time is a circle
and the apps are sticky
Hello, this is a separate section of the newsletter. I am, for now, calling it “The Weekly Narcissist”. It may or may not be weekly. But it will probably be more frequent than the main newsletter (which will probably just be monthly?), and thus I am including this disclaimer to let you know that if that is TOO MUCH for your inbox, you can unsubscribe from just this section! And I will not mind. Or even notice, actually. Overall, I think the vibe will be more personal-blog-gy. This may be my Instagram photo-dump replacement, so if you liked those, this will be that, plus some.
Since turning 28, I’ve been thinking a lot about the things that are coming back into my life that I haven’t engaged with in around a decade at this point. I may have started thinking about it because of Saturn return stuff (or is it Jupiter return?)(No, that sounds funny. It’s Saturn)(okay but I think there was something with Jupiter too. And I think maybe the Jupiter thing actually had to do with the whole decade cycle)(point being, there was stuff happening with planets, and I was thinking about it).
I’m getting back into working with clay, which I haven’t had as a big part of my arts practice since college.
I pulled out a keyboard and printed off some sheet music and started playing around with piano again - something I’ve hardly touched since I graduated high school.
I took a jiu jitsu elective in high school, and have recently started taking classes again (everyone thought it was very out of character when I did it the first time around, and I haven’t actually told very many people that I’m doing it now but pretty much everyone I have told has also found it very out of character. I am, in fairness, an extremely non-combative person. And I’m very bad at the combative part of this sport. Which is actually most of it. I’m very bad at jiu jitsu. But it’s good to be bad at things sometimes. Even though I cried after class every day for a couple weeks. But then last week I got the first stripe on my belt! Which means I can start taking classes with the big kids. Which probably means I’ll start crying after class again. I really am having fun! And also, am locked into my membership until 2027).
At the coffee shop we start our morning at basically every day (we love you, Funk It), the playlist they’ve got going most days is almost identical to what I was listening to when I took my first art class my senior year of high school, and first considered that art could play a significant part in my life.
Writing this newsletter feels like going back to my teenage mormon fashion blog days (I go back and read those posts periodically and am always amazed by how little I have actually changed, in spite of everything).
I’ve been slowly getting to a point of not totally hating mending - it is still insane to me that I used to make and alter clothing for fun as a teenager (many of these pieces were featured on said teenage mormon fashion blog).
A lot of the things that are coming back into my life have fairly painful memories attached to them, so it feels really significant to be intentionally taking part in them again - and to have them be a source of joy and pleasure.
A related train of thought:
Moving away from the apps is definitely also influenced by a desire to be connected to the world more similarly to the ways that I was as a teenager again.
I am still uncertain as to how much different replacing my social media presence with a more regular newsletter presence really is. It does take away the immediate availability, immediate posting, and immediate “connection” that I’d get from Instagram. It is significantly less convenient in terms of getting my work out there to a broader audience, at least at the moment. It does increase the intentionality with which I say things on the internet.
But why don’t I just include these thoughts in the letters I write to all my new penpals? (side note, several people actually did respond to the last newsletter by giving me their address and agreeing to be penpals and I am so excited. I am still accepting new penpals. It is never too late) Why don’t I start scrapbooking, or get back to journalling more intensely? I do still have a lot to think about in terms of what exactly this means for me - what I’m hanging on to by switching to this space, and why.
As ever, no conclusions, only questions!
To wrap up, here is a piggy bank I got at the antique mall here in Missoula that matches a piggy bank I got in the antique mall in Sherman, TX when I was living there.
May he bring us all abundance.
xoxo,
the mindful narcissist
“Time is a flat circle” was a popular quote for a while with folks I once spent a lot of time with. It comes from a TV show called True Detective and I think Matthew McConaughey utters it. The more you know!