Tag Archives: July

(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

July and August Again

“Meanwhile the world goes on,” says Mary Oliver. I repeat her poems to myself like mantras—for comfort. Lately I am finding it hard to achieve balance in my life. I want to focus on myself, but I don’t want to sink too far into myself. I want to want things, but I don’t want to obsess over them. I want to feel everything, but not too intensely. Or maybe I do. In retrospect, I always do (it makes for better writing). But I cannot control everything. I can barely control anything. It must be necessary to let go of that urge to dictate the timeline that the world has for me. Otherwise I am wrenching myself from the hands of greater forces.

Taking my own advice this month has been hard. I have been living extrovertedly this month, and now I find that I cannot be alone. I am proud of the person I am, but also seeking nervous attachment. It kind of sucks that the struggle to achieve healthy self-esteem is a lifelong process. Somewhat relatedly: I have a hard time accepting that nothing is really innately fair. The world owes us nothing, but we owe the world everything!

I am on a plane and missing optimism. But it will find me again soon because these things are cyclical. I will make something and return to myself shortly. I will listen to “Flightless Bird, American Mouth” and think about movies. I will eat some pesto. I will put these thoughts out into the ether like I do every month, letting them float there miraculously as lines of code and otherwise meaningless symbols. Meanwhile the world goes on.