Special: where I've been
mostly personal and some musical
I have a lot of penpals. I started writing letters to Breann when we were twelve and fifteen respectively—what started with postcards sent across town turned evolved into collages, scraps from our travels, and at one point, a notebook and a USB port that we would write in and load up respectively with every iteration. I also write letters on and off with Mina (sometimes in French) and Philipp (who I met once in a bike co-op just before he moved back to Berlin, but now he’s in Vienna—we haven’t seen each other in a few years at least, and we write probably just four to five letters annually). Julia and I have a purely email-based letter thread, because she has no permanent address while she travels around the world, climbing and writing about her adventures on her Substack.
Record Store has gone on a bit of an unintentional hiatus, because I’ve been busy. I’m working, trying to find a new job, training for a triathlon, traveling, and generally trying to expand my mind. It’s rewarding! It’s exhausting! I had a revelation recently, a revelation to no one but me, that writing takes time and space, and cannot be shoved into random moments of stillness like a problem set or reading assignment. When I was in college, my irregular schedule gave me blocks of off-hours in the middle of my friends’ work days, which made writing easier. I also feel like somehow my life has gotten more complicated since I left school, and I’ve found somehow more mental preoccupations between which to split my attention, which seems to be my special talent.
So today I’m writing you a letter, which is the only kind of writing that I can do in fits and starts, on the back of my hand or in my Notes app, during and between and amongst. Writing a letter feels like teasing out the knots of my mind and hanging the ropes up to dry. Since I usually pen letters by hand, I often completely forget what I’d written by the time I get a response; it’s nice to imagine what I was trying to say weeks ago, when my worries and ideas were entirely different from now. You can email me a response about what’s been up with you, what you’re listening to, if you want.
Regular Record Store should be back in the next few weeks, once I come up for air a bit. I hope to finish editing an interview with my friend Andrew soon, and I want to write a piece about Mk.gee’s new album, which really moved me—watch this space, etc. But I wanted to provide some context for this newsletter’s inconsistency—if the personal essay is not your thing, feel free to skip.
I want to be so many things. There’s a TikTok trend—probably old now, but I keep watching them so my algorithm keeps showing them to me—that bastardizes the Sylvia Plath fig tree quote about how your life branches out ahead of you, with choices you must make. I’ve been doing ceramics on Mondays, and it’s nice to make things, but I don’t yet have the skill to make them beautiful so it’s also frustrating. On Tuesdays I work at the farmers market and say hi to all my regulars, including a baby whose name I don’t know but who I see more often than some of my close friends. Our five minute interactions, which often include me giving her a strawberry to make her smile, brighten my week immeasurably. After the market, I attend an online class about Python and math, which I try to pay attention to, but which often plays in the background of me playing with the dog or making dinner.
I’m trying to stay engaged with making music, but it’s hard to write lyrics right now as it is to write prose. This next Bike Lane record is to me like a face in a dream; it dissolves every time I look too closely. I’m building a world around it, in the hopes that the negative space will reveal itself to be a scrutable shape. I’m struggling to find coherence in the songs, and am already dreading having to cut some of them for the sake of consistency. Some of them are trickier than others, and I know making them will be rewarding, eventually.
Over the fall and winter, I was feeling very creatively inspired, coming up with new ideas all the time for things I wanted to make with my hands. That energy has waned slightly as the days have gotten longer; I’ve been spending more time outdoors, more interested in interaction and absorption than creation. In my ideal life, I have some sort of studio space, where my projects can live without needing to collapse back down at the end of everyday. A few months ago, I bought a lot of fabric with the intentions of sewing some bags and maybe a garment or two, but I sort of lost the spark. I feel tired a lot of the time, and unfortunately I’ve realized I don’t function that well without deadlines or some sort of other external motivator. I’m trying to get better about disciplining myself to do the things I know I like to do, but it’s a practice.
I’m trying to find a balance between working and working, as in working on myself and what I want for my life longterm. This second category includes nurturing my relationships, pursuing my athletic goals, creating art, learning new things, consuming good media, and writing this newsletter. Right now, My Work and my work feel cleanly bifurcated along the lines of what is meaningful and what is not, and although I know meaningful work is a privilege, I aspire to it. I think what I’m seeking is more alignment—more of the things that I do pushing me in the same direction, rather than pulling me apart, away from my center.
I’m reminded of something new I’ve learned in ceramics class, about the reason we wedge before we throw. Wedging aligns the particles in the clay such that they are all facing the same direction, making the clay more pliable and less prone to cracking. I think my life right now is like an unwedged ball of clay, with all the particles pointing in opposite directions, unsuitable for throwing.
I have a lot of questions around what I should do with my life, as ever. Where should I put my energy? I find myself tending towards things that have clear and immediate consequences—if I work eight hours at my hourly job, I get a paycheck; if I learn a new skill, it might be useful to me in the future. The stress of choosing what to do with my time in every moment leads to a lot of what I’ve been calling dithering, which is to say scrolling on my phone in some capacity. I have been meaning to meditate consistently as a means to improve my focus and decrease the troubling sensation of near-constant frustration, but I’ve failed to fit it into my routine and therefore failed to do it at all. The many paths ahead of me seem unclear at best, counterproductive at worst.
Among all these questions about vocation and meaning, there is always the issue of alignment. I’m always looking for ways I can multitask, but what if there were simply fewer tasks, and I did them better? Can I combine my vocations and hobbies such that I can eliminate one direction of movement?
I feel like the newsletter and the playlists and Bike Lane and concerts do create some sort of larger axle of music in my life. I think about music all the time, even when I’m supposed to be thinking about other things. While writing this letter, I was simultaneously swiping over to Spotify to modify a playlist I was working on; my life is quite literally soundtracked. I don’t think this obsession makes me special or unique, but I do think it’s a highly motivating factor for me, one which I’d be remiss to ignore in my search for my Real Purpose.
Can someone tell me if I’m supposed to feel tired all the time in my twenties? If not, what kind of vitamin deficiency do I have, because going to the doctor is too expensive? What swimsuit am I supposed to buy for the summer? Is political action effective anymore or should I feel despair? What’s the proper amount of time to be on your phone everyday, if it’s all relative? When am I supposed to decide I’m never leaving the city where I live, and I’m going to put down roots there? How much money is too much to spend on your friends? What if you really love them, and you want to spend your money on them, and it doesn’t feel like a burden? When is it too late for your life to really start, to give yourself a fresh slate with which to begin again?
Love always,
Amaya
P.S. Playlist of what I’ve been listening to below for paying subscribers.