it’s not you, it’s (mostly) me
Well, well, well…
I did not intend for my “talk soon” sign off in my previous post to translate to nearly 5 months. And yet!
Isn’t that common knowledge, though—when writers want to write, they do everything but. Or when they sit down to write, their brain simply says “no❤️”.
Don’t get me wrong—I’ve been writing in my absence from Squarespace. If emails count. Which they probably shouldn’t, since my corporate America vocabulary is terribly limited. I always have to be careful with punctuation, limit my use of “please” and “thank you.” It gets repetitive. Or rather, it is repetitive. That, and earnest journal entries that often begin with “Wow, it’s been a while!” As if the last dated page is saying to me, Well, what do you have to say for yourself this time? I know that you spent an entire weekend watching Emily in Paris and regretted it.
I suppose it’s safe to say that I have been questioning a lot these past few months—about myself, my intellectual capacity, and my career prospects, and increased social anxiety. Being scolded not once, but twice, not only with a handwritten cursive note on your desk but a face-to-face interaction about messing up an office supply order, in which you ordered legal-sized paper instead of letter-sized—will do that to you. So the only logical remedy for this at the end of the day is to rewatch New Girl all the way from season one (again) so I don’t have to think about anything. Which is being lazy, I know. But I’m on season six, and while I always want Nick and Jess to end up together, I’m distracted by the fact that Megan Fox was actually cast as a love interest for Nick.
One of the main reasons why I haven’t posted in a while is that I kept talking myself out of it. I grew insecure, and thought I didn’t have anything interesting to say, because everyone is going through the same motions right now. You know, like finding any possible excuse to go to Target or any grocery store. Or abandoning previous snobbish reservations and finally downloading TikTok “to see what the hype is all about.”
After spending a few months working my office job and having weekends off to do whatever I please, I decided to go back to hostessing—not at my former stomping grounds, but a new place. The gig is only two days a week, so I’m not entirely encompassed in restaurant drama, but it is enjoyable, and to go back to something so familiar is nice. Not to mention part of my job is operating an espresso machine (we use pods, though, so I suppose I’m a faux barista in that sense)—hearing the drink tickets print next to the host stand computer is one of the best parts of my shifts.
Since my last post in July (!), I have been doing a lot of living off-screen. August was a culmination of many things, including celebrating one year with my boyfriend, and going to a cottage three hours south of Cleveland, which passed the vibe check for Taylor Swift’s folklore album. I got an essay published on The Rumpus, and I am still reeling from it even though it was four months ago. September, October, and November all blurred into each other, but somewhere in there, after Trump lost the election, I turned 24. Despite all of the uncertainty in the world, 24 feels pretty good so far, even if that means my top artist of 2020 on my Spotify Wrapped was the Coffee Table Jazz Relax Playlist. Honestly, I spent so much of my early twenties characterizing myself as being busy, and forced myself to be an extrovert in the sense that I wanted everyone in my field to know who I was. This is probably because I was following the girlboss Instagram account (which I am not anymore). My business cards are collecting dust.
My latest endeavor is writing a cultural criticism essay about the newest Sylvia Plath biography, Red Comet, which is incidentally 1200 pages long, and took the author eight years to write. Like hostessing, I’m revisiting familiar territory again. I’m still terrible at math and make many typos in my social media posts (I am a disgraced former copy editor), but if you need a random fact or a rant about the injustices about Sylvia Plath’s legacy, I’m your gal!
I’d like to believe that I will be more consistent with blogging again, so let’s keep it at that and see what happens.
Sorry for keeping you waiting for so long.
All the best,
Grace