what i did in march ✦
charting new interests, 8 books, yoga portraits, reflecting on travel
march was a prime example of how frequently the winds and whims of my life change from week to week and day to day. it felt even more all encompassing than february, the breadth of new experiences one after the other giving me whiplash, both in the physical and emotional, high highs and low lows.
here are some fun things: it was my birthday, i went to two live basketball (nets!) games and started learning a lot more about basketball, read 8 books, went to a protest and 9 🕒 , tried many new bars and restaurants, spoke to the bestie on the phone a lot, got paid to take photos, went to a day rave with a high school friend, went to SF for a few days of work (for GDC) and hosted my first ever event which was a big learning experience!
i made almost no progress on my creative projects after the 16th, which is when i traveled to SF — travel is a privilege (obviously) but also so draining and disruptive, that i can never really predict how long it’ll disorient or bring me down some new rabbit hole(s) for. it’s now 2 weeks past, and i’m finally feeling back “on track”, except i’ll be traveling again in a few days (for weeks and with a 12 hour time difference this time). sometimes i think about travel like a disruption to my “real” life, because i’m almost always traveling for other people and specific obligations (like weddings or work), and it feels like the next two months are already gone, because all that time is accounted for.
this reminded me of a few things: 1) it’s imperative for me to work toward trips as a deadline for WIP creative projects, ideally to complete it the day before the trip or at latest on the flight there, because otherwise the momentum is gone and who knows if this particular project will ever get done, 2) why it’s so important to keep up a daily practice of creative work, and to prioritize it in my day to day. once it falls off, it’s so hard to get back in. even just writing this paragraph, writing this monthly roundup, has been like pulling teeth. a stark contrast to the first one i wrote in january, when i locked in for six hours and drafted it in one sitting. this is usually the easy part!
jumping from thing to thing, and so many social engagements, also means i’ve spent the last two weeks exhausted, the physical kind where i have to lay down and sleep. the kind of discombobulated that makes me feel loopy, ive had so many conversations with different people i’ve lost track of what ive said to who. i hate to be the person that describes themselves as “tired,” and i usually don’t, but it is accurate. i’ve noticed a few things when i’m in this state:
in social situations, especially with new people, it cuts off my natural inclination toward curiosity and asking questions to learn more about them, i end up being quite reactive in conversation. several (new) people made comments about my lack of expression / reaction, and someone described me as “hard to read.” as a relatively quiet and socially anxious person on a normal day, these are good things to know about myself and how i show up.
when i’m trying to recharge, my favorite wind down activity has been to lay in bed with all the lights off (6pm onward, when its dark or about to get dark outside), the window open or a chill coming in through the walls, listen to EDM on my speakers with my eyes closed. sometimes i fall asleep like that. i lived with my best friend in college and she reminded me that i did this back then too, she’d hear me blast clubbing music to sleep. I don’t know what it is! there’s something so peaceful about being able to gently drift out of consciousness to it. i can only do this when i’m exhausted though.
charting a new interest: basketball 🏀
i’ve never been a basketball person, and still wouldn’t call myself one, but it is something that i became much more interested in this month (shout out to harry!). i didn’t become overly fixated in a taking over my life way, but i definitely did seek out information and experiences about it, so i thought it would be interesting to chart how i came to this interest and how i’ve been exploring it, including tangentially related offshoots and little mundane choices i’ve made that i otherwise wouldn’t. like a case study of how i approach new interests, or how they show up in my life.
some links:
The Cam Thomas Experience, alive and well from Madison Square Garden (NetsDaily)
Brooklyn Nets put to sleep by Steph Curry and Golden State Warriors, lose 121-119 (NetsDaily)
Cam Thomas' NBA Journey: From Chesapeake To Brooklyn (Youtube)
The Game I Breathe: Kevin Durant & Nikola Jokic Aren't That Different by
I Fell in Love with Basketball in Grandma’s Basement by
creative projects
photography
i did my first paid shoot in a very long time — a series of yoga + classic portraits for purba. the yoga photos where shot digitally inside her studio space, and the classic portraits in the neighborhood on 35mm film (kodak gold 200). i was nervous, but am really happy with how they turned out! i’m really enjoying shooting yoga portraits, and to be able to work with friends on these :-)
writing
i wrote about turning 29, and birthday angst!
it was helpful topic to reflect on, and i’m glad i got to include my self portraits and the handful of related influential essays in the same post. it felt like quite a “complete” capture of my mental state and that moment in time. i’ve noticed that i’m very drawn to multimedia records and explorations of things — it feels like a more whole picture of the thing because you’re not limited to one form, and you don’t have to imperfectly translate something (say, a photo or image) into the right form (like words) in order to include it. the newsletter/blog is a really flexible medium that allows for this, and i’ve also been looking for authors that do it in book forms, which i’ve found in ugliness and swiper, experimental books that i read this month (which you’ll see more about in the section below!)
i also took the essay to wendy’s subway’s speedback writing night, where i got feedback from two lovely strangers. it was my first time participating in one of their speedback (quick feedback) nights, and it was very out of my comfort zone (whenever i share anything ive done with anyone, honestly, but especially writing, and to have to see them read and react to it live, terrifying), but it was such a helpful and affirming experience. i asked these questions for my partners, lynley and pinat, to keep in mind: where there any parts that you felt bored at, anywhere you would cut/expand, did the piece feel complete. i ended up getting somewhat opposite feedback from both partners — both found it overall relatable and funny (hearing someone laugh while reading your work is so validating), but there were certain parts that one found compelling and wanted expanded where the other thought they were repetitive and could be cut, representing my own conflicted instincts. i hope to make it back! and a friend and i are hoping to recreate a similar monthly feedback night.
community
went to MoCCA Arts Fest with a friend!
received my @mada.exe prints + art book :-)
what i read
this was a pretty good reading month — i finished 8 very different books, and i liked / took something out of each.
swiper by edwin tran [artist’s book] — “in the summer of 2023: After going out for drinks with a man named Joshua whom she met on Tinder, 25-year-old New York City resident Alexis Dougé spent the night with her date back at her Brooklyn apartment—only to find out the next morning that he had stolen her pair of Tabis. Alexis posted a series of videos on TikTok recounting the situation, which immediately took social media by storm and sparked an Internet-wide craze for the newly dubbed “Tabi swiper.” The publication documents the story’s viral reception across social media.” i purchased this at bungee space, and was really drawn by the concept, a dive into a niche/viral internet incident (common) in book form (uncommon). i think i was expecting more of a thinkpiece / fulsome examination, or at least documentation, of the series of events, so was left disappointed with how limited it was. but still a helpful reference point!
ugliness by moshtari hilal [nonfiction] — “With a profound mix of essay, poetry, her own drawings, and cultural and social history of the body, Hilal explores notions of repulsion and attraction, taking the reader into the most personal of realms to put self-image to the test.” i enjoyed this a lot, the topics explored, as well as the experimental form (mix of autobiography/personal reflection, research, images including manipulated and unedited / personal and historic, poetry, some surreal details.) the multimedia nature of it felt like a more complete exploration of the topic from the author's POV, like you got a fuller picture because things didn't have to be discarded for form. i thought the first half+ was particularly strong, the focus on specific physical bodily features (her nose, body hair), her personal experience with them were very vulnerable and touching. Some quotes:
Whether a repudiated body is insecure or self-confident does not alter the material reality of its repudiation
when we hunt for ugliness in ourselves, it isn’t necessarily that we hate our pudgy thighs, dirty hands, hairy belly, or hunched back; it’s that we fear the categorical proximity to those our society hates
I wish to learn to see and be seen without the chagrin of a person who fears proximity to ugliness
deposited in the body is the singularity of a unique human life, which is tied to place and time and bears the marks of that, with all the contradictions, all the pain, all the exhaustion, all the work.
Whiteness structures their desires, feelings, bodies, and spirits. Feeling that your own skin is a hindrance, or flawed, becomes an unbearable prison in a uniform that cannot be shed. The relentless representation of the colonized body as that of the criminal, loser, or barbarian burns itself into your retinas. Only to look in the mirror and discover, to your horror, that you are the barbarian. Fanon conceives of ugliness as the trauma of inhabiting a body you have learned to hate
I also read some pieces by others that talked about beauty:
giannis: the improbable rise of an NBA MVP by
[biography] — “The story of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s extraordinary rise from poverty in Athens, Greece, to superstardom in America with the Milwaukee Bucks—becoming one of the most transcendent players in history and an NBA Champion.” read this knowing literally nothing about giannis, and almost nothing about the NBA, so learnt a lot ! the first half, about giannis's childhood in greece, was the most interesting to me -- mirin did a great job including context about the racism in greece, and the stories about the people in greece that were kind to and believed in giannis + his family. it was pretty shocking, and touching, to hear about the sheer poverty they lived in, his teammates recounting how viscerally hungry he was, and the fact that he and his older brother shared only one pair of sneakers, so couldn’t play basketball at the same time. reading about his draft experience was also interesting, and how he almost went to the atlanta hawks. (ive always been curious how the draft in professional sports works, so this was insightful.) the second half about his time at the NBA was less compelling for me, but solid read, and i gained a lot of respect for him. I also looked up highlight reels 20% through the book, pretty cool. This book has been on my TBR for a while, especially after seeing mirin speak at a Squawkin' Sports event, and a fitting read now as i’m becoming more interested in basketball.careless people: a cautionary tale of power, greed, and lost idealism by sarah wynn-williams [memoir] — memoir by a former new zealand diplomat + facebook director about her time leading global policy at facebook. the stealth release of this book (no one knew it was coming out), coinciding with joel stepping into his new role as chief global affairs officer at meta was kind of incredible. “expose” non fiction is a genre i enjoy (read one on spotify last month), and this was really engaging, sucked me in. it was also very interesting to see the POVs of others at the company at the same time, i highly encourage reading them here and here. I also wanted to talk about some of the other public reactions (talking about their positive experiences with some of the named individuals) i’ve seen from current/former employees, which i’ve found incredibly disappointing. just because you worked at the company and didn’t personally experience the same bad treatment someone else did, and your relationship with an individual was good, doesn’t mean that everyone else had the same experience! it’s shocking to me how some people seem to think their own positive experience invalidates another’s lived negative experience. just because he didn’t do it to you doesn’t mean he didn’t do it to someone else. especially appalling when one of the claims in the book is that a straight man sexually harassed a woman – and you see a straight man on linkedin defend the straight man by saying he never experienced this. this isn’t to say whether the allegations are true or not true, i have no idea, but these attempted “defenses” are just so unpersuasive to me and leave a bad taste in my mouth.
martyr! by kaveh akbar [novel] — this was a highly anticipated read, such a breakout star last year (and recommended by
), and just the cutest cover. It was a 5 star read halfway through, got bumped to a solid 4 star by the end. so many interesting themes explored (martyrs, faith, sacrifice, making art, addiction and recovery and 12 step and sponsors, finding meaning in life, performance art, PTSD), i learnt a lot! i liked looking up the references, like the bruegel landscape with the fall of icarus painting, allegri's miserere. i also liked the imaginary scenarios and artworks he conjured. there were such great lines, great passages, i really tabbed up my copy of the book. i liked the short chapters. i thought the plot was interesting, i was pleasantly surprised by how much "happened" for this genre. The bad – there was something too cute about how it ended, which then recast the rest of the book in that light. i think i had expected it to be darker than it was, but it was very light hearted in treatment, almost whimsical, which is not a bad thing, but then it just ended like a love story, and not in a subtle way, but a romance anime / kdrama type way, which just felt like i should take the whole thing less seriously. but i listened to a few interviews with tommy akbar after, and stumbled upon the gem of his friendship with tommy orange – i love hearing about generative creative friendships – on this podcast. I was also so excited to see they were doing a bay area book tour together (CUTE), and i happened to be in the bay area during that time for work (!!) but just could not make the timing work. my friend went to one of the events, and said it was fun and all Q&A, so im sad to have missed it but happy to know that it happened.so long sad love by mirion malle [graphic novel] — highly recommend this. It tackled a difficult topic in a relatively detailed way (for a graphic novel). i was blown away by how realistic the dialogue was, and how well done the character’s expressions. purchased at drawn and quarterly in Montreal almost a year ago and finally read in one sitting(ish) in bed on a Saturday night after MOCCA fest!
vivian gornick
I read two books by vivian gornick, “an American radical feminist critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist" – the odd woman and the city (memoir), and approaching eye level (essays). she gets her own section because there are many quotes and i have many things to say. i initially found out about her through celine nguyen’s best books of 2024, but i’ve now been seeing her work in bookshops everywhere – it feels like a second wind in her career, which may not be correct, maybe i was just oblivious (maybe not?), but i’m curious what brought her back into the spotlight a bit.
the odd woman and the city [memoir] — 2.5 stars. there were some really great lines, observations, sentiments that i appreciated in here, but overall felt lacking to me: 1) while the book is focused on her interiority, and i'm sure it was honest, it didn't feel very vulnerable. not sure if because of the substance or the way she talked about it, but it felt pretty impersonal, i didnt feel a weight or depth of emotion, and i felt at an arms length. 2) there were a lot of scenes from NYC life, encounters with strangers on the street, that she would describe and intersperse frequently through the book. the moments she picked weren’t inherently interesting to me, and the way she talked about them was also not very interesting. It got me thinking about when these kinds of anecdotes are impactful to me, like in a stand up comedy set (observational humor), or used as a hook/example in an essay to expand into some bigger point. But they just didnt work for me here, without any further commentary beyond relaying what happened and her own reasonable mundane thoughts as they happened. 3) This added to my general feeling of the book as a jumble of thoughts that were just kind of thrown together in a stream of consciousness, without a clear structure or arc to it – which, may also have been exacerbated because i read this in audiobook form. What read as jumpy and hard to follow when read into my ear, was more poignant as text on the page.
approaching eye level [essays] — 3.5 stars. enjoyed this much more than the odd woman and the city, but solidified my POV that maybe her way of storytelling just doesn’t work for me. theres just something about the way she tells a story that feels so melodramatic in a way that i can't take seriously, like the facts doesn't feel truly genuine, even though i very much related to many of her feelings, observations. and there’s something about her voice that rubs me the wrong way, maybe its the way she reacts to things seems lacking in empathy sometimes, so she as a narrator is very unsympathetic to me. i think my favorite essays were on letter writing, at the university: little murders of the soul. i also liked on living alone, tribute, on the street: nobody watches everyone performs. i did highlight many many lines from this book, which i share with you below (and many feel relevant to my own experiences this month):
My acquaintanceship—like the city itself—is wide-ranging but unintegrated. The people who are my friends are not the friends of one another. Sometimes—when I am feeling expansive and imagining life in New York all of a piece—these friendships feel like beads on a necklace loosely strung, the beads not touching one another but all lying, nonetheless, lightly and securely against the base of my throat, magically pressing into me the warmth of connection
one must be either distinguished enough to create one’s own environment or humble enough to merge with the one at hand. If one is neither, a critical mass of like-minded spirits is required. It’s like the difference between ordinary plants put down in a suburban lawn (one dumb-looking bush here, a forlorn flowerbed there) and those in a richly planted garden whose massed profusion makes the same homely bushes and flowers glow with “element.”
I slept beside Marie every night but she was not as real to me in the flesh as she was here in the car, a conjured vision, the shared object of Vinnie’s over-excited anguish
But the idea of love, if not the reality, was impossible to give up. As the years went on, I saw that romantic love was injected like dye into the nervous system of my emotions, laced through the entire fabric of longing, fantasy, and sentiment. It haunted the psyche, was an ache in the bones; so deeply embedded in the make-up of the spirit it hurt the eyes to look directly into its influence. It would be a cause of pain and conflict for the rest of my life. I love my hardened heart—I have loved it all these years—but the loss of romantic love can still tear at it.
The rhetoric of religious fervor began to evaporate in me, replaced by the reassuring pain of daily effort. I could not keep repeating “work is everything” like a mantra when clearly it wasn’t everything. But sitting down to it every day became an act of enlightenment. Chekhov’s words stared back at me: “Others made me a slave but I must squeeze the slave out of myself, drop by drop.” I had tacked them up over the desk sometime in the early seventies, and my eyes had been glazing across them for more than ten years. Now, I read them again: really read them. It wasn’t “work” that would save me, it was the miserable daily effort.
Yet in each case I could not hold onto the friendship. I failed to comfort as well as stimulate. With me they did not clarify. In my company each became more fragile, more complicated, more self-involved, not less. I did not give them back themselves as they wished and needed to have themselves returned
Nothing makes me feel more alive, and in the world, than the sound of my own mind working in the presence of one that’s responsive
At that moment I could not imagine that I had ever had anything to say, that any words of mine had ever animated an exchange, improved a conversation, given pleasure. I looked blankly into the face of each man. Then I excused myself, and walked away.
I heard my sentences being received exactly as I sent them out. Because the ones I spoke were being responded to, I had more of them to speak. Because I had more to say I felt myself filling up. At the end of the evening I left the restaurant well fed
The letters are a record of his longing to make sense of things, penetrate his own chaos, figure out what he feels from what he is writing. A different kind of inner pursuit: a journey into unmapped space
Other essays and interviews: even though i didn’t love either of those books, i find her a very intruiging person, respect the life she has built and what she has done, and think she is someone i could learn a lot from. i plan to read “the situation and the story” by her in april, and i read some of her work online. interestingly, some of the issues i point out in her books, i didn’t feel at all when reading her standalone essays and interviews. when it comes to those aspects then, there’s probably a volume threshold for me where it goes from unnoticed to glaringly obvious. here are several i enjoyed:
Vivian Gornick: ‘Thinking is the hardest thing in the world' (The Guardian)
Vivian Gornick: "The Power of Testimony" (The Yale Review)
Vivian Gornick: A Pioneer of Personal Journalism (The Yale Review)
Every writer has only a small piece of experience to draw on; from it flows only a small number of real subjects. The obligation is to continually be reviewing that experience so that it yields more and more nuance, going deeper each time around. Something like Cézanne painting that apple for forty years because he was trying to get to the essence of “apple.”
Solitude is good, loneliness is not. In a solitary state one does not have to feel disconnected, much less isolated or abandoned. To the contrary, being alone is nourishing: one has one’s own mind for company—and in that state, thinking and writing are pure pleasure. On the other hand, loneliness is a disease: it saps the energy one needs to feel vital, and in that state, writing and thinking are torture. How to court the one, and stave off the other, remains one of the great mysteries of life.
more essays! 💌
no exit by
They saw me, essentially, the way I saw myself, and were understandably concerned by it. But S saw something in me I did not see in myself. In seeing it, he made it possible for me to become it. This is the paradox of love: we believe we have to be good to deserve it, but being loved can make us good. Being loved by S made me want to be better. I wanted to live up to his kindness, to become the competent, communicative, well-adjusted girl he saw me as. And when I looked at S, I also saw a version of him that he struggled to believe in. We saw the best in each other, and belief itself was enough to make us want to live it.
can intellectual intimacy replace physical desire? by
Does writing make it harder to get over someone? by
the feminine urge to repress sexuality by dieting by
life design by
We talked about how it’s becomes much easier once you’ve run even one process all the way through—you know that you can get something done. The most competent people I know are pretty good at basically anything they put their minds to, because they just design a process and run it. I think this is largely mental and emotional—the hardest part isn’t figuring out the steps, it’s enduring the psychological discomfort of doing them and then adapting.
the burden of the memory keeper by
Childhood memories, presented by DraftKings by
Someone has managed to get their hands on the Texas Rangers (TETAS) hat before it was pulled from shelves (not an essay, just a funny reddit thread)
what i watched
David Sedaris on Storytelling and Humor [Masterclass] — such a great move by delta to have masterclasses available on in-flight entertainment. i’ve watched the first half of issa rae’s masterclass on a different flight (love insecure), but they had the entirety of david sedaris so i watched all of it from JFK → SFO. i remember picking up one of his books in high school, at our secondhand book fair, but have never actually read any of them. i don’t think we have the same sense of humor, but it was incredibly insightful to hear about his creative process and a breakdown of craft from his POV as a successful funny personal essayist. i especially enjoyed ep3 observations to stories (turning diary ideas into essays), ep4 breaking into a story, ep9 ending with weight, ep11 growing as a writer, the spirit world bonus reading.
BBQ High [TV] — this is so random but completely up my alley, watched all of it from SFO → JFK. “Across Texas, teens compete in regional BBQ competitions for a shot at the state championship and scholarships. They perfect dishes like dessert, beans, chicken, ribs and brisket while navigating senior year and pivotal life decisions.” it was really cool learning more about barbecue (the meats, how it needs to be cooked, techniques, etc), and what its like to be on a high school barbecue team. i love sports anime, and this kind of felt like an IRL sports anime (where the sport is BBQ). after watching, i was inspired try my local barbecue spot for a brisket :-)
morgans brooklyn barbeque stavvy’s world clips [youtube] — im a BIG fan of stavros halkias, i saw him live in NYC last year (he wore an iconic velvet green tracksuit on stage), and i’ve watched many many of his crowdwork clips on youtube, but my favorite thing to do lately has been to watch clips of his podcast stavvy’s world, where he and his guests answer listener questions. I don’t listen to many podcasts, but the comment sections of these videos confirm that they get the most unhinged questions. the scenarios are just so silly, some of the listeners are delusional, and it’s so funny to hear stavvy 1) laugh, and 2) rightfully roast the sht out of them. great man. some good ones: How do I tell my girlfriend I own way too many guns? / Poly guy's second girlfriend is driving him crazy / I got three chicks pregnant and my fiancee is pissed / I was really bad in bed; should I text her an apology?
LISA - BORN AGAIN feat. Doja Cat & RAYE [music video] – great song, great video
this roundup was a struggle to put together, but here it is. thank you for reading 🖤
questions i’ll leave you with:
are there things you tend to do only when you’re really tired?
how did you get into your newest / most recent interest or hobby? how have you gone about exploring it?
Wow thank you for sharing!!!
absolutely love wrap-ups and you just reminded me again as to why- this is a stunning round up of the month 🫶🏼