entry 001
03.22.26
i just deleted my substack, and it felt amazing. don't get me wrong, i thought substack was a fine place. it serves great purpose. for someone with adhd, i found it taxing- there's too much customization, and every time i thought about writing, i felt overwhelmed.
i've decided to integrate my blogs into my own websites. it seems like the smartest way to go about it, and the best part is that i can prioritize simplicity. i'm hoping that i'll write more this way. no stats, no visuals, no promotion, no social feed, just words.
there's nothing to get distracted by here, no orchestration really. i'm writing in a .ts document straight into the sitexml. i don't feel like i have to write a particular amount here, or say anything extraordinary. i'll have to see if it stays that way.
substack wasn't the problem. i am well aware that i am the problem. it is my own self-defeating expectations in writing that have caused me to fail time and time again. so, cheers to the endless loop in time.
there's something about destruction that i've always been attracted to. when i was a kid, i would spend all day drawing something and then when i was finished, i would rip it up into pieces. i always got in trouble for this, so eventually i just stopped doing it, but there's actually something liberating about it. it makes me think of the tibetan monks who spend weeks building sand mandalas, these impossibly intricate, beautiful things- only to sweep them away the moment they're finished. it's sisyphus and kate bush running up the hill, you know? there's something freeing and reassuring in it. it feels powerful. it's like, who cares. i'm still here. this frivolous thing i created doesn't hold a candle. it is evergreen. and what the hell else do we all have to do anyway.
entry 002
03.24.26
over the last few years, it's been impossible to make plans. i've been so deep in the unknown that it has fundamentally changed how i operate in the world.
it's hard to communicate when you don't actually know what's going on or what's next. it's like, how do i tell a story that i'm still so deeply interwoven? how can i tell a story when even retroactively, i can't tell you what has happened and is happening? i don't know the narrative. i am off-script.
i have left everything that i've known about operating in this world successfully and have traded it in for.. something else. in this space, all that exists is possibility, and i'm still waiting to see what that means. i think back often to this moment in 2022, when i was walking by myself on a trail through a remote area of barcelona. i was listening to one of my playlists, and 'you can have it all' started playing by yo la tengo.
there was something about the song, the surroundings, the emotion that felt like a turning point. it felt like a calling. it occurred to me that maybe i could have the life that i wanted, exactly- fully on my own terms. i think that moment has cascaded into some new version of me that is still unfolding- a version who has full authority and isn't intimidated by it.
entry 003
03.26.26
last night i made a bunch of blueberry pies. i've unlocked a new feature of myself. i've always been much more interested in making savory food, but it's been fun to make these little miniature pies and give them to family and friends. it's also incredibly easy. there's no reason not to make small pies. so, i've decided to keep making them. i started with strawberry, but the blueberry was far better. although, i am deeply biased toward blueberry.
next, i'd like to experiment with matcha. then, maybe i'll try my hand at earl grey. cornstarch is a game changer; now, i feel like i could make a pie out of damn near anything. pies and gravy, babe. if you can dream it- you can make a pie or a gravy out of it, and don't let anyone ever tell you differently.
i'm about ready to check out of the mountains here, so i've been busy trying to get all my affairs in order. i was supposed to head west a long time ago, but circumstances put my plans on the back burner for a long time. it's still not perfect. i have some things in storage in saint pete. and sometimes i think about going to get them so i no longer have to pay that bill because it's tedious and unnecessary. but part of me doesn't want to let go of that because it's my last remaining tie. of course i still have friends there, but what does it mean for me to have no other identity there?
i have never felt so connected to a place, unable to let it go. too much happened there, and i'm still in love with it. it still feels like home to me. i know it so intimately, with countless memories and stories, and that's hard to let go. but also, maybe that's the best time to let it go- when it's still this perfect oasis that lives in the center of my heart, that i can always retreat back to.
entry 004
03.27.26
i've been having such wildly specific memories surfacing lately. i got pulled back into this random moment when i was first learning to write, and my mom had gotten me a little black book to practice writing in. i remember digging so deep trying to spell 'couch,' and i still ended up spelling it cooch.
i guess i didn't have access to 'u' yet.
otherwise, i've been having these moments of me saying something batshit from a movie- like 'house of a thousand corpses,' but never telling anyone i was quoting a movie. and 1. assuming people know i'm quoting some obscure film 2. that they've actually seen.. is a creative risk that has never once paid off for me.
so, i recently found a word that describes my experience well. hyperphantasia. there's also another word that i feel is really similar and connects to the experience- hyperthymesia. hyperthymesia is the ability to remember vast amounts of personal life experiences in vivid detail. hyperphantasia aligns with my experience a bit more closely, and it's characterized by exceptionally vivid mental imagery that can rival real-life perception. it's often described as a 'cinematic' or 'high-definition' inner world. i think that they must go hand-in-hand to some extent or at least work in similar areas of the brain because the hyperphantasia i experience is the doorway to the hyperthymesia. i mean, i believe that's why i can access so many rich details of memories- because they were just encoded that way.
when i stumbled upon this, it floored me- mostly because i had no idea others were not having this experience. it supposedly only affects approximately 3% to 10% of the population. i've been talking about the way that i've been doing inner child work by going back into memories for a long time, and it probably sounds a bit unhinged. i just.. assumed that people understood.
for me, if i have full access to a memory, i'm able to walk back into it like it's a movie scene. it's like my current self can walk back onto the set and look around, and most importantly, explain things to a former version of me. it's been profoundly healing. it's been a long process of reparenting myself and attending to the specific needs i had at the time. a wiser version of me gets to intervene in some of the most intense experiences of my life, with a far more nuanced understanding. it has been one of the most healing tools i've had over the last decade. it's like low-dose time travel for wholeness.
anyway, i don't know how common this is, but i'm certain it isn't so black and white. while there are some people who genuinely can't access this ability (aphantasic), i would say most people are on a spectrum. it's most likely a skill that can be exercised just like active imagination, and that's what the neuroscience supports.
entry 005
04.16.26
56000 photos & videos. it's taken me the last couple of weeks to work through these in my spare time, systematically saving them to an ssd and deleting. i can't describe how good it feels to get them off my phone and computer and out of my icloud drive. don't get me wrong, i love all these photos. there's so much i never even posted. i think that's the hard part. they distract me every day, and i get annoyed at the space they've been taking up. every time i've tried sorting through them, i got crushed by the overwhelm. and i didn't want to get rid of any of them. so, i've found a middle ground. as long as i know they're somewhere, that's enough.
i've been helping my aunt take care of my uncle for a while, and my sleep schedule is fubar. my uncle is in his 80s, recently became totally paralyzed from the chest down, and he has worsening dementia on top of many pre-existing mental health conditions, such as ptsd. i haven't talked about this, but it's been a challenging experience. first, the situation itself, and second, the decision to leave- knowing how difficult it is. my aunt is almost 80 herself, and she can't lift him, and that's something we have to do numerous times a day. she's living two lives now, mostly at the expense of her own. i wonder what will happen after i leave, whether i should just stay a bit longer. it's brutal. for her, this isn't temporary. it can only end one way. she's one of the strongest people i know. if the roles were reversed, i don't think he would've done half as much for her. and now he just calls her names and belittles her 90% of the time. he says the most terrible things to her. he's cruel unless he's heavily medicated, and it's hard to ignore. i never thought i could or would do something like this, but i imagine neither did she.