I was getting annoyed with how all of my stuff is disjointed across different platforms (Substack, Instagram, YouTube, etc), and I wanted a place where I can centralize all of it and just write and document my life with way less pressure to be good.

So here it is.

As I was looking back through October, trying to remember all the things I did and all the places I went, I realized it wasn't so bad. Usually, I can only think about the things that didn't go my way. How much I don't want to be in school, how much I wish I had a job, and my lack of a job at this moment. And all of these things are true. I am sick of college, and I want a job! But despite many things not going my way this month, it wasn't so bad.

I got to hang around with Bella while Kyrie and co. while they filmed Kyrie's music video: Borrowed and Blue, which ended up being one of those days of all time. Nothing particularly remarkable about it, other than the fact that it was so out of the way of normal things I'd typically do. We saw glimpses of a whale driving down the highway, and on the other side, the charred remains of the houses that burned down last January. Breathtaking, whichever way we happened to look. I'll never forget sitting shotgun in a vintage Buick convertible watching the sunset on the beach, because we both looked at each other and said, "I think I'm going to remember this day forever."

I almost got killed by a bottle that fell on my head, and I threw a lovely party with my sweet friends. I was a bit nervous about mixing friend groups, but all of my friends are kind people, so they all got along, and it wasn't terribly awkward in the end. Hosting is more for me than it is for anyone else. I love making food, bringing people together, and having a grand ole time. I want to host parties until the day I die.

I went to Canada and touched a lot of grass. I hope to be back in Vancouver again.

I also went to the Bay Area for the weekend. I had a cookie and a latte and got to walk on a cold beach, which is what life is all about.

I saw Wednesday (live). Truly life changing. I have listened to Wednesday since I first heard Twin Plagues in high school. I started writing on Substack after hearing Rat Saw God because the songwriting was so good it made me want to try writing. The way Karly Hartzman depicts the scene in Rat Saw God felt like someone had been in my own life and described all of the things that happened to me and the place I grew up in, and described them just as they were, so that the sludgy mix of things gorgeous and creepy, but at the heart of it all, just real. Listening to that album inspired me to try writing about the place I was from like that, and three years later, here we are. I am someone the masses may consider a "good writer." But that is neither here nor there. Hearing the songs live absolutely changed my life. I am trying to describe it, but you just had to be there. I got to scream along, and when I left, I felt freer than before. I will buy an electric guitar when I move into a new apartment.

Also, the opener Friendship rocked (and they signed my CD!)

Speaking of guitar, I have been GRINDING guitar this month. Mainly as a means of procrastinating on my homework and responsibilities, but it makes me feel better. I started playing four months ago. I do not have the skillset to pour out my woes into beautiful music. It's a lot more boring than that. There is hardly anything emotional or evocative about switching between cowboy chords on an acoustic guitar. But it's the only thing that makes me feel better—being laser-focused on playing the same four chords over and over again until I get it right. Remove the emotions, it's almost robotic, the opposite of any introspective self-aggrandizing way of solving my problems by looking within. I think I like playing the guitar so much because it has nothing to do with me. If I wrote the songs and the riffs, I suppose it would be different.

I'm now learning how to play That Funny Feeling by Bo Burnham and Maura by Wednesday. I try to sing too. I'm not very good, but it's not illegal to be bad at singing. Songs were made for bad singers!

While every day feels like I am just slogging along, waiting for something good to happen, manically checking my email every five minutes, and being perpetually nauseous because I have no clue what's happening next—it really isn't that bad. I think about this time four years ago, when I was a senior in high school, and it was pretty much the same, except the stakes were higher. I look back and I romanticize the shit out of that time even though I felt exactly the same because it's part of this whole narrative I've created about myself, and what it means to work hard, and my ability to persevere and try despite the circumstances. I know no matter how awful I feel right now, I'll look back in however long it takes and it will all be part of the story I'll tell. Knowing that makes it a little better.

I've been reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I feel like I'm relating my incredibly shallow struggles of wanting a high-paying tech job to struggling through a post-apocalyptic, decrepit society with no food and shelters and marauders everywhere with no end in sight, like the struggles of the boy and the man in the book. But fiction is the best form of self-help, and I'm not going to read any kitschy "let them theory/atomic habits" bullshit. But reading the book, I am amazed by the boy and his father's ability to not blow their brains out with two bullets left in their pistol, and keep chugging along despite the incredibly bleak and depressing horrors they endure on the road with no end in sight. It's inspiring enough to get me to lock in.

That's all I really have to say. Until next month!

Love
Aishu