it's wild that i'm wrapping up week 12 of the artist's way this weekend. i've followed the book religiously for the past three months and have gotten so used to reading each chapter every weekend. maybe i'll get another julia cameron book and keep this going. i think i'll continue journaling in the morning because it keeps me calm. i just started a bearblog to help keep track of my writing and meandering thoughts. i think i am ovulating or will be soon because i feel more animalistic. i'd like to be stepped on. my mom is flying to egypt tonight to see her family for the first time in a decade i think. praying that she gets there safely. she's very excited. my preferred version of thanksgiving stuffing is ikea veggie balls. we had them in our freezer but i think my sister threw them out, so i might go to ikea tomorrow if i have it in me. might also book an ashiatsu massage tomorrow. #might . . . wywhwm . upgraded to mac o.s. "tahoe" and instantly regretted it. trying too hard to be windows xp . . . just told my mom that i am craving white ppl food. she accused me of racial profiling . woke up at 4-ish am and couldn't fall back asleep. i might be functioning on eastern time but i don't like that my sleep schedule is so off these days. since i failed to fall back asleep, i thought of you and went looking for a notebook that i was using a couple of years ago. it took me a while but i eventually found it, flipped through it, and read my notes from that year (2023). this notebook represents a transitional period for me. lots of changes. lots of stuff that i look back on with confusion. i was confused back then, too, but my confusion today feels different, in a good way. 2023 might as well be decades ago, because the things i was thinking/writing about are not things that i think of today. the things i once thought were important feel very trivial now. the stuff that used to get under my skin is just slightly annoying these days (or not an issue at all) and easier to shrug off and let go of. in my support group, we have been talking about how much we have changed since losing our parents, which was not long ago. a lot of the changes are out of our control and difficult to make sense of. a lot of the changes are occurring in real time. i feel that i am actively shedding things (attitudes, assumptions, opinions, ways of working) that feel so distant and unrelated to me -- at least from my vantage point. and then i think of people who may still perceive me in ways that i would deem outdated and/or skewed (biased). it's frustrating to feel this way, and it's not easy to explain my frustration to people who are unable to understand the world through the same lens as me. the best way that i can put it is that things change and people change, in all sorts of directions. i'm not chained to my past or to unfair perceptions of me, and you don't have to be either. . . . listening to avril lavigne on my flight to phx. no delays! 🙏 . it’s friday but it feels like tuesday. i spent the day doing nothing, which was great. a lot is on my mind these days. right now, i’m thinking of the word “brave,” alongside other things and people that i care about. what does it mean to be brave? who do we expect bravery from? why? i rarely feel brave even though i tend to put myself out there a lot. i regularly have to advocate for myself in different contexts, otherwise bad things can happen. it’s become second nature, but i don’t know if i feel brave when i self-advocate. if anything, i feel tired and annoyed. people like to think of black women as strong creatures that can weather any storm and respond to any challenge, but that’s not how i see it. in my experience, the expectations that are put on us are unfair, and over time, they become disabling. i remember making a soft poster about black women’s emotions and elaborating on my thinking during an instagram takeover thing. this was almost ten years ago (wow). i still wish i had saved the instagram captions somewhere because they were more interesting than the poster imo. but i mean, most people won’t get it regardless. i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about things that are challenging, grieving significant losses over the years, and observing as my body begs for relief. i tend to be hard on myself (i’m a virgo) and i take the fall for things that aren’t always my responsibility. but i do bear responsibility for a lot of things that i am not proud of. particularly before i understood/accepted that i am queer and disabled, i was carrying a lot of pain that went unprocessed. i didn’t like myself very much and somehow didn’t know that i felt that way. i projected an image of confidence and strength that helped me feel like i was surviving when really i was enduring more pain. i thought i was put together, and i had reasons to believe that i was successful professionally. but i felt empty deep down and didn’t know how to tend to myself. i feel very differently about myself these days, but i still struggle sometimes and am obviously not perfect despite being a virgo. i tend to be more forgiving of myself and my shortcomings, which helps me understand that i can forgive others. but it’s a process, day-by-day. life is funny and challenging. i’ve crossed paths with many interesting people. some were friends, some were/are very special to me, others turned out to be in a different category. but they all helped me better understand how to relate and connect and feel less alone. alhamdulillah. i’m listening and learning. . . . 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)