Hand on my heart,

hand on my stupid heart.

Life is wild. I’ve been spiraling continuously for around two months, with brief (but very pleasant) interruptions from travel and friends. Something bad happens, I uncover giant holes in my heart, I sit with the feelings and get used to them, and then another bad thing happens and I uncover more holes. I feel like I’ve been staring down and charging head-first at the same problems for months and it feels awful but it’s also really liberating. Reminds me of my favorite part of Celeste, where you rush relentlessly towards the part of you that you used to run away from. Anyway I’ve had like 7 completely unrelated sources of heartbreak over the last two months. None of which I feel capable of writing about directly, so instead I’m sharing some of the words that have been on my mind.

(While we’re on the subject, this is a sick Celeste tattoo. Almost makes me want to do a road trip to LA. Also, sorry for spoilers. But this post has spoilers for so many things that I’ve given up on including warnings.)

This might be my first properly-capitalized non-academic writing in like ten years or something. Mostly because the vast majority of the text is copied from other places, but also for legibility reasons as this one is especially hard to read. Don’t worry (or sorry), we will return to lowercase shortly.

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I wake up & it breaks my heart. My tea’s gone cold, I’m wondering why I got out of bed at all. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. The morning rain clouds up my window, and I go outside. personally idk how u can walk through downtown SF late at night and I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. [MARLEY] There’s a sense in which everyone is pathetic. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. Pathetic on the surface, but also pathetic deep-down. see people asleep on the sidewalk and feel anything other than There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. a deep tenderness And you can choose to see everyone as pathetic if you want, or you can choose to not. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. I can’t see at all, but even if I could it would all be gray [VINCENT] I think that’s one of my problems. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. I grew up not really respecting other people. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. and a wish for a better world. Hand on my heart. And when you’re in the habit of not respecting other people it’s also really easy to not respect yourself. Hand on my stupid heart.

If you want to be loved, find something you love. People can sense it when you have something you’re dedicated to. [CLEMENTINE] Too many guys think I’m a concept or I complete them or I’m going to make them alive, but I’m just a fucked-up girl who is looking for my own peace of mind. Don’t assign me yours. No one wants the burden of being the answer to your dissatisfaction. [JOEL] I remember that speech really well. [CLEMENTINE] I had you pegged, didn’t I? [JOEL] You had the whole human race pegged. [CLEMENTINE] Probably. When you’re unsure of yourself, it’s easy to be obsessed with the idea of love—the idea that happiness will arrive when someone else loves you. [JOEL] I still thought you were going to save my life. Even after that.

[VINCENT] I have this behavior where I obsess over projects and people and place a lot of happiness in the distant future. [BOJACK] Everything comes so easy for you. Like I tell myself I’ll be happy in a few months when this project is done, or I’ll fantasize about someone. The fourth rule was to ignore thoughts about the end product and how the end product would be received. I could too easily find myself inhabiting a fantasy world [MR PEANUTBUTTER] Oh, and it doesn’t for you? [CLAUDE] The obsessive quality you mention might be serving as emotional anchors or sources of dopamine that keep you engaged and hopeful, but potentially at the expense of feeling satisfied with life as it is right now. in which my thesis led to fame and renown. You’re a millionaire movie star Not only was this eventuality extremely unlikely, but it led me further away from, rather than closer to, This could relate to a few different things: a tendency toward fantasy as emotional regulation, with a girlfriend who loves you, difficulty with present-moment fulfillment or contentment, my goal of discovering the pleasures of the process of work. possibly using these obsessions to avoid uncomfortable feelings or emptiness. acting in your dream movie. I wanted to work not because of the supposed effect of my work on others, but for the gratifications, to me, of working. What more do you want? [VINCENT] Recently I did IFS and noticed that there was a part of me buried in my childhood which was harshly criticized by my parents / felt unloved / needed external validation. What else could the universe possibly owe you? I wonder how this relates to self-worth and my obsession over future outcomes. [CLAUDE] Here’s how it likely connects: That younger part who was harshly criticized and competed for validation learned that love and safety came through achieving and performing. [BOJACK] I want to feel good Even though your adult self has built healthy self-worth, that part is still running in the background. about myself. So your current obsession with future outcomes might be that part’s survival strategy still operating—except now it’s internalized. My fantasies made the reality of my barely begun thesis look so shabby Your adult self developed good boundaries and independence (probably as protection), but the underlying mechanism of “happiness = accomplishment” remained. The way you do. Romantic fantasies might be that younger part’s way of accessing the unconditional love and acceptance it never got. And I don’t know how. In fantasy, you don’t have to achieve anything—you’re just loved for existing. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. But because it stays in fantasy rather than present reality, it maintains that “happiness is always just ahead” pattern. I don’t know if I can.

I want someone to tell me what to wear in the morning. No, I want someone to tell me what to wear every morning. [TIFF] I would put you as more serious than silly. I want someone to tell me what to eat. What to like. [VINCENT] I think I want to go ebiking regularly. It seems fun and will help me get out of my head more. What to hate. Lord, I confess I want the clarity of What to rage about. What to listen to. [MARLEY] You’re trying to make all these top-down changes to your life and I’m not sure if that actually works. What band to like. What to buy tickets for. [VINCENT] Yeah I know, it’s a problem, I’m trying to be less serious. What to joke about. What not to joke about. [TIFF] I have a problem where I’ve been doomscrolling a lot on TikTok. I want someone to tell me what to believe in. [VINCENT] Oh, I hope you do less of that soon? Who to vote for It feels like you’re trying to plan solutions because you want to have already solved the problems, catastrophe but not the catastrophe. and who to love and how to tell them. when instead you should be having fun in the process. The point of life isn’t to have lived it. I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far, I think I’ve been getting it wrong. [VINCENT] I see what you mean. It’s like how I would never go on TikTok because it seems like a bad use of time, [TIFF] It’s kind of nice though. The silly part of me thrives on TikTok. but actually some friends I really respect use it a lot and it seems quite valuable for them. And I know that’s why people want someone like you in their lives, because you just tell them how to do it. [MARLEY] Yeah, it seems like there’s a lot of exploration you don’t let yourself do You just tell them what to do and what they’ll get out at the end of it, even though I don’t believe your bullshit because you’ve told yourself it seems wrong. and I know that scientifically nothing that I do makes any difference in the end, anyway, Like everyone else, I want a storm I can dance in. I’m still scared. Why am I still scared? So just tell me what to do. Just fucking tell me what to do, Father. I want an excuse to change my life.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out [KEVIN] What are your goals right now? and didn’t have to take the normal classes, Slow down, you’re doin’ fine, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. [VINCENT] I think my goal right now is just to make a lot of stuff. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. [KEVIN] Does it matter what kind of stuff? you can’t be everything you wanna be before your time. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. [VINCENT] I don’t think it matters what the stuff is as long as it’s aligned with my values and I’m pushing myself. Although it’s so romantic on the borderline tonight, tonight. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. Too bad, but it’s the life you lead, [KEVIN] Are you worried about being too unfocused? But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. you’re so ahead of yourself, that you forgot what you need. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. [VINCENT] I used to worry about this a lot. I thought I needed to have a grand vision for how everything fit together. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. Though you can see when you’re wrong, But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. I guess I no longer believe that’s a realistic goal though, so I’ve stopped caring about it. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. you know you can’t always see when you’re right, You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever, you’re right.

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(Words borrowed from: Meditations in an Emergency, Thank You / Stan, a ctbeiser tweet, many conversations with friends and Claude, how to avoid half-heartedness, an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind scene, a Bojack Horseman scene, Learning to Work, a Fleabag scene, CATASTROPHE IS NEXT TO GODLINESS, Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement speech, Vienna.)