My Little Notebook

I can't be bothered with a subtitle right now

I’ve been trying to write this for two weeks. You know how when you’re just not feeling your best and you know specific things you can do to feel better and you don’t do them? Yeah I’m like that. I have no excuse other than I just haven’t written because I’ve been feeling down, it’s not all I’ve been feeling but, yeah.

I write for myself everyday, but I just couldn’t post, probably because it’s what I should’ve been doing. I do this thing where when something isn’t going my way I highly romanticize something else like that’s like it, but also different. For example, I’m having a challenging time trying to figure out how to live in Brooklyn/NYC so naturally I’m thinking if I went to LA my life would be so much easier, it wouldn’t. I’m also romanticizing every other major city in the tri-state area, convinced that my life would be so splendid right now if I was in Philly or Baltimore, and I know that it wouldn’t but I have to do this, it’s who I am.

My mom asked me tonight if the Big Apple is treating me well and I bluntly said no. It’s soggy, moldy and has worms in it. It hasn’t been completely terrible thanks to friends near and far checking up on me. I finally found a job after a couple weeks only to realize that my spirit was rejecting it badly. I left with little notice which I feel bad for but also I don’t. I started a new job and today was my first training. As embarrassing as it is to be the new person at work I’m so thankful for it because it it’s been incredibly fucking hard finding a job. I’ll need income soon and I’ve been beside myself with worry with the thought of not being able to pay for my basic needs. It gives me a sense and feeling of motion in my life to start working again. I don’t mind being uncomfortable for a bit if I’m doing something to change the circumstances.

After being here for a few days I went to my hometown in Delaware. I took the Chinatown bus from the Lower East Side just like I’ve done so many times, weird taking it from here to there and back and not the other way around. It had been almost two years since I’d been home. I lived in Austin for over 12 years and I didn’t really frequent home as much as other Austin transplants that I knew. My mom wasn’t going to bankroll my flights home and I didn’t want to pay $300+ to NOT go on vacation. So now I can just pay $60 round trip and visit and come back in the same day.

Me and my mom aren’t besties but I could tell she was happy I was home and we just hung out at the apt. I never feel hungry there which is nice, she always has the pantry stocked with my favorite snacks. We even had a nice moment looking through a lot of her old photos from back in the day. They’re honestly stunning and belong in a 70’s black culture photo archive museum or something.

Among the photo albums and organized clutter behind the couch and in the corners in the apt are some of my things that I brought to my hometown. Back in 2022 I drove my car from Austin, TX to Wilmington, DE because I thought I was moving to NYC then, but instead I just spent a heinous summer in my hometown and bought a one-way ticket to Peru, but that’s another story. Since then my mom has had a lot of my crap in her apt. I haven’t seen any of it in awhile. It’s the most random of stuff but it’s my stuff and I deeply miss my stuff and I cannot fucking wait to have ALL my stuff with me again one day, a dream.

The first little box I went through was a box full of my old journals dating from 2013-2021. I’m a severely nostalgic person and I often get in moods to read old journal entries. I get a kick out of myself. I read this quote recently about reading your old journal entries, “I know her, but she doesn’t know me.” Like wow right?! The first journal I picked up had Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” on the cover. I usually put whatever year it is on the inside of the front cover but I didn’t with this one. I started reading to see when it was from. February 2013, the first month I moved to Austin. The things I wrote were so eerily similar to how I feel now. Very much wtf-am-I-doing-with-my-life entries, very that.

The best thing I found in that box was this small little notebook. I have such a ridiculous memory I could vividly see the gift shop I bought it from in Barcelona. It’s a small, almost pocket sized notebook that had pictures of the tiles from Park Guell on it. I had a full size journal at the time, but I bought this little notebook cause it’s cute and I love a gift shop. I bought this book after two days of the best rendezvous I still have ever had. I wrote about it, like to read it here it goes.

After two days of ducking into dark alleyways making out with a grungey guy from Argentina I was completely crashing out because he ditched me on my last full day. I was the saddest girl in Spain July of 2017. I would walk past a cute bench meant for two people and almost be in tears. What about the night at the beach looking at the moon? The patatas bravas we ate, huh??!! All of this while I had a boyfriend back home but that’s not the point. I naturally wrote down my sad girl grievances in this little notebook. It was small enough to take with me everywhere. The convenience of writing down your feelings as your feeling them. I don’t think I had opened it since that time and wow. It is kind of cringy of course, but I love that I express myself this way. I love that I basically have an alibi since I was 11 years old because that’s how long I’ve been writing in a journal.

Reading who I was, how I felt, where I was, it’s a mind fuck but like a good one, mostly. Embarrassed at how stupid I was, sad about certain situations but overall thrilled at the experiences and happy I wrote them down. Reading that little notebook made me buy one recently. I got it from the grocery store near me, not a cute gift shop in Spain unfortunately but it’ll do. This is one of those times in my life, like in July of 2017 where I need a little notebook on me at all times because wtf-am-I-doing-with-my-fucking-life is the general feeling as soon as the sun rises, not that I can see much of the sunrise because I’m basically a troll living in a basement in Bushwick, but yeahhhhh.

One day I won’t live here in this basement anymore. I’ll hopefully be in a more comfortable spot in many ways. Maybe I’ll be on my Diane Keaton shit living in Rhode Island, I don’t think she lives there but doesn’t it seem like she should? I could be in Vietnam doing the Ha Giang Loop or hiking Patagonia. I’m literally capable of anything and everything ya know. It doesn’t matter because I’ll have my little notebook from the time I first moved to Brooklyn and wrote down random shit while I was at the park or at the cafe. I’ll have a record in real time of how I felt, not just the end of the day summary like in my main journal that I don’t carry around.

My little notebook is admittedly quite depressing now. I’ve written lists of things I want, things I need, and things I should do. Self deprecating thoughts, just trying to be honest with myself no matter how stupid and emo I sound. One day I’ll find this little notebook in a box somewhere and I’ll sit down and start reading it. Maybe I’ll have a cup of oolong tea in a cute mug and I’ll sit and flip through it. I hope I get a kick out of myself like I usually do and idk I guess my main hope is that I feel proud of myself for trying and who the fuck knows, MAYBE something about all of this will make some sort of sense, but it’s all for the experience anyway.

so there.