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082421

things go chugging slowly along, life passes me by as I do mundane and ordinary things like move my car to the other side of the street, go to the library, and make pork chops, like a facsimile of one's 20s, but rich with sentimentality and colored by dystopia—but maybe that's everyone's 20s?
paprika by Japanese breakfast is such a good song...also, hey you by no doubt
I spent the last week in fremont detoxing from too much socialization (me?! who would guess)...my mom hit a fat j in my kitchen talking to her older sister in India about what food to make for a dinner party (epic)...im leaning into doing what I want these days, being myself, being less of a you guy (look where that got me)—as if I owe nothing to anyone, like a white boy...it's a little bit of a gateway drug, seeing what I can get away with, but I have no fear of leaning too far in that direction because my ingrained selflessness is just too hard to shake, for better or for worse. my therapist asked me to name some things I liked about myself, so I did, and now I revisit them when faced with a resurgence of goblin-brain...creative, kind, intelligent, moral, generous, resilient...how ugly to let yourself be treated so poorly, how embarrassing to have such low standards for yourself? I thought when I looked at the hot influencers on my IG feed, god, how pathetic it would be if any of these girls accepted the treatment I do, and how much less I would think of them...the fear of becoming so deserving of reproach is accelerating me through this slump and making me at least try to inhabit the more Hot Sexy Mean Girl self that I deserve to inhabit. whatever works, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
im trying not to advance fret about all the things I will have to do in the coming months and just be more zen and present, and intentional about how I am spending my time...I have been actively trying to schedule things further apart to reduce my stress and weaken the sense of urgency that I am conditioned to approach all of life with...I guess the only urgency is that my time on this earth is scarce, but maybe that's the wrong way to look at it—maybe my time just 'is,' and it's about maximizing my enjoyment instead of trying to cram everything all in so I can check it off my to-do list...I'm just out here looking for a healthy balance, but I guess that is a lifelong project, continually tweaking and adjusting my behavior to optimize for my happiness...coming up is: a date tomorrow, megha's birthday, a smog check, figuring out my set, finding a space for joof, a mani pedi, dinner with my dad's friend, yheti at temple, our party next friday, and my painting I have yet to finish...where does the time go? 😵‍💫
advance fretting...gotta stop that, but if I dont do that, how will all the things get done? because I calendared them, I guess...I am definitely just getting stressed about doing all the things that I definitely have enough time to do, because I am generally bad at understanding how much time anything takes to do, so I feel completely unprepared to handle any type of responsibility...like, will my set take 2 hours or 12 hours? I legitimately have no idea...why didn't they teach me time management skills in high school? that feels like someone else's failure, not mine...
I could probably afford to be more cavalier...who cares about any of that stuff anyway? maybe I need to do more drugs...can't be stressed in a k hole...right?

082121

Nimatnama-i-Nasiruddin-Shahi

081921

the sun glows orange through the smoke and the haze...before we went camping I drove to the REI through the dusty summer heat and it occurred to me that maybe I was buying supplies for my own survival...my cousin says that in the 1.5 years she was actually going to high school in person they had 2 weeks off because of the fires...when I was in high school I navel-gazed about whether to kill myself, but now they check the air quality on their weather apps and mourn for the world...I take long walks with my mom talking about everything and nothing...they say its always a good idea to buy property in the Bay Area...the Dead didn't announce a show in san francisco...im beat from the parties...I had just 3 days off and I thought my sleeping problem went away...I cant remember how I did this in college...my tolerance for agony was so much higher, or maybe I just didn't have a good read on myself...so it goes, who ever said life was easy...who ever said you would know what you want at 23...who ever said I would have all the answers...I brought my swimsuit, I thought I'd go swimming...just another Caldor sunset...
EVERYTHING is A-OK!...if they don't give me a raise im going to go Milton-mode like officespace

@ stern grove; bucket-hatted frat-adjacent young men wear sunglasses and Hawaiian shirts and traipse up the hill, paper trays of hot dogs die on the footpath and between peoples teeth, every girl between the ages of 16 and 30 wields a tote bag printed with something vaguely hip, every boy with the analogous long-sleeve t-shirt; double-fisting mate and hard kombucha, chasers to tequila shots in handmade ceramic shot glasses, organic limes from whole foods, ample strawberries; leopard print is out, puffers are still in, plaid is timeless; the girls all wear curtain bangs, coy, and they all have opinions on Zooey Deschanel; Patagonia pullovers drift in from the marina, everyone wonders who invited them...; little shirt big pants is still riding the airwaves; cheap heart sunglasses and cowboy hats from amazon; bleached hair, white converse, gold hoops; some of the boys have mullets, some of the girls dye their hair like its 2012, some of the people wearing furry hats and cat ears should be escorted out...; denim on denim on denim with the new short roll knit beanies, a pretty blonde girl drinks wine and twerks in a bright magenta turtleneck and bold white pants, people sit on the same slave-woven $12 tapestry purchased on the interwebs; cringey maxi dresses and space buns, an embarrassing wealth of carhartt, I am in a thrifted XL orange hoodie, repping the U of I basketball team...

081721

the most magical city in the world
dead.jpg

081521

im too fried
we celebrated Jeffrey's 25th birthday at sakesan last tuesday, and drank lots of plum wine and ate nigiri and sang Taylor swift. I took wednesday and Thursday off but it didn't really feel like it, we went to the hipster wine party on Friday (lame), then Daniel's show at rickshaw stop (cool), and then to supertask at the midway, we got back at 4am and I door dashed jack in the box (stupid...) I got so dummy high that night that yesterday I was just totally zonked, but still managed to go to the Van Gogh thing (stupid) with my cousins and get lunch at ananda fuara (great), and then go to the Berkeley hills for Noah's birthday party which we were DJing...I met some people I think I liked who I might invite to our future parties (ed, Ava, pauline, Armand)....noah got too drunk and we left around 1 in the morning, we packed all our shit and deposited it at Darrens, then I drove my lonely 19 minute drive back to the city around 2am...my software is bugging out, or maybe my computer, and it is causing me inordinate levels of stress, but honestly it's good practice in not letting things get to me, or to not be so disappointed. regardless, I really need to figure this out, and I refuse to play another show until I do, because it just is laughably stressful and I dont even have fun that way. but Noah's house was sick, and we played in their bunker/workshop underground
noahshouse.jpg
hopefully they'll let us throw another party there soon. apparently we gotta do another one at the end of the month because that's when Conor will be here, but im like... 😵‍💫 im just gonna run away....

080921

how to make art when you don't know who you are? we listen to the new pardoner record which came in the mail, we drink chaga hot chocolate from the coop, we hit the bowl at the free thundercat concert at stern grove; we buy antique sewing machines off Craigslist, we crochet bikinis, we lose our $600 sunglasses; we let ourselves unravel in the name of romance, we get too drunk off expensive champagne, we are health-conscious and have dietary restrictions; we make fun of the natural wine people, we watch local music, we trip and listen to dubstep; we unwrap toys like the push, we order too many clothes online, we play with slime; we watch mind-numbing game shows, we read political theory, we hand-deliver noodles around the bay; we tend to the garden, we buy beautiful scarves, we make ugly ceramics; we do ketamine in bed, we wear Japanese house shoes, we get hipster haircuts; we overcommit, we feel anxiety, we are fatigued; we formerly vape, we feel imposter syndrome, we pretend to understand things we don't; we flirt with the idea of grad school, we are in grad school, we hate people in grad school; we loathe computers, we spend more than 8 hours a day on our computers, we make money from our computers; we vote for Bernie, we organize(d), we are unapologetically woke and remorseless; we feel empty inside, we wear baggy t-shirts, we listen to modest mouse and think about god...we use dongles and we dont have sex

080821

life in the vivid dream...a chilly wet august sunday, mildly high, mildly hungover, tired but in maybe sort of a nice way, we threw a party last night and we went out on friday but I still feel like I used my weekend efficiently, no moping around with a stomachache, no waking up into the afternoon, we went to to the farmers market and bought fajita strips and local rockfish (I'm really into Ori's formula, grain+veg+protein+sauce), we got world famous turkey sandwiches at Arguello and ate them in the cold fog at stern grove, bamboozled by the fickle San Francisco weather...our party was popping, if not dense, but the real homies came through and vibed, what more could we ask for? I was bummed about my set which got fucked up because my software broke, but it happens, and I tried to remind myself far worse things have happened in life, and anyways everyone danced and had good words to say despite my transitions not being up to my standards
im not sure how to get more people to our parties, maybe its covid, maybe we're not casting a wide enough net, but it surprised us how many people seem to have things they would prefer to do than come to our (sicko mode, and free) parties...then again, maybe this is all advance fretting (a term I have been using to identify my behavior recently) and it took club chai 9 months of throwing parties to make it big-ish, so maybe we just stick with our shtick and keep working at it, build it and they will come(?) in any case, I think we are doing really well, and making the best of our situations, the neighbors came and didn't call the cops, and I like my friends, I thought when I was at Evita that wow, my friends can party and also they are so incredibly brilliant, and how lucky I am to find myself in such stellar company, and how seen and effortlessly understood I feel in their midst, and on the flip side, how sometimes difficult it is to find people who fit the vibe, so many people are selfish, or self-centered, dumb or just not interesting, not curious or intellectual, or just have bad vibes, and I am lucky to have found so many people who feel akin to me in ways I take for granted...it would behoove me to think about how alone I felt growing up, and in high school, like an alien, contrarian, and like I didn't get along with anyone or that no one appreciated or understood me, and I was always playing someone else's game, and how I am almost entirely devoid of that feeling now, as an adult, in a way that I could not possibly have conceived of as a depressed, mentally ill teenager who never expected to be alive this long to begin with...
LA was a good time, SF is fun but I wish it weren't so cold, I think I will summer elsewhere next year, maybe New York, or LA, or miami if I'm feeling real crazy...traveling during July and august seems like the move, SF is a great home base, a great place to be bored; listening to lazer guided melodies on vinyl, a fitting mood for this quiet lazy Sunday evening, thanks Lukas
my priorities for this week are to: return my clothes packages, talk to Salim, listen to my 3rd Ableton course, open the push, celebrate Jeffrey's birthday, DJ on the speaker setup and figure out why Traktor got fucked up, go to supertask and bpt, read, cook, glaze my ceramics, paint and fix up my painting studio, etc, etc...so much to do and so little time before all the partying of the weekend begins again, but I feel like I might as well get it out of my system before everything gets cancelled again, or maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way and I should try to be more sustainable, that's what zach would say— but I love to party, and be around other people, and meet them, and so it goes...probably I should just pick a couple of those things to do this week
everyone and their mother was at the thundercat show at stern grove— my former co-worker, a professor from Berkeley, Colin from soccer, a hinge date I never had, Jeffrey's brother and his friends, other random people I recognized from various places...it made sf feel like such a small world, and like we were really embedded in a community, the opposite feeling of what it felt like to have lackluster turnout at our party; it gave me some solace in an otherwise dreary august, nestled in the eucalyptus grove amid all of our friends and enemies, like a village...
now we sit in the perennial winter of san Francisco, with Christmas lights which never feel out of place and the chill seeping through the cracks in the windows, of this 1893 house which no doubt is haunted by former residents, maybe my dad included; I want to at some point look up the old land registry, and see who used to own this plot of land, and who built this house, and who used to live here for the 100 years before it was sold to the family who sold it to us? to imagine this house as anyone else's is so difficult for me that I am unable to do it in any way other than abstractly; but surely there might have been prohibition-era children running up and down the stairs, or hippies/anti-hippies with opinions about the summer of love and the flower children on haight street, just as now it is me and zach, people without labels but young, idealistic, bohemian, reacting to the dystopian nightmare of 2021 and fumbling through our twenties...we have freshly cut yarrow in a handmade ceramic goblet on our dining table and a piece of reclaimed wood with hand-carved painted mushrooms on it from an artist in rockport, Massachusetts as our intentional ornaments, trying to inject some fullness or sentimentality into our stubbornly empty neoliberal lives...
it is 8pm and we should think about dinner, maybe thai?

080621

im so fucking sick of covid and angry at unvaxed people. I am being robbed of my 20s and I do not deserve it...
I'm kind of stressed about our party tomorrow and all the things I want to do but do not have time to do. on my to-do list for today is to finish working, go through all the clothes I ordered, and start moving some stuff for the party. tomorrow we will have to set up for the party and then throw the party. I can't tell why I am stressed, if it is about turnout or neighbors or my set or feeling rushed or what. after the party then we have thundercat on sunday and then Jeffrey's birthday and then fremont and then supertask and then Jeffrey's second birthday, lol. maybe there are too many things going on but then sometimes when there aren't enough things going on I get very sad. it is a tough balance to strike but I really want to re-do my portfolio, finish the painting I barely started, open and use my push, catch up on my last two Ableton classes, finish glazing my leftover ceramics, and make potato salad. alas. when will I have the time?

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