Hi world. I had Covid this week and was thus home from school, cursing myself that I couldn’t muster up the thoughts to write this email. A week of quiet was good for me, though. It reactivated my urge to babble into the email void.
Before you fret for me, “MK, don’t be hard on yourself, you had Covid, you don’t have to be a productivity machine,” let me assure you I was not actually cursing myself. Like, in any way, at all. I do not get hard on myself when I’m sick. I get sorry for myself, as if I were the first woman alive to experience this virus and not the last of basically every person I know. I texted about 20 different people when my rapid test came up positive—“i have covid :(” or better yet, a captionless photo of the double-line rapid test. What can say? I love the attention. Even if it’s pity attention.
The question “what are you watching?” has been making me laugh during this time, because, what haven’t I been watching!? Cooking videos, painting videos, guitar tutorials, stand-up clips, fashion reviews, OOTDs, motivational speeches, music videos, cute dogs, dogs dressed up as humans, dogs dressed up as Taylor Swift recreating one of her music videos, Taylor Swift theorists saying that she was going to drop an album last Friday (hmph!), people jumping over massive puddles in New York crosswalks, Scandinavian cows in lush fields, an esthetician giving her infant child a facial, a napkin blowing in the wind, a slow-mo video of an ice maker releasing freshly made ice cubes. And on!
But to answer your question, I haven’t been watching much. At least not any TV series or movies that I could recommend. All I can report on is one endless, perfectly curated feed of tiktoks washing over my congested stupor, and that was made just for me, you can’t have it! Sorry! The algorithm says so!
Don’t worry, I would never actually wish my for you page on anyone else. I love tiktok as much as the next gen Z but shit gets weird on there after too long. Or better said, shit gets weird in your brain. It sure did in mine.
I’ve been working on a couple of poems. I suspect I will tinker more, but here they are in their current forms.
I’ve been writing in my journal a lot this week, reflecting on this time in solitude and the bursts of restlessness I feel. There’s a thought I’ve been returning to throughout the week that I want to share with you here. I’m not sure if I’ve read this exact idea somewhere before, or if it’s a synthesis of different spiritual guidance I’ve encountered. I’m sure it will sound familiar to you—
When I’m feeling frustration, I want to move forward with a dash of patience, a dash of faith, and a dash of action. Patience from knowing I am on no one’s timeline but my own, and my life isn’t a race to somewhere. Faith from believing that however things work out is how they're meant to. That braveness will come to me in the moment it's meant to, and that stillness will come to me at the right time, too. Action out of knowing there are specific steps I can take to address the source of my frustration, and I can tackle them one at a time, when I feel ready. I need all three: patience, faith, action.
That’s felt soft on my mind and heart lately.
Thank you for being here, for reading and responding. I love connecting with you in this way. Until next time, happy pizza day! I love you all. x, MK