Journal 2025-05-24
I think I’m in the second phase of this whole time-off thing. At first I was like, oh yeah I’m good kinda just doing my own stuff and seeing what comes of it. But now I’m suddenly getting that low, gnawing background feeling in my chest, like there’s something else I really should be doing. I can’t tell if this is just a subtle side effect of the alcohol I had yesterday — I really wouldn’t be all that surprised about it. But this isn’t really the sort of thing that usually manifests that way.
What it really is, I think, is the hangover of social situations where I feel inadequate. It’s not like every other person there was a rockstar, but it was that there were a lot of people who had things a bit more Figured Out, and I am very much not there. But of course I’m also a good decade younger than all of those folks. So it goes.
I am just generally tired. The other day, I had been laying around in my bed in the hostel, and the girl staying across the room tapped on my bed and asked if I was alright, like if I was sick or something. It was both sweet of her to check on me, but also I felt mildly insulted or something, like I was being pitied. I don’t think that’s how it was intended, but that’s certainly what it felt like when approached from a certain angle.
But I think this is also a real reckoning of differences in skill level. I can see the gap — it’s right there. The gap in the skills I’ve got today and the level I need to rise to. That’ll happen, but it involves a deep investigation of my own abilities, which is always uncomfortable. But it’s more comfortable to accept that gap rather than to pretend forever that it’s not there, and that I could always do this stuff iff I just really wanted it. That’s bullshit — I can only do it if I put in the work and learn.
Anyways, enough self-coaching. What else is going on. I’m in Santa Barbara at the moment. I really just had to get out of LA. 90% of my dislike for LA can be attributed to staying in Hollywood and that obnoxious hostel that was wrong in all sorts of myriad little paper-cut ways, because otherwise it was kinda nice. At least at moments, when you get away from the bad parts of the city. (Although that’s essentially a tautology: “a city is good if you ignore the bad” etc.) What I mean is, the Getty is cool, Skylight Books was nice, Beverly Hills was beautiful (to drive through at least). But the city is a topographical nightmare and I could never stand living there, with all the traffic I had to sit through. I also paid more for parking than I did for my hotel itself. Blegh.
But it’s also time for me to get back to writing. I want to finish my TBOT review tonight, and by finish I mean finish the draft, and then I also want to finish reading Meander, Spiral, Explode.
Ummmm what else what else what is on my mind. I’m tired — I had an absolutely shit sleep last night. The goddamn person who slept in the bed above me was tossing and turning all night, which caused me to toss and turn and probably disrupted others ad infinitum, and the room was about a thousand degrees because the girl who asked if I was okay keeps turning off the AC even though it’s the middle of the summer in LA in a room with no fan. That’s really the issue with my hostel: it’s not the accommodations themselves, because it had decent showers and free towels and an AC, it’s just the obnoxious-ass roommates and the snarky staff just really threw me for a loop the whole time. All the ingredients were there, they were just overcooked, so to speak. I’m also just kinda over the US — I feel a real draw to be Elsewhere once again. And it’s not just Elsewhere from Birmingham, but Elsewhere from this country. It’s a rough place to be, truly. You can either spend a billion dollars or you can have the worst quality of life in the world. Pick one. (That’s not entirely true and not my Actual Opinion, but that’s my feeling in this down-in-the-dumps moment where I would really appreciate a nap.) Anyways, I’m being too salty, so I’m going to read instead of just writing more vitriol. Goodbye, dear.