Unprecedented Times: Year 5
do they just eventually become precedented if enough time has passed
despite the attempts to tell myself that “it’s only august” and “my whole life is ahead of me”, the visceral impacts of august (melancholic introspection and a sudden year-end countdown) have still arrived to wipe their muddy feet on the welcome mat of my joie de vivre. i have been sweating tirelessly for months and am drowning in the realization that time is passing way faster than i can ever process it. it has been 5 years of feeling like creating any sort of a forward-thinking roadmap would be marvelously foolish and a lifetime of augusts that have altered me on a molecular level. for better or for worse, anything can happen. i would say pardon the drama, but that kinda implies i normally do something else.
i’ve never been much for a 5 year plan. planning, to me, requires knowledge of the variables at play and what can be done with them. perhaps the greatest crime of all is being in your 20s and expecting a particular level of certainty. a level of certainty that i am beginning to believe no one will ever experience in their entire lives. the “surest” people i know are all melting down these days, so i wonder how much that could truly be worth.
for me, the inability to imagine my life concretely 5 years down the road is less of a defeatist quality, and more of a testament to being open to whatever comes. it feels difficult for me to think about what has not truly presented itself yet. sometimes the best i can offer in this arena is a very general statement of “something amazing is coming and i will know when it arrives”. feels fitting to write somewhat of a reverse 5 year plan here - rather than “where will i go”, i’m asking “where have i been?”
the major musings of this august ~
this year has been quite madlibsian in nature and i felt it back in january when i was so sick i could barely form coherent thoughts. signature meal of 2025 is word salad and unfortunately a lot of the time, the word salad has been sitting in the hot car for several hours
saw this tweet stating that taylor swift’s “august” is 5 years old this summer. while i’m no swiftie, it does feel like every july 31st → august 1st transition of my entire life has been marked by the first tweetings of “salt air, and the rust on your door” and i’m stunned to learn this has only ever happened for the past 5 years. sometimes 5 years is a lifetime.
lack of trust in yourself will begin to erode your self concept and you’ll wonder why you feel so out of control.
put an old college playlist on shuffle and was struck by the LCD Soundsystem lyric “you spent the first five years trying to get with the plan and the next five years trying to be with your friends again”. it does, in fact, hit like a bag of bricks after graduating 5 years ago from a 5-year college program. though it’s basic math that that line would hit me over the head in 2025, here i still am, authentically gobsmacked
i was looking back on old tarot card spreads, discovering that i just now understand them. time reveals all and i also just understand tarot better now
i was reminded of the quote “day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different." how close to sameness can we ever be?
i’m 2 years into attending weekly yoga and pilates classes. some days, it feels like i’ve learned so much, other days i feel like an extension of myself at 9 when i first went to a yoga class. 3 years ago, i had never been anywhere in the midwest. now, i’ll hear myself speaking out loud and notice that my pronunciation of particular words has shifted. 5 years ago, it felt like life as we knew it was over and we all had to process this new way of life in isolation. 10 years ago, i moved away from home for the first time and learned which facets of daily life were regional. everything is different.
i write this today while eating one of my high school go-to convenience store snacks - a snickers ice cream bar. i may never feel a sense of belonging when it comes to the central time zone, i bought a jar of giardiniera and a 6 pack of old styles as part of my grocery run last week, i’m in a perpetual game of “do they like me” vs “are they just midwestern nice”?, i feel a particular kinship with Jeremy Allen White for being an east coaster through and through but constantly picking up roles as Guy From Chicago, i miss the ocean even though the lake is really big, i love walkable cities and hot dogs and cheap drinks, i miss being down the street from my best friends, i love the incredibly loud train speeding by above my head, i wish everyone i love was here too
i cannot commit to watching love island ever again. i am still tired
i defeated my anxiety around cooking with cast iron pans, something inconceivable to me 5 years ago
perhaps the most reliably consistent part of dredging up whatever emotions august wishes to exhume is the eczema. i am sweating off the bandaging used to cover an active eczema flare-up and begging to god that i have the strength to fend off the itch-scratch cycle. something so deeply samsaric about the itch-scratch cycle…. half the time i don’t even recognize that i’ve started scratching again until i’m in way too deep. the bandaging can never stay put for long, even if i’m somehow not sweating as much. it takes a true madman to successfully bandage the parts of your body known for moving and bending the most. when i give up on the bandaging journey, i run the sink water hotter than each layer of hell combined and hold my battered hands under the scalding water for longer than i can tolerate. hot to the point of my hands turning bright red, to the point where the water actually feels so hot that it begins to feel cold. there is a sort of pleasure in this specific pain…..feels so bad that it feels unbelievably good. as the consequences set in, i ask myself if this is worse than scratching. either way, the dermatologist is somewhere in the back of my mind, cussing me the fuck out. i have never felt more like a dog who needs the cone around its head to stop from scratching. i begin the bandaging process again. i beg for the day when i am released from the cycle.
every year it feels like just as i get used to the sun setting after 8pm, it’s snatched right back. cycle continues…
in the end, i am incredibly happy that i didn’t get the things i thought i wanted. i look out on the current landscape of my life and find that so many things are better than i could’ve known to ask for.
anyway. happy august xoxo