It turns out that writing a monthly newsletter is a whole lot harder than writing a weekly one. I knew this coming into the newsletter, since writing Splash is such a deeply ingrained habit that doing anything else on a Wednesday night makes me feel antsy. Meanwhile, I never really started to establish much of a habit around this newsletter, largely because it always felt a bit strange.
I wanted it to be a recommendations newsletter colored by my personal experiences, but writing it always felt a little bit icky to me, probably because I didn’t think that imbuing it with so much of my personal life stories seemed right for something that seemed more public than my other newsletter. The easier-to-access archive and visibility that Substack offers were a sort of con to me in this regard.
To that end, I imagine that this newsletter will take some different form. Monthly can be a goal, but I’m not sure it’s attainable, since the recommendation format already has grown stale to me. So perhaps I’ll take on the model of the newsletters of some of my other friends, who publish occasionally, but pieces that have received much more rigor than I’m used to giving to a newsletter.
i. no good alone
In the tradition of my two issues of this newsletter though, let’s recap the last 6 months or so. My last issue covered January, but I wrote it in March since February flew by. In March, I literally flew, going to visit Japan for the first time. After being cautious about Covid for a long time, it was the first vacation where I felt comfortable going maskless in restaurants and experiencing a vacation like I did before.
In Japan, I saw many amazing things—shrines and trains, cartoons and kanji. However, after an unfortunate encounter with a low ceiling, I found myself getting a CT scan in an Osaka hospital to confirm that my concussion hadn’t made my brain bleed. Thankfully, I was fine and the doctor told me that I just needed to rest for a day and I’d be good to go. Two days later, I flew back to San Francisco and hoped that I’d be able to look at screens sometime soon and that my brain wouldn’t be permanently marred.
I ended up being okay. I went back to work soon after and started doing more and more for my job than I had before. The fear of my brain not working properly made me work harder, hoping that using it more fully would make the neurons wire more strongly together.
Soon after, I read “no good alone” by Rayne Fisher-Quann, a piece of writing that permanently changed the way I see the world. It pushed me to change the way I lived my life, especially when she wrote, “Your job, really, is to find people who love you for reasons you hardly understand, and to love them back, and to try as hard as you can to make it all easier for each other.” The piece seemed to pull all the strings of my values that I’d been uncovering for years and weave them into a clear picture. I too often thought of myself as an individual, rather than surrendering to the reality that I’m a representation formed as a part of, because of, and unto others.
In April, I went to New York and cried when I saw my friend step up to the altar. I went to New York and saw people I hadn’t seen in years, assuming that they weren’t interested in seeing me. I was pleasantly surprised how old friendships sometimes just continue to some degree, with the versions of each other we hold onto in our minds. I ate too much pizza and met my coworkers in the city and ate more pizza.
In May, a new roommate moved in. He redecorated the entire living room and changed the way I think about interiors. I’m still trying to figure out my own bedroom.
ii. mortality
At the beginning of the summer, I couldn’t stop thinking about my mortality. I found myself overwhelmed with tears and wondered if it had to do with carbs or wine or everything. I spent a morning sobbing to every video on my Instagram Reels and then had one of the best days all year. All of human experience existed in every day, but I only felt it sometimes.
In June, I learned that an acquaintance from college had taken his own life. I went home to visit my family for a while. I read a book about a woman with cancer dealing with her impending death and how she never thought her life would end so soon. I saw my family and how they all moved a bit slower than they used to. I saw my baby nephew for the first time and the joy he brought to everyone. I ended my relationship because I didn’t think it would last forever, afraid of the time that it took away from the rest of my life. Time was terrifying. Death was terrifying. I couldn’t do anything about it so I had to do something.
And that brings me here. I came back to San Francisco and upended my life in a lot of ways. I started to redecorate my apartment, I started to plan a birthday party. I told my friends I wanted to be more social and that I wanted to be invited to things. I decided that I wanted to get into shape and started counting calories and skipping rope and pushing myself when strength training. I lost 10 pounds and gained some back but the measurements keep getting better. I’m trying to learn how to play basketball. I’m trying to learn how to play tennis. I’m looking for every limiting belief that I’ve had about what I can and can’t do and destroying it because if I don’t do it now, it will never happen. I enjoy it when I do and I feel good when I don’t feel so tired. I still wonder if my brain ever healed. I’m trying to fall in love with everything because when the woman in the book with cancer died, all she wanted to be remembered for was being loved. I want to be those who loved her and I want to be loved like she was.
At times, it feels like I’m bursting with feeling, like the incredibly sunny summer in San Francisco this year is filling me with light and I’m photosynthesizing it into levels of hope I haven’t experienced in a long time. I’ve always wanted to be driven by love rather than fear, but I think the fear allows for love to exist. To love is to accept the fear of everything that can happen. To love is to expand the possibility of fear. To love is to acknowledge that another could harm you, to accept fear of anything that might harm them, and to continue forward anyway. I don’t know if I can do that wholly yet, but I would like to some day.
I stare into the mirror and wonder what Narcissus saw. Sometimes I see something worth admiring, and sometimes I see something unrecognizable. Did he only ever see a single version of himself, or was he frozen in perpetuity until he was turned into a flower? Could I ever see the same thing reflected back? Was I the same person six months ago? How come it’s easier to smile at strangers and babies? How could I make a joke to a stranger so easily when I couldn’t even imagine doing that sort of thing? Was that the real me or is this the real me or are they both as real as the shifting rivers?
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I wrote a lot of other stuff while I was gone. Most of them were my weekly newsletter Splash. You can check out a few of those that I liked:
I wrote a few pieces for Lens as well:
And a couple of poems:
Thanks for reading, let’s chat soon.