Category Archives: Blog

Year in Lists: 2022

Goodbye, 2022! You were very good to me, though I had kind of a flop year in terms of media consumption. I am also usually fashionably late to things. Nevertheless, here are some lists of things I enjoyed that came out this year.

Movies and Film

- Fire of Love 
- Cha Cha Real Smooth 
- Everything Everywhere All at Once 
- RRR
- Fire Island
Television (new episodes this year)

- Ziwe (Showtime)
- Wednesday (Netflix)
- Money Heist: Korea - Joint Economic Area (Netflix)
- Succession (HBO)
- Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend (Netflix)
- RuPaul's Drag Race (VH1)
- The Rehearsal (HBO) 
Albums

- The Loneliest Time - Carly Rae Jepsen
- Being Funny in a Foreign Language - The 1975
- Hold the Girl - Rina Sawayama
- Renaissance - Beyoncé
- Midnights - Taylor Swift
- Crash - Charli XCX
- SOS - SZA
Podcasts/Webseries

- Modern Love (New York Times)
- Las Culturistas (Big Money Players & iHeartPodcasts)
- 5-4 (Prologue Projects)
- Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlin (Ramble)

- Make Some Noise (Dropout)
- Game Changer (Dropout)

- Never Too Small (YouTube)

A few lists full of non-media items: Fight me!

Overrated in 2022:

- The word "vibes" 
- Cow milk
- Two-factor authentication (I'd rather get hacked)
- Stress culture 
- FOMO 
- Living in fear of “The Big One” (this is just for me)
Underrated in 2022:

- Using Venmo like social media
- Trader Joe’s Taiwanese Green Onion Pancakes (sorry these are so good)
- Going to restaurants alone
- Sitting on a bench in the sun with no other stimuli
- Juice... especially orange juice
- Dressing up for things for the sake of it
- Using the US Postal Service recreationally (huge advocate)
- Facetiming your sisters and playing Splatoon 3 together (when possible)
Forecasts for 2023:

- Demise of Facebook (I hope) 
- Demise of NFTs (I hope)
- Legwarmers become mainstream fashion
- Resurgence of wired earbuds and headphones
- Elon Musk appears in a Marvel movie
- Teenagers on TikTok mobilize to solve a major crime
And?
- Everyone reading this has a great year 🙂

Things to Love

Dear world. To save myself from finals-related spiraling and from listening to way too much Lana Del Rey, here is a blog post slash poem slash meditation slash prayer.

Lately, my days are not very dynamic. I am severely vitamin D deficient and I feel like my body is hibernating while my mind works too much. So I have been compiling a list of things that are life-affirming to me. I am inspired by a poem called “Love” written by Alex Dimitrov, who is one of my favorite poets (and also my former professor). Every line of his poem starts with “I love” and it continues indefinitely on Twitter, one line a day. Anyways, as an exercise in gratitude and poetry, here are some things that I love. They make me feel more real. Here is the (non-exhaustive) list now while I am feeling earnest. Thank you for reading and I hope all is well with you!

THINGS TO LOVE:

* A good night of sleep
* Orange juice
* Friendships that last years
* Sunlight and how it streams in through the window unapologetically 
* Laughter that hurts the ribs
* The color red
* Hearing people talk about what they love
* Preparedness, until it doesn't make sense
* Sweaters and my favorite jeans
* Doing nothing because I can't help but think about everything
* Being alive because it is so hard sometimes
* My pothos plant 
* Music that people put their entire souls into
* Seasons and what they represent to people
* Calendars
* Cinnamon rolls 
* Aestheticism, beauty, things that exist for no practical purpose
* The solemnity of mornings 
* The solitude of nights
* The squirrels that run across the power lines outside my window and chase each other 
* Impractical clothing
* Birthdays (not mine)
* Dusk
* Writing letters to friends, of course
* This poem by Eileen Myles, called "At a Waterfall, Reykjavik":

	I still feel like
	the world
	is a piece of bread
	
	I'm holding 
	out half
	to you.
	
* Brutality (only in theory)
* Bone broth 
* The feeling that I am becoming my own person 
* Movies with stunning combinations of sound and color 
* Looking forward to other things
* Dvorak's New World Symphony
* Flowers as gifts
* Clarity 
* And bravery (may we all have it!)

End of November 2022: Permanence

A futile attempt at cohesion… many rambles this month!

Happy end of November, which is often one of the hardest months (at least in my book). November feels like it’s for suffering; it has neither the intrigue of October, nor the celebratory nature of December. Maybe that’s just me. But I should also say that this doesn’t mean that November has to be a bad month! Mine was lovely. I think.

I chose to reflect on permanence this month for a few reasons. (1) Big life decisions often feel permanent and I feel like I am in a transitory period. (2) Something about winter also feels very permanent, as if all the trees, animals, and people are buckling down and hardening. Everyone knows that spring is coming, but for a span of time, there is a suspension of confidence that it will actually arrive. Like we are all holding our breaths. Do you relate? Winter feels infinite for a brief minute. (3) And I got a tattoo!

Even this personal-journal-blog feels permanent in a way. The internet is scary and I do not live in a European country that exercises the “right to be forgotten.” Oh well. It can be hard to cope with permanence sometimes, but I guess writing helps me deal with the passage of time. In a nihilistic way, there is nothing that really matters because nothing will really outlive us, I suppose. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say that nothing matters. In a truer sense, everything matters. Ok I’m going to move away from this topic actually.

I think the fear of permanence also has to do with external pressures. Perhaps it’s school, jobs, family, friends, etc. Pressure to make the right choice makes every choice seem more permanent. Idk. I am self-diagnosing here because I am a very indecisive person. I feel like a newborn deer most of the time, wobbling on my legs and seeing everything for the first time… but in a way that makes me oscillate between feeling overwhelmed and feeling full of awe at life. [I think I’m just describing anxiety lol.]

Ok maybe this post was a little too honest. I guess I am just trying to help us all be less anxious about the future, but I regret getting so empirical. Let’s all be hopeful, shall we? Life is sweet. I don’t know how to end this, so I’ll leave you with a poem by the late Bernadette Mayer.

On Living: Mary Oliver and the Woods

So I don’t post much on this blog beyond my end-of-month posts, but today I was absolutely floored by a Mary Oliver poem and had to put my thoughts down. Here is the poem:

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.


“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.

I don’t know what to say. But here are words anyways. Mary Oliver is a genius. I don’t know how she gets away with so much little repetition, yet manages to keep pace in this poem. I don’t know why the choice of “three things” works so well when this is not a fairytale. I don’t know how she can get away with using the word “salvation.” I don’t know how I can see the Blackwater Woods in my mind now, though I have never been to Cape Cod.

I love the woods. I love the cyclic nature of the woods. I love the peace and the slow growth. I love big existence. Nature is a trope that is all at once so overdone, so necessary, and so true. I don’t know! This poem makes me so emotional; it makes me think about how there are so many things and people I want to hold against my bones. And how everything is so ephemeral. But still, it is better this way.

Here are some songs that give me a similar feeling: the bigness of life and existence. The smallness of today in the scheme of everything. Enjoy them today and every day.

I think this song is in a famous movie from the past thirty years. I don’t remember which one.
This song is so phenomenal and so beautiful. I think the title is genius too.
This song makes me want to be in love.

End of October 2022: Polishing

“The gem cannot be polished without friction nor man without trials.” ~ Confucius

“I polish up real nice” ~ Taylor Swift

This month has felt so slow and so comprehensive. Do you feel that way as well? October encompasses so much. The days have clipped themselves dramatically. Books refuse to be finished. My plants are reaching upward in a move of radicality. I turned 23. The world turned to reflect a slightly different angle.

I had a conversation with friends where I told them “I love love.” I think about that a lot lately. To feel feelings for feelings. To love love. Maybe we only feel feelings for feelings. Maybe that’s pessimistic. I think I am a pessimistic person. But at least its optimistic to love love. I do love love.

There are many ways to proceed in front of us as we head into November. The next month is full of trials and opportunities. The way forward is cold, but also sweet. Always space to be constantly polishing ourselves, then turning our rough sides over. Showing them to others and sighing. Not feeling embarrassed because who has time for that! A good showing. Putting our best selves in the running race. So to speak!

End of September 2022: Foreseeing

I am posting a day late because I did not foresee the end of September…

Wow, the month really flew by, but in a way, it did feel like the appropriate length. For me, September was a month of change and adjustment (and I am still changing and adjusting). It was a big time of growth and a time to stew and reflect on the end of the summer. In Los Angeles, the air is still so warm at night, even though the days grow shorter.

There was much that I wish I could have foreseen. Or, there were times I wish I had better foresight. I think I could have been more prepared in many situations, or acted differently. Or, I wish I knew how I would feel about things now as opposed to back then.

But I suppose that we are not given that gift and we are meant to live in the moment. There is no use in feeling that sense of regret. There is every reason in the world to let things go and to move on. The seasons move on! And so do the months.

End of August 2022: Trying

I feel that it a truth universally acknowledged that August is a month of longing. It’s a month of long days growing ever shorter. August usually means the end of summer. Here, in Los Angeles, it does not really feel that way. Nevertheless, the feeling remains.

It is a good time to start trying. And to start trying new things. Whether it is a job, school, new friendships, new relationships, or other changes, there is good reason to believe that we might find new things now that are worth investing in. I don’t know. Maybe I sound like a horoscope at this point.

I guess I mean to say that Fall and Winter can feel like times of uncertainty, fatigue, and finality. As we head into September, we should take advantage of the transitional season. Nothing is set in stone. Yet.

Keep at it! I try to remind myself every day to value my own efforts. So I guess there are many layers of Trying here. Trying to try can be good enough, can be more than enough.

End of July 2022: Summer Fantasy!

Something that I have not realized until this point in the summer is that delusion is not always *bad* or *unnecessary* or *irresponsible*. Ok, maybe I should come up with a different term for a positive spin on delusion. Maybe it’s the ~Fantasy~. Sometimes you deserve the fantasy that is in your head! Whether it is for a season, a week, a month, or a special event– sometimes it’s okay to just enjoy life as you are inclined to experience it!

Don’t doubt yourself!