joining the Eve Babitz fandom, my no buy year, and the winter blues
joining the Eve Babitz fandom, my no buy year, and the winter blues
january / my month in review
Hey, stranger.
I hope you’re getting through the dark and cold purgatory that is January. I sure am trying. As you may have noticed, I did a bit of a rebrand for this blog a few weeks ago. I wanted something a bit more me. Consequently, my posts have also been slightly different; I’m making an effort to write about moments or topics instead of what I’m consuming. Last week’s writing was slightly inspired by an old writing assignment I found in the vault. I counted, and I have 5 separate books that I started writing and only got to the 2nd chapter of before quitting. Or I forgot about them. Thank god I forgot, because some of those were atrocious to read. Although, I do love looking back at my old writing— I feel very fond of a younger me who was so desperate to find herself.
Writing vignettes, or more prose focused work, sort of feels like time traveling to a version of me who lived entirely in her head. I saw an interview with Greta Gerwig where she described writing as painful, the process long and arduous and feels like extracting something of yourself. That is exactly how I feel when I write something more meaningful to me. In this vein, perhaps, I am starting to understand why this blog has been helpful for me. When I was a freshman in college, I took a required course for my honors program called Velocity of Gesture, or: Intro to Air Guitar. Fantastic name, right? Still holds the title as the best class I ever took. Throughout the course we performed air guitar solos, spoken word poetry, lip syncs, and dances. They went as well as you can imagine (i.e deathly humiliating but somehow bonded everyone together). At the end of winter term, after 3 long and heinous rainy months, we gave a final performance for our classmates in which we had full freedom to do whatever we wanted. My professor asked me earlier what I was most scared of, and I told him the thought of singing in front of people always sent a shiver down my spine. Naturally, for him and for the spirit of the class, I stood up in front of the class and sang Leaving on a Jet Plane. My hands shook the whole time, my eyes remained closed, and my voice wavered. At the end of the song, I opened my eyes and I remembered watching my professor cry silently behind his desk. He cried at everything, but I like to think my performance moved him in some way. I suppose this blog is me standing in front of you, doing something painful even when my voice shakes.
I read 10 books this month, which yes, is a lot more than usual, but I got a kindle so I make no apologies for devouring books at a rapid rate. Most notably, I read my first Eve Babitz book, Black Swans, and I knew even before I finished it that she had a place on my favorite authors list. A list that, I would like to think, is a hard one to find a place on. In the preface of Black Swans, Stephanie Danler (who is also the author of one of my favorite novels, Sweetbitter) says that she stumbled upon Eve when she needed her most. I think I did, too. Eve’s writing is casual and funny and effervescent; the stories are frivolous yet poignant and I cannot recommend her fast enough. I’ve read a lot of 3 star books recently, so I was thrilled that I loved Black Swans so much. Any author that can write about mundane life and pull meaning from it is talented beyond belief, in my book.
When I came back into town after the holidays, I looked at my closet and realized with an enormous amount of gratitude, that I felt very pleased with my wardrobe. I’d spent most of 2023 curating a collection of clothes that I felt good in and wore regularly, instead of holding on to clothing that was cheaply made and never worn. As a result, I had a lot of fun playing with clothes this month. Like I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been enjoying darker wash denim, loafers, and using accessories to make my outfits more interesting. My goal for 2024 is to limit myself to one new clothing item every season. I got the idea from this report that deduced every single person needs to reduce their annual clothing consumption for the industry to stay within its carbon budget. Fashion is one of the biggest contributors to waste per year and I want to do my part to avoid overconsumption, especially when it’s not necessary. Hence, one new item per season. I will be excluding thrifted items and accessories because I typically don’t buy in excess in that category, but I do want to keep track of what I’m purchasing. We are all products of our environment, which is not a bad thing, but I think a little accountability on what you’re actually consuming will go a long way.
Winter is a terrible season for activities, especially when you’re sick of being cooped up inside. I recently started a new job (yes, I remember Bakery-gate but this time is different) and I’m feeling grateful that on the days I open, the sun is still out when I get off. Every year, I forget that season effective disorder is very much real, and very much present among me and my friends. Once the holidays are over, it becomes much harder to romanticize the season and thus, the countdown until April begins. All this to say that if you’re overwhelmed: I’m right there with you. Whenever I feel ashamed of struggling, or having bad days when I have so much to be grateful for, I think of these words from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: “Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.” I finished this book last week and it has haunted me every day since. But I think of these words when I’m angry or frightened, and remind myself that emotions are how we know we are here and we are alive. In some ways, that makes them more bearable.
Here are a few lessons I find myself having to relearn, over and over.
Sometimes life is hard, and there’s no getting around it. Best advice is to find a way to make it more endurable (watching The Hobbit, getting dinner with friends, reading a good book).
Fighting against what is, thinking it should be something else, is a short path to being miserable.
Everything will always balance out: I will be happy, then stressed, then sad, then happy again. Over and over and over. It has always been this way, and always will be.
Always ask how people are doing, even if they don’t ask you.
Speaking of new jobs, I’ve been back in the swing of job applications and interviews and I feel good about it. Burn out hit me like a truck alongside the onslaught of rejection after rejection, so I took a month off in December, deciding to not worry about jobs. Starting this month, I am officially back in business, baby. I will most likely be moving to Salt Lake City in June, barring no extreme circumstances, which I have mixed feeling about. One one hand, I cannot wait for a new environment. I get antsy to move every 2 years because I think living in new places is a one way ticket to growing as a person. On the other hand, Salt Lake City is tiny in comparison to Seattle, even Portland, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Like most people who grew up wanting to move to New York, I crave the energy of a city and dread to leave it. In some ways, this is exactly what I need: something to knock me out of my comfort zone. It may sound counterintuitive that downsizing is something I am less comfortable with, but I know for a fact that I could move to another big city and grow to love it. I don’t know, however, if I can stand being in a smaller pond.
No point in worrying about the future, I guess. Right now I’m trying to focus on enjoying my present life the way it is: making coffee in the morning, taking the bus and watching the raindrop races on the windows, seeing the moon through the small gap between buildings as I lay in bed, making customers laugh while I ring them up, making soup for my friends, holding hands with Michael, calling my mom.
Thank you for reading, I hope you’re having a wonderful Sunday morning. See you next week!
xoxo,
ev
This was so beautiful seriously…why did I need to read that so bad. Omw to find a copy of black swans. Also June in salt lake is gonna be so fun :,) evie’s mirroir palais summer