Author Archives: Sophie Lee

(Aug. 2026) Fully Finally Forever

Hi to the readers. We’re back with newly developed film photos, new months to write about and new promises of consistency to abandon.

I saw Charli XCX perform at a music festival and she ended her set staring at the camera while the words NO ONE LASTS FOREVER flashed on the screen. She stood that way for over two minutes and the gusty wind and mist blew her hair and her backup dancers breathed heavily and pulsed around her. It was cinematic but I remember thinking that the sentiment was sooooooo obvious. and also kind of at odds with the image of a pop star grappling with leaving a mark on culture. But then again I think I could use that reminder – that everything is essentially impermanent. Which maybe means that we shouldn’t be thinking so hard about everything. There really isn’t much we take with us in the end, there is just the outward ripples of our actions. Which will also end somewhere.

To cope with the idea that I am essentially a fruit fly, I really need to feel like a person. But it turns out that it is soooooooooo hard to be a person who feels like a true individual. yada yada algorithms – we don’t really like them. But I like to do things and buy things and say things in the hope of them shaping me. Is the antidote to look inward? I’m trying to be envious of myself lately. So let’s try to fall in love with clothes and things I already own. Try to just be good to the people around me and not be so bitter! Try to write more, though we see how that is going. It’s really easy to blame everything and anything when I don’t have a strong sense of self. But that can only come from one place. (I kind of love when people just tell me what to do.)

I’ve always felt safest and most like myself alone in my room at night, listening to something, writing something or crafting something. Lately, nights are precious. If there isn’t work to accomplish, there are beloved people to spend time with. There is my brain’s fatigue, and then its craving for thoughtlessness. And now that I’m returning to my own ritual, I feel a little anxious that I am supposed to be doing something else. Could this be growing up? An indicator of becoming extraverted in the displacement of time for myself for time with others? [Weirdly, I kind of love being people’s coworker. I think having shallow and amusing conversations to distract from work is something I am good at. I wish that in itself was the job. To get polite laughs out of everyone.] It’s okay to feel like change is occurring as we speak. and it’s okay to want and need new things.

I hope we can feel the promise of oblivion in its best form. To see ourselves as fully, finally and temporary. The idea that impermanence is good for us because it is freeing and not a trap. Not existential dread, but a promise of liberation. okay, time to stop here probably.

(Mar. 2026) Elevator Love Letter

Back to routine and commitment and expression. We are almost a quarter of the way through 2026 and I’m thinking again about how time moves away from me. I think Los Angeles continues to astound me with its weather consistency, but also its timelessness. It makes everything feel slow even when the months barrel forwards. I am happy to be back and writing something here.

I found a song called “Elevator Love Letter” by Stars, a Canadian indie group. the lyrics go: “My office glows all night long / it’s a nuclear show and the stars are gone / elevator, elevator take me home.” It makes me feel cozy and okay in my fatigue and weariness. Which is not a constant feeling, but it is present more and more lately. I find myself upset at how mundaneness and routine make me feel like I missed out on the rest of the world. Maybe not a useful line of thought because no matter what we do, we may feel like we are missing out on the rest of the world. Everything is designed to make us want everything, to make us feel like we are part of everything and nothing. We are just ourselves, and fatigue feels inevitable these days.

If I think about it, fatigue is a personal experience, and it almost feels natural to let it blend with other feelings. It gives the mind a physical anchor, even if that anchor is itself fading or resistant. On days when I find myself dissociating and when the hours feel like minutes, I think it might be useful to find new ways to feel my emotions more deeply, more memorably. I want to fight the current of days that I let pass me by without remark.

I am grateful to the people and things that make me feel especially present, which help to contextualize all the other changes and patterns and shifts happening out there. You make me happy to live in this time, in this month.

(Nov. 2025) One Take with No Aspirations

An image of a journal page with text written in blue ink
A white journal page with a journal entry written in blue ink. A drawing of a stick figure cartoon with a dress and spiky hair.

11.24.25 For once the evening feels like a void. I yearned all day for rest and then did not enjoy it. Feel like I have a lot to say if someone would just ask. But then when I approach the thoughts I don’t see anything.

Hm. I was on the internet way too much today because I saw a video of a guy playing beats with sticks in the woods & the caption said “There will still be raves in the apocalypse.” And I felt nothing about that. I felt virtually nothing about anything today and now it’s a big deal. I even felt nothing about all of the effort in my life that I feel is not reciprocated. No aspirations and No scale for justice.

So I wrote the beginning of a poem about WWE in my notes and then read it back but it wasn’t good. Of course it wasn’t. Well, it was supposed to say something about melodrama and spectacle and mundane life. I think it was pretty bad. And I wrote it while I was driving in my notes app that’s on me. And I think lately I just complain & that’s kind of my life. Wish I was complaining less (but there I go again).

Finally I was looking at another internet post about that short story about the two headed calf seeing the stars and it made me very emotional. I realized I had been lying in bed for hours and my feet were still ice cold. And I didn’t really know why I felt so dissatisfied there. ennui from having too much time & thoughts. By that I mean 3 extra hours on a Monday.

I looked up from the bed and saw “Walking With Birds” which is an art piece that has followed me around from home to home, and I remember it from my earliest bedroom memories. It was a person who looks like this:

which is actually a really accurate drawing. And I realized that they have tulips on their dress and there are tulips in the background of the art. And of the birds, the two chicks are walking in front of the mom. Sorry. Could be a dad. Or a random cousin. Then, I thought about tattooing Walking With Birds on my arm and maybe felt that was insane. That had never occurred to me before, to have something mean something like that. It makes me want to cry looking at it. The birds. I think I can just trail off and notice a dozen things I didn’t before. The transparent leaves, The translucent clouds. The other flock of birds, red in the sky. And then how the rain outside has stopped, and then if I stay still and visualize all corners of the house I can focus on being. I’ll just drink another glass of water & do my routine again.

(Aug. + Sept. 2025) Sober Trip

Last night I spent a while cutting up a heavy yellow melon called “kandy” that was some kind of hybrid between a honeydew and a cantaloupe and something else. I was trying not to waste too much melon while I cut off the tough skin. It was sweet and somehow acidic, like pineapple. Later that night I had strange dreams with lots of responsibility. I can only attribute those dreams to the kandy melon. I woke up with a splitting headache and the urge to clean out my closet. I sold some clothes at a bougie secondhand store except they “had to pass today” on two dresses. Tonight, I hope my sister is having a great time at her high school dance. She said they were playing “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz and it’s funny to me how things are still the same in a lot of ways. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll have the same thoughts as today. That nothing can surprise me lately. Huh, more cynical and sad than usual, and then there is a surprising breeze that rattles my blinds. [Here in Los Angeles autumn is just an afterthought. And then suddenly its a mild winter.] But back to tomorrow. Maybe P and I will walk a mile to the farmer’s market. Maybe, if we wake up on time and everything else runs on time. Time promises us a lot. It’s hard to believe that promise: that things will change, or that they won’t, or that things will be better, or they won’t, or that time will heal everything and wipe out everything and someday mean nothing to nobody. The more I stay an adult the more I feel the cyclical pull of the generations and their patterns. The universe and its patterns. Do I sense myself joining the wheel? Will I become someone foreign to me? On the day after tomorrow temperatures are supposed to drop. Elsewhere, everything will be ending. I think I’ll feel the same, but I am frustrated at the idea. I am distrustful of time even though it is the most constant thing. Or is it change? Or is it evil? For a moment I think hard about the idea of ubiquitous evil. My florescent lightbulb flickers in the hallway next to the kitchen and I hear a maniacal dog barking outside in the warm night and feel my thighs and there are a number of bug bites and then consider opening the fridge to eat more of that melon. I think I’ll do that. The cold will chill my upper right teeth, like they did the day before.

(July 2025) Bitterness

A week late! On the tail end of big obligations and big events! Lots of stressors! Writing from a place of bitterness! Also writing from a place of hunger. Turns out I am not good at being without routine even though I purport to crave unstructured creative freedom. I need to be given tasks because I am not good at giving myself tasks. Or maybe I could be.

I had a gas leak in my new apartment. Why is a decorative fireplace trying to kill me. I bought a tiny little gas detector and it was not happy with me because I was poking it everywhere and clicking the two buttons all the time. And I was smelling gas for a few days but gaslit myself (not physically). Idk why I didn’t just call the gas company sooner. I feel like when things are wrong that are out of my control that they are somehow a reflection of me. When the gas company man came in he said holy shit what is happening here.

I’ve been getting the Poetry Foundation daily poems in my inbox and I typically like them and find them moving. But lately I just mark them as unread like I do with all of my random emails. Also with Duolingo. I do the daily lessons but do not engage my brain at all. Sorry French. Sorry Korean.

What if I’m just the most bitter person I know? I want to think about what motivates the feeling. A sense of unfairness? Inconvenience? Fatigue? Lack of empathy? I want to probe the feeling. But I also want to keep being bitter and that’s maybe the problem. It feels good to hold grudges and be annoyed sometimes. And then there is a moment when the tension breaks and I get remorseful and I am set free from my bitterness. And that is a good feeling. I feel so silly to have been bitter for so long. But now… Not there yet. Keeping being bitter. Holding onto it

(May + June 2025) Cruel Summer

Hmm. I’m writing this post from Seattle, which is obviously beautiful in the summer. Walking around briefly on a warm night near the Space Needle felt a bit like a reset honestly. I think I needed to remember how many other people exist. And the suburbs too can do that for me with all its unwarranted quiet rage. The crowded strip malls. The sando restaurant being the exact same. The low sun and a walking trail next to the freeway. On my walk I listened to “Feel Again” by OneRepublic and it honestly felt like feeling. It’s hard to feel moved right now towards anything but despair, anger, sadness. And I feel guilty for these thoughts because what on earth is happening to me here!!!

But I haven’t been in tune with myself lately. Studying for a big exam is really oppressive because it just looms over you no matter what you do. It’s nice to have a big goal, but it’s overwhelming. I feel very creatively stifled. Submitted and got accepted to a zine fair recently! But on the day of the event I felt a bit like a poser. I didn’t know how to talk to people there. I don’t know how to feed my hobby and to let it feed me. It’s really taking a back seat lately, which I wanted to avoid. This doesn’t bode well for the next year. I’ll do something about it I hope.

In the midst of everything, a list of fulfilling things: tempura, sunsets through tall trees, sparkling lake water, soda, guitar hero, new beginnings, sweet love, tenderness, swedish candy, laser light shows, music, complaining, going with the rhythm of everything. Still!

(Apr. 2025) Somebody

I was listening to “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” by Whitney Houston. Everyone loves that song, right? How could you not. Certified party song, karaoke song, dance song, loving-life song. I realized recently that I kind of love the vagueness of it. The “somebody” is so random that it needs to be qualified with a parenthetical. Whitney’s only specification: “I need a man who’ll take the chance / On a love that burns hot enough to last.” Now I’m remembering that I actually wrote a poem about this in undergrad. I think one of the lines was: “I Wanna Dance with Semantics.” Ugh. I do love grammar in a sick and twisted way. But maybe we should just enjoy the song.

I so badly want to make a new zine, but I’m feeling creatively stifled. And time is limited and at a mega premium, so it makes me feel a bit guilty to work on it. I anticipated this; setting myself down a path that is an accelerating, nonstop conveyor belt to… work and life. Not that you can delay life. It probably wouldn’t be good to delay life. But I think being in school has given me a cop out when I feel dissatisfied with my life because of the promise of achievable benchmarks and impending change! But what if I settle into “life” and I largely feel the same. What then…

So I’m writing my new poems very slowly. I want to be picky. There’s a lot of bad and depressing stuff in my OneNote. Right now I have a poem about John Mayer, half a poem about being online and hobbyless, half a love poem, and a couple other half baked ideas. What’s certain is that I need to make this zine. I need it feel like myself again. Not to be dramatic. Not to be anything. Not to be Somebody. But who isn’t???

(Mar. 2025) Sweepstakes

Posting a day late for April Fools probably! Taking the day to do some semi-serious reflection.

March was extremely fun and mentally tumultuous. I had a wonderful and tiring trip to New York City. I juggled responsibility and intentional rest. I cut my hair and started taking care of my perm. I made some great salads. I tried to write more and succeeded a tiny bit.

I entered a sweepstakes giveaway from Sumo Oranges, and now I get emails from Sumo Oranges all the time in my inbox. It’s kind of funny to me to get emails from oranges, so I stay subscribed to them.

I started watching Breaking Bad lol! Except when Jesse is on screen I can only hear Todd from Bojack Horseman. It’s nice to watch an older popular show with lots of existing online discourse. But one thing about me is that I am terrible at committing to finishing TV shows. I hope I can see this through. (Except Survivor, which I will watch every week.) The media diet has been a bit uninspired. I’ve been playing tons of League of Legends instead of watching anything. Hm.

When I feel overwhelmed I focus on sorting my days into one-coffee days and two-coffee days. Today feels like a two coffee day. Decaffeinated green tea has also been good. I remember when I used to have four-coffee days in college. Probably not necessary in retrospect. Praying for lots of one-coffee days for us next month. Unless you want more! Have some more!