EST 10.2025
Wednesday October 15, 2025
10:49 pm
Hello!
There’s something very vulnerable about a bare-bones, undesigned, basic html format site. Usually I work to make something perfect before I even think about putting it out into the world. I’m practicing not doing that. Perfection is the enemy of progress? Or something.
I have lots of plans for the way I want this website to look. My goal is to not get lost in the weeds and continue to update, even during construction. Inside me, I’m fighting the need to reveal a fully-formed, perfect, and tastefully designed site that is thought-provoking, original, and maybe makes people wish they were me. (I struggle with my innate self-image and constantly question my own reality.) I also wish I could somehow keep a visual record of the evolution of the site, like a mirror facing a mirror framing each side of my framed CV that I secretly hope everyone in my home takes time to admire.
This probably comes from the innate need inside of me to archive, to record, to capture in place. Just in case. Just in case what, I’m not sure. In case I need to look back and see exactly what time I was making the first post on my website, maybe for an alibi or something. Or maybe something I write on here will help solve a 100 year old cold-case. Would it be important and worth it then? Would it make a difference? Would it matter if it existed or not, if I existed or not?
Essentially I guess that’s the purpose of this site. To pursue meaning, to create something original that comes from my own mind and put it into the world for someone else to see and think about? Already I’m self-conscious of how pretentious I sound, anxious of how self-aware I am and I’ve barely written anything yet.
I told my therapist yesterday I constantly feel like I’m wasting my time. Like I’m not doing what I should be doing, like I’m going to regret the way I spent my days. Like I’m throwing away my potential. I can’t do anything for the “fun.” I’m constantly thinking about why what I’m doing is or isn’t important. And feeling guilty about it either way. In the same session, my therapist told me she thought I didn’t need her services anymore. She was also going on maternity leave, so I guess it was a sensible segue. Does that mean at the point I’m ready to find the meaning of life, I’m fixed? Is this the point, to figure out the point? And when I’m ready to find out and not yearning for the void, I’ll join the other mentally healthy adults out there and we’ll just ask each other questions?
I guess that’s what I have for now. God, this is embarassing.
Until next time,
Lane
Friday October 17, 2025
11:55 am
Happy Friday =)
Unfortunately today’s entry isn’t very happy. Hopeful maybe, but not happy.
I’m not very good at texting people back. Switching to a small, e-ink, “dumb” phone a few months ago did not do anything to improve my replied/left on read/didn’t open ratio. I honestly think I’m better at replying on that little thing than I was on my massive pixel 6 that has now been nerfed into oblivion by google in an attempt to prevent burns by exploding batteries. I used the update that rendered my pixel virtually useless as an excuse, but really it had been a few weeks before that. See for some reason, having a smart phone in my pocket at all times, having unfettered access to the infinity of the internet, makes me feel like there’s a leak in my brain. A leak flowing out as well as a leak flowing in. In any given moment, I’m permitted to follow every passing query or musing, to type a few words into a search engine and immediately receive answers and information (now being forced to wade past the AI summaries of course). But more often than not, I get stuck out there in the shallow ocean of clickbait and moving pictures. Before I even type in my question, there’s a link to an article that the algorithm (on my search engine!) has decided I will be interested in at the bottom edge of the screen. I don’t think I COULD ever guess what kitten-related surprise waited for this single mother-of-three when she looked in her crawlspace. But now I could find out. And now I care to know. But wasn’t I here to figure out how many volts are in an amp or something…
And suddenly that’s 20 minutes gone. My neck is stiff from craning downward and I still don’t know how many kilojoules make up a calorie. So I cut off the problem at the source. Stopped up the leak. I don’t have infinity at my fingertips, and I feel much better for it.
But back to the texting. About a year and a half ago, I was gainfully employed in my field of choice and reaching the end of my first season of work. That first year seemed to last an eternity, probably because it was filled with new people and experiences, but maybe also because I was faced with yet another woman in my life who not only thought I was stupid, but seemingly wanted me dead. (This is a phenomenon that I’ll write about at some point, but this woman joins a long legacy of many others like her, at least in relation to me. For obvious reasons, I will be acknowledging this particular woman’s individuality.) After a year of criticism, frustration, lack of consistency, and unclear communication, this woman I’ll call A was unexpectedly and abruptly let go. Let go and escorted out of the building no less. I really didn’t think that second part was necessary. Or the first part, to be honest. It was the conflagration of a lot of unfair, corporate hierarchy and a personal vendetta on the part of her superior (the woman who, at the very start of the next season, left her position empty and the whole company high and dry to make the Big Move out to the West Coast, but not before hiring another Woman who would make my life miserable in the duration of the rest of the season, which would turn out to be my last).
A was asked to leave on a Friday, if my memory serves. I never saw her again. I went up to our shared workspace and saw remnants of her everywhere: a speaker with a logo from her favorite band, a dimly-lit polaroid of our team hanging up on the cork board, evidence of her work scattered all around the room. The other members of our team were closer to her, spoke to her and saw her often after her dismissal. I didn’t think it was fair, the way it happened. Her superior made it a spectacle, embarrassed her, and confirmed her fears that management thought she was “too emotional, too combative, too difficult to work with.” I think she was trying to carry out her role in the best way she knew how. The best way a woman can when almost every other department head is a cis/white man who doesn’t get questioned when he makes an evaluation. When he draws a boundary. When his worst is interpreted as better than her best by the people who write the checks. She was doing her best.
We were out with friends the other night when my partner handed me their phone. Their phone that can instantly access the most recent thoughts of the President of the United States. Their phone that can text people back.
They had pulled up an article about an accidental shooting from the night before. In another city, one state over, from ours. A woman had died when her roommate mistakenly took her for an intruder and shot her. A woman who had three children. A woman who’s polaroid was still hanging up on a cork board somewhere. A woman who had been my boss and had been fired about a year and a half ago from the company that had fired me last month.
I was tipsy. I sat down on the steps and read through the article. She had moved out of state, she had a roommate, which means she had finally left her awful husband that had been emotionally abusing her. She had a job at a college, had become a professor at an institution that didn’t think she was “too difficult to work with.” She had left the things that had made her so angry, so hurt, made her make herself small, behind. A was free of the things I always told myself were the real root of her criticism of me. Her frustration at the work I did. That’s how I got through the season. It’s not really me, I’m not bad at my job, she’s just in a really hard spot.
I don’t think it was fair, the way it happened.
When the other remaining members of our team from that season were let go, A had texted me. She told me she heard about the firings and asked how I was doing. How things were going with a new boss and two fewer (integral) employees. I didn’t text her back. I didn’t text her back for the same reason that I fail to text anyone back: I want to take time to think about my response; I’m in the middle of something else and want to give the conversation the proper attention; I’m not sure where the conversation will take us and that makes me anxious; I feel guilty that I still have my job (for a bit longer, though I wasn’t aware of this) while she and the others on the team do not; I got distracted, and I forgot. The leak in my brain of too much in and too much out too fast, too often, that’s what did it, that’s what made me forget. It definitely wasn’t my fear of discomfort. Definitely not my anxiety around knowing and being known. And I forgot until the moment I realized I had lost my chance to respond.
Something I fear more than discomfort and the vulnerability of knowing: Regret.
Writing all this now, it does seem like I’ve taken the event of this woman’s death as an opportunity to talk about myself. A woman so removed from me that I didn’t bother to honor her with a text back while she could receive it. And now I’m writing a blog post about her to make myself feel better. Too little too late.
My therapist, the pregnant one, the one who graduated me a few days ago, told me it’s completely normal and not selfish to have thoughts like this when someone you know passes away. Therapy said I’m allowed to do this, and I’m so good at therapy they told me I don’t need to come back. Still feels self-aggrandizing.
Something about the way I was raised made me afraid of another thing: being selfish. Self-centered. But another story for another day.
So now, at the risk of sounding like my father-in-law…
I’m extremely saddened to hear about the passing of A, whom I had the pleasure to work with at [insert mutual institution here]. She was an incredibly gifted artist, lending her valuable skills to a huge number of projects and inspiring her fellow craftspeople with her passion and attention to detail. I am thinking of her children during this very difficult time, hoping they never forget how intensely they were loved by their late mother. May she rest in peace.
It’s hard to ignore the poignancy in speaking to my pregnant therapist, who is due in less than a month, about the death of a person I’d spoken about in numerous therapy sessions. I’m working on crocheting her a baby blanket, because I have the yarn, and because that feels like a nice thank you to your therapist when you graduate therapy. Something about life and death and the endless cycle. I guess it’s a natural step in the process; first I’ll create a handmade gift and write a heartfelt note about how thankful I am for someone’s presence in my life. Then maybe once I’m comfortable doing that, it’ll be easier to do the work of texting people back.
Until next time,
Lane
Sunday, November 9, 2025
12:52 pm
I feel stuck.
Several weeks ago I was sporting very high hopes for the near future, filled with excitement about recovering from my chronic hoarding tendencies before the results became all but irreversible. I can say I’ve done a very good job not bringing new old things into the house (with the exception of a scrapbook from the 1970s made for/by somebody named Amy, discovered by me at the top of the recycling pile in a dirty metal container at the park nearby my house. To be fair, it was on the very top, untouched by unwashed food cans and the unknown contents of piles of top-tied plastic shopping bags, despite the sign on the dirty metal container that states “no plastic bags or trash,” and it contains some very cool greeting cards with designs that make me nostalgic for an era I never experienced). But anyway, I’ve done a pretty good job stopping the influx. Despite that, many of the things in our apartment still have not found homes, either with another owner or in the collection of “treasured few,” as I like to call the perfect ideal number of my possessions. Many still sit in the abused storage spaces in the basement, or simply scattered in the middle of the concrete floor in the sub level, since no one has complained yet. I don’t think many people utilize the additional storage space in my building, which makes me wonder: am I the only one who struggles with this?
I had such grand plans of quickly slimming down my things to an amount that fit easily into my current 750 sqft living space, preparing me for an imminent move to pursue grad school and reducing me and my partner’s stress in the meantime. Work is scarce for both of us, so not a lot of money is coming in. I fear: would I be spending if I could? Continuing my habit of a little bit here, just a couple there, one small thing won’t hurt.
But it does hurt. Right now and most definitely in the future if I don’t stop it.
Lately we’ve been spending our evenings mining and crafting in our mutual friend’s blocky world. It leaves me with a sense of accomplishment that I never have any real-world evidence to back up. I fear this is extremely dangerous, but I’m also having fun and spending time talking and collaborating with friends. And my wrists hurt. Not ideal for someone who works with their hands.
The first day we played together extensively, I felt a revelation had happened. Instead of the creeping anxiety that always follows whatever I do with my hours, my attention had been completely absorbed by building a bakery to keep the baked goods for our commune. (Communism reins on the server, and so far nobody has been enslaved by the sickle and hammer. It is a peaceful, healthy, and happy community, despite the Creepers.) I wondered later if this is how people who don’t suffer from divided attention feel on a day-to-day basis. Minds occupied, hearts full, spirits content. Taking off the blinders of the screen reminded me of how it felt coming down from Adderall for the first and only time. I felt, in a word, focused. I wasn’t distressed or distracted by passing thoughts that pulled my attention this way and that. And I got a lot done. I also sent a few texts that almost alienated one of my closest friends with my detached tone, so it wasn’t all highly efficient bliss.
But the piles in my work room remain piles. The boxes remain full of decor and treasures I’ve collected that I’m surely not treasuring well. The prospect of downsizing felt easy before I started to actually do it. I keep writing lists and flow charts and making grand plans. But when I look around, there is still too much. How do I take my plans and put them into actual effect? How do I tame the space around me so I can actually use it? How do I make space in my life for the person I love?
When I’ve gotten stuck on an item in the past, hand-wringing over the idea of not owning it anymore, I try and remind myself that the process was never going to be easy. The decisions I make will most likely bring up emotions for me of bargaining, avoidance, regret, and loss. But I can and I must weather those feelings. The life that I want: a life far away from the horrible and tortuous recent move that took many painful, exhausting hours from me and probably years off my life. A life where I look around and feel peace, not the weight of the things I own. A life that I can pack up in a weekend and bring with me wherever the future leads.
I’m waxing poetic with the sweet (for now) Wyrmwood in my lap. Upstairs, it sounds like the neighbors are body slamming the floor over and over. Now I am paying for the crimes I committed living on the third floor for eight years. In more ways than one. If anyone has any discernment to spare, please send it my way.
Until next time,
Lane