notes from the phone

A less poetic follow-up.

• Extinction burst, in a less-than-celebratory way. Old habits sure die hard all right. Why not go out the way it started? Forget plans; hello, sweet inertia. Behavior is a choice—as is, to some degree or another, the sidelining of behaviors that help prevent the more unfortunate tendencies.
  • As I often say: ah well. It started bright. And it really does Invoke Some Type of Feeling—that I can be disappointed at all, and not a ragdoll to whim.
• Besides that: Using a pen or pencil til my hand is sore, ink (or graphite) smudged across fingers and page. The mark, I like to pretentiously think, of a zealous writer; those rare moments, all the better for their temporality, of saying to hell with it, let’s get messy.
  • I am talking about writing an essay in pen, because I either left my pencil at home or (more likely (and honestly)), while it’s with me still, I didn’t want to scrounge for it a millisecond longer. Screw it, take an extra; oh, huh, these have the school’s name on them. I probably got these at orientation. We have come full-circle.

one month later, footnote

This has been languishing unpublished because I was going to make some kind of fancy custom layout for it, but on a reread, I am not entirely sure I’m following past-me’s train of thought and thus am just gonna drop this here as-is.

Of note: the phone note was titled “things that make me feel alive.” I have no idea why I didn’t include that header here.

I still like the other thing a lot more. I think it’s clear I was trying to be all wordy and abstract here, whereas the other kinda just Happened on the spur of the moment. The lesson here, I think, is to be less of a tryhard and just go with the dang flow more. But what do I know, it’s impossible to judge myself objectively ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

—June 3