I’ve always thought July as the official half of the year also known as the unofficial second New Year. I coined this a few years ago when I needed another catalyst to change myself. The resolutions you set six months ago are from the person you were before, not who you are now. The six months left to go, as a result, stretched time into an infinite of possibility.
The moments leading to this particular July felt like a crescendo of feeling. When asked what I was looking forward to over the summer, I didn’t know what to say, I was in the eternal spring of my projects. There were things to do, a delayed gratification to relish in. Work hard, lock in, and you will become who you were meant to be.
In June I then had a string of failures that made me melt into the viscous summer air. They were real failures, and not at the same time, all things considered. Articulating why I cared meant admitting how badly I wanted legibility. With legibility, people would understand my dedication to my art and design practice without much explanation. With the approval of others, my identity would become what I aspired to be, and my day to day life would follow suit.
Moreso I hesitated to explain myself because had I not gone through similar feelings, a similar cycle, a few weeks, or months, or long time ago? These were feelings I had written about writing about writing before. Admitting disappointment and failure felt like a cloud that followed me which would never go away. Despite proclaiming multiple times I was better than that, that I was all for the journey, a part of me wanted a result that would make everything make sense.
There was a blog post I would write in my dreams, about what to do in a messy middle, which then when I woke up became what to do in a messy middle that never ends. In secret I had a hypothesis that my life was like a game, if I accomplished specific tasks and worked hard, then I would unlock the life I thought I deserved. That was the source of my optimism, to then realize that linearity was out of my control. If I knew the “right” people to tell me all the “right” things to do and yet still mess up, then what was the point? The only solution was to do something I hadn’t done before. I melted into the 100 degree summer.
I went to an anime music night with my friend the day the Knicks won. The train was down so we hitched a ride with a random person’s rideshare and arrived at 1 am. Soon it was the 2000s, I was in the suburbs in the heat of the summer in my room and doing nothing but watching anime on a virus laden website. It was probably the 50th show I watched, but if you asked me what happened, I couldn’t tell you. I heard the garage door, my mom was coming home from the asian market, I was crying because the show was so sad, the pair of friends had to go their separate ways. There was so much, so much time to waste.
If you want to waste time in New York, it’s pretty easy. You can try and optimize your life to only respond to texts on your phone while you’re walking and then get on the train going the wrong direction for several stops. You can go to parties with people you’ll never see again, or that you’ll only see at parties. You can plan a day where you spend equal amounts of time getting to the place and hanging at the place. You can go to Soho and wait in a line. You can spend your prime working years on several side software projects that you’re proud of but are definitely not monetizable or scalable. You’re an artist to you and your friends and to everyone else you’re a normal person who wastes time.
I always thought Julys were the precipe of change. Realistically, it was the month I always moved, if not apartments, then cities, coasts. In the packing, the goodbyes, the dwindling weeks you start to see what’s in front of you. You keep on drawing the tree from your window, cherishing the time to make it last longer. There’s a few weeks left before your friend you recently grew closer with moves to California. It’s been a few weeks since you’ve last seen others who haven’t moved. You appreciate the moment for what it is. It’s starting to become more clear, you expect a narrative when the story is always changing, for yourself, for others, all the time. We always think there’s a beginning and middle and end.
Isn’t it funny, your friend tells you, I’m doing what you did two years ago.
Two years ago I move to California, like many do, to catalyze a story. Was that the beginning or the end? When I try to explain to others why I am the way I am, in some stories it’s the end and sometimes the beginning but mostly the middle. I went to that city not to work on a b2b saas startup but to work on my art. I went because I had a narrative that doing so seriously and earnestly will bring me happiness. And now I am no longer there and I have accomplished these things and am still not as legible as I’d like and July has come and went and I am not moving. I am here, stuck with myself, with the middle of a story that I don’t know the ending of but am happy to tell.
topically related are.na channels: auto/fiction
misc updates:
planning a meetup for inprogress.works (project accountability journal) in October to celebrate the end of the year / the concept of The Project. there will be snacks and a commemorative publication! RSVP here
gave a talk recently for wordhack about how I believe everyone has the potential to be an artist and also a demo of sequence, my comic maker (if you’ve tried this pls give me feedback!). you can watch it here! I wouldn’t have ever expected this to happen so feeling very grateful.
also gave a talk for work about a project I worked on that I was very topically interested in, which I didn’t expect to happen either. work/the industry has been very in flux lately which has downsides but also, the potential for upside too
caught a fish, been playing soccer, will be stopping by sf for a few days / hongkong / shenzhen in oct lmk if you have any recs
going to publish another essay sometime this week about AI, design, and tools…. !!!
as always feel free to lmk if anything in this sparked related thoughts!