2024: Oops All 'Some Things' #2
reflecting on 2024
two hyperfixations in 1 week? an annoyance or an embarrassment of riches???? who’s to say.
preamble: getting my groove back
Lost the race against the clock, so I am gauchely sending thoughts on the past year during the new year. but whatever. there’s no bad time for retrospection!
I’m beginning to reach a point where who I am at the beginning of the year and who I am at the end of the year does not feel so markedly different. That’s not to say my life has not transformed over the course of the year: I traveled (including visiting my wonderful friend Michelle in London), went on a non-zero number of dates (if you know how little I want to spend time with men you’ll know this is huge), moved out of my parents’ house to a neighborhood I adore next to many of my dearest friends. I got addicted and unaddicted to Maltesers. I did NOT crash my car (two fewer car crashes than in 2023)!
I ran 650 miles, spent my days and evenings enjoying the lovely spoils of this city with my stunning and hilarious friends. I had a debilitating crush and spent billions of dollars on Uniqlo simple basics. I played and ate and danced and sang and laughed — laughed so much! The year of laughing. The year of IJBOL.
I watched the moon eclipse the sun under the shadow of an asylum-turned-hotel in Buffalo. Spent days sitting in the uneclipsed sun, basking in its sharp heat before it inevitably kills us. Watched my friends produce amazing work, become doctors (of different types), fall in love, get married, help the world, fight for justice. My research is going really well; I’m feeling more and more like an expert and a real scholar, and I love my colleagues. I wrote 18 newsletters for you, which is pretty good considering how much busier I’ve become now that I’m not depressed :)
Not all fun and games, of course: I did cry on the metro escalator after a teenager told me to get my ass out of her face and that I stank. (To be so fair I did stink; I had just come back from a run. But my ass was nowhere near her face.) Still, I am bragging when I say these days I feel very much at ease, even when there is loss and grief. So much at ease that the ease is eating its own tail: I am starting to fear I’m overdue for a horrible, life-altering disaster. But worrying about that does me no good.
I am thinking of my life these days like a body of water, maybe. Maybe a river, an ecosystem of constant flow that still appears unchanged. But things are of course changing. Not to get all cliche and Buddhist about it, but the water is obviously changing the shape of the rocks which are in turn changing the shape of the water. I’m noticing increasingly that my life is feeling more stable than it was before, measured less so in intense changes, losses, and accomplishments. More so, now, in the days and moments. I don’t think this is any better or worse. It’s maybe less narratively interesting, but being a story or main character is not the point of being alive :)
Okay. ‘Some things’ for the year below :) Btw my friend Dori
shares a weekly tarot card & astrology forecast (and essays on occasion!) — For the new year, she shared some journaling prompts that I thought would offer some nice structure to an annual reflection. I wanted to share them here below, to prompt your own thinking:Can you recognize something from the recent past that felt like a failure in the moment, but now you might see differently? What did you learn from this perceived failure?
What longer term goal(s) do you want to set for yourself this year? (something that cannot be immediately accomplished)
How can you demonstrate continual dedication toward yourself that does not feel like suffering? What constitutes that line between dedicated action and suffering for you personally?
What is the most far fetched dream you have for yourself? What's one step you can take this month to get closer to accomplishing it?
without further ado…
some [of my favorite] things [last year]
Movies
I think my favorite movie of 2024 was Sing Sing, but maybe just because it was a bit of a tear-jerker
Honorable mentions of course to the fan-favorite Challengers, and Julio Torres’s obsessively surreal Problemista.
Since I saw it over the summer, I haven’t been able to stop referencing Twisters, which I thought was an amazing movie in terms of ‘being a movie.’ I’m loving the return of big blockbusters, a space that felt completely suffocated for years by the Marvel universe, and then by the pandemic. Thanks Barbenheimer for bringing us back.
Books
I am a slow reader; every year I set my reading goal to 12 books, which I think is all I can muster. I talked to you about most of them in this newsletter, but:
My favorite book of the year was Intermezzo. At the end of the day I’m just like every other bitch aren’t I..
I also read some books that perhaps didn’t warm me up in the same way but that I did find thought provoking and/or aggravating (in a good way):
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. There is a twist in this book that I found extraordinarily groan-inducing, but Akbar is a real master. I’m also biased, because I found his approach to writing about identity and Iranian-ness to be refreshing. He manages to touch on the truth and frustration of otherness without verging into the trite diaspora poetry of it all. Brilliant. Shoutout Iran Fr.
All Fours, by Miranda July. I found the narrator to be frustratingly “of a particular type” (it was kinda like white, short bangs, brooklynite — though not actually in bk — artist type that I found annoying) but I found the text itself so gripping. Now that I’ve finished it I’ve really enjoyed some interviews that July did, including a recent one on Fresh Air and one with Esther Perel (this one is worse imo).
A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan. I read this book when I was 17 and declared it one of my favorite books ever. I decided to reread it this year because a friend loaned me her copy of The Candy House, and I felt I needed to reread Goon Squad before getting to the sequel-of-sorts. It’s just so fucking good. Jennifer Egan was also on the NYT “The Interview” podcast talking about the book, but I think that might be paygated now.
Podcasts
Like I said before, I ran 650 miles this year. At ~ 11 minutes a mile, that’s roughly 119 hours of running. I can only listen to so much music before I get bored beyond belief. Sometimes you need a podcast at 1.25x speed.
I am going to recommend The Headgum Podcast again, even though it’s a futile endeavor. I don’t even know what a good starter episode is for this god foresaken piece of shit podcast that I love. But my favorite episode of any podcast by far was the special 200th episode of The Headgum Podcast: “200: The Overlapping Dialogue Special.” I listened to this during a long drive back from Ithaca and guffawed/cackled/etc the whole time. I hope this podcast never ends.
Podcasts I’ve been listening to regularly that I’ve been really enjoying:
Served with Andy Roddick. A tennis podcast that’s well-produced. Kind of rare.
Haley Nahman’s Maybe Baby podcast, especially the “Dear Danny” advice episodes. Sorry, these are for paying subscribers only! :* So pay up
Exploration: LIVE! with Natalie Rotter-Laitman and Charlie Bardey. These two are so effortlessly funny and they accompanied me on many runs. I feel like they are basically sociologists — like these podcasts are half of what my meetings with my advisor sound like.
One-off episodes/series I loved:
“The Narrator,” an episode of This American Life about life in Gaza told through conversations with an 8-year-old girl named Banias. There’s a moment in it that just broke my heart — but reminded me of the tenacity and resillience of children, and how we have to do so much better for them.
“Trillion Dollar Shot,” a 4-episode series of The Journal (by the WSJ) about Ozempic, how it was developed, and how it’s been impacting the lives of its users. Episodes linked in order here: Ep 1, ep 2, ep 3, ep 4.
TV
Literally nothing here except Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, especially season 4. But nobody wants to hear about that again. Let’s keep it moving.
Music + Concerts
This was the year of Waxahatchee & MJ Lenderman for me. I was lucky enough to see them both in concert: Waxahatchee twice (in Richmond and at Wolf Trap) and MJ Lenderman once, front row at 9:30 club, next to a sea of white men. In line for the show, a college-age guy wearing dr martens & socks that said “I <3 Jesus” was sitting crosslegged on the sidewalk swiping furiously on Tinder. The vibes were incredible. Best show I’ve been to in a while, maybe in years..? Second place went to the Nova Twins pop-up show at Songbyrd where I “moshed” for the first time in my life.
I went to more concerts this year than any year, I think. List is in the footnotes for the real heads.1
Theater
Ok I saw 2 things live this year. But they were both incredible. One, The Picture of Dorian Gray on the West End, starring Sarah Snook. Shoutout Michelle for this GOATed suggestion. Secondly, my friend Sid’s play, Thatha’s Play, live at Philly Fringe :) Sid’s play reminded me a lot of Martyr! — taking on second-gen angst in a way that doesn’t feel trite or forced, but honest and self-aware.
Misc.
Last year I said goodbye to the air fryer. And I said HELLO to using the oven, in a big way. Huge shoutout to the oven, gotta be one of my favorite appliances. These days I’m making a lot of sheet pan dinners, and the oven has really been killing it for me. I love sticking some shit in there and coming back in like 25 minutes and having a delicious hot meal.
I love Uniqlo. But i maybe need to stop .. . . . . .
I also have loved watching Instagram Reels. Something so amazingly campy about them that TikToks nowadays simply lack. Good time for TikTok to get banned, I guess.
I watched so much live tennis and soccer this year (including a last-minute decision to go see Messi/Argentina play at FedEx field) that I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Living in a city where these kinds of events are so accessible and create so much community (especially in the case of women’s soccer!) what’s not to freaking love !!!
Lastly, my resolutions:
Last year, my resolutions were simple. (1) Get more hoes/money, (2) take more risks, (3) take my work seriously. I think I accomplished (1) and (3) successfully. And how do you even measure (2) anyway?? Hard to say. Maybe we carry that as an intention into 2025, but not necessarily a resolution.
This year my resolutions are more detailed:
Even more money and more hoes. (i.e. graduate and get a job, go on more d*tes :-/)
Juggle a soccer ball 10+ times. I just really need to do this more than I’ve honestly needed to do anything ever. I think it’ll help with my ball control in matches too.
Start wearing contacts more than glasses bc I hate wearing glasses soooo bad
Fix my toenails which have been obliterated after the marathon :( This is not a resolution so much as something I am looking forward to happening as I grow out my dead toenails.
An actually extremely hard one (for me) which is to submit (and hopefully publish…) at least 1 story or essay to a publication, reputable or otherwise, lol. If writing this newsletter was to develop a regular writing practice, then it’s time to put that practice into, well, practice. I’m putting this here so you can shame me if I don’t :)
THAT’S ALL!
Happy new year, guys. I can’t believe I’ve been doing this shit for like four years, and that you guys have been reading along. It’s really such a joy to be here with you, to borrow some of your attention for a little bit in this oddball world.
Lots of love, and even more!!!
Pegah <3
Briston Maroney, my boy Brendan Abernathy + Dylan Owen, Tinashe, Priya Ragu, Waxa x2, Pallett, Nova Twins (it smelled crazy in there btw), Carly Rae Jepsen at Nats Park, Sara Bareilles with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, MJ Lenderman, and Slow Pulp (a show that was 1 hour long with no encore. cmon guys)
has it really been four years of Substack !??!?