Note: I wrote this when I was exhausted (like the title says) and the below is an extremely unorganized jumble of thoughts, read at your own discretion.
Happy Friday, internet friends! This is a photo of me after a hecking long day of work. I took the subway from my office to my dad’s office and he took this photo of me. My parents were so good at documenting me and my sister via photographs growing up, but as an adult these photo ops feel more like a strained hassle. I should probably be more grateful for these moments with them that won't be available to me forever. *existential sigh*
My dad and I chatted and we promised to grab dinner sometime soon. This visit happened in early March, and we didn’t get dinner together until late April. I am writing this blog post now in early May. Before this visit, I couldn't remember the last time I had seen my dad, but I'm sure it had been a few weeks? Maybe a month? Everything seems like such a blur to me. Sometimes I will wake up on a Saturday morning in a haze, unsure of what just happened with my concluded work week. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so foggy, and it makes me question if this is what being an adult is, or if my experience is compounded by the collective trauma we have experienced over the past two years. We have all heard about compassion fatigue with everything that’s going on, but I don’t think this is that. A main theme I am seeing with the writing of this blog is that I am just now shaking out and processing all the shit that has happened over the course of the past two years and a little bit before that.
I am no Sofia Amoruso, I don’t like when someone calls me or themselves a #GIRLBOSS unironically (also it feels like we are shouting when we put it in all caps like that), but it is so true that you need to be able to hustle in order to survive in New York City. I have struggled with the idea of how much energy it takes to live here, but I do admit I have fallen to the "New York or No Where" mentality like everyone else who lives here. I have family and friends who live elsewhere and they seem happy. On a trip last summer to North Carolina, we stayed with family who live deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains outside of Asheville. Life there seemed so pleasant, so quiet, and so simple. We trotted down trails, danced in the underside of a sparkling waterfall, and felt... what I can only describe as light on the shoulders tranquility.
I loved waking up in the trees and I loved the feeling of fresh air in my lungs - like, real deal fresh air I had not experienced in what seemed like a lifetime. I also loved the cost of groceries there, too. In 2022, with all our technological advancements, I don’t think appliances like a washer/dryer and a dishwasher should be labelled as luxury items, but if you want them in nyc, you’ll need to tack on an additional $2000 bucks a month and usually need to find them located in a building that has been recently built in a gentrified neighborhood... which is another issue all together. But for now New York is home, even if it does come at the expense of my pocket change and a trip to the laundromat every Sunday.
The span of a week can seem so murky to me, and if I don’t keep track of what I’ve done during the day in my planner, I will lose any and all concept of time. The long term impact of these past few years remains to be seen, but I’m already noticing the effects in how people are acting. SNL recently did a light hearted skit, (Post-COVID Game Show, click here to watch) on how no one knows how to think or behave anymore, and while funny, it was starkly true. Countless incidents of people lashing out at each other at grocery stores, malls, and while on airplanes tell a larger story of the impact isolation and political discourse has had on our brains. I remember there always being a divide between the left and right, but it never felt so life or death until recently. Or has it always been this way? I really can’t remember. Crime podcasts and crime television series have risen in popularity, and many women have reported to listen to them as a way to wind down in the evenings after a long day of work. Disagreement and violence have become so intricately woven into our minds that we are desensitized to it and we crave it when we do not hear about it. Many social media platforms thrive off of conflict, and more interaction is seen between users when something bad happens. Someone has a comment on it, and everyone else has a comment that disagrees with that comment, and vice versa and so on and so forth until the end of time.
Speaking of disagreements...
On Sunday, May 2nd, while the celebrities we are programmed to obsess over were celebrating being beautiful at the Met Gala, Politico published a leaked opinion from the supreme court hinting at the end of abortion rights for women. I have seen so many tweets with so many conspiracy theories. Some say that someone on the right leaked it, some say someone on the left leaked it, some say that SCOTUS leaked it themselves to soften the public blow for when they finalize their decision. Either way, it feels like a bummer. The draft has heavy themes of eugenics, and paints women as vessels rather than human bodies. And if they go after abortion, they will go after contraception next, I hate to say.
I think a lot of us will need a lot of unravelling once this whole pandemic/political upheaval is done, if it is ever done. None of us who survived the first throws of the virus will be the same as we once were, and I don’t think we can ever go back to the stasis we had before March of 2020. Did we ever have that stasis? Or do we only miss what we romanticize the past to be? I really don't know! Going forward, I want to make sure I am giving myself more of a break when it comes to literally everything, and to hop off of social media more. I will continue to dream of the day I have a washer/dryer and dishwasher in my home, and will also dream about going back to North Carolina where I can forget about all this for a while, and fall asleep in the clouds.
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