This essay is part four 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 February 4th.
February 4, 2012—2023
Before I start, I have to tell you — I am, to my core, a long-form narrative girlie.
Over the past decade, I’ve found comfort in writing, in length, about experiences that have happened to me. I love that I am able to lace together memories from different times in my life to create a successful storyline and it’s been a skill that I’ve carried gratefully around with pride. (In an extremely “on brand” moment for me, I do believe the knowledge that I even possessed this ability stemmed from winning a $1,000 scholarship my senior year of high school for writing a piece about my first kiss).
I am, however, not that confident in other forms of writing. Whether that be short fictional stories or poetry or listicles or, really, just anything other than my normal, personal essays, I’ve never felt like I had a grasp on that world of literature. One of my goals this year, especially with this particular project, is to allow myself to branch out creatively and try more things, specifically things that I don’t think I am going to be good at.
I’ve always loved reading IN and OUT lists at the beginning of each new year. I think they are clever and fun and it’s an interesting glimpse of where a person’s mindset really is in the form of something lighthearted and a tiny bit silly. This month’s post looks a little different than usual — it’s an IN and OUT list for every year of my life explored, in hopes that I can extend my narrative abilities while still seeing how I have grown.
2012: We made margs and did sunrise shots all night — it was the greatest. Drew was our bartender and Tyler and I had a wall sit competition. Eric drank salsa threw [sic] a straw and Anna and I did drunk Turbo Kick.
IN:
• sunrises (tequila) — I’d have sooner died than drank orange juice in the daytime, but mixed with grenadine and alcohol, this was my preferred drink of choice when I was 19, a clear sign to pretty much everyone that I was 19.
• exercising (drunk)
OUT:
• sunrises (actual) — after nights so fueled by tequila that drinking salsa out of a straw was not not a normal occurrence (also, out, sorry, Eric), if we were awake to see a sunrise, we weren’t remembering it.
• exercising (sober)
2013: I met with [my adviser] and I can graduate on time as long as I don’t do anything dumb. I went into The DN [the student newspaper where I worked as a designer] early to work on 72 HRS [the student iPad publication I helped bring to life] and Ball Bearings [the student magazine I was the design editor of] and we watched our “Lucky” video again.
IN:
• going to the office early and staying there late, never realizing the reason it took us so long to get anything done was because we spent large chunks of time filming lip-synch music videos.
• thinking I wasn’t going to graduate even though I had a 3.8 GPA, was a design lead in almost every student media department available and would not shut up (to the point of becoming insufferable) about reading “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” in my Honors College classes.
OUT:
• actually almost not graduating one year later because my Econ professor did think I was dumb — on one particularly frustrating day during my second semester of senior year, he called me stupid and threw the whiteboard eraser at my head, causing our entire class to walk out in protest. I do have reason to believe that the fact I had too much to do for student media and did not have time to report this incident led him to change my grade from the 72 C- I had to the 75 I needed to pass the class at the very, very, very last minute (like, literally after I had already walked at graduation).
• sleeping
2014: I worked on Ball Bearings again all day. When I finished going to the printer, I came home and slept for three hours, then drank beer while I coded and talked with my roommates for the rest of the night.
IN:
• feeling like a real adult
OUT:
• not realizing that most real adults do not have the luxury of middle-of-the-day naps
2015: After work, I accidentally found an Urban, then went into Bed, Bath and Beyond before going to the hip hop class. I really liked the routine we did this week and met nice people there.
IN:
• being Urban Outfitters #1 customer — I often stood outside the Urban downtown just waiting for them to open in the morning before work so I could buy a new outfit during an alcohol-fueled phase of sexual recklessness that I cannot compute now as being the actions of the same person who is sitting here typing these words.
OUT:
• being Urban Outfitters #1 customer — this period of fast fashion consumerism wreaked havoc on my finances in my early twenties in ways I have only recently recovered from.
2016: After work, I went to Equinox, then Barfly with ZG and Serria, where we apologized to Liz for calling her Lucy for a year and I went outside the Taproom to get a Polaroid photo taken.
IN:
• Barfly Thursday
• feeling unsure about my career path and, in a fit of desperation, researching grad schools
• realizing grad schools were far too expensive so resorting instead to re-reading books I enjoyed in college, leading to me carrying “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” everywhere I went
• making my friends take a photo of me holding “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” outside of the bar my hookup-who-I-thought-I-was-dating-and-was-maybe-going-to-marry-until-I-asked-once-at-eight-in-the-morning-“are-you-seeing-other-people?”-and-he-said-“yes”-and-I-said,-inexplicably,-“I-have-to-go-do-karaoke,”-then-left works
OUT:
• the morning after a Barfly Thursday
• actually believing that my friends believed me when I lied, saying I was waiting for them to get in cabs first, that I was also going home and definitely not into the bar my hookup worked to drunkenly read my book and comprehend exactly none of it until he got off his shift
2017: Serria and I threw an awesome party. Everyone came and our apartment was so crowded, but it was so much fun. After, a few of us went to Billy Mark’s and [the man I once got a bloody nose on in the middle of adult activities] and I had a talk.
IN:
• hosting a housewarming party for our tiny, shitty apartment with an invite list of 99+, assuming not everyone will show up
• having almost everyone show up
OUT:
• fire safety
2018: I spent the morning doing chores and then headed to the UES to watch the Super Bowl at Jenna and Kyle’s with them, Tori, Tyler and Nicole which was fun.
IN:
• spending time with my cousins and their social-media famous cat, a kitten who competed in the Kitten Bowl
OUT:
• actually watching the Super Bowl
2019: Maggie and I spent the day walking all around Manhattan which was really nice — it was fun to just hang out with her. When she left, I had dinner with Serria, Bridget and Jess.
IN:
• the absolute lightness of a weekend spent visting with a long-distance friend from college
OUT:
• the unbearable sadness when they leave
2020: After work, I sat with [a co-worker] for an hour and had a really nice talk before I left to go see Cold War Kids play at Webster Hall — it was an okay show, but good.
IN:
• the beginning of a relationship changing from co-workers to real friends with good, after-hours conversations and future plans to get together soon
• going to concerts by myself
OUT:
• not realizing we’d only have a month to make that transformation complete, then never getting the opportunity to actually hang outside the office
• not realizing this would be the last live show I’d see for over a year
2021: Work was fine — I am tired from this week — and I had a nice conversation with someone [my boss] matched me up with to talk about a career in design which made me want to look into the grad school program again.
IN:
• talking to a recent graduate and, instead of being reassuring to them about the state of creative journalism, sparking my own panic about going to grad school (again)
OUT:
• online grad school being just as astronomically expensive as in-person grad school
2022: Serria and I had a very chill night in and finished the Harry Potter series which was a perfect way to spend one of our last Friday’s together as roommates — I genuinely enjoyed it a lot.
IN:
• staying in on a Friday — to the pre-pandemic versions of me, this would have been unacceptable behavior. Back then, even if I was hesitant on the content of the plans, I would go, wanting to be perceived as someone who was always down for a good time, even if I wasn’t actually enjoying myself. One of the most beautiful parts of growth for me during the time immediately after lockdown is that I fully prioritized doing what was important to me and gained the confidence to show that, allowing me to feel lighter and happier than I had in years.
OUT:
• forced fun
2023: [A new friend] and I had a very nice friend date at Paintbox and then going to [our favorite instructor’s] 90-minute class. I am extremely thankful for 305 and the community that I have found through going every day.
IN:
• sunrises (actual) — this new friend and I got to know each other in the early morning hours before our 305 class started. Back then, before the studio closed, I’d leave my apartment before 6 AM, delighting in watching the sunrise start to peak out as I trekked my way to the train station. Remembering 2020, when I’d been so excited to spend time with my co-worker outside of the office and never got that chance, I was eager to make non-305 related plans with the girl I chatted with weekly. I was blown away by how sweet our first friend date turned out to be and felt a deep, deep gratitude when the day ended.
• exercising (sober)
OUT:
• sunrises (tequila) — by the time I started going to 305, I was already eight months sober. I was immediately obsessed with the community and the confidence I felt just being in the room, but was nervous about actually making friends. I hadn’t really made friends without the lubricant of alcohol since before college and I was so terrified I would be bad at letting people get to know me. Instead, I found the opposite — without hiding behind tequila, I was so fully myself and it felt really lovely getting to know a community on a level that felt more genuine than what I’d experienced in the past.
• exercising (drunk)
Before I end, I have to tell you — in March 2022, I once again re-read “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.”
Besides writing a one-sentence review of every book I read (for this one, “I love this, as always”), I also jot down any phrases or quotes that jump out to me. The first one I wrote on that reading embodied the general thesis of the book, the exploration that everyone truly only has one life to live and that there is no eternal return. The quote reads “We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.” Later on, this is reiterated again, stating “Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which are bad is that in any given situation we can only make one decision, we are not given a second, third or fourth life in which to compare various decisions.”
I think that is why I like this book so much and return to it again and again. The whole reason of me writing these daily journal entries — and, even more so, me going back now to excavate through them — is to see where my life choices have brought me. It’s an investigation to see how I ended up here and if this is the correct path… which it has to be, because it’s the only path. I’m grateful I have such a clear blueprint of my past, but even more grateful that I have made decisions (some good! some bad! some light! some dark!) that led me to where I am right now. I love all those other versions of me – the girl staying up all night, exhausted in The DN office; the girl standing outside in the cold, waiting for the Urban Outfitters to open; the girl crying in Central Park, applying for a grad school consultation on her phone while simultaneously checking her bank account; the girl who found the strength to get sober; the girl who became the person who is writing this essay… which did turn into kind of an essay, rather than a list, despite my best efforts.
There is something so beautiful about finding joy and lightness in where my life choices have taken me, even when the experiences felt heavy, and I feel so thankful for these connections. I still have the Polaroid I made ZG snap that night in 2016 and I found it when I realized the date was tied to this project. I look at it now and I remember watching both him and Serria get into cars, leaving me to stare up at the bar. I remember feeling the equal pull of wanting to go inside as well as the burden of knowing it was likely the wrong choice. I remember looking down at the book in my hands, remember thinking about how we don’t know for certain which decisions are good, remember thinking about how we don’t know for certain which decisions are bad, remember thinking about how we don’t know for certain which decisions will affect us for the rest of our lives.
And, then, I remember walking inside.