june musings
an intro to my "monthly musings" personal pet project
hello? is this thing on?
i realized i haven’t published anything on here in a year and what i have published, ever, are poems written long ago that i wanted to live in a concrete space outside of my handwritten journals and iphone notes app. but i want to challenge myself to cultivate creativity and encourage personal growth by attempting to do more on substack (and by “do more” i mean try out keeping up a regular cadence of publishing just for the fun of it). i’m someone who is not always the best at follow-through—lots of ideas, not a lot of execution and completion—but i like being creative, i like writing, and i want to see what happens if i commit to a personal project in this area.
so without further ado, welcome to monthly musings! every day i am noting a musing of the day that will be compiled each month into this newsletter? article? polished and published whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
why monthly? we are keeping this low stakes, folks. monthly seems the most realistic. however, there is a daily component which i’m hopeful will force me to stay engaged in this and follow through.
why musings? in an effort to be more present-oriented, i started jotting down one brief, daily note that is simply some thing that occurred that day. i titled my substack “just musings” way back when because everything i write is just that: thoughts, contemplations, observations. this is exactly what you’ll see here. one day may be something that made me laugh, another a line of reflection pulled from my journal entry, a recommendation of something i’m enjoying, or a swift moment of presence or joy in my day.
i’m curious to discover what i may learn through this practice. i’m hopeful to keep this going for at least the rest of the year. i’m doing this for me, but if you’re reading this then that is really cool. i hope you find it interesting and i thank you for indulging me and my musings.
now, let’s get to it:
june musings
one thing about me is i love a sitcom. when browsing various streaming apps today, i stumbled upon the show AP Bio, started it, and am already hooked. it’s silly and super charming!
in my biological need for the ocean but sadly not living near it at the moment, i started watching surf cam video streams to get my fix and it’s actually been really soothing
my bff texted that they were listening to ‘We Are Young’ by fun. (which was the song of our senior year) and it made me so nostalgic for high school! we really had an innocent yet quintessential teenage experience
i finished reading ‘Yesteryear’ today—i know it’s been polarizing in reviews but i gotta say i was intrigued the whole time and didn’t predict how it would end, so overall i enjoyed it and will be eagerly awaiting the movie!
i do a bedtime playtime with my cat, Ringo, every night with a literal scrap piece of string on a stick and she loooves it so much and hops around my bed. her pure, simplistic joy brings me joy
in my morning journal today i’ve been contemplating the idea that by believing i have to create my own joy, i believe i have to work for or earn joy. what does it look like to just allow joy to come when it may and not force it for myself?
my three-legged dog, Nemo, is obsessed with chasing lizards in the backyard and practically rock climbed to get to a lizard today, which is so silly and also impressive. he just makes me laugh
zoom in on his toe grip i finally got the procedure to fix my deviated septum today! i’m proud of myself for getting it done. it’s been deviated since i was like 6 years old (baseball to the nose) and have put off getting it addressed. also the doctor referred to the gauze holder they are having me keep under my nose as a “nose hammock” which is such a funny term to me
one day post-op and my nose is so swollen i look like Christina Ricci in ‘Penelope’ lol
two days post-op and all i’ve been doing is watching Parks and Rec, which is undeniably the best comfort show
a moment of unexpected joy today—a friend sent me a postcard from japan! i love snail mail!
a long distance friend called out of the blue and we talked for two hours. we just happen to be going through the exact same things in life right now and the timing felt serendipitous. i’ve been having a rough week and felt so seen by her
i scrolled instagram for the first time in months. after approximately 5 minutes i felt physically nauseous and deleted it again, reminding myself that it is not for me anymore
experienced my first monsoon while temporarily living in the desert. it was very cool!
reading ‘On the Calculation of Volume’ series and the covers are so beautiful i want to frame them
i often feel so “behind” in life but i’ve been reminded a lot recently that i’ve always been on my own timeline. i will get to where i need to be at exactly the right moment
nine days post-op from my nose surgery—i had the follow-up appointment today where the doctor took out the splints and for the first time was able to experience the difference in breathing the surgery made. it’s actually so crazy that i could not breathe through my nose for my whole life and thus was breathing incorrectly (through my mouth only). it’s a whole new world, baby!
i’m trying to create just to create and not worry about being bad or get frustrated by how it turns out. one way i’m doing this is by sketching/doodling because it’s not something i am confident in at all. anyways, here is my drawing from today:
something that made me laugh today: i watched the movie ‘No Hard Feelings’ and it was pretty good!! as someone whose comfort movies are The Hunger Games, i love anything Jennifer Lawrence
i spent the day reconnecting with a friend i haven’t seen irl in years. it’s always so nice when you can just pick things up where you left off. she texted me after and said it was the most herself she had felt in a while.. what an honor to be a part of that!
lounging by a body of water is truly when i’m my most content
moment of joy in my day: when i say “hi bb” to my cat and she meows in response like she’s saying a “hi” back
i referred to gear shift in the car as the “prindle” (prndl) because of that one ‘Suite Life’ scene that was a fundamental part of my childhood, but my sister somehow did not share that core memory and had no idea what i was talking about. we had a good laugh with me trying to explain myself. do yourself a favor and unlock a childhood memory by watching the clip!
‘Finding Nemo’ was on tv and my dog, named Nemo, kept looking up every time he heard his name, it was so cute
“tomorrow is soon, even though it may be many days away”—a quote from ‘On the Calculation of Volume 4’ that stuck with me
sometimes all you need to get back to yourself is a walk and a therapy session
i started watching the last season of ‘The Bear’ and when Carmy is giving the staff of the restaurant his speech about why he’s quitting, he says something along the lines of how he wants to wake up and love something. like really love what he does like he can see everyone else does, and damn, same. i don’t have a linear career nor do i know what job or career i would wake up loving what i do. this desire to have what provides an income be aligned with what i love doing has been at the forefront of my mind for a while
drove 12 hours with my sister from our dad’s to our mom’s today and we made a 12-hour playlist of songs that probably would never get put into the same playlist by anyone other than us (a song from Cats the musical followed by an Alanis Morissette deep cut). i love the shared specificity that can only be between siblings
my mom pulled out a bunch of me and my sister’s old dance competition and recital VHS tapes (so old, yikes) so we started watching them. seeing my younger self is always full of complicated and conflicting feelings mixed of empathy, adoration, and shame
communing with my inner child by drinking sunny d by the pool
and that’s june, come and gone, sprinkled with pool days, surgery recovery, and finding moments of joy and laughter (mostly amusement brought on by my pets). looking forward to this project anchoring me to the present in july. -urn
obsessed with you so of course i enjoyed reading every single musing! <3
(baseball to the nose)