hi

3 moons have passed. 3 moons have passed!

(i always liked that joke from new girl)

When things are going poorly, I list out everything going wrong (e.g. when I wrote all my rejections on a sticky note). Maybe it’s therapeutic, making me feel like my life is made up of component parts under my control. Or even if it’s not under my control, it’s helpful to know I’m dealing with a countable and finite number of disappointments.

Last week I told anyone who would listen that 3 horrible things happened to me over the course of 5 days: (1) Post-grad job opportunity that was I was in a final-stage interview for got cancelled due to hiring freeze. (2) I hit a deer on a dark road in middle-of-nowhere, Pennsylvania, likely totaling my car (I am fine). (3) My mom called me telling me that her and my dad didn’t approve of my boyfriend and that I “have to break up with him,” along with a host of other disappointing things.

It’s funny how back in October Muthu told me a friend had asked about why there hadn’t been any newsletters in a while — and Muthu said it was because my life was too good at the moment.

So I am finally writing again now that I’m jobless, carless, and not on speaking terms with my parents. Matthew sent me a column I wrote in college after I gave him my 3 updates; apparently I wrote about the experience of dealing with my dad’s lofty and specific expectations when I was 20. In spite of the numerous teary fights my dad and I have had since, it seems like nothing has changed.

I often think about the young woman who wrote those all those columns eight (!) years ago. I find her still quite smart and funny and thoughtful — Why did she care about so many things? How did she find the time?

I struggle now with the young-woman-substack-industrial complex. Women in their early 20s with far better bodies and aesthetic/SEO sensibilities than me have created a whole genre of blogging & diaristic essay writing that I am jealous of, intimidated by, and uninterested in. I want to scream at everyone that I’ve been writing aimless essays on here for almost 6 years!! I was here first!! Give me something!!

i_d instagram post i saw for an article that was ultimately kinda mid + oomf's ig story last week

Despite being here for so long, I sense that I have little left to say. Or, at least, that I have little time left in my day for saying things beyond maybe recounting my own woes. It is such low-hanging fruit; everyone wants to hear bad news. But I miss it so much, the sublime sense that you have a unique idea worth sharing. Sublime, but painfully common! When you’re 20 it feels like you might be the only person on earth who has ever had an experience.

I’m trying to believe that there’s still excitement in realizing that your thoughts exist within the history and context of billions of people who have also experienced and felt and thought the same things — Kamala Harris coconut tree type shit etc etc. That you can connect your feelings to others’ through hundreds of years of art. But it does feel a little disappointing and dull, especially at this particular moment where “slop” is the talk of the town. Ranging in form from CAVA bowls to AI-generated Instagram Reels, we consume slop with our bellies and eyes and ears and brains, and maybe the worst thing you can do is contribute more of it to the world. Everything feels oversaturated all at once. Too many songs, too many clothes, too many posts, too many colors, too many hot girl substacks, too many hot girls period. Max-maxxing? All my friends were talking about the gooning article in Harper’s, which always made me laugh. “Have you read the piece on gooning in Harper’s?“ like I’m the exact pseudo-intellectual yuppie at a dinner party in a movie. And then we read a Substack essay in response, talking about how the piece on gooning in Harper’s didn’t consider the trans experience. How might we make room for transness in the gooning discourse?

I’m meandering! Staple of the genre, or maybe not. The response to the slop epidemic does seem to be care and attention, something that I feel a little avoidant of in my writing, for fear of creating too much pressure on this stupid ass medium. It’s a bit easier for me these days to pivot my care and attention to face-to-face relationships, which sucks because the relationships don’t have URLs I can send around as proof of my social productivity. Sometimes “Real Life” feels oversaturated, though not with slop. It’s good; oversaturated maybe like a Lisa Frank sticker pack, or that picture of the smiling dolphins jumping out of the water.

After I hit the deer, a beige minivan pulled over in front of me. The man walked out amidst my car’s shrapnel and asked me, politely and professionally: Was it a deer, are you okay, do you have a phone, does it have signal, do you have someone to call? Then, as quickly as he pulled over, he drove away. In the middle of Pennsylvania, with 2.5 hours still left to go, it felt like by stopping and speaking to me for 1 minute he had done the kindest thing in the world. Just a minute against all the slop and woe and misery to offer some relief.

Thanks to everyone who’s listened to me kvetch about the job, the deer, and my parents. Especially as these bad things accumulated over the course of several days and my complaints grew more and more frequent. And thanks to everyone for reading another stupid meandering little thing. I just needed to get back #outthere.

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some things:

• I’m hoping to do another Oops! All Some Things in a week or so, so stay posted! I’ve decided this will be a tradition for so long as I make it one. Maybe something special this year :-P

• Obviously I missed you all for 3 months—a whole quarter!—so there are a lot of some things to catch up on, and I can’t share them all here.

• Two albums I was spending a lot of time listening to (as part of “album club” with boy): Sound of Silver by LCD Soundsystem, which feels thematically related to the experience of aging out of a creative world you used to feel like you owned, and Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road, which feels thematically related to being really bummed the fuck out. I used to make a joke about how it was funny all the members of BC,NR were white (and British?).

• I finished Open by Andre Agassi, a whirlwind true to its name. Really fantastic memoir/autobiography (what exactly is the difference?) and the first book I was able to finish since April. I can no longer say “I haven’t finished a book since April,” something I was saying a lot!!

• Enjoy a glimpse of my Merlin Bird ID life list from a week in Costa Rica with my family for Thanksgiving

  

• Some people have been talking about the Charli XCX substacks with derision. Before I saw any of that Maryam sent them to me and I thought they were fabulous and fresh. As Maryam put it, “it’s so nice reading from someone who has something to say.” I would add, someone who has something to say and who has been living a life.

• Some articles I read:

  • House Arab by Ismail Ibrahim, on Ibrahim’s [bad] experience as a fact-checker for The New Yorker after October 7.

  • sorry about your cookies by Sohla El-Waylly, on Sohla’s [bad] experience at NYT cooking. What I appreciated about both these pieces was the 1st/2nd gen kid context at the beginning—something that makes it particularly hard to let go of these prestigious affiliations that get us, to some extent, security and legitimacy

  • What Did Men Do to Deserve This? by Jessica Winter, on the manufacturing of the “masculinity crisis.”

  • The Age of De-Skilling by Kwame Appiah (archive link), contextualizing AI-driven deskilling fears. Certified fresh by me (an expert) and my colleagues (more experts).

  • Postscript to an Open Marriage by Jean Garnett, who I fear I’m obsessed with in a lit-gossip way. An essay on the discourse around Lily Allen’s West End Girl and open relationships. I thought it read as defensive, but was still worthwhile.

• I’m watching: Pluribus on Apple TV (though I’m behind), Selling Sunset (perfect as always), Selling the OC (less perfect but I’m watching it to get through the days between when I can watch Selling Sunset), and as always Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. I’m happy Bronwyn’s freeeeeeeee. Happy Jen Shah is free in an anti-carceral way & because i’m like 1 degree separated from her son.

i think that’s all for now! love you xoxo. See you soon

PM