I’ve been sitting with time recently. Watching her slowness to start much of anything, the languidness she chooses. The way the future arrives after years of adding one piece at a time, because that is the fastest pace time will allow. Being on the edge of my mid-twenties, it’s the first time I can see how time moves very clearly. I think about aging and technology, generational rifts, investing. I consider all the projects I want to do, how I’d like them to be done, and how quickly. I am humbled into accepting that my wishes are too ambitious for the timeline I’m allowing.

It’s easier to observe time’s fickleness as an outsider. I have now loved certain things and people for a full decade of my life, been able to feel the real-time acceleration, and look back at it. I listened to Halsey’s Zane Lowe interview in awe, remembering what it felt like to see them release Badlands and then rise in popularity, become a star in every sense of the word, and struggle with the height of it. I sat with the version of them that was so knowledgeable and mature in my high school brain — and much younger than me now. I consider how it all shifts, how you think you know the world when you’re 18. How one day you feel you can never know enough.

I’m at that age where many of the artists I admire emerged with something they had built for almost a decade. It’s an existential disaster. I keep looking at my hands and everything I’ve ever made feels translucent, not good enough, not quite what I want or need right now. Just a series of tweaking, pivoting, and perfecting. The Artist’s Way, if you will.

When I told my friend how I felt, how I hadn’t done much of anything, she laughed before telling me off. I know I do many different things, but I do them haphazardly. I’ve been writing and posting online for ten years, with varying levels of interlude, sharing my thoughts. The album I released last month took me three years to do and five years to gain the skills I needed. Things take time to become. I hate it.

I’ve been trying to prepare for “the next thing”, whatever that means. In my head, the rest of this decade should be used to build something for myself. Something I can be proud of pouring time into, but I can’t sense what it is. I’ve never been a person who heavily commits to any particular thing, preferring the swirl of creative pursuits, round robin style. What does that build other than a cyclone of chaotic attempts toward no particular goal?

It is useless for me to hold onto the idea that growth is linear. To me, time is a mass, a solid we move through that slows things down, makes them feel sequential. It’s the only way the spiral makes sense to me, the repetition of before with different variants. What my life is forming into is unclear. Maybe it’s clarifying to me what it would like to become. I’m trying to sense where to shake for gold. The sludge of time is sticky and stubborn.

This Aries full moon has been the first lunar cycle in a while that I lost grasp of. It felt more like remembering I’m 24 not 22. Remembering I live in Los Angeles and not some generic metropolitan city where young people congregate for a TV drama. It feels like a Monday but fresher, maybe a bit bloody, a proper hunter’s moon. Aries in all her fiery ram glory, ready to lunge with little persuasion needed.

I spent the weekend buzzing around, tentative of my quickness given the previous week’s lethargy. We went out dancing like the young folks we are, let our Sunday be slow and sleepy. It was the perfect weekend, rung in by the dawn of an idea.

I am a honeytrap for ideas. It’s probably the cardinal energy in my Cancer sun and moon, always burgeoning but not always closing. My loophole has become attrition, each idea feeding its predecessor. This one gained my trust because of how it attached to me. I entered two states of meditation — initially lying on my back to rest when it first arose, then opening my laptop to put on an incidentally meditative listening session. I entered a flow state I hadn’t visited since the beginning of the year.

Through this state emerged the bones for a workshop, an idea I had been wanting to execute all year but never had an answer for. This workshop would be a meditation on archetypes through the lens of the tarot, using a single card reading to assign each participant their “character” that embodies the current season of their life. Through a series of prompts, participants would confront their feelings around being this character and later create a story for this character’s journey based on their current experiences.

I’ve spent most of this year obsessed with symbols, how we choose them, and how the stories we give a symbol guide us through different phases. I’ve been embracing the way these archetypes return and evolve in meaning, constantly changing just like we do.

I wanted to turn this medition into an easy to follow workshop that could provide both a chance for self-reflection and a space for community. Talking to my friends about these archetypes we’ve identified in our own lives and how they appear to us has been grounding as the world grows more turbulent. It feels like connecting to a universal language that has been here for as long as humans have felt deeply about the world around them.

Combining my love for tarot, the tarot centered gatherings I’ve been conducting this year (one for every season if you’ve been keeping track), and my love for storytelling felt natural. Tarot is storytelling as much as it is a mirror. Why not practice creating our own stories for our lives? We see how powerful of a practice it is with things like personal myths.

If you would like to participate in this workshop, it will be on October 18th at 10 AM PST. We’ll be meeting virtually so more people who resonate with it can participate in this space. That being said, space will be limited to ten participants due to the nature of the workshop.

Registration is on a $25-$35 sliding scale, but if price is the only thing keeping you from it, email [email protected]. I’m willing to discount a few spots to get the right people into this space.

I hope to see you there in about two weeks. I sense it will be very fun and extremely special. Until next time.

I’ve been crying at work nearly every day for the last month. It’s been an inconsequential moment of my life, mirroring the depression switch that went off in my brain when I was thirteen.

It was the last month or so of eighth grade. I remember sitting in the audience of our empty middle school theater on the opening day of our “senior” show. I cried like someone I loved had been shot in front of my eyes, all silent and shell-shocked. I carefully swiped away tears while an air of melancholy I couldn’t describe loomed over me.

In retrospect, I was probably grieving. It would be the last time I ever did any form of theater, the last time I would spend time with many kids I had become well acquainted with. I found myself in similar situations the rest of the school year, escaping my orchestra class to sob alone in the theater and eventually in the company of my best friend, who would turn soft nemesis. Orchestra was my favorite class in middle school; our class section became a funky friend group. I never quite enjoyed playing again after that year.

The cloud, understood to be depression and mild suicidal ideation, followed me around Paris the summer after that semester, where I would stay with my aunt for a little over a month. It didn’t taint my memories of my time in the city, thankfully, but I remember spending days alone in the house, letting what was likely grief swallow me whole. I’d find comfort in collecting lyrics to Paramore and eventually Twenty One Pilots songs, further codifying my grief as a mental malady.

Eventually, when it became so overwhelming that not even a church camp trip to the Swiss Alps could save me, I confided in an adult, as the internet outside of Tumblr suggested. It was convenient that said adult looked so much like Brendan Urie, which I of course let him know. Never let depression hold back a fandom-obsessed brain.

I went home and told my mother, who had known real depression, and she dismissed my experience. The melancholy would follow me for the next two years of high school, manifesting in angsty friend groups and creative projects. The most quietly successful of these ventures was my poetry collection, which garnered a humble 1800 reads on Wattpad of all places. For those familiar with Wattpad’s game, you can understand why I’m still proud of that accomplishment. It’s probably why I bothered to keep writing poems at all.

I don’t remember what made the worst of it stop. It wasn’t my existential philosophizing turned blog or my angsty teen friends’ trauma bonding until it all combusted. It may have simply been time. Enough time passing for the change train to slow to a stop of stasis for just a second. I would still get sad and emo, but it was a normal teen amount rather than the concerning life-threatening variety.

I’ve been examining that summer often the last month, holding the crystal ball to my eyes and swirling it around to reveal some hidden key to getting out of this mess of emotional landsliding I’ve been experiencing. As my therapist (and anyone with eyes can probably) identify, I struggle with change. Most people do. For me, change has usually been a case of all or nothing, a tug-of-war between wisdom and guilelessness. When I left Kansas for Los Angeles, it was a change I embraced by sheer will. I knew I would hide in my cocoon if I gave myself the chance, so I forced my wings open and embraced an array of experiences for better or worse. Many of my closest friends come from that period of time. Some of the worst events of my life can also be traced back to that choice. C’est vie.

My final year of college and first year of post-grad were a split version of this pattern. I kept my feet on the pavement at full speed in my final year, attending every gathering under the sun to “make the most” out of it. At the same time, I would retreat to my room between every class and outing in an attempt to soothe the stress-induced body aches.

This battle of valiance relented until I came back to Los Angeles from my final class trip and settled into my first real apartment. It felt nice for almost a week. Inevitably, I was hit by a wave of depression that was disturbing even by my mother’s standards. I would cry at least once a day, sometimes for no reason in particular, the gaping void of unknown soul-crushing.

I don’t remember this period of depression very well, only the recovery period. I flew home upon my parents’ suggestion for a month, settling into my renovated childhood room. I spent time with a home friend, interviewed for a job I would later turn down, and watched Interview With The Vampire for the first time. When I returned feeling a bit better, I moved toward any creative venture that helped propel me forward. I took up watercolor, made a mini poetry collection from my much larger draft, and did the Artist Way from fall to winter. I tried dating, got my heart broken, and sat with it. I found two jobs in the span of a week and accepted them both, feeling ready to take the big swing.

Life felt like it was flourishing into something I hadn’t been able to imagine was possible the last two years. I was able to accomplish things a younger version of myself would have squealed at. Naturally, the cracks began to show.

Around eclipse season last September, I decided to take on the most monstrous editing gig I could’ve signed up for. About four hours of video, split into two separate installations, completed within two months back-to-back. I would have a forced break of two weeks, thanks to my semi-convenient trip to Paris (mirror, mirror, if I’ve ever seen one), where I would have to jump back into the cutting room as soon as I returned to Los Angeles.

If I could go back in time and turn down the money, it would be pointless. That project is why I didn’t have to stress during winter last year with my forced time off. Still, it was difficult working every possible hour of my waking life, only stopping to eat, sleep, occasionally socialize, and work my other job.

The burnout was inevitable, the final blow being in November 2024. If you’re a subscriber, you may be familiar with this spiral already as I chronicled it in my Welcome Back post and subsequent Grief Studies series. Not long after, I gently quit the editing gig and pivoted into more balanced means of living. The calibration still feels like a work in progress.

Outside of work, my life did improve significantly. I managed to alchemize the breakdown into a deep healing opportunity. I reflected and worked through a lot of subconscious programming that had been holding me back. It allowed me to tune into a version of myself I hadn’t been in easy contact with. It anchored me during other turbulent periods of emotional upheaval.

But the storming is relentless. I know it doesn’t make sense to be upset about the slow, stuck feeling that’s been weighing me down for months this year. I have run tests on navigating my life in a way I approve of. I have yet to crack the code.

In my notes app the other day, I penciled this:

I’ve been in this void state recently where I am alone in the world and no one else gets it. I talk to others and they reflect my thoughts and feelings back to me like a cassette tape of your own voice speaking affirmations. I look into a mirror or people watch or scroll on my phone while my laptop pretends to be TV and it is one resounding voice of lostness. I don’t know what I’m doing, where I want to go in this life, how to get there.

I’ve been on a self help kick all year from varying angles, trying to fix up my brain from cracking as bad as it did the year before. No luck. No clue as to where the dam has broken from this time. Only triggers that create more triggers and leave less answers and more questions. I don’t know how to “move forward”. I don’t think any of us do. I feel we’ve all been stumbling along. Sometimes you get to land on your feet and more often than not you trip and fall around for awhile.

I’ve been so exhausted by my efforts. The cocooning effect was truth this summer. My fight to hammer open my shell always came with blow back. Push too hard and I’d be shown exactly why my desire to hide was right. I hate it with a passion, the need to bundle myself up so tightly.

I can’t explain what this lost feeling is, other than that it’s hard for me to know exactly who my friends are these days besides the ones I’m really sure about. I don’t know what I should be investing all my energy into other than the stuff that drives me to fall headfirst into the process. I’m not sure what I need home to be, only where I’d like it be one day and what I’d like it not to solidify into.

I haven’t decided the life I’d like to live right now. I feel it’s time to pack up for the next thing but it’s not the time to move forward unflinching. It’s a stumbling through the hell of trial by fire. I wish the fire would swallow me whole so I’d never have to think again.

I am in the painful struggle of recalibration. The I-Ching would call this void energy k’un, hexagram number two. Here’s the Wen Yen Commentary in the version translated by John Blofeld:

“The Passive Principle thanks to its exceeding softness, can act with tremendous power. Silent, tranquil, its virtue is amorphous until, receiving into itself the subjective force, it becomes clearly defined. Embracing all that exists, it becomes bright and shines forth. Its essential characteristic is glad acceptance.”

The gentleness of this void, of this receptiveness over action, has been a recurring theme in the last year. Toward the beginning of the year, I had written about the void in an attempt to piece together my own understanding of it.

The void says, “Helloooooo,” with zipped lips, eyes shut. To stare into the void is a mirror. The whispering you hear is yourself — offerings from the beyond of your own understanding.

The void isn’t here to deliver anything. It is a blank canvas, a tunnel, a bag for shuffling. The void is the hand holding the swirling dice before they emerge, totaling up to seven, nine, twenty-five. Every number is lucky to somebody.

The void in all her absent glory is you and me. Not deep inside, just is. You stare at me, I stare at you, and we are a black hole of being: siblings, parents, jobs, grievances. The stuff that’s held and stretched across time. This is called a life.

The void is over you. And under. The void sings the song stuck in your head. Write it down or you’ll miss it. The void is tired. The void is so, so tired.

The void is calling. It is time to be nobody again. If you could stop filling it up with objects and the weighted mass of your importance, if you put down your scheming and plotting and take a second to sit there with it, you can sit inside of it again.

I have no grand conclusion for you. There never truly is, only the illusion of one. All I have right now is that an emergence of something is incoming. A butterfly is cracking open its cocoon, struggling to get free.

The following is a transcription of some of my new moon clarity. The song is how it felt to have the fog of my own nonsense finally clear stage to allow something new to take root. God bless the sick day haze.

We're doing Virgo new moon manifestations. But the specific aspect of it, I wanted to record for, put down somewhere, but I'm not— I'm like, “I need to write this down.” I'm someone who gets very in my head about presenting as an authority, and I've always felt very anxious about being an authority figure in any way when it comes to my writing, my work, anything. I really struggle with the idea of being someone with knowledge. And I've been playing this month with the idea in both me and others that we all hold knowledge for each other and that it's not so much about being an expert and it's more about showing up and allowing ourselves to put together the pieces ourselves. And that nobody owes you their expertise.

And there are some people who are experts to a degree or knowledgeable in certain ways because of life experience or study. But for the most part, we all have something to learn from one another. And because we all have something to learn from one another, I feel like we don't really owe anybody the need to show up perfectly a certain way. Like, I'm not here to be your professor on life, and you're not here to be my professor on my life either. You're the only one who holds the answers to your life, really.

And when other people give you advice or we have people… Especially as someone who loves self-help realm, who loves self-help world, like, there are lots of people out there that will share just their life experience, their research, their observations on how to live well, how to be well. And some of it is going to resonate with you and some of it is not going to quite resonate with you. And you have to get good at being able to tell which is which. I feel like that is the big game of life is getting really, really good at listening to your frequency.

Because I deeply, deeply believe that each of us are sent here to live the life we're meant to live. And if we are not careful, it's way too easy to get trapped into someone else's matrix of ideology. And it's really important to be able to discern the difference between someone else's life experience that happens to align with yours and when it stops aligning with yours. And when you need to just allow yourself to be an observer. Maybe pocket what is sitting with you or what is causing friction in you to reflect on later, at whatever point later, maybe. Because some things come back around, will hit a different way back around, and it's beautiful.

But I feel like— It's almost like— I've really just been playing with the idea of seeing the world as, like, a tarot card. Like, seeing the entire world as, like, one big tarot deck and being very, very hyper aware all the time of the fact that we are constantly projecting onto things. And that's not to say that you should never take anything seriously or you should never consider other people's intentions. You should never consider things to be something happening separate from you.

But I think it's perfectly fine to understand the fact that when you're interpreting something or understanding something, observing the world, taking in the world around you, that the information you're taking in is an interpretation always. And the interpretation you're taking in is more reflective of yourself and being very, very aware of why you're interpreting things in the way that you do. And that sometimes you'll take things as truth because they resonate with you and other times you'll take them as truth because you don't want them to resonate with you or you feel insecure about the fact that they don't resonate with you or — There's so many different reasons why we intake things in the way we do. To give this further context, I've been in, like, a tarot video hole recently. And at first, I was really worried about it being, like, this really maladaptive practice of, like, “Oh my goodness I'm in, like, super control freak mode. I'm needing to know everything all the time.” And then I realized the other day that for me, when I watch tarot videos, I'm not reading it as tarot. I'm not reading in the same way I would read a tarot reading I'm physically doing myself or a friend is doing for me. Like, I'm not reading it the same way as in-person tarot at all because that's not subconsciously how I'm interfacing with it.

For me, it's like a weird form of manifestation. It's like a weird roundabout way of playing with dreams and possibility. I get to step into this little world where I pick a card or a section. I hear a little story, and then I imagine myself in that little story. And then I get to see what parts of the story I really connect with and attach to.

And I see the parts that I don't. And the parts that I do, I take home with me and I sit with and I integrate them in whatever way is most useful to me. And understanding that that is what it is and that that's very different than the tarot reading, at least in the way that I do it, that will allow you to look at these cards, gain a message from them very intuitively that reveals your inner world to yourself. It's a very different way of going about reading compared to how you read tarot for yourself. And I feel like that approach and perspective has really shifted my world in such a beautiful, illuminating, powerful way, and I would highly encourage you to get in the habit of doing the same thing.

It's basic stuff that you've been doing since you were a kid. When you watch, like, a show and certain characters really resonate with you and really considering what that means for how you see yourself or how you experience or wanna experience the world. You're reading a book and a certain quote really resonates with you. What— I'm now looking at that and being like, “Okay. What message am I telling myself subconsciously?”

I've been in my little romantic movie phase, and I'm really hyper aware right now. The fact that, like, a lot of these movies are showing very similar themes around dreams, very similar themes around following signs of the universe. That's something that's really resonating with me right now. It reveals something to me about myself and what I care about and what I want deep down and what I'm secretly deep down subconsciously wishing for. So that's really what I'm… I think I'm getting at here.

Maybe I'm still a little woozy out of it, but I'm like, I feel like I might have just actually legitimately channeled some sort of message here. Because I was like, “What? Where did I get to this point from?”

But I remember because I was talking about messages. So I was thinking about my voice and defining that in terms of the new moon, being very clear on what I mean by that. I'm being very clear on the fact that, again, you don't need to be showing up as an expert to be useful to someone. You don't need to be showing up as an expert to be someone's teacher. Anyone can be a teacher. You don't owe anybody expertise. To be an expert or perform the role of expert for anybody. It's a privilege. It's a privilege. It's part of a larger journey.

It's a very different interaction, I think from what I'm really talking about right now. Yeah. I feel like the learning process for that is just very different when we're working with experts as learners. When it comes to life stuff is really what I'm talking about here. I suppose for general research and facts, like that's gonna be a completely different thing.

But when it comes to like life s**t, like introspective philosophy-based life stuff, like that should not be approached in the same way as, like, research and expertise. And I need to hear this as someone who can be very type A and black-and-white thinking about this kind of stuff. And I also need to tell myself this because I need to be writing and sharing my writing and recording stuff like this and sharing what I learn and see even when it's not a complete thought yet or maybe when it's not perfectly perfected as an idea. Because someone will hear something in this, and it's gonna hit for them, and they're going to add that to their puzzle piece or their larger puzzle of their life. You know?

And I feel like for me, what I've been realizing is that it's less about finding the perfect guide and more about allowing the same messages to hit over and over and over again from many, many, many, many different sources and synthesizing that information. That's how I used to do research. That's literally like, that's also a research basic. Like, you're not ever supposed to go and look at one source for your information. You're supposed to be going and looking at many, many, many, many different sources for your information and synthesizing it and seeing what the consistent thing is so you can clarify to yourself. So getting picky about only searching for experts is silly. You're depriving yourself of so much valuable research and information that you can have. And you holding yourself back from sharing the info you hold within yourself, from others, is also doing a disservice to the world around you. You need to share your thoughts. You need to share your thoughts.

You'll know which thoughts you're meant to share and which ones are inside thoughts. You'll know which ones you're meant to share and which ones are inside thoughts. Let's put our thinking caps on. Let's put our, let's put our thinking caps on. Let's put our little third eyes on.

Turn them on. You know what they are. Yeah. I feel like that's all I have to say regarding that. Yeah.

We have… I'm gonna stop recording because the rest is for me.

Sometimes I sense how trapped my bones feel inside my body — pressed against muscle and veins, organs thumping, squeezing against the edge. Sometimes I have the urge to cough up bits of myself to give them a little room. Living fossils lodged inside of me, giving me form.

I’m not comfortable these days. I didn’t realize it was getting to me until an enlightening therapy session. I sensed the rods inside of me hiding — they burn fearfully now at my mentioning. They come up for air when it’s safe to, otherwise enjoying their time inside the dark warmth holding them in place. My little fossil.

What does it mean to be yourself? I don’t know yet, but I’ve come up with a series of ideas.

* Not overthinking. Blank brain, full Id, do do do.

* Overthinking. Enjoying the drum of piecing it together, rapid from one idea to the next, returning, rehashing, restitching over stitches to nail down the sticky stuff.

* Melting into the background. Letting the dark blanket you in the unknown. Feeling the soft rocking of the boat beneath you, eyes shut, the whir of wind and water your guide.

* Dialing in. Taking in every detail of the world in 4K technicolor. Feeling the texture of the sidewalk in your teeth, smelling the glittering rays of light hitting every surface —full sensory overload to never miss a beat of life.

* Playing the game of conversation. Tossing the tongue back and forth. Building on the bit until it flops over like Babylon’s tower, leaving us in giggling disarray.

* Holding another’s hand and heart. Taking a deep breath without saying a word. Being on your way.

* Putting on the costume, dancing around the living room, imagining yourself as the star, the villain, the lover. Putting on a new face when you’re done.

* Stripping off the costume. Then your underwear. Then your skin. Unwinding the muscly bits, the string of vessels and nerves. Putting your bones under hot water, soaking them in a bath. Letting them grow elastic. Lying out to dry into the shape you fall into.

* Being all of these things at once. Then none of them. Second by second, minute by minute, because you are alive and fragile and mosaic.

I’m over being uncomfortable in my skin and done with soothing myself into the calmest, coziest state. I am both/and/either/or depending on what the day suits. I am sitting with the anxiety to listen to it and then act. We are co-creators of my experience, all aiming to curate the perfect ambience. Both of us failing to do so.

If my body was a party hall, my soul would be the music, and the fractures of myself would be my party guests shifting in and out of playing host. ‘Where’s the silverware again?’‘Let me grab the chips. ’‘Can we listen to Club Classics?’‘Oh, how about When I’m In Your Arms?’ We sit up, lie down, roll in the grass, run around the deck. We bustle and bustle, arguing over whether this is a kickback or a rager. Either way, we are dancing and greening out on the balcony.

In an effort to grow, I strained my back taking on too much (I mean this literally and metaphorically), so I’m pivoting into becoming softer, recovering from the overload by underloading, presumably. It always feels like you’re taking on significantly less than you should once you unburden yourself. You get so used to struggling with the weight, how it feels to constantly hold tension, that you forget there’s a better way. Always a better way.

In my dream last night, I was someone else. A Sotce looking white woman traveling through Eastern Europe using trains and violating the rules of a region that required women to shave their heads. Some people hid their hair in hoods, but it didn’t work. She arrived at the border with burns on her face despite her silky brunette hair intact. The border patrol was a panel of similar-looking white women, all four intelligent and biting as they assessed the main character's actions in the country she was leaving. They deemed her unworthy of escape, dooming her to gendered persecution. She turned back, accepting her fate as she rode in an elevator with an older disabled man and a young girl. As she talked to the young girl, essentially telling her to stand her ground, she realized she had let those women demean her without a fight. She returned, and the panel laughed, assuming she wanted another round of lashings. Instead, they engaged in a discussion of ideas, sharing their backgrounds, dreams, and ideals. She became one of their own and escaped.

If we consider what my subconscious may have been trying to say, there’s a big theme around how we handle judgment. When we are deemed unworthy, pushed to the side, or away from where we’d like to be, we can either see that as truth, or show up with our full selves. You cannot arrive meekly to cross to the other side and free yourself, especially when you’ve put so much effort into maintaining who you are (& especially when you’ve been persecuted for it). To show up at the edge of freedom with the expectation that staying small will keep you safe will trick the doorway into assuming you can’t handle the other side. The world will treat you how you show you should be treated.

I sense it is time to stop hiding to get through enemy territory and to be proud of who I’ve managed to continue being despite it all. Yes, I feel weaker and more gentle than I'd like to admit, but I've also stayed surprisingly soft and deeply loving. It is time to show up and ask those who are ready to do the same. The very people you fear judgment from may be looking for a person just like you if you’d only show them who that was.

Has that ever happened to you? You try to befriend someone who’s projecting a persona, and you only get along once the facade comes down. Time and time again, I’ve found that to be what keeps me from bonding with people in both directions. I will integrate this and forget it, and reintegrate it all my life, I suppose.

I’m not saying that this alone liberates you from judgment and persecution. Time, place, nuance. All I know is what I know must happen for me right now. Here’s to trying.

In the last two months, I have been swept off my feet in the worst ways imaginable. Random losses, crises out of my control, stressful family dynamics, all with work’s daily grind in the background. I have been writing, thankfully, just nothing notable enough to share at the moment — a partial lie. I’ve written a few pieces I’m giddy to share in due time once I’ve given them due diligence.

Despite life life-ing, I’ve found myself thinking about love again. If you’ve been a long-time subscriber or you enjoy archive digging like me, then you know I had an era on here where I wrote almost exclusively about love and connection. It hasn’t been as much of a focus this year since it hadn’t been as heavy a presence until recently. Naturally, I gravitated toward romance movies.

I feel it’s a very cliché period to be going through as a young woman in my 20s. I spent last week watching movie after movie centered around love in some capacity, which has been clarifying for me in a way other media hasn’t been recently. I’ve always preferred television with its slow character development and rhythmic arcs. However, I needed the ebbs and flows of emotions that movies jam into 90 to 180 minutes. What genre was better at that than romance movies?

Arguably, the selections I chose ended up being all very tonally different but overall similar in feeling. All of these movies held a magic to them, love becoming an inexplicable force that defies logic and reason. Love pushes us into ourselves and out of ourselves. Love bringing together families, tearing them apart, mending them together again. Love as a healing force to ground you when life becomes hard.

The following are all the movies I watched that warmed me mind, body, and soul. Maybe they will warm you too.

* When Harry Met Sally (1989)

* This became one of my favorite movies a couple of Christmases ago. I decided to rewatch it after a particularly rough day. It opened the romance movie portal and ushered in a series of bangers I found myself watching afterward. I love how much this movie is about love and timing. It fascinates me how much love or the kismet moment we associate with finding love is just about timing. There’s no lesson to be learned, only a willingness to be patient and open once you’re ready to be. I suspect this will be foreshadowing, but that’s a story for another day.

* Missippi Masala (1991)

* I first saw this in my last year of college in a film studies class, so I thought I might like it more if I watched it for fun. It’s gorgeous in more ways than I remembered, and I do love how it explores how real political events affect the fate of one family in a way that most people wouldn’t overthink at all. It reminded me in some ways of my own family. It made me reflect on the ways I’ve been shaped that I’ll never know entirely, because they were before I was even aware of life. The chemistry Denzel and Mira have on screen is to be studied. It looks and feels like summer, or at least how summer should feel.

* My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)

* A lighter selection in my spree that dialed down the intensity but kept the passion high. It always fascinates me how much immigrant stories parallel each other. I understand why my family had it in our DVD collection and why I never saw it growing up, either.

* He’s Just Not That Into You (2009)

* To bring myself back to earth, I thought this one would ground my romance movie spree with a reality check. To a degree, it does, but in the end, even they couldn’t resist the sweeping feeling of romance on the big screen. I didn’t expect it to stick with me long after watching it, but I do find myself returning to its grand twist of a conclusion towards the end of the movie. How realistic can you be when it comes to love at the end of the day?

* A Nice Indian Boy (2024)

* As I chronicle this watch party adventure, I’m realizing the gentle flow the universe took me on here. This movie addresses the realism you have to consider when it comes to love and marriage, especially. There are many American movies about pleasing the family to have a wedding. My Big Fat Greek Wedding addresses this issue comically. A Nice Indian Boy takes this issue very seriously because it’s not just about the family approving. It’s about tradition, respect, and knowing the weight of what it means to join ennergies with someone by marrying them. It did help me clarify why I felt so strangely about marriage (which I didn’t realize until seeing Materialists). I have little interest in building a life with somebody, but honoring a deep connection that drives you to want to bind together under the eyes of the powers that be? I could never be resistant to such an alchemical decision.

* Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)

* After A Nice Indian Boy, I needed to see the movie that had mattered to our main couple so dearly that it made them believe in love. I get it. It’s a romantic movie in every sense of the word: the saturated hues, the lush scenery, the beautiful clothes, the songs, and the chemistry between our leads. On paper, it’s a very silly story. The best love stories usually are. The commitment to having their love exist honorably got me. To be so committed to not being ashamed of your love that you're willing to potentially lose it? Being so sure of your love that you know the risk will be worth it? I’m left to hold the feeling gently and see where it takes me.

I’d love to leave with a conclusion, likely all the essay training from years of schooling. But there is none. I have been note-taking my life for months, hoping to find grand answers on how to be, and I have none still. So instead, I leave you a series of movies I’d encourage you to watch and let yourself get lost in feeling as you do. See where the feeling takes you. And then the next and the next.

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It's more about […] surrendering and being […] open to receiving this next thing now that you've given up all these things that you may have wanted or you wished could have worked out. […] Things that, you know, just weren't good, that just weren't working that had to be let go, and maybe you let them go or they were forced out of your hands, doesn't really matter. […] And now we just kind of wait. We wait in suspense, we wait […] to see what comes next.

Celebrate where you're at right now — even in the face of the darkness, of loss […] — know that you do still have things in your corner. You have people in your corner. […]. You still have love in your corner, support in your corner.

That's going to get you to the other side, and it's okay that you've lost these really hard things, these things that you may have wanted, these things that you were really trying to make work, these things that you thought were going to be your in or your out […]. It's totally okay because this is clearing the way for what will work and what will be good for you. […] You have to trust.

What does safety and security look like in a fluctuating life? What does it look like to trust in an inconsistent and imperfect world?

My relationship with trust is a work in progress, as this excerpt from my journaling project makes clear. Even today, as I start to pen this, I’m wrestling Trust on the floor, trying to decide whether to fight back for control or surrender to defeat. Trust in my body has been an anchor, but not the whole picture. I still find myself lapsing in self-trust, let alone trusting the world.

I’m finding that play and patience can help this process ever so gently. Allowing myself not to move too quickly towards something usually helps me trust my actions and intentions because I have seen the breadth of what they are.

My current favorite parasocial mentor on this is Realizations by Pea. They had put together a Reality Creation Profile quiz a while ago (that I unfortunately cannot currently track down). It reveals how you go about bringing ideas to fruition. These affirmations have been sticking with me extra hard recently:

You're allowed to let clarity emerge slowly. There's no deadline on knowing.

Find ways to commit gently, piece by piece, instead of forcing yourself to leap. You can go all in without abandoning yourself.

Grounding into the “feeling it out” space is borderline non-existent for me. I’ve found myself playing with it more, bit by bit, but the process of trusting it has been a tricky one.

I only returned to writing this post almost three weeks after I first recorded the reading. Two extra weeks than I’ve been letting the previous readings sit for. I had to trust that the process I have for these readings will reveal when it is time for them to emerge. This one didn’t flow as quickly, but I knew falling back would allow it to flow as easily as the others.

Unfortunately, this is too easy a process for me with creation. Creating something inherently requires trust. You don’t know what you’ll make until you’ve made it. How that extends to life — jobs, relationships, day to day living — is what I’ve currently been investigating.

For now, I’ll leave you with a series of references until I come back later with my slowly emerging thesis. The following have convinced me that living the creative process in all aspects of life can take one far:

* The Creative Act by Rick Rubin — Full of stuff you already know if you are someone who makes anything ever. However, we forget ourselves, so a point-blank reminder is never a fruitless effort.

* This video by witti.indi on TikTok — There’s been a lot of new chapter talk in the astrology world this year, and it makes me feel like an onion being peeled layer by layer.

* This post by Valeria Maerz — Felt like the path that you’re walking on, lighting up like a Christmas tree. This leads me to…

* Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present (2012) — I want to revisit this in a longer essay, so all I’ll say is that Marina’s commitment to process in her work opened a door for me.

* Oblique Strategies by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt — I need tools that will not give me direct answers and instead force me to look inside of myself. This has been a fun tool for such exercises.

All of these will soon be added to my Masterlist (which you are always encouraged to peruse). We will talk properly again soon.

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This week has been on one. I found myself deciding to step out of my shell and read some writing in front of people for the first time in a couple of years. Funnily, I love reading my work, which is why I’ve shifted towards the audio format for my posts. Reading in front of an audience is always a bit vulnerable for me, which is something I’m contending with. More on that later.

Enjoy this piece I wrote in late January after some health and body anxiety. I still really like it, and it freaks me out a bit that I wrote it. That’s when you know you have something good, if it feels a bit alien to you.

I hope it helps you find peace with your body, even for a second.

It’s interesting, the saying “the body keeps the score”. My body is not at war with me. I am not at war with her. We are moving as one, the rider and his horse, the boy and his dog. We switch places. Sometimes my body rides the back of my spirit to get to the end of the day. This is true survival, us taking turns to make it to the end.

But dear body, you have been mothering me. Holding me more than I am willing to hold myself. Letting me know I am safe even when you’re not. Trying to be an indestructible thing. You are flesh and bones. Atoms vibrating with all their might. A brain firing and misfiring, losing lines and traction with time. A heart fluttering and thundering for more blood and life.

Body, you are my enemy because you know how to be. You accept what you are and work with what you’ve got. You store fat for when I am hungry, burn it when I am full. You move before I know where to go, remember to keep breathing when I forget how to. You hold life like it is nothing for you, not even a second thought to want to be alive. Tell me, how have you figured out how to be properly alive? I would spend all day contemplating blank walls if you didn’t force me to eat, drink, and pee. Thank you for showing me the world even when I try to keep it from you.

Body, your desire for life, love, and movement drives me. You are my inspiration, my true muse. My first art piece was making you look like me. I see you in the mirror and laugh. I pick you apart with my eyes. I devour you. I check every visible fold because you will not let me see the ones inside. It’s for the best. Imagine if I could prod at my stomach, the intestines, the uterus. I would pinch leg muscles all day if you let me, tug at my appendix, wait for something inside to burst.

Sometimes I imagine killing you. It’s not personal. I just feel overwhelmed at all the possibilities you lay at my feet, the way you keep track of time through sagging skin and wobbly knees. And you distract me, ask me to upkeep you with stretching and exercise and good food. It’s exhausting, body. I know you are wearing my soul out, so it does not burn itself in the existential void. I appreciate your built-in failsafe. I hate the execution. I do love how you continue to hold me close, especially at night, eyes closing me inside of you like a suitcase, traveling into the future. Letting me rest, saying you will sleep too, only to stay up all night repairing yourself so you can carry me through the next day. I’m sorry I stay up some nights manic. I guess I desire more time with you.

Body, when we die, will you still hold me tightly? No, you are the family dog resting on my lap, eyes shut to sleep forever, the unspoken understanding that I cannot come with you. That you will let yourself decay into dirt and dust in the ground, becoming one with the flowers, because you know how to just be. And I will leave you for the air, join the wind coursing in circles above land and sea because I am motion. I am life as breath, just as you have taught me to be.

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A friend of mine requested a print copy of my poetry collection Love, Fiada. If you would also like one, you can place an order here until June 15th.

Hello again! I come bearing a message I created early last week. It was strangely timed, considering the hermit energy I was in. This weekend, I finally implemented it, and a garden has grown. We’re on our way up!

This one is short and sweet, so I don’t have much to say for it. I hope it nudges you forward into the future.

“We're able to and articulate truths more precisely when we share them with others. […] In order to kind of come to a better understanding of ourselves, our own light, our own understanding of living, we kind of need to bounce off one another.

…

‘You know, if you were to share how you were feeling [and] what you were wanting with people more often, it may be helpful in helping you achieve what you're trying to achieve faster, more efficiently’ […] and I feel like that's kind of the message here is getting out of yourself. We're kind of taking what you have inside of you, bringing it outside so that other people can come through and help you and support you and be there for you in the ways that you're needing them to come support you, be there for you.“

If this is the first reading post you’re seeing from me, you should also check out the Page of Wands reading. They’re very connected.

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“We are on our journey, our path forward. We kind of know where we're going already, and it's […] more of a matter of trusting ourselves and the path forward versus getting caught up in the big grand pictures. […] When we're talking about sketching out the plan, [it] is less about trying to predict every possible thing that will happen and more about getting real about what we wanna focus on right now. […]

[This] can be in the form of short-term goals. They could feel like long-term goals. But we're really painting a picture based on where we're at currently, and we're allowing that map to evolve as we progress forward. So getting attached to the idea of, like, a five-year plan that you stick to is unhelpful. But playing with a five-year plan is this kind of playful, wishy space where we are putting out our desires and intentions for what kind of life we wanna live, how we want the world to be around us. That kind of thing is helpful.

I feel like the idea of imagination right now in regards to the future is a powerful and hard thing to do because of how uncertain it feels to try and plan out everything down to a T. And so give that up and open yourself up instead to the idea of experimentation, allowing your map to be less of map of where you're going and more of map of where you are.”

Hello again! I’ve decided to continue this series after successfully executing the first one. Today’s message comes from the Page of Wands and times perfectly with Saturn’s return to Aries.

I’ve been getting “it’s time to plan the path forward” messages for the past two weeks. In an earlier part of the recording that I cut out, I even read a Chani daily message that covered a similar idea. What didn’t click for me until after the reading — and honestly, for many days after — was the idea of a plan being a malleable, growing object. My plans were reflections of me and where I want to go right now. Naturally, they will change as I do.

Having changed quite a bit internally over the past few years, it’s harder to attempt to plan anything. I used to feel very destabilized when my plans blossomed into something new until I eventually learned to lean into it. I leaned so far into it, that I’ve abandoned the process of planning anything. I’m now turning the dial back a degree toward where I was before, without turning the heat on high.

Since then, I’ve been revisiting some old ideas and playing with new ones that are helping me re-open my planning books. The first was the Saturn in Aries reading from Astrobutterfly. Shortly before, I had read the poem “The Scaffold” by Fernando Pessoa.

“If Saturn in Pisces was ‘fake it till you make it,’ Saturn in Aries is ‘make it real.’” – Astrobutterfly

“The illusion that kept me going Was a queen only on stage: Once undressed, her reign was over.”– Fernando Pessoa

I also watched “How To Put Up Scaffolding” from How To With John Wilson a week or so before, which plays with similar ideas regarding taking risks. Of course, I sat stubbornly with all these puzzle pieces and stared them down to see if they’d take their shape.

Instead, I found myself handed this video by Anna Howard, which detailed ways to plan abstractly instead of in the targeted SMART goals style I had used for years.

I can’t deliver a grand conclusion for this reading because that’s never been the point. The point is to try and figure out where you are now, then where you’d like to be, and see how your feet shift. Life is a series of experiments instead of sprints. It makes everything feel softer and easier, taking it one piece at a time.

If this resonated with you, please let me know!

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