Existential Summer
I gave myself bangs and I'm doing a paint-by-number and I'm obsessed with Hunter Biden now and also the new Charli xcx album is kinda genius, right?
I’ve been clenching my jaw in my sleep again. When I mention it to my husband he always asks me why and I don’t have an answer. I don’t know what or why I do things in my sleep. My dental hygienist told me it was a side effect of my SSRI, but I’m not grinding my teeth all the time.
It’s the writing, I think. The pressure to publish a book is still programming my psyche somewhere in there. I can tell myself that I’ve let it go but somehow I’m not buying that I’ve really let it go yet.
Every so often, I’ll have a night where I’m knee deep in a video about the hellscape of society and a bit of insight grips me enough to return to my draft and type out 300-500 words of voice-driven prose. Something deep comes out. Jennifer takes the angst and turns it into something satirical. The satire is still messy, though. It’s going to take some time.
Recently I got this paint by number. I thought I’d be doing it solely by watching YouTube doomer essays, like this one wherein the Ordinary Things guy gamifies his life after a cancer scare. There was a part in it that triggered me a bit. It’s when he gets a Dexcom to track his blood sugar readings and it took me back to last summer where I briefly had a Dexcom to manage my diabetes. It was nice to know things, but also a curse that didn’t pair well with my perfectionism.
I’m now back to my retro diabetic regime of finger pokes and bolus calculations. The nurses are nice about the fact that I refuse to use technology, but they keep mentioning the benefits. Oh, the benefits of sharing your medical data with a big corporation that (for now!) promises they won’t do anything with your data. I’ve gone on the “I don’t trust corporations” soapbox screed with them before. I’ve had to stop myself from sounding crazy.
I’ve resorted to saying that managing my diabetes is a skill that I’ve spent over 20 years trying to work on (poorly), and that I’m willing to back to classic carb counting, being intentional about it instead of guessing doses and having multiple lows in a day like I have been for a while now.
I don’t talk much about my diabetes. I don’t like othering myself, specifically because I’ve mostly done a pretty shitty job of managing it during the 30+ years that I’ve had it. Never too late to start, though. Never too late to talk about it, either. Post-Dexcom meltdown Rebecca is willing to admit that she was masking diabetes management. My last meeting with my diabetes nurse was super productive. Now I have an app that helps me calculate all my insulin doses that (for now!) doesn’t collect or share data with third parties. It’s literally just a calculator. It’s got a rudimentary interface. It’s perfect tech.
Oblivion is freedom.
In other entertainment news, I bought a signed copy of Charli xcx’s new album, Music, Fashion, Film. If I’m honest, I really wasn’t even looking forward to this album. I hated the lead single, “Rock Music”. It’s a shit single. “SS26” and “Wink Wink” were pretty banging, but I still didn’t want too much of a good thing. Brat summer was only two years ago. The Wuthering Heights album also came out this year and I didn’t want too much of a good thing.
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised how well the existential dread of Music, Fashion, Film synced up with my paint-by-number sessions. It’s not the sort of album you can put on for everyone. It’s deeply personal. It’s an artist’s journey and it feels like my own journey.
I love “Camera”, where Charli admits to finding freedom in acting. “Fucking shoot me,” she says in a moment that touched upon my own existential voice.
I love “I’m Afraid”, where Charli wrestles with the concept of how being a wife affects her identity, how she both wants it and feels selfish for wanting it.
I love “Card Declined”, where Charli goes on a fully self-aware shopping montage.
I love “Wink Wink”, where Charli promises that she’s not a bad girl anymore while discussing all the ways she’s masking her own sexual identity. Fuck, man, I love it.
I’m not a music reviewer so I’ll just say that it’s a good album that syncs up well with my midlife crisis.
“Fucking shoot me.”
Lastly, I’m gonna share this post from Hunter Biden, who I’ve grown a bit hyper-fixed with lately. I admire his honesty and the blunt way he talks about his addiction. He talks about the ritual, and how art can be a good way of replacing that ritual with a new ritual, a new purpose.
It resonates with me, because I’ve been struggling with a bad ritual. I’ve been numbing myself with the news cycle. I’ve had this misguided purpose in it, the need to be smart and stay informed. I miss being a dumbass, and because I tied the news cycle in with my novel, it’s uh…it’s become a curse the same way the Dexcom was a curse. I sort of gamified my goals with the end of the world, and now it feels like I’ve got this fucking deadline, like if I don’t publish my book, then my whole purpose will end
I’ve talked about this artistic existentialism already. Numerous times. I even took a fucking hospital selfie once. It’s been bad for a while, but at least I’m trying to do something about it, I guess?
Everything is fucking bullshit right now but I get to live through it without a ton of suffering. The least I can do is enjoy it, as my favorite character from White Lotus once said.