i went to the immersive van gogh exhibit at the waterfront in toronto by myself today.

the last time i went to an exhibit on my own was when i saw the basquiat exhibit at the AGO, which i remember being a great time.

i often like going to these things solo because it gives me a chance to experience them thoughtfully and quietly – an opportunity to really lose myself without the distraction of company – but this time i think it would’ve been nice to have someone to stand next to and take it all in with.

also, i’ve been feeling a bit lethargic and groggy lately, plagued by persistent and chronic fatigue that just won’t seem to let up, and yes, maybe it’s because my sleeping habits have been disastrous lately – what with the all the late nights spent playing video games at my parents’ place on the weekends and my inability to properly readjust – but i feel like i’m also starting to get a little bit sick, which is pretty alarming in the current global health climate.

there’s a stubborn tickle in my throat, and sometimes i have a slight cough, so i feel like i should try my best to stay away from people again.

maybe it’s time to not leave my apartment at all for 3 weeks at a time.

maybe i’ll go across the street and get tested for covid tomorrow.

covid restrictions have eased in Ontario a little bit (patios and malls are starting to open again), and it kind of feels like nobody is taking the pandemic seriously anymore, and i can’t really say i’m any better.

it might be that the weather is becoming too nice to stay inside, or maybe people’s patience can only run so far and it’s been too long, or maybe things are starting to feel pretty normal since more places are opening up so people are starting to act like it’s safer, but i’m seeing a lot of people in groups and not wearing masks.

a lot of my friends also work in retail or service, so i guess a common mentality is that being cautious can only get you so far if you’re going to be exposed to that many people anyway.

i’ll admit to being more lax and behaving in a riskier way than i should be recently, but it’s getting difficult to resist the urge to enjoy myself with friends on a nice patio, even though i know it might be stupid.

i hung out with friends at a park a couple of weekends ago and we were all sitting pretty close together on the grass, and none of us were wearing masks.

i think we’re all just hoping each of us is more cautious in every other situation and aren’t actually seeing many other people in the same way or proximity, which i know is completely flawed thinking.

camilla came to my apartment for a bit to hang out beforehand and we got some food at the village genius pub’s makeshift patio (the waitress seemed new and nervous, and wasn’t very convincing in her efforts to be cautious), and camilla told me that as soon as i was outside and around people, my energy went up and i came to life. apparently it felt like i was dead inside in my apartment.

i could feel the shift too. sometimes i forget that i’m actually a pretty solid extrovert and this whole being forced to stay indoors situation isn’t very good for my mental health. i don’t really notice it when i’m in my apartment for stretches at a time, but as soon as i go outside and hang out with people, my mood lifts exponentially, and i remember everything i missed.

after hanging out at the park, we were all tipsy enough to want to go to a patio (which i’d previously said i wanted to avoid because i wasn’t convinced it was safe enough even though the province seemed to think it was), so we ended up getting a table at a place where camilla knew the host and all in all it was a pretty fun and wistful night.

i savoured the feeling of walking home from a bar, a little drunk and hungry, and getting drunk food while watching inane youtube videos when i got home (i ordered delivery from frans even though it’s literally a block away from my apartment).

there is a specific sense of carefree invincibility i get when i’m drunk that i missed.

this past weekend, i went to a coworker’s backyard for a surprise party in honour of our other coworker’s promotion.

it was a safer scenario because we actually practiced social distancing and sat a fair distance apart from each other, but i can only be sure of that for as much as i can remember from the night because i ended up drinking too much and blacking out.

since i haven’t been drinking at all during quarantine, my tolerance levels have really plummeted, but i still have drinking habits as if they haven’t. i drank a bottle of wine and a bunch of white claws (thanks zach), and then i went and bought two more bottles of wine and drank one, and that’s basically when my memory fades to zero.

i don’t know when i left or how i got home, but sadiq told me i got home pretty late and he heard me singing loudly by myself in my room (which is so rude). i woke up with a new burn on the back of my hand.

i can always count on waking up with a new set of burns and bruises after a blackout night.

i think i was just excited to be at a party and to drink with friends after so long.

i hope things start going back to normal soon. or maybe not normal, since normal wasn’t very great at all.

but i hope it’s not long before it becomes safe enough to hang out with my friends and have a good time without feeling worried or guilty about it.

i have to remember that that will happen faster if we’re all more careful!

i woke up a bit late today, coming out of a very strange dream, and that was probably not a good set up for the rest of my day.

to be honest, i was in a pretty bad mood for most of the day, which was annoying, and also kind of unexpected considering i’ve had such a good past couple of days spending time outside and with family.

today i was battling a lot of self-doubt for some reason, and some feelings of aimlessness and disappointment in myself. it was actually pretty distracting while i was trying to work, and i have no idea where it was coming from.

it felt like i was trying to hold back tears all the time, and though the cloud would lift for a while and things would feel normal and okay, it would quickly come rushing back and i’d feel heavy all over again.

i hate it when this happens because even though i can recognize the senselessness of these feelings, i’m unable to rationalize my way out of them.

i think to myself, “there’s nothing wrong, i’m really totally fine, my life is actually pretty good right now, i’m happy, i’m happy, i’m happy,”

but the weight lingers, and it makes me wonder if there are deeper things that i’m trying to postpone dealing with, or if these are just things you can’t help but feel sometimes.

when these hard feelings come, all i can do is sit with them, feel sad for a while, and hope they pass sooner rather than later.

thankfully, it’s mostly over, even though i still feel a little displaced (kind of like when you wake up from an unexpected nap and you don’t know where you are or what time it is), and i can read in peace before going to be early, hopeful that tomorrow will be better.

i was texting joff today and we were both complaining about how bored we were, and he said “i just need something, anything to look forward to.”

so i told him we should go hang out at a park, and now that’s what we’re doing friday after work.

i’m also supposed to meet up with conor and renee to hang out at a park on wednesday after work.

and i just set my alarm about 45 minutes earlier than usual so i can wake up, have a leisurely shower, and then go grab a breakfast sandwich and coffee from tim hortons before settling back down in my room for work.

i kind of miss stopping by tim hortons on my way to work in the mornings, standing in that line after the commute, always ready to order my usual (farmers breakfast wrap OR sausage, egg and cheese english muffin with a medium double double).

someone once told me that the happiest or most satisfied people always have something to look forward to at least every 3 weeks or something. so on any given day they have something – anything – to look forward to within the next 3 weeks.

maybe i’ll start making sure that’s the case for me, even if what i’m looking forward to is a perfectly ordinary breakfast sandwich that i’ve eaten maybe a thousand times.

i think it’s important when we have vast stretches of monotonous days that can so easily feel overwhelmingly the same.

tonight i finally watched ready player one, which i’ve been meaning to do for over a year, and i actually really liked it, even though i found the ending a bit meh.

robby says i should read the book and honestly, i skimmed the synopsis and it does seem a lot better.

i was craving chips or something similar, so i impulse ordered a bunch of snacks from snacko to enjoy while watching the movie, and this turned out to be the best saturday night i’ve had in a while.

camilla reminded me that there’s a 7-eleven five minutes away from my apartment, so i felt a little dumb, but honestly $23 (including delivery) for 10 things was pretty worth it.

i’ve been snacking a lot during quarantine and let me tell you, i’m not hating it.

above: this was a shot sadiq took of me to test the lighting during his photoshoot with bre. people apparently love this photo and it wasn’t even supposed to be a thing!

sadiq has taken a pretty keen interest in photography recently (he even bought a pretty neat, retro-looking camera and everything), so on Tuesday he asked me if i wanted to come with him to a photo shoot he was doing with our friend bre.

i hadn’t been out to hang out with people who aren’t members of my immediate family in so long, so i happily said yes.

we took the subway there, not sitting down to minimize physical contact with anything, and we noticed public transit already starting to get busy again. the train we were in didn’t even have those signs over every other chair saying they were out of service to encourage spacing out.

neither of us remembered to bring our masks so we were feeling pretty vulnerable. it’s so weird (or maybe not so weird) how a pandemic can so quickly create an atmosphere of distrust.

my building is trying to enforce a policy of one household per elevator (which usually amounts to 1 person per elevator at a time), and sometimes you can tell when people are really paranoid about everything.

sometimes the elevator door will open and someone will already be in it, and there’s an awkward moment when i can’t tell if it would be okay to join them, but usually you can register a kind of dull hostility before they start pressing the close button, which is fair. we really shouldn’t be taking any risks.

but the couple of times i have joined someone in an elevator, we’ve ended up laughing about how crazy everything’s gotten.

i remember coming back from a run and there was a woman in the lobby already waiting for the elevator, and when it arrived i had the full intention of waiting for the next one, but she said “do you wanna come in?”

and i said, “oh, are you sure you don’t mind?”

and she kind of gave a dismissive laugh before beckoning me inside.

i was sweaty, and probably smelled so i fel a litle bad about that, but it was still a nice ride up. i noticed her lcbo bag and asked “wine night tonight?”

and she said “yep, just by myself again,” and we laughed and she told me she was a photographer and we had some friendly chit chat. honestly, it was really nice just to have a simple encounter like that as if everything was normal and there was no reason at all to be worried about two people sharing an elevator.

anyway, we met up with bre at casa loma, and the weather was really nice and everything around us was pretty. they went about choosing outfits for the shoot and picking locations and i went about shooting my own footage pretending i was some sort of behind the scenes videographer. i was planning to release the footage with my latest video, but it already ended up being so long because apparently i don’t know how to stop talking (which i’m going to have to work on before i bore whatever audience i have to death).

eventually nellie came to meet us since she lives close by, and it was really nice to see her in person after so long.

my favourite part of the day was after they were done shooting and we were all just sitting around and hanging out on the grass.

it was nice to just be outside, feeling the fresh air and the sun on my skin, watching strangers walk by with their bikes and their dogs. weirdly, i miss being around strangers, and i know this sounds super conceited, but i miss feeling pretty to people i don’t know. it’s like that feeling i get in airports when i walk around in my comfy travel clothes looking like a whole mess, but i still feel super cute.

and it was honestly nice to just be able to talk with some close friends face to face about everything that’s been going on.

i haven’t really been in the best place for the better part of the last two weeks, but i’m finally starting to pick up again.

i’m starting to feel stronger and more myself, a little more centered and a little more reoriented. thankfully, bad moods are predictable and will always pass, and i get through them by remembering everything happens in cycles. you just gotta feel what you feel when you feel it, and then move on.

after a bit of chit chat, we said our goodbyes, and sadiq and i went to tim hortons before heading home. he got an ice coffee and i got not one, but two donuts, which i’d actually been craving for a while.

we stopped by my parents house so i could pee and grab some rice (i ran out), and my mom gave us a couple of coca colas to sip on our walk home.

and by the time we got home we were both so tired, even though we’d only really been out for three hours.

all in all, it was a really good day, even though it made me miss being able to do normal things in the summer.

i hope i appreciate these small moments more after this whole pandemic situation blows over.

i’ve been rereading my old blogposts lately and as always, it’s a fun and bittersweet trip through memories i haven’t thought about in years.

one thing that i’ve come to realize is that i’m jealous of my former self and the way i used to write.

i used to have such a beautiful way of interpreting the world – i could lay it all out in such simple and striking ways. i could conjure such perfect images and evoke such specic feelings without even having to try.

before, i was able to imbue even the most mundane things with some sense of significance or meaning, and that transformed the world around me into something worth recording.

i think it’s because i used to feel things so deeply, so of course everything i saw was full of some holy light or some imposing darkness – the glitter golden hours or the hollow, somber nights.

now i feel like the poetry has seeped away from my life and i don’t know where to find it.

the thing about contentment is that even though it’s nice, it’s boring.

it’s great that i haven’t felt particularly heartbroken for a really long time, but i also haven’t been particularly inspired, which kind of makes me sad.

i miss the spontaneity of my younger years – the wild recklessness that both shattered and upheld me.

i’m fine where i am right now – i’m really perfectly okay – but i want to find the beauty in things again, and i think it’s up to me to really look.

i don’t have to let myself be drained of all the pretty things just because i’ve fallen into a predictable routine.

there is still so much more out there, and i want to see and feel it all.

“I understood that I had arrived there full of pride and realized that – in good faith, certianly, with affection – I had made that whole journey mainly to show her what she had lost and what I had won. But she had known from the moment I appeared, and now, risking tensions with her workmates, and fines, she was explaining to me that I had won nothing, that in the world there is nothing to win, that her life was full of varied and foolish adventures, as much as mine, and that time simply slipped away without any meaning, and it was good just to see each other every so often to hear the mad sound of the brain of one echo in the mad sound of the brain of the other.”

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

fortonystark:

Anti-Racist Resource Guide

Resource is from victoriaalxndr on Twitter!

so many good books!!