8/30

went to s's show on friday and i got to hang out with other s and l and that was rlly good. i want to get closer with l, we had a really good talk. and then i remember hes not following me back on instagram even tho we play dnd together and i get like :/. but this is something ill get over eventually

also went kayaking with c, h, and d yesterday and it was so fun but i got sunburnt :/ even tho i applied sunscreen twice. i need to stop getting the spray kind, like it never works. i felt awkward yesterday but i also had a lot of fun. c h and d are sooo nice and accepting and i know in my heart it's not weird, like they invited me for a reason and they don't suddenly not like me. and h even said on like hour 6 that this is a fun group and im like !!! i need to listen to her! im very bad about internalizing that tho, like i worry that'll always be with me. i was also considering bailing on the kayaking bc i was like it's 3 hours away and we had to meet up at d's at 8am and my 10am start times for therapy have made me rlly soft about waking up early. i used to wake up at like 5:30am when i was a barista and be fine with it like girl grow up. but i was like no so many ppl have already bailed, and i don't cancel plans anymore unless i *actually* need to. and im glad i went. i keep on learning this lesson dude

8/26

had a super weird dream a couple nights ago about someone whos no longer in my life and woke up feeling like i lived three real weeks. i feel like this upcoming sturgeon moon or whatever is making me crazyyy. i actually hate full moons so much.

8/21 2

we had 13 ppl which was perfect btw. genuinely the hardest part of hosting is that im around everything after the fact. i look at all the red solo cups that ppl sharpied their names on and the name tags ppl stuck on our fridge and girl i start to cry. like literally love is all around. #pisces

8/21

every time i host im always like there will either be one hundred people at my house or one. and every time someone says they can come im like well great :/ one hundred people at my house. and whenever someone says they cant come im like well great :/ only one people at my house. and then every time it's like, 7 to 15 people which is perf. for my event this weekend i think we have 8 for sure confirmed besides me and s which is a good number. but im like what if 92 more show up. what about the fire code

also i grew out my hair for my sister's wedding with the intent to chop but im attached to my long hair now even tho it's overstimulating. hmm

8/16

listening to sk8r boi. i feel like he and the other girl were not a good fit and she maybe had some maturing to do

8/14

phoebe bridgers gaunt as hell and boring on her new album. girl no wonder you can't write you're starvinggg

8/12

every two months i look into silent retreats and find a great one and it's One Thousand Dollars. maybe i just need to book a cabin with friends and be like NO TALKING!!! but i feel weird suggesting that. like haha im so bored lets all shut the fuck up...

genuinely i think this would be great for me tho because i struggle with not filling silences. i have a lot of "lets get coffee" friends but not a lot of "let's watch a movie/parallel play" friends and this feels like the epitome of that

7/24

i feel like i have the perfect weekend plan. seeing friends at a bar pop up thing tonight and then going to an event after that and then tomorrow i have a chill morning and then botc in the afternoon. and nothing on sunday. besides the fact that i have to work late-ish tonight it's rlly hitting my ideal for the right amount of stuff. i have a bad habit of either jam-packing a weekend or having absolutely nothing and it feels good to have #balance. the only issue is that the thing after the bar pop-up is a white lie t shirt party and i have no idea what to do for that. i think "space alien" would be funny. or "evil." maybe "evil space alien." im overthinking

7/22

obsessed with going to the comments of heartbeat and sorting by "new"

honorable mention

7/10

slowly learning that hypothyroidism is connected to every weird health problem ive had over the past 3ish years. and not even like "stomach and head hurt." like my fingertips tingling that i was certain was neuropathy? scratchy throat and hoarse voice every day for no reason? the weird grouchiness i started getting that i thought was just being an adult? irregular periods? dry and gravely-feeling eyes but theyre also so incredibly watery(which i learned is just having dry eyes. like dry eyes make you tear up a lot; the tears just cant lubricate your eyes right. im NOT just a weepy pisces). even earwax. was talking to H at mokabes about this and she was like, youre living out everyone's fantasy of finding out that there's Something Wrong and i just need to take a pill and it will be all better. hopefully it will be all better tho....bald soon also. #bald

7/9

made a gyno appointment. they told me over the phone "we will not do a pap smear the first time you come." ok. go there. they tell me they're doing a pap smear today. ok. mid pap smear the gyno mentions her girlfriend. i think "cool shes gay. makes sense, she also has short nails." then she mentions her husband. i think, "poly?" look at her shirt. peplum. she is not poly; shes just referring to her female friend as her girlfriend. she is now inside me. i realize why she has short nails. they ask if i want blood work done. i say sure. next day check my phone. new medication is available at walgreens. check description. it's for thyroid issues or cancer. thats fine. call them up and they say i have hypothyroidism and/or maybe hashimotos. hypothyroidism maybe causes hair loss. the medication? also maybe causes hair loss. awesome. gyno tells me i will probably not be bald or lose any hair. they tell me that if i dont take it my heart and ovaries will explode "but i dont have to." tf? bald arc incoming

7/4

in the process of inventing Survivor Love Island

Survivor Love Island

stage 1: two tribes. the tribes compete against each other for tribal immunity. as this is happening, they do a love island-style coupling up. voting within each tribe works half of the time like love island, where it could be a couple going home, sending home someone who ended up single, etc. the other half of the time it's a survivor vote-out, meaning one individual is voted out by the others in their tribe. in this stage, bombshells are being sprinkled in. *i think the advantage of having fewer opportunities to be voted out if you come in later/being more interesting and shiny romantically because youre new is countered with the power of day-1 alliances from survivor lol* they compete with each other in challenges and otherwise the tribes dont see each other like regular survivor (developing crushes on the other tribe's members maybe?????)

stage 2: tribe scramble/casa amour. bombshells stop. guys from tribe A go be on a tribe with the girls from tribe B, and vice versa. Otherwise, the game continues like stage 1

stage 3: merge

just like survivor, these players will be on the final tribal council. survivors/islanders are now competing for individual immunity, though they sometimes still do get voted out based on audience voting-- immunity also protects you from that. (to make it interesting, there would also be the thing *that happens on regular survivor!!!!* where a man and woman both win immunity, and in this game, there's the incentive for both members of your couple to win. or maybe not if you don't like your couple...) there are recouplings throughout this stage.

stage 4: as people are voted out--both love island-style and survivor-style -- the numbers whittle down enough that there's a final recoupling. they aren't told it's the final recoupling until right after it happens. this is also the group of couples that fans will vote on to win the love island side of this, the 100k, regardless of any future vote-outs (if both members of a couple get voted out after the final recoupling, the audience can still vote for them to win the 100k). after the final recoupling, each player privately makes the decision to play as a couple or play as an individual. individuals and couples continue to be voted out, both by the audience love island-style and by the players survivor-style, with individual immunity from challenges still in play like regular survivor.

stage 5: final 3

if it gets down to one couple and one individual in the final 3, the people who make it to the merge (stage 3) are either voting for the couple as a unit or the individual, so 2 options. if the couple wins, their prize money becomes a prisoners dilemma situation:

-if they both said they wanted to play as individuals after the recoupling at stage 4, they get half a million each and are both winners

-if they both chose to play as a couple, they get 2 million between them

-if one person says they want to play as an individual and other wants to play as a couple, the individual gets a million and the one that wants to stay gets, like, the minimum payment for being on TV.

if the game gets down to everyone in the final 3 being from a different final couple, they are each playing for a normal million-- jury votes for them like regular survivor.

and outside of all of the other $, another 100k is possible to be won by any of the couples after the final recoupling in stage 4, if the couple is chosen to win by audience voters.

stage 5.5: after all of this happens, at the final episode it's filmed like the final episode of survivor crossed with a love island reunion, in that we find out whether each couple chose to vote as an individual or as a couple as they get voted out.

reasons why i think this is cool

-you're choosing who to couple up with based on their attractiveness and their strength and skill in challenges, which makes coupling up about your deep respect for the other person's intelligence and strength as well as you being attracted to them

-the WORST part of survivor is the fact that the conversations have no substance. this is all about substance babey

-i like the idea of taking the inherent-individual-win component of survivor out with the whole "playing as a couple or individual" thing. making it so that it *could* be all selfish/for the money or it *could* be that you actually want to be in a couple/continue with your person outside of the show is a really interesting choice to me

-i really liked the "showmance" & manipulative woman era of survivor, and now the good survivor players avoid them because theyre bad strategy. i want more parvati's.

-in that same line of thinking, i think survivor and love island fans have direct opposite values, and it's cool to introduce the idea of making them more balanced. like love island fans *only* care about you being genuine and they do not like people who strategize, and survivor is obv the opposite. (there's also a botc/mafia element of having the opportunity to reveal if you were in it for the Right Reasons at the end)

-i actually think that, say, two boys would couple up to save each other on this show (which is always technically allowed on love island!) and the idea of this season's, say, Zac and Bryce having to couple up to save each other as friends (whether it's truly to for that or there's some homoeroticism) would crack the door enough to introduce some out-of-the-closet LGBTQ+ ppl into love island <3

7/2

having a hard day as a therapist in your 20s is like im good i just need to sit in a dark room with my head in my hands for 45 minutes but then im down to go shake ass at the club

6/29

busy (by my standards) weekend. a few different friend hangs, nate's parents in town, and hosting blood on the clocktower on saturday. sunday could not have been more chill, but friday and saturday were such a blur

have been thinking a lot about my hosting/social anxiety being almost completely gone. spencer and i were co-storytellers for botc (shout out to the couple of flounderers who went!). that meant that we were both doing a lot of speaking and technical explaining in front of a lot of ppl, about half of whom were strangers to me. and that, in my apartment, with short notice (we relocated out of the park because of the rain) would've sent me in full panic mode just a couple years ago. the fact that im so passionate and nerded out about botc helps a lot too lol shout out to nate for listening to my insane ramblings about the potential of an amnesiac lycanthrope

i remember when i moved into my apartment off of kingshighway i was like "i want this to be a hosting space" and it didn't rlly happen. and our new apartment is turning into that. it really helps that everyone was super nice and polite also. our bedroom was a total mess and i told everyone to stay out of it and there were no questions asked which was cool. (this contrasted with me asking my partner's mom to not go in our messy bedroom and her being like "oh it's just me!" and insisting on it...girl. why do you want to look at my bras on the floor so bad)

tonight im going to the gooseberries farm to table thing and im so excited. nothing bad will happen with this insane full moon and mercury retrograde. it will be #normal

6/26

new phoebe single. ohhh girl they could never make me form an opinion about u. it does feel like all her previous projects in a blender. and im like oh hints of stranger in the alps yayy...lil bit of better oblivion yumm...ew the record is in here...etc. (i do NOT like boygenius and not even because their fans are annoying as fuq. and im blaming boygenius for the fact that this sounds lowkey like worship music)

it seems like she's moving away from having elliot smith as one of her inspirations in writing lyrics which is devastating to all. lost boys would be a banger if it doubled down on that, or on leaning away from it and more towards her sound from punisher. i want to say "rock" but that feels like the one taylor swift quote where shes like "reputation is a punk hardcore emo scene album for insane deliquents" or whatever lol. ok anthony fantano signing off. (if anyone has that screenshot of someone tearing him apart for his rating of fetch the bolt cutters pls send it to me btw)

found it

6/25

pineapple rain in stl city <3

6/12

have been thinking a lot about a conversation i had with an artist client about how ceramics and live music are both art forms where the art *has* to be finished at a certain point, like you can't go back and touch up a mug or something once it's gone in the kiln, and once music is played to an audience then that's it. it's been making me feel weird about the fact that poetry and acrylic painting are my favorite modes of creative expression, like oh is it that obvious that im a raging perfectionist to compensate for the fact that i take long breaks from my work and am actually not that skilled... but there's also something freeing about the fact that i can slightly fuck up a painting or poem and come back to it and make it better. one painting or poem can truly match your vision if you keep going back and fucking with it.

also i went back on twitter for the first time in like a year and saw that my sister tweeted something along the lines of "'that's not true gentle parenting' is starting to sound a lot like 'real communism has never been tried'" and she's so hilarious for that

5/28

finally finished famesick. it kept making me sad so i had to keep stopping but it was good. she is a very gifted writer. her portrayal of her husband was one of the most interesting things about the book to me. it's very sparse compared to the commentary about the rest of her romantic partners. when things are good, there's less to write about, i suppose.

the final third was a lot more compelling to me than the first 2/3rds. i think she measured the quality of the writing and her maturity to the ages she was writing about, which is a genius thing to do if you know people are going to read the whole thing. or maybe that's naturally what happens when you're writing about things that happened from years ago (there are some IFS-compatible ideas in that theory). her growth comes through really organically. im sure ill have more to say about it in a couple days when ive digested it more but im glad i read it

5/23

very very soppy (and slightly drunk) rant incoming

wow my sister's wedding was so beautiful and i loved it so much. i was the maid of honor and during the ceremony i kept looking over at the groom making puppydog eyes at my sister, seeing tears well up in his eyes as she walked down the aisle, so obviously head over heels in love in a way that you can't perform, that i had to keep looking away because i had a reading and didn't want to get choked up. (nate was like "i saw your lip shaking a little but it was sweet" lol) afterward the groom was like "you kept looking away from me" and i was like yeah dude i didn't want to cry!! and we hugged. i was so nervous about reading my sonnet at the ceremony and doing the speech at the reception and the flowers getting lost and nate having to book it to walmart to get baby's breath and the other groomsmen having to cobble flowers together, that it didn't really sink in that this was my sister's wedding and she looked so beautiful and is so in love. and at the reception i kept seeing the women on my mom's side of the family out of the corner of my eye and confusing them for each other, not in a dementia way but in a "wow we look similar and are so bonded by our love" way. i broke down in tears hardcore and hugged nate after people started leaving, and my aunt was like "hold that pose!!!" when she saw us hugging, and as soon as she saw that I was crying she burst into tears too. and my mom's cousin came over and pinched me and was like "im gonna pinch you until you stop crying!!" and it was so crazy that i stopped lol. nate told me after that the groom saw and was like "what happened is she okay?!?!" lol i cried more than my sister. and let the record show that i was 100x more pressed about the flowers than her, she did not give a fuck. my pisces ass. everyone came up to me and said they loved my speech and said i didnt seem nervous at all and they were probably lying but idc. and i love by new brother in law even if he makes my sister a tradwife a little. he is kind and good and brings out a sunniness in her that reminds me of when we were kids. and im proud to be his new family. ok pack it up

5/20

i remember flounder roughly once a month these days lol

new apartment is incredible, i keep expecting there to be something majorly wrong with it for it to be this cheap but it hasn't happened yet. also got enough clients to quit urban matter which rocks. im just not a retail guy i think, too much unstructured time. i liked my coworkers for the most part but they were super chatty. which i love but it's also a lot for a 7 hour shift. usually during shifts i would do a task, like cleaning the kitchen or something, when my social battery was hitting a low and one coworker went "you like to do a lot of tasks, why is that?" and i was like "haha i just like being productive!" lol. happy that my days consist of talking to clients and friends and my bf. ive been going to pole dancing classes too, which is very far out of my comfort zone and staggeringly unsexy on me atp but we’ll get there! i love my hobbies i love going to dnd with my friends i love my community. <3 i love my work and i feel like most of my impostor syndrome has faded too. something they tell you in grad school (at least at mine) is that you will always have impostor syndrome. i told my boss that and she was like “what the fuck? no you won’t.”

finally got to the end of the hold list on lena dunham's memoir and im like 2/3rds of the way through it. will update with my full thoughts because she’s someone i (along with everyone else) have a lot of conflicting feelings about, and that's something she talks about. she seems to not know why that is. i watched an interview with her and she was like “i have literally always been perceived as annoying” which made me a little sad. and it takes strength to stay in the public eye after all the abuse she’s endured, privately and publicly. i also definitely think her parents were abusive if what she's written is correct, which she doesn’t seem to think is true. idk at one point she says something along the lines of “it’s hard for me to communicate my feelings even though that’s my job” and i think that’s possibly why she’s so polarizing– she can tap into a feeling without always understanding/communicating the logic behind it. and that’s a dangerous area. and it’s also why the lord was lowkey speaking through her when she wrote girls. overall i think her book is a little “woe is me,” which, to be fair, woe is her a little.

speaking of woe is me, my sister is getting married in like 4 days and it’s kind of a lot. i told my mom that i was feeling bad about wanting it to be done with and she was like “no, your sister is saying the same thing” lol weddings are just exhausting. my mom and i are getting manicures and making bouquets and centerpieces together tomorrow. it's all very Girl. and im probably nonbinary but im the maid of honor so i don't have time for that right now. june will be peaceful-- no moving, no wedding, warm weather. ive been feeling so much more levelheaded at this apartment, though, even though this month is crazy. i have a conspiracy theory that my old apartment had lead paint (or just desperately needed to be sage'd).

lastly i desperately need to get offline because so much online speak is so annoying. stop saying that things are "biblically accurate"

4/13/2026

last update for a bit. i think one of the reasons why i love posting on flounder and letterboxd so much is that it's kind of the intellectual equivalent of hoarding. there is a part of me that's hardcore a hoarder (not literally, but thats kind of how i think of her) and the rest of me sometimes has to talk her down, and it's important to remember that some things and thoughts get to pass by without being recorded and shared and treasured. i tend to have a very firm grip on what's around me-- less in the "get a grip!" context and more in the "im not willing to let things go" way. this verges on what my bf calls "minmaxxing," a focus on how to make your experience as good as possible and it taking you out of the moment. and that's the logical outcome of feeling like you *need* to have a good time. and that's control freak-y at its core.

4/9/2026

feeling like at my last update i was seeing the start of a lot of big life changes, and now theyre implementing themselves in a lovely way. got a really beautiful apartment in shaw with lots more space that we’re moving in to in may, and it's just barely more than the cost of our current apartment. we'll be across the street from tgp (almost) and down the street from an ice cream parlor, which is a big step up from our current view of the t-mobile store lol (no shade to t-mobile lovers but that sign is so fucking bright in the middle of the night, like it shines through our blinds). our current apartment is associated with so much stress, too, like even though we're not rlly that stressed anymore, it'll be nice to fully start a new chapter. this part has felt effortless, like for months i was desperately touring apartments that weren’t enough space, or were a little too expensive, or were perfect but it was way too early to move, because i was scared of having to move back in with my parents or signing a lease for a place i didn’t like. and the right one popped up at the right time. i was holding that fear too closely, and that’s something i want to learn from.

ive been talking to friends about having a housewarming party, and i think that’ll be a good way to break the ice of a new place-- i get a lot of stress about inviting people to my house because historically i haven't lived in the nicest places. and unkind people tend to be bitchy about where you live in my experience. and im excited to live in a place i truly like and to also trust the people in my life to be decent and not tear me down about it if theyre not as in love with it as i am

to conclude for the day: when i was looking for apartments in the city, my dad was like “you guys are gonna get shot” (regardless of the fact that i work at two different places on grand currently) and was very pessimistic about the whole thing. but when he saw the place we’re moving in to, he agreed that it was beautiful and actually kinda respected it. and that was a cool development i wasn’t expecting, and i think 15 year old me would be really happy about that. ive also been thinking about the movie “sorry baby” in that context. i think it’s hard not to get emotional when thinking about your younger self, everything that they’ll have to go through, and all the beauty on the other side of that pain. ohhh maybe that’s why i wanted this entry in the time capsule. this is why i love monologuing

3/11/2026

has it been a year since i posted on here? i think it might be. it might actually be closer to 10 months but that's basically a year

im still figuring out what my relationship to flounder is. it kind of morphed from acquaintance to bestie to someone from your high school who you heard got married. i will be honest, it was really hard to break the habit of checking it one million times a day. now i feel like she (flounder) (flounder is feminine) can be someone i check in with occasionally, like we can grab dinner sometimes. i think i might do yearly check-ins and try to make them mostly for myself. allowing myself the grace to delete this if i feel like that's right, too. is posting on flounder healthy for me right now? idk. have been thinking a lot about "healthy" vs "unhealthy" and how it's easy to put things in those boxes, but what we really need is balance(corny ass statement). more on that in a sec

im starting to see the value of not panopticon-ing myself. when i was posting on flounder all the time it felt like how i imagine it felt to use facebook when it first came out, or like the episode in the IT crowd where they first got social media. like, im being social by myself, this is crazy! and it's cool to connect with people on here, and there are lots of people on here who i think of fondly, even in my mostly post-flounder era. but you can't actually be social when youre by yourself. it short-circuits. i struggle with that boundary, of talking to yourself but also simultaneously talking to a bunch of ppl. so i don't post on instagram that much, got rid of my twitter, and im not really on here. the only social media i really consistently post on is letterboxd and that's entirely for myself. if you want to read my 5 paragraph reviews, that's on you

i told myself i would make this update "short" (with heavy air quotes) because im prone to putting my life story on the internet and that's not a good habit. so speed updates are that im working a counseling job that i love, like i feel like im in the top 1% of people ever when it comes to career satisfaction, but private practice takes one million years to become a full-time job and i fucking hate marketing myself so im working at ***** ****** in the meantime which is like. fine. i also put a hard ban on canceling plans unless i *actually* need to which has been life changing-- realizing i was too lax about that for a long time and it was a barrier to getting closer to my lovely friends. im still trapped in my lease after the landlord saga that happened in october, but that's ending in like 2 months and it can't come soon enough because i want to move to shaw so bad. rip the security deposit though, was basically told we could sue them for it and that's it. might throw a house-cooling party in may, like come rip the bong inside because there's no way im getting my deposit back. but i might actually get sued by the new owner and someone would probably light the bathroom on fire. so probably not