getting told to "DO BETTER"

reasons for staying #2: melting cheese, cooking a lot, getting reported for suspicious behaviour

hi <3 this is the second installment in my series, reasons for staying, where i write a list of reasons that feel significant to me abt being alive . more or less. hope u like it

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• the joy in getting any haircut, even a shitty one, even one you give yourself, because you have reinvented yourself mostly under your own terms, is how I get over that brief post-haircut regret, if it happens. I look in the mirror thinking it was a mistake, but then I like it because I was decisive about something for myself.

• being talked to gently by anyone. a bus driver. your neighbour. a sweet friend.

• I went with my friend A to see the griffin poetry prize finalists read from their collections. don mckay received the lifetime award and he was delightfully funny and quick, and read this beautiful address about the whole point of poetry, and said a funny joke about porn that everyone liked, and then went back to poetry, how it manages to capture the magic in seeing someone handle a bird for the first time, how a can of orange juice was suddenly replaced by a kestrel, how poetry knows its own inadequacy of language to represent these things but still tries anyway

• sometimes I think of the puzzle of ongoing self care in adulthood by imagining myself as an animal and a zookeeper at the same time where I try to keep myself enriched in my own enclosure. like. am I meeting all of my personal health bar requirements. what are those requirements even.

  

  

  

  from left to right: cake i thrashed around on a hot day for s' bday / MY NEIGHBOUR GIVING ME HOMEGROWN PRODUCE / apples from my other coworker b / i made lunch with my friend JT who lives a few floors down / i made dinner with j for his friend a / i grew a little bell pepper / poor bastards / nice day for giving away free shit / tomato salad i only met you this year but i love you

• a friend who works at another consulting firm just showed me a slide that says (completely unironically) HOLISTIC ARSENAL OF INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL ASSETS, which should be your new dating profile bio because it telegraphs INTELLIGENCE, INTRIGUE, AND AMBIGUITY . thank you to corporate business development materials, where you can find sentences that don't say anything, say it in a way that sucks, and still manage a military reference <3

• I went to boston for a poetry retreat and I went to open a book that had the word butt on its cover and there was a live spider inside it and I screamed and closed it but gently so as to not crush it. the next time we opened it it was gone.

• I find the word immaculate, when used to describe something cool, annoying. Originally I was going to write a list of words I find annoying but mostly I just wanted to write a hate post about the casual use of the word immaculate. I actually think this comes from this guy who slid into my facebook dms when I was in college to tell me he thought I was cute, and I was like, that's nice, and then when I sent him a picture of my Kpop fan art he said, damn, that’s immaculate, and I was like, why did I send you my Kpop fan art?

• my old roommate C, upon seeing the irrigation syringe I have been using to irrigate my wisdom teeth extraction sockets, said, I’m not getting my wisdom teeth out. they can stay there.

• I read poems at an open mic hosted by my friend B and it was a great experience. I was so nervous I blacked out everyone who went before me and then when it was my turn walked up and immediately started talking about how my strava name is 'fart bucket' and how people I knew on the platform were threatening to report me for suspicious behaviour. J did an improv exercise on stage with an old man in a big white robe and 10+ necklaces and everyone laughed. I saw that old man in the subway months later and the back of his robes said "MI CASA SU CASA". anyway apparently everyone at the function HATED this old man but I thought he was hilarious.

• at another poetry reading I read at, hosted by my friend E, one of the introduction prompts was to write down and share your flaws. I am chronically late and shared that in the chat, but right after also shared that I can't help but put cheese on everything and everyone only saw THAT one, and multiple people told me to "do better"

• my friends and I did some painting outside on tiny canvases and it was a really beautiful and colourful day

  

• my neighbours sent me home with a ton of veggies their friends grew on their balconies and they were really fresh and delicious and I blanched them with ramen for my friends. gramps next door reminded me multiple times to eat beef liver (they found out I am iron deficient).

• I got two different timers (one you rotate on its sides to start a timer, one with a dial) that I adore and I love using. the thing about devices with a specific purpose instead of multiple is that their purposes are clear and undistracting, which allows you to focus. like an e-reader!

• I was on the street waiting for someone to buy my desk chair from me (I sold it at a $10 profit which really helped my self esteem) and a chinese granny asked me for help locating a grocery store, and when I didn’t know what store she was talking about she started calling her friend on speaker — whose phone number brought her to an automated chinese voicemail message about bananas with music playing in the background. HELLO the granny said to the automated voice and music. IS ANYONE THERE. WHY WONT YOU PICK UP. this was freaking me out because she was clearly talking to an automated message and made me think that we really need to help people with technology.

• a few hours later I went to my neighbours to help them reset their tv connection and they sent me home with apples. half the produce in my fridge is from their friends. it has been a great relief.

• speaking of technology my password at work was a numerical variation of 'fartbucket' for a while and I accidentally typed that into a group chat with my coworkers, who said, is that seriously your password.

• apparently one of my top expenses this month is therapy so that's great.

• my therapist responds to my emails with this emoji 🧚‍♀️

• there are too many consultants whose hobbies are travelling eating at restaurants and tennis. STOP GOING TO BUSINESS SCHOOL AND SPENDING ALL YOUR TIME WITH OTHER CONSULTANTS!!!!!!!!

• i think like 4-5 of my coworkers have gone on mental health leave in like the last 3 weeks. lots of them are joking about quitting but I think it would probably really improve their life if they quit.

• I saw an improv / skit show with some improv students with my friend D, who is taking improv classes, and at first I was like oh god I don't think i can sit through this. but then I started to really enjoy myself. in my experience it's worth giving most things a try even beyond the point of initial cringe because you really may come around to it eventually. and what is cringe other than being vulnerable and unpolished…¹

• this song that J showed me:

• I made pumpkin cakes from glutinous rice flour and red bean paste from a pumpkin my neighbour gave me. folks at the client office loved it. our quality assurance analyst said while leaning over my cubicle (in endearing ukranian accent) OH JESSICA THANK YOU SO MUCH. IT WAS DELICIOUS. we went bowling and he did this amazing run and jump every time and every time it went into the gutter.

• another conversation with this coworker —
  coworker: (looking at my desktop wallpaper of lisa and gaspard) i like that picture. is that yours?
  me: no, i wish it was!
  coworker: (smiling) you can do it. anyone can do it. if you want to paint then you should.

  

  my work pc desktop wallpaper — lisa and gaspard created by wife and husband Anne Gutman and Georg Hallensleben

• national boyfriend day happened so I sent lunch to J’s house, which he told me was delicious and extremely helpful because it gave him one less thing to worry about. somewhat serendipitously I had spent the day thinking about how I should start planning out what I'm going to cook during the week so that I can prep things in advance, use my produce more efficiently, and make life easier and more delicious for myself. I felt so excited about it I bought trout from the market after work and prepped it 3 different ways — ginger and scallion, sweet miso, and soy sauce with honey.

  

  how i’m currently planning my meals out … wip

• I was thinking about writing a pithy review for the original beetlejuice on letterboxd and while doing this I was pressing my body to the cool glass of my closet door. I had some leftover cheese and spicy rice cakes that I made the other day with J. I ate a little bit of cheese and suddenly I felt like I had energy to do chores even while sick. I feel like energy management = emotional management sometimes. and emotional management = eating cheese

  

• I don't really get the intuitive eating thing when it comes to eating ENOUGH, like, yeah it makes sense to listen to ur body when u are full but if you don't eat for a while or you are distracted then you will just not feel hungry. and u will continue to not feel hungry. not eating will make u feel WORSE. sorry .. am I making up someone to get mad at..?

• I made a lot more comics in the last few months than I ever have before. sometimes the difference between 2 minutes of effort and 10 minutes of effort is VERY great! my other learning about a consistent small practice for drawing — I find it so much easier to make things for one specific person instead of an ambiguous “audience”. it’s much more concrete to think about how to make a loved one laugh instead of trying to be funny online.

  

  

  I REALLY LOVE MY FOUNTAIN PEN BTW.

• had a discussion with my friend D and the definition of compassion came up — the working definition is the ability to sit with suffering without being able to fix it. which is a very insightful definition because I feel like my tendency is to try and provide solutions for people when it's not my thing to fix

• I go through cheap grocery store blocks of mozzarella so quickly. maybe 1 block in about 4 days is my speed. I melt it on everything. I can't help it.

• this poem by ellen bass

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1. someone said this somewhere but i forget where.