or for worse. I can be meaningful, without feeling like I need to be more than I am. ◊

#obsessed: My Love — Until The Ribbon Breaks

It's been a while. Hello blog, my old friend.

Somehow, I'm still only one year older since my last post. It feels like it's been a lifetime, as I've changed my name, graduated, traveled to Greece, moved to Sacramento, finished my last internship, got a job, traveled to Chicago, lived with an old lady with Alzheimer's, moved into my own apartment, and finally seemingly achieved all I ever wanted and hoped to be by this point in my life.

Yet still, somehow, I'm not happy.

Of course, it's a process. It takes time to get to know people and make friends and get used to my new situation. It's only been just over a year. I finally have time to figure out what I want to do — an overabundance, if anything. I haven't learned to slow down yet, I'm still the instant gratification type, looking for the next big thing in my life to achieve. I'm eager to be at that place where everything is exciting, but I'm too scared to start doing the things that would make it exciting. Of course, there's also the issue of money and transportation, but even the things that wouldn't require additional investment still terrify me sometimes. Every Thursday, I drag myself to free yoga at the library, rain or shine, in the hopes that my regular presence can inspire some like minded person to reach out. It's a first step, and it's easier to hope that someone talks to me, but eventually I'm going to have to own up to the fact that I could be doing more. A therapist would certainly help, but all the ones I've contacted so far either don't take my insurance or aren't available for new patients. I think I've finally reached a tipping point in my solitude that without any new external input or outlets soon, I might break down.

That's definitely not something fun to think about, and it's not a realization I would have made without blogging. A conscious flow of words, with or without an audience, has yet again brought a small amount of comfort to this introvert in her lonesome. Hello blog. Hello myself. ◊

Growing Pains

The start of a new month is coming up soon; this one especially is an important new beginning. Today is the last day of September, the first full month of the semester, and this is a benchmark point for how I'm doing, settling in and going about this semester. This past week was particularly brutal — all the glamour, and the trauma, and the f*cking melodrama — but now that it's over, I feel like I can take a deep breath and release all the anxiety in my chest, the burden on my shoulders, and the noise in my head.

I'm currently extremely satisfied by how I'm managing my academics, my extracurricular commitments, my health, and my aesthetic. I'm still working on squeezing a social life in, but even though it could be more robust, it's mostly sufficient. In doing so, I need to reassess where I'm putting my time and effort, and only continue putting my time and effort into places that I feel good about it going toward. If I don't feel good about it, it's time to let go. I will choose to be with the people that choose me, however painful it may be to outgrow the people I love.

There's really no certainty at this stage in life — everything is temporary, ever-changing. College is a time of development, transitions, and growth. As long as I have integrity in my character, being genuine and intentional in my actions, constantly striving for introspection and self improvement, I can be confident that everything will be okay. I'm not sure if there's any certainty ever, but I'm learning that a good thing doesn't have to last forever. ◊

Green Beans

My friend Wei-Wei was making green beans the other day, and we talked about how green beans are so good, so wholesome, any way you cook them. I hadn't had any in a while, so our conversation inspired me to get some. As I was meal prepping the chicken, potatoes, and green beans, I was struck by a sudden wave of nostalgia in the middle of preparing the beans. It wasn't quite uncomfortable, but I was slightly shaken by the intensity of the feeling. For what only feels like a split second, I am six years old, sitting on a little wooden stool on the backyard deck, the sun on my shoulders and on the worn, musty wood, making everything smell warm. The AC unit is humming behind me, a slight breeze occasionally rustles the leaves on the vine canopy beneath the balcony. I'm with my mom, and we're snapping green beans, pinching off the ends and then snap! snap! snap! breaking the beans down into small, same-sized segments. Sometimes we talk, about school, about summer; sometimes it's silent. When we're done, my mom takes the strainer full of beans inside to cook, and I sprint down three stairs, out the gate with the bell, and look for roly-polies while I wait for the food to be ready. Soon, the fragrant smells of green beans cooked with pork wafts out of the kitchen, and I run back in without being called. A spatula of sticky rice in a bowl, the green beans and pork and all the juices on top, running into the rice, first to shove into my mouth with complete disregard of etiquette, and then to savor. I always ask to leave some for the next day; I still maintain that leftover green beans and pork tastes even better as the flavors have had more time to sink in.

Then it's back to my task. I finish prepping the green beans, and it's time to cook. I don't have pork, so I make a mental note to myself to pick up some bacon the next time I decide to cook green beans. I inexpertly tend to three large skillets, the struggle of trying not to burn anything burying those memories as quickly as they were unearthed. The food turns out okay, but it's a shame I didn't have pork.

Later that night, I remembered it was also the day of my little sister's birthday, and even though I called her, I couldn't think of a single thing to say. I struggled to figure out how old she was, mistaking her birth year for that of my little brother at first. I felt terrible, but sometimes I forget I have a family. It's been over two years since I've lived with them, a tenth of my life. The one thing that is more or less a constant structural support in most people's lives does not exist in my personal landscape. Usually, hearing my parents' voice is a source of anxiety, and is something I happily do without. Most of the time, I don't feel like I'm missing something. But sometimes, there are little moments, like when I'm snapping green beans, that I think about what could have been, what I had before, but not anymore. ◊

Knowing My Limits (Update)

An addition to last night's rather frantic post:

As they say, hindsight is 20/20. I believe the cause of feeling like I was "hitting the wall" was a mild hypoglycemic crash. For context, in the absence of professional medical evaluation, I was probably hyperglycemic for most my life eating so much sugar and chocolate. It might not have been diabetes but I had all the symptoms: hunger and fatigue, drinking water all the time but still being thirsty and having to go to the bathroom frequently, dry skin, and vision problems. I've had these concerns for a number of years but they remained unaddressed because my parents were somewhat neglectful regarding my medical issues. I'd bring up concerns and they'd be dismissed, and I wasn't encouraged to bring up my concerns to the doctor at regular checkups. Now that I'm responsible for my own health, I'm determined to take care of things properly.

So, suddenly, I've decided to take action. In changing my lifestyle so abruptly, the healthy eating and exercising intensity caused a hypoglycemic crash, as my body couldn't adjust to the lack of sugar. All I could feel was frustration when I couldn't figure out why, but now that I've recovered and I think about it, it all makes sense. It wasn't that I was mentally incapable of writing, it was a physical issue, not something I could address through discipline and willpower alone.

I might not be able to fully control how and when my depression and anxiety manifests but there are things I can control, like my diet, exercise, and sugar intake. I used to not bother, but now I have the autonomy to make decisions about my life, and these are things that will be important to me. I now know to make these changes gradually and to be forgiving to myself when I'm not able to adjust instantaneously, but eventually I will be at a comfortable balance. Until then, I'll have to be careful and do what I need to to keep myself functioning. ◊

Hitting The Wall

It's 1AM, which is by no means an appallingly late time to be up on a school night, but I have been sitting at my desk starting at this essay for, oh, about six hours now. Truthfully, I should have realized that I wasn't going to get anything done by around 9PM, by when I had done everything I could to avoid working on this essay: showering, eating dinner, cleaning the kitchen, clearing off my desk, facetiming my friend, eating twenty chicken nuggets, buying six sports bras (yes, six), browsing Buzzfeed endlessly, etc, etc, etc. It would have been much more effective if I had gone to bed early and woken up early to work on this, yet somehow I insisted on getting this done tonight and couldn't see that it was a bad idea to do so.

It's been a wildly successful week by any measure, as was intended. I went to the gym, caught up on all my readings, stayed on top of my reading responses, attended all my classes, worked at my internship, and forced myself not to procrastinate so I could go to sleep by 10PM. I figured that if I hopped on the work grind for a week, it would be enough to catch up from the confused mess left by the beginning of the semester, and reset myself to a sustainable schedule for the rest of the year. For a while, it worked. I got all of my work done, exercised, ate healthy, and slept enough. But suddenly, today, confronted by a single Classics essay of which I had three pages left, everything stopped. I did everything I could to avoid working on that essay. I ended up binge eating and stress shopping because I was so distressed that I wasn't doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing. I wrote in my journal. I wrote this blog post. Nothing could pull me out of the academic writing rut, which seemed to come out of nowhere.

I keep reminding myself that everything is okay. Even though I spent a lot of money on my stress shopping, it was arguably for things I needed that were on sale. It might be a bit financially irresponsible, but as soon as I check off things on my list like selling the extra iPad I received this summer, those finances will be in ship-shape. The binge eating was a small blip in an otherwise healthy routine. Yet still, even though I know it isn't, everything feels like it is out of my control.

Moving forward, I think it's important for me to be aware of my limits. As much as I try, there is only so much I can do until I hit a mental wall. What should have been an easy essay was the straw that broke the camel's back after a grueling week. I am only capable of being on a productive grind for so long until I get worn down. When that happens, I need to stop and let myself recover, because I can't do my best work if I am not my best self. For now, this means going to sleep and getting up in the morning to try again. If that doesn't work, then there are always other options, like asking for an extension. Even if that's not possible, there's nothing I can do right now except make taking care of myself my only priority. ◊

A Girl Has Needs

There's a boy and he was everything I wanted. Six foot one, built like a demigod, dark hair, hazel eyes, smart, and kind. He liked archery and the color purple and cats and he laughed at my puns and held my hand and took me out to dinner, and he liked me too, until it all crumbled before me like a sandcastle at high tide, for seemingly no reason at all. I watched what could have been slip away like sand between my fingers. It felt like a big, "Fuck you," from the universe, to be shown something so beautiful and magnificent, and to have it all washed away like it never existed.

I keep trying to figure out what went wrong. Part of it was my fault — I rushed into it, I couldn't help myself, I couldn't stay chill. But I tried, I tried, I tried, I tried everything I knew, and nothing was getting a response. He'd talk to me some times, and then he wouldn't. I grew frustrated with every interaction, the on and off conversations where nothing was being said and it felt like he didn't care. It wasn't out of any malicious intent; it was just who he was, somewhat oblivious and too much in his own head to consider how other people felt. I struggled to accept this, and part of me still hasn't, but it's past time for me to let go. But the worst part is I know I'd throw myself back at him in a heartbeat if he made any effort at all.

The fact of the matter is I'm alone again, and I need to be not alone, just not in the way you think. I thought I'd be growing my circle of friends in college, but instead I find myself losing people. One friend temporarily for some business travel, another off to study abroad and no longer speaking English, one former friend to the complicated matter of a possibly non-consensual encounter between us, one friend to his own anxiety, one friend to her numerous other obligations, and countless others to distance and time and no reason to talk. I fill my time as much as I can with classes and notes and work and exercise and digital distractions but still I am faced with empty weekends. Nobody blowing up my phone. The people I make plans with don't invite me back. All the discipline in what I eat, when I exercise, how I study, how I live my life, has no impact whatsoever on how other people live theirs and whether they choose for me to be a part of it. Maybe it's a bad case of FOMO but I think there's something more there: I need that connection, I need communication, I need a sense of security that people care. Regardless of my self worth, I am only human, and humans are social creatures. I have no idea what to do about this but to continue to reach out, and hope that someone reaches back. ◊

Settled In

It's been a full two weeks into the school year and I already feel comfortably in the swing of things. I just got in to my last waitlisted class, my internship has started, I've finished my shopping, my finances are in order, and I'm ready to try new things. For the first time, I don't feel apprehensive about how things are going to go, and I don't have that lingering feeling of not doing enough or being caught up enough, even though it is true that I'm still behind on my reading. I believe part of this has to do with my experience in DC; I was constantly challenged and pushed beyond what I felt capable of, but now I feel a lot more comfortable with who I am. I am a changed person: I don't take things so personally anymore, I made a whole lot of mistakes, and I did a lot of growing up. These are all new feelings and it's nice to feel so settled in for once. Perhaps it's odd to do a blog post like this, but I don't have much to share except that I'm happy right now and looking forward to things to come. ◊

#obsessed: Good Nights — Whethan & Passenger Seat — Clueless Kit

If my rate of blogging and my general mood are correlated, then evidently I've been in a great mood lately. I suppose this is true: my schedule is settling in with the exception of one last waitlisted class, my room is set up exactly to my expectations, and I'm starting to see my friends again. I feel like I'm already in the swing of things, unlike past semesters or summers where the time is halfway gone before I feel ready to begin.

Good music is also extremely effective at mood boosting. These two are from the Spotify Pop Chillout and Discover Weekly playlists, respectively. I really couldn't choose which one I liked better, so I'm #obsessed with both of them. "Good Nights" has lyrics about a good thing with an old friend ending, but the tune is carefree, evoking a feeling of savoring happier memories of past times. "Passenger Seat" is about reconnecting with an old friend on a drive by the ocean, filled with hopeful and uplifting vibes. I find that both of them are fairly relevant to my life right now, as I try to become comfortable with letting old parts of my life go and welcome new things in at the same time. We'll see where this new year takes me, but I'm excited for good things to happen. ◊

Types of Guys You Date in Your Twenties

I was really obsessed by how alone I was over the summer — in retrospect, pathetically so. This led to a lot of bad decisions in my quest for a fun summer fling. But, as I quickly found out, the vast majority of guys are not worth the time. I'm glad that I at least made all of my mistakes early on and all at once in one summer, so moving forward, I won't be having the same awful experiences over the course of several years. Starting off this semester, I am still single, but happily so. The following caricatures are sadly based on real life experiences.

1) the Liberal
-fights for higher taxes on the wealthy and $15 minimum wage
-only talks about himself
-interrupts you in the middle of a sentence
-doesn't pay for your food in the name of equality
-never asks any questions
-expects you to walk around to meet him
-casually low key racist

2) the Hookup
-decent first date and conversation
-invites himself over without really asking
-thinks he's a really good singer
-doesn't want to use a condom "because it doesn't feel good"
-thinks the best thing a guy can give a girl is sex
-kicks you out at 8am because it's "inconvenient"
-messages you two weeks later about how he's over you

3) the Boring Corporate Guy
-has a great job, his own apartment, and car
-takes you out to brunch without a reservation
-is incredibly stingy with money
-can't hold a conversation
-not as tall as you think he is
-doesn't take a hint
-a dead fish has more personality

4) the Philosophical One
-first question he asks is, "what is your definition of happiness?"
-shows you cool libraries
-can't be bothered to comb his hair
-is happy to just cuddle
-a Buddhist, even though he is white
-always saying how beautiful you look
-really chill, like maybe too chill

5) the Techie
-slightly awkward and nerdy, but cute
-lives for his work
-is really smart, going places
-not aggressively sexual
-takes you out for lots of food!
-actually fairly interesting in terms of life experiences
-doesn't text you back
-lasts six seconds

6) the Fuckboi
-seems perfect, almost too perfect, at first
-most likely a gym rat trying to get swole
-room is messy af, almost a biohazard zone
-says he likes you but doesn't make an effort
-having a conversation is too much of an emotional commitment
-ghosts you for three months two weeks after you start talking
-messages you to hook up at 1pm on a Wednesday
-is emotionally unavailable, probably because he misses his ex

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