Journal 2025-05-25
Ahh, what a day. Quick recap: Hike with Chris Lee, who I met at the Craig Mod event on Friday. Very fun — we hiked around the Santa Paula Canyon area to this gorgeous waterfall and I got what I think will end up as Very Sunburned. Less fun: my car got towed. Thankfully I had an AirTag in it, because at first I thought I was going insane and thought I had just completely forgotten where I had parked. Anyways, a one-hundred dollar uber ride and a seven-hundred dollar fee later, I got the car back. Not particularly mad about it, especially after such a great walk. I guess technically my car was on the road, like one one-hundredth of an inch of my wheel probably, but like it’s a trailhead in a rural area and there were dozens of other cars in the same. A bit of a scam by Highway Patrol if you ask me, but ce la vie.
Anywhooooo, I finally made it to the hostel now and got a good shower in. My shoes (and most of my clothes) desperately need a wash. They were white when I left, and they’re completely brown on the other side. Sigh. But I got the shower in, and I feel refreshed.
What am I thinking about right now? Essentially nothing — I’m so tired after being in the water and out in the sun all day. No thoughts, head empty. It’s kinda nice that way, but I also would like to make some progress on the review that I meant to do yesterday.
Oh, I don’t even think I mentioned what happened yesterday. I went to the hostel I’m in now and tried to check in. I Am Very Smart and booked one day off, and it’s Saturday of Memorial Day weekend so clearly nothing is available (short of paying $1000+), so I decided to sleep in my car. This, as expected, causes me massive anxiety. It is (for whatever reason) technically illegal to sleep in your car on the street, a law that I find strange and baffling and cannot really think of a good reason to support. (What is so different about sleeping in the car vs sitting up in the driver’s seat? Is there something materially different that causes a problem? It feels anti-homeless in a way that’s strange — having a car as a home is strictly better than no home at all in my opinion. But this is also generically true across most states in the US.) Thankfully, nobody woke me up or caused me any issues.
La di da di da. My legs feel kinda funky, in a good way. They’re tired from a Full Day, to use the Craig Mod-ism. “What’s the key to living an interesting life?” a woman asked at the reading on Wednesday, tacking it on as one final question before we broke for book signing. Craig just smirked and said “Full Days.”
I need more days like this every day. The conversation aspect of it was really good, and I’m trying to be really honest with myself if that was part of the Full Day. Probably yes. No matter how much I like to fool myself, being around people from time to time is quite nice. I think the rhythm of this past week — not-that-stressful book signing Wednesday, highly-stressful SP event on Friday, and chill hike with new friend on Sunday — was enough recovery time to be good. I think it would’ve been too much to try and stuff a ton more social stuff in those days, because after Friday I was absolutely feeling the head-spinning-ness of it all. (To be fair, I do attribute a fair amount of that next-evening-and-day head-spinning-ness to the alcohol; it’s a fairly familiar sensation on that front.)
What else what else. I have my mind on my money and money on my mind. Well not really — I have getting this particular Morning Pages done on my mind and my mind on getting my TBOT review done, plus making some progress on Meander/Spiral/Explode and/or The Pale King. But I really, truly must get to this 750 word count in order to make this what I want it to be, to follow all the rules that I’ve set forth for myself and so on. And to hopefully make my mind feel just as malleable and tired as my legs.