i'm supposed to fly to arizona this weekend; i hope it works out but i know it's been crazy. i almost don’t want to travel if everything will be delayed but i do want to be with family this month. lots of conflicting thoughts like that: i do but i don't. i will but i won't. i know and i don't know. huh. i'm typing this at le pain quotidien on walnut. i thought i'd have a lot to write but i'm kind of lost right now. i was moody and menstrual earlier this week but i got acupuncture yesterday and had therapy today and feel alright (still menstrual tho). i think i'm kind of f*cked up because i have been frustrated about crap that i have been guilty of in the past. i'm reading _how to be an adult_, by david richo, and he mentions that this is a thing -- our triggers and frustrations tend to point back to our own characteristics. (i remember thinking about this when i was in grad school, too.) for example, people who have a strong distaste for controlling people might be controlling themselves. i agree and disagree with some of richo's arguments and wish i could have edited his book in another life. lots of unnecessary SAT words interspersed (e.g. vicissitude lol), lots of sentences that could be trimmed in half or reworked, and references to heidegger, james joyce, and other people who won't land with a lot of folks. but that's ok. for about ten years now, i've positioned myself as a designer who is interested in cross-cultural exchange, especially in teaching and learning environments but also in other spaces, too. i feel like it's become harder and harder to be that type of designer & educator, in part because i genuinely don't want to do it anymore but also because it's a strange dance that doesn't always feel sincere. a lot of us are on very different pages, but we've been socially primed to believe that we are the same deep down. this makes things particularly uncomfortable when we realize that we're not the same, that we don't hold the same values, and that we might not agree on specific things. i think it's perfectly healthy to be on different pages. sometimes that might mean time apart but it could also mean slowly making an effort to understand each other, without judgment or expectation. i've been trying to work on the latter. can't say i'm completely free of expectations or judgments (i am a virgo) but i feel like i approach things differently these days. i'm trying to learn from my dad, allah yirhamu. (now that i think about it, he was also a bit judgmental but less obvious about it <3)