This essay is part twelve of my year-long project where, each month, I’ll look through old journal entries by using a random date generator to decide which day of my past to explore. This month’s was October 20th.
OCTOBER 20, 2011 - 2023
2011: Anna and I skipped class to buy materials for our informal costumes. I spent the night at home and made costumes with Allie, Kate, Alex, Ethan and Dia. I am covered in feathers.
2012: We woke up early and went to the Farmers Market in Bloomington. We bought a chili plant. After exploring IU, we went to Dia’s sister’s fall party — it was so fun! There were games, fire, photos, food and so much cider.
2013: The Fitzgerald’s came over for lunch / dinner and we all went on a walk. After everyone left, Mom and I watched “Legally Blonde” and I designed Ball Bearings until really late at night.
2014: I was super stressed today because of the Photoshop file and trying to get everything done on time. I felt very bad at my job and like I had failed at most basic things.
2015: I was pretty exhausted at work because I got home so late last night, but I didn’t have much to do, so it was okay. I’m also getting very sick, so yoga with Omri was a huge struggle for me today.
2016: I realized last night that all of my make up was missing, so that was unfortunate, but we also all got bonuses at work and my parents bought us all Kanye tickets.
2017: Because I got home at 5:30, I was severely hungover / still drunk all day, but Cymbre, Abby, Chels and I got lunch and I was asleep by 8 pm after eating pizza.
2018: Serria, Jess, Bridget and I took the train up to Lawrence Hill to go apple-picking and it was so much fun. It was truly a really good experience for the four of us.
2019: Taylor and Kyle dropped me off at Anna and Johnny’s after Cody and Kyle cooked us breakfast. The three of us went to a brewery and then met up with Chris and his new girlfriend, Abby, for dinner.
2020: I took over a lot of the magazine this week to prove that I deserve to be here and it was really tiring, but I prefer to be busy. It felt like all of us were in very weird moods, too.
2021: The whole art department went into the office today to work on the refresh which was nice to see everyone. At night, I had my date with Jackson which was nice, but I think we might just be better friends.
2022: I took a sick day because I feel awful. I still haven’t been able to eat anything, but I am hoping that this is going to be the end.
2023: I did not feel productive at work today in any sense — I think I am a little bit in mourning of what’s happening at 305 and I feel guilty for not being as present as normal, but I did have a really lovely class with Emma.
When I started therapy in January of 2023, the first thing I told my therapist was that I had trouble envisioning the future. “It’s not like everything is all black and completely dark, like I want to die,” I said — a thing I have since been told is actually a Very Not Cool thing to say to a therapist, because if you bring up death (especially in the first session!) they will, in fact, think you want to die — “but,” I told her, “when I think about the future — a year, five years, ten years from now — I can’t see anything concrete. It’s like everything is just all murky and gray and, through it, I can’t possibly see what I want my life to look like.”
This grayness was not a new occurrence for me, though it was the first time I was putting my experience into words and saying them out loud to another person. It’d been around for years, maybe even my whole adult life. I had an incredible life in New York — I had lovely friends, an unusually competitive and cool career, a social calendar that was full and hobbies like 305 that I enjoyed so much, they bordered on obsession. Still, things just always felt… stagnant. I felt a little trapped in the makings of my own life. Every day was good, sure, but they also all felt the same. I wasn’t overly excited by anything, not really, and didn’t feel like I had a grasp on my own preferences, wants or needs. I started to get worried that life was just passing by without me making any concrete goals for myself. I had no idealism of who I was or what I wanted for the future. Over and over again, I would close my eyes and try to imagine where I wanted to be in a year, five years, ten years, and what steps I needed to take to get there.
Over and over again, all I saw behind my shut eyes was gray.
My therapist, for her part, tried — kind of. We talked a lot about burnout and perfectionism and the way I tend to live my life with an almost unhinged type of physical dedication, ruminants left over from my youth as a dancer, but she lost me, fully, when she suggested I purchase a workbook focused on self-confidence for millennial women. It wasn’t so much the contents of the workbook that offended me — rather, a former straight A student and lover of gold stars and checklists, I actually enjoyed the concept of filling out pages to reach an intended goal — but the design of the proposed workbook was so tacky, it made me question every nugget of advice this woman had ever given me. The farthest I got in this particular self-help experience was flipping through the chapters, seeing the pages littered with bad typography and basic quotes (“You’ve got this, girlie!!!”) and, immediately, throwing it in the trash.
Six months later, in October, things were still pretty gray. I’d moved on to a new therapist (if we are being technical, she’d moved on from me, citing she needed to graduate… which made me realize I had not been speaking to a licensed therapist, but instead, to a grad student the entire time. This made both my $15 co-pay and the cheesy millennial design of the workbook make much more sense.). My new therapist was…. fine and had not gotten any closer to helping me map out what I wanted my future to look like. The only thing that was keeping me even somewhat grounded was my practice at 305 and, this time last year, our studio was about to close with no solid contingency plan. In one sweep, I was losing my community and the only physical activity that made me feel like myself. I was still concerned about my future and the grayness, yes, but the thought of no longer having access to the one place that was keeping me mentally sound was enough to jumpstart me into a panic about changing my day-to-day first.
I thrive under structure (I am, obviously, an eldest daughter!) and, so, began searching for rigid programming that’d help me reformat my life with the same dedication I’d previously poured into 305. For context on my commitment, it is important to note that this was during the time my Achilles was so injured, I was only getting through the dance classes by periodically pausing to shove full ice cubes down my sock in an effort to numb my ankle. Thinking back to my first therapist and how I’d initially been excited about the thought of filling out a workbook until I’d taken it out of the packaging while also fearing long-term repercussions if I pushed myself into a new physical activity, I started The Artist’s Way, a twelve-week, workbook-based program focused on sparking creativity that fully changed my life and, importantly, gave birth to this project.
I didn’t know what was going to happen when I started this project — despite keeping diligent records of my days for over twelve years, I’d actually never looked through any of the entries. It has been fascinating to explore who I used to be and peering through that data with the lens of who I am and who I can become. Working on this not only made me become a more consistent writer for myself, it also inspired me to complete so many other goals that added color to the previous grayness of my days.
Physically, I did multiple rounds of a fitness program I’d been struggling to finish since 2016 and, also, successfully accomplished 75 Hard (all without making it my entire personality which is, actually, an impressive feat because when you are drinking a gallon of water every day it, somehow, has the side effects of making you have to pee all the time and feel morally superior to everyone else for how hydrated you are! Sorry!). I hate admitting I need help, but recognizing I was struggling with both fueling myself and overexertion, I got a nutritionist and a physical therapist, two people who helped me learn to chill the fuck out and listen to my body and to whom I have promised to never rely on ice cubes to get me through a workout or a hunger spell ever again.
Creatively, I went to more shows and became a regular at artistic meet-ups. I joined more museums and actually went. And, I started making real art again — for me, not just for my job. Also, I think I should still get credit for joining a 10-week printmaking course even though I quit after a month when the instructor stopped showing up and, instead, the class began to be taught by the 17-year-old TA named Tobias who knew less about printmaking than me, but did teach our class quite a bit about Tik Tok.
Emotionally, I extracted myself from a relationship I realized was no longer right for me. I saw through the grayness far enough to make the decision to freeze my eggs (to be honest, this procedure, which rocked my world this summer, could be filed under “physical” and “mental” as well) and adopted a three-pound kitten/gremlin who wakes me up every morning at 4:30 to play and has destroyed everything I own, but floods me with gratuity when she greets me with love each time I come home.
Mentally, I committed to continuing the Artist’s Way practice of writing three pages every morning and those 30 minutes I take for myself each day to sort through my thoughts are some of my favorite moments from this year. It’s a practice that has become so engrained in the fabric of who I am now that it’s hard to believe I haven’t been doing it forever. Writing each morning has allowed me to find both my voice and get a better grasp on what I want and need. Part of what I learned in those quiet mornings to myself was that I wanted to be more vulnerable and find the confidence to share my life and art in bigger ways, both with my friends and people I did not yet know. That led me to join a year-long writing group focused on exploring the tenants of sexuality and the community I have found there, a group of people all across the world who make me feel safe and seen (especially at times this year when I was not feeling safe or seen in real life relationships), has allowed me to open myself up to a more beautiful and generous life.
It’s been hard for me to write this piece, I think because it is the last one. I had thought, maybe, I’d continue this project for longer than a year — I am proud of the writing I have created this year and reliving my past in such a specific way was lovely, but after a three-week period this summer where, perhaps sensing I was recently single and mentally sound, almost every person I have ever dated reached out, giving mad “If you’re still in line to talk to Jen, stay in line!!!” energy, it felt like a sign I should stop digging so deeply into my past. I’m grateful for the ability to have the resources to do this project — grateful to myself in 2011 for purchasing my first Five Year Diary and grateful for all the iterations of myself who have continued to fill them out, day after day, throughout all these years. It’s been so interesting to be able to look at every mundane day I used to consider gray —“We bought a chili plant,” “Cody and Kyle made us breakfast,” “I am covered in feathers”— and remember those as the beautiful, colorful moments and relationships that make up my life. Not only has writing these twelve essays given me structure each month (she loves an accomplishment — you know a checklist hates to see me coming!), but it’s changed how I spend my time and energy. I now push myself to do so much more, for both my community and myself, and because of that — even though I still don’t know what I want my life to look like in a year, five years, ten years — I no longer see gray when I close my eyes. Instead, I see possibility.