december
i’ve been thinking about what to write for my autumn 2024 update. i’ve graduated and moved to the other side of the world, and yet i haven’t written anything in months. for some reason i haven’t felt the need to; i still don’t, if i’m being honest
if there’s anything surprising to me about the past month, it’s the normalcy of it all. one evening a week ago it suddenly hit me that this was it. this was my new forever—the signed print from DARKMATTER hanging above my desk, the amazon-branded black duvet crumpled on my bed, the yoga mat where i eat dinner (and do yoga sometimes). back when i first moved in, i was pretty unenthused; i wanted to get out of golm, where the MPI is located. (think grass in all directions. maybe some cows and hay.) but that didn’t work out, and i ended up moving just ten minutes down the road into this tiny shared apartment. there’s no living room or dining table (hence the yoga mat), and when my housemate is on the wifi at the same time my video quality drops to 240p. i didn’t even have a blanket for the first week because amazon kept missing my delivery. but now, this place is my home—my own little abode where i can drink soup on the floor and play video games offline
i guess i’ve found what i had been looking for since i left MIT: a suspension of limbo. i like my routines and my lack of routines, like waking up every day at 7:30 am sharp and deciding if i want to work from home or berlin or my office. i like the new things in my life, like new friends and vegan dino nuggets and reusable cups at cafés. i’m even warming up to golm. i survived november and it wasn’t too bad. i’ve placed around my room reminders me of my old home: a basil plant, a children’s book in dutch, a gray crochet Miffy, a Smiski mid-situp. my closest friends are thousands of miles away, but in many ways they are closer than ever before
i don’t like to admit it, but despite everything—the distance, the paycheck-to-paycheck budgeting, the depressing weather—i’m happier now than i was at MIT
november
recently, i finished night in the woods, which is about many things, from cults to shoplifting to the dying of small towns. it has a distinctive art style and a great soundtrack, but most of all, it has some of the best writing i’ve seen in a video game
Went outside and the tree out front, I looked at it every day, it was like a friend outside the window. Now it was just a thing... just a thing that was there, growing and eating and just being there. Like all the stuff I felt about the tree was just in my head. And there was some guy walking by, and he was just shapes. Just like this moving bulk of stuff. And I cried, because nothing was there for me anymore. It was all just stuff. Stuff in the universe. Just... dead.
night in the woods is about everything dying around you, and of course it’s set in autumn. everything dies in autumn. the leaves pool on the ground in crunchy red puddles, the days get cloudy and short, and suddenly one day it’s november and you haven’t seen the sun in two weeks. the worst part isn’t the death; it’s the dying: the slow deterioration into a person that i always think i’ve left behind
if i could give a name to the worst version of myself, it would be november. i don’t think i had a single good november during high school or college. november is waking up in the dark at 7:30 and watching the clouds darken at 3:30. november is a concrete sky in all directions. you go to work but you can’t go to work. sometimes, november is just shapes—the gray coats hanging on the door, the blank faces of friends, the words bleeding off your monitor for hours. your reflection in the mirror, just a pointless, fleshy lump
in november, i felt like a shell of who i should have been—november, not april. i know things are bad when i begin wondering—forgetting—if i can ever be truly happy
maybe giving a name to the worst version of myself empowers it too much. but the thing about november is that i have experienced it—this kind of november—so many times. and each year it is a little better than the next. my bad days in november were bad, yes. one day i would like to worry about never being happy for the last time. but this november, my bad days in november were just bad days. and november passed, instead of persisting through the rest of fall and winter
i wonder what it is that has changed. i’m taking adhd medication that doubles as a mild antidepressant, and i’ve been trying pretty hard to practice acceptance—an agnostic belief in both the best and worst versions of myself. i guess not being chronically stressed out of my mind has also been pretty helpful. on those days when the trees outside my window become shapes, i take the RB23 to berlin. i breathe in the cold air of cobbled streets and spend the day at a cozy coffee shop. when i call my friends in the evening, a part of me feels silly to have forgotten how happy i am for them to be in my life
how do you describe a thing without distorting it? i don’t know. but i know that i survived november, and that it wasn’t too bad. i drank a lot of coffee. one day, it might even be easy
i’m visiting SF 1/8 - 1/18 and boston/MIT 1/19 - 1/27! let me know if you’d like to hang or catch up :)
one day, it might even be easy » YES IT WILL!!!