a meme from @heaven
sleep deprivation & actively resisting regret
i am once again thanking you for your patience as i spend weeks doing essentially whatever i want (fun!) followed by complaining constantly about being burnt out and exhausted (annoying). between my sister coming to visit, a dreamy trip to moab, and a very muddy festival, i have lots to recap over the next week or so. forgive me for the lack of consistency. remember i have to get to living before i can get to writing.
the leaves seem to have returned overnight, as though fugitives on a fedex truck i didn’t hear barrel down the street, because i was buried under the thick wool blanket of a deep sleep. i don’t know how i didn’t catch them in the act, especially considering i’ve slept maybe a total of 20 hours this week, which kind of sounds like a lot but is actually not at all.
maybe you know this, but you have to sleep a lot to feel like a real person. the only time i can remember feeling as tired as i have this week was in high school, when i’d stay up late after dance doing my AP biology homework, and then fall asleep at my desk the entire next day. it is not a state of being i would wish on my worst enemy, if i had a worst enemy. i can’t imagine having a worst enemy.
i played my first sunrise set at our favorite locals-only desert festival this past weekend, speaking of sleep deprivation. i am getting better at managing my dj anxiety, which isn’t saying much, but seems worthy of a brief applause. i still pace, still shake, maybe don’t feel as pukey as i once did.
you may ask why i keep doing this to myself, to which i would say, fair! but if i could condense the euphoria i feel when i play my favorite song on a rig the size of a house into a pill, i would tuck it under your tongue, and then maybe you would understand, and the validation i’d receive from the exchange would have me agreeing to my next gig, and maybe, just maybe, you would want to go, too.
not much has changed except everything, except the trees, except the leaves, appearing to me suddenly like familiar faces post-coma. did april feel like a weird dream to everyone else, or did i snort too much pollen? it’s a miracle i don’t have allergies, considering the time i spend dragging my nose through the flowers.
a joke i have with god is “the neighbor mowing their lawn.” i think of them sort of like a recurring character on SNL. i can’t even count how many times in my life it’s happened: i’ll be relishing in a few brief-but-holy moments of peace on the porch, only to be jerked violently from my reverie by the suburban roar of a weed wacker. it’s gotten to the point that i actually have to laugh, applauding the comedic timing, my favorite meme from @heaven.
i’m losing the plot again, i think in the skirt aisle of the thrift store, an intimate corner of my world that would normally provide the comfort of a mother. the place is drier than my nasal cavity. not even a mug or figurine worth a second glance. this disturbs me for many reasons, the most prominent being it yanks my mind down the precarious road of i miss my old life.
we all know acutely the perils of this path! you don’t even want to know what kind of sanity-insulting, psychosis-inducing playlist i had blasting in my headphones.
i can say i miss my old life without wanting it back. though there’s a stubborn sliver of me that doesn’t mean it, i wouldn’t trade my health insurance for the thrift queen crown i’ve since relinquished. it’s not a big deal. i’ll go to goodwill after work like everybody else. i mean, god, can you hear my gritted teeth through your screen? what good is having cake if you can’t eat it?
i decided i can be ugly because nature can, too. i hate the look of things in winter, but i don’t damn it all to hell. god willing, come may, those april showers start kicking in. and then aren’t we just so glad we took a chance on those sticks.
what i liked about my morning thrift schedule was not the emptiness or the quiet. it was the lack of competition – my true pick of the litter. can i trust that i’ll never have to fight for what’s mine? is it greedy or unavoidable to want for things we aren’t promised?
sitting legs-crossed with my afternoon diet coke in my (still) undecorated cubicle, all i can think about are the vintage grails being snatched out from under my corporate nose. this reads like an exaggeration but, unfortunately, is not. is there a time limit on the faking part? i think i’m ready to start making it!
i realized i need to thrift for the same reason i need god. i can’t just google what i want. i only know it when i see it.
obsessed with “i realized i need to thrift for the same reason i need god. i can’t just google what i want. i only know it when i see it.”
such a good line. thank you for continuing to write. I love reading your posts. Also we are far too similar haha