rando consumptions + the start of an epistolary story

Inventing Anna

I finally got bored enough to watch Shonda Rhimes’ Netflix special about the fake heiress who scammed a bunch of people out of money. It was pretty good, in the way a multi-part TV show about a Vanity Fair article can be pretty good. My central complaint was how much time they spent trying to humanize her at the end of the story. It felt good that she ultimately did go to jail but simultaneously weird how many people seemed so certain that she actually was good at heart and definitely not just scamming them.

Though I suppose one of the central points of that article is how precarious the worlds of the rich and influential really are. If someone with seemingly no actual footing in those spaces can trick their way in with a bad accent and some well-placed forgeries, maybe we should all stop placing so much importance on status and wealth.

Bluesky/social selfie prompts

Zach really said this but I’m going to steal it. He claimed that Bluesky selfie prompts were the icebreakers of the social media world. I like Bluesky because it’s a Twitter-esque social media platform that’s not run by a clear anti-semite but Jesus if you’re a gay man who follows more than 10 people you’re constantly dodging alliterative sex-crazed prompts.

I want to be clear that I don’t have a problem with people posting nudes, like go do your thing. What I have a problem with is the absolute corniness of the whole situation. Grown adults are firing up apps and gleefully reposting selfies of themselves wearing baseball caps because someone said “Baseball hat thread.”

My big conspiracy theory is that these are secret training threads for AI bots. I have zero proof of that aside from the fact that somewhere down the line we got to the point where a selfie thread was “search drinks in your camera roll.” Who in their right mind would organically create that? Then there’s the real question of why we need prompts at all. Scrolling through your feed now it’s an endless slew of engagement-farming whether that’s Twitter users asking for who your favorite One Piece character is or Bluesky posters sexually Mad Libsing their way through another week. Like scrotum Saturday? grow up!

6+ months at a new job

It’s been probably 6-7 months at this new job which feels insane to me. My whole relationship to work has drastically changed which is healthy to me given how absolutely insane my last place was for seemingly no real reason. The biggest shift has been transitioning from a fully in-person job to a fully remote job. It has its positives and negatives. For positives, I’m able to watch Cookie, cook myself lunch, clean the house between meetings, and you know watch Netflix in the background. For negatives, I can sometimes go days without talking to another human (except for Zach) which is obviously, not ideal.1

I think there are ultimately some things I like about working in person, but not enough to make me rush to go back into an office. The office environment gives me a lot of anxiety which I try and combat, but really struggle with. At my last spot, most of the people I knew were incredibly nice and kind, but I just felt soooo out of place and isolated. Truthfully I probably feel more connected to my team at this current job than I have at the other one.

Additionally being at a place that fits with the type of content work I do just helps eliminate some of that imposter syndrome shit I was feeling before. Here I’m not getting thirty suggested edits on every single thing I write because mostly we’re writing informative copy and content for SAAS and not lifestyle work. It’s definitely more in my niche.2

The multi-month of mini-tragedies

The last couple of months (really weeks) have been a bit chaotic for me, with a bunch of things just happening all at once. None of them alone were anything major, but compounded it felt like I was getting trampled every day.

1. Cookie fractured his leg and we had to keep him in a splint for two weeks and crate rested for one week. He’s back to his normal routine now and only picked up minor bad habits in the process! Currently, he’s pouting because Zach and I took him down to my parents’ last Saturday to go to the Ren festival and he got to spend the day around 2 other dogs.

2. A drunk dude ran into the back of my car. It was minor damage but Zach doesn’t have a car so we’re a one-car household now going down to 0 until I can get things looked at.

3. I sliced my hand on glass after cookie knocked over a glass lamp. I had to get a stitch and it bled a lot.

4. Zach had some health stuff that I won’t talk about because it’s his story not mine but still it was right before we were going to go to the Ren Festival3

A bad start to an epistolary story4

From: ▇▇To: ▇▇

Subject: A Note

I’m sorry for how strange this is. How antiseptic this approach may feel. Years ago we trekked through the ▇▇ ▇▇ national park: a short but refreshing hike, though the altitude did neither of us any favors. Do you remember sitting by a lake and letting the time crawl past us as slowly as it could? I was trying to recapture that feeling, that instant moment of clarity you can find yourself in with someone you know too well. The moment when neither of you feels compelled to talk and instead can sit pleasantly in silence.But then, still the loneliness. The vast and empty divide that was forming between us. Each of us watching the other grow into something different, something new but far better than it was before.

Transitions are hard, scary, and sometimes too frightening to make. Other times they happen, instantaneously and with little fanfare. Growth is never easy. It breaks and stretches things. A sprout must escape its seedpod to grow into a flowering plant; a sea must crash endlessly against the rock to build a shore. There are so many ways for things to grow and so few of them without at least some destruction.

I wish we could stay in that moment or return some time later. A random date, five years into the future. Meet me here at this lake and tell me what you have become, show me the ways your body has stretched to fit the monumental force growing inside of you.I don’t know what I could offer in exchange. Nothing that would make this worth it. Nothing that could ease this tension caused right here and now. Somewhere I read that to love another person, to invite them into your life means almost certain disappointment. What we grieve when we lose someone is not the loss of that person’s love. No, it’s much more complicated. We grieve a future with them, the community we built with them around. We lose a friend, a node of empathy, a form of trust. I wonder sometimes what else is contained in that grief. What new forms of sorrow germinate under its black cloak?

I am rambling now, telling you more than I need. I will see you again, somewhere, sometime.

To: ▇▇

Are you serious right now?What was that email?Can you pick up your phone?Read 2:55 PM

To: ▇▇From: ▇▇Subject: Re: A Note

▇▇, it’s been months and you haven’t responded. I don’t know what to make of that or where to go from here.

Sometimes I’m paranoid, thinking I see you around every corner. Sulking in a grocery store, drinking at a bar, riding your bike downtown with ▇▇. Each time I look though you’re gone. Poof, vanished.

I wish you had just let me leave. I wish it was something we could have entered into mutually. Not this weird thing…whatever this is. Now I spiral on long walks through my neighborhood. I look up apartments in Portland or New York or Miami—anywhere to escape the thought that you could be here, five blocks over, living.

Once, we argued after a movie. I wanted so badly for someone to see me, to listen to me. I wanted someone to tell me that they respected my thoughts and my ideas, that they thought about the articles I sent them, about the things I said, the stories I wrote. I was desperate for you to look at me like you looked at them. You admired their spirit, their mind, their sense of self, their righteousness, or their inherent coolness. There was always something you wanted from each of them.5

But, what did you admire about me? What did you ever think of me? What did you want from me? Could you just tell me that, please?

▇▇, leaving someone is not such a bad crime. Falling out of love isn’t a crime at all. To vanish just feels so…fucked.

Best,▇▇

P.S. | At least, at the very least, you could pay me back for the plane tickets.

▇▇ | 11:04 AM

Chase | Zelle(R): ▇▇ sent you $318.35 & it’s ready now. Reply STOP to cancel these texts.