A random assortment of things consumed & consuming me

Citizen Sleeper

I told Zach, “Hey this is just like Persona but without all the extra stuff” and by extra stuff I meant battles. It’s also pretty similar to the like gameplay loop of Blades in the Dark I think. I really enjoyed it and ended up running through two of the possible endings in one night. I’ll definitely play the second one and it also reignited my desire to finish my Twine story/game.

Conclave

A very pretty movie. I don’t know if I found it a very insightful movie or a very interesting movie, but I liked watching it! I was raised catholic and went to religious education classes every Sunday but anytime I learn about the rituals of the church I’m like “come on that’s just silly.”

Restarting therapy

My therapist finally got back in my network after my insurance changed in January so I’m back to weekly sessions. I don’t 100% need them tbh and I was fine for the month and a half I was going without therapy. But, I’ve found the ritual of it, even when I don’t have something particular to talk about, really enjoyable.

We’ve done a lot in therapy and I think over the like six or seven months I’ve been going I’ve really grown and learned a lot about myself. I’ve also challenged myself to do a lot of things that were scary to me: talk about feelings of suicide, talk to an actual psychiatrist, explore past trauma. It’s been pretty rewarding though to see that growth.

The next thing we’re focused on is doing some Internal Family System work, and even just his introductory explanation of what it was seemed to make a lot of sense to me.

A Real Pain

I think I liked this movie. I honestly can’t tell. It’s another movie that I enjoyed watching a lot and get the message it’s going for, but parts of it just seemed disjointed to me and almost like they couldn’t decide what genre they were going for. But, even writing that I kinda wonder if that’s the point.

Venture Bros

Shamefully, I started rewatching this after getting YouTube shorts of it. I forgot how good it is while still being such a product of its time. They literally have an episode in one of the later seasons where they have to purposefully call out that they keep using the R slur and that’s not acceptable.

White Lotus, season 3

I’m excited to see where this goes. My running theory is that the gunfire they heard in the beginning is actually the security guards protecting that famous dude and that Belinda isn’t dead but escaped into the little shed or whatever she left open in the first episode to escape whatever was crawling in the tree.

Severance, season 2

I was extremely worried that Severance was going to do that thing all cerebral TV shows do in their second season: start more mysteries than they solve. However it seems like the writers are keeping a pretty steady pace between answering questions and opening some new ones. I have a feeling like we’re going to actually see some resolution throughout this season.

Yellowjackets, season 3

Man, I know a lot of people love Yellowjackets and I really enjoyed season 1 but something’s got to give soon. Season 2 was terrible IMO, it felt like such a “well just wait till you see what we’ve got in store for these girls” season and I can’t shake the feeling that season 3 is just going to replicate that model.

The problem with any show like this is that you have to really commit sooner than later to whether or not something is a mystical and magical force or not. If you don’t you end up in the Lost situation where, by the end, nobody really bought the whole mysticism angle of the show and it ended up feeling just a little too corny. For the record, I don’t think there’s anything mystical going on in Yellowjackets, I think they’re a bunch of girls trapped and trying to survive inventing their own stories to cope. But the real problem is by now this same exact story has been told so many times (seriously Amazon Prime literally had a show about the exact same premise running concurrently) so like what more can you really teach us about society or civilization or community by now?

There needs to be some other hook otherwise it’s just going to fizzle out into another boring Lord of the Flies fanfic.

The St. Alwynn Girls at Sea by Sheila Heti

Speaking of Lord of the Flies fanfic, this short story was really good. It takes the POV of a girl on a ship of girls, floating the ocean during a war as she writes back and forth to a boy she’s crushing on who is also floating the ocean on a ship full of boys. It really reminded me of Karen Russell (which I know is an unfair comparison because writers are each their own unique thing) and the sort of magical but not quite magical world building that she does so perfectly.

A quote I loved from it comes in just the second paragraph:

A Man / Me / Then Jim

Gnawing off my arm thinking of these lyrics

Being 32

My 32nd birthday was good actually. I took the day off and just sort of did the things I wanted to while Zach was still at work.

In the morning I took Zach to work and we stopped by Wheatsville and he bought me a cold brew and a chocolate cherry scone, which was nice because the first thing on my “birthday todo list” was actually scone and coffee.

I cleaned our apartment for a bit and took Cookie outside then went to go buy some plants, even though it was cold. I got a snake plant and a cute yellow creeping vine for the trellis planter we have outside. It had to be a snake plant because our bedroom, while nice, gets the least amount of natural light in our house and we need something that can survive regular periods of low light. I positioned it next to our standup mirror and got a little woven basket for it that matches our linens and our new rug.

Then I played some video games and had Snarfs for lunch and then took a nap and thought a little about what I’d like to do the next day with friends. After work, Zach went to pickup a surprise for me: a custom crafted heart cake that said “Happy Birthday Cole” on it. It was an almond wedding cake with thick buttercream frosting and it was so delicious but eating any amount of it was almost too much.

We had dinner together outside at Radio, getting a burger and a drink and just enjoying the slight cold before coming home and watching the traitors and Drag Race.

The next day I went to Meanwhile with some friends. I didn’t think anyone would actually show up but a lot of folks did and it made me really happy, even if I couldn’t properly communicate that at the time. Before we got to Meanwhile Zach joked that there would be a non-zero chance he’d see one of his kids’ parents here and when we were in line he turned around and, sure enough, one of his parents was literally right behind us (the lesbian couple that i think seem kinda cool).

We went back to my place at the end of the night and I probably drank too much, which is why I’m NOT drinking for the rest of February. Anyway it was nice. I also got a lot of happy birthday’s online which was equally nice.

I keep wanting to come up with something grand about my stage in life or being 32 but honestly it’s just nice to have a simple birthday. It feels good to be at a place in my life where things can be a little simple and slower. It feels nice to be surrounded by friends, even if only for a few hours. I keep thinking about the life I’ve built for myself and the work I’ve put into doing it. I keep thinking about the type of person I want to be and, lately I feel like I’m getting closer and closer to that goal.