Call me Timmy Turner the way I’ve been doom and gloom up in my room.
I wish I was better at organizing my thoughts into cohesive products, but unfortunately I come up with a bar like that and it just goes into my Notes app to die. Or to this blog to annoy people. In another life I think I’d be a really successful rap ghostwriter. But instead – as aforementioned – I spend my time in the isolation of my apartment just worrying myself away to nothing.
I’ve been trying to diet for the past month. Which is always crazy when I tell anyone who knows me because I’m already a smol girl. But I yearn for the days of 2021 when I was 108 lbs. and living in St. Louis. I was kind of a freak: in the sense that I woke up every day and had a Celsius, did the same gym routine, and then made a protein coffee and went to work. As annoying as all of that sounds, you just really can’t beat the results yielded via old school gym culture discipline. My brother and his friends used to have a joke where every time I’d come home to visit, they’d say, “Kels – you should just get jacked.” To the point where now I can’t even like, ask my brother for advice because that punchline will be offered up as the solution to all my problems. “Why don’t you just get jacked?” Anyways, I tried to rehash my Celsius addiction a few months ago, but ended up tweaking out to the point of borderline panic attacks from too much caffeine. Had to make the switch back to old school coffee from the Keurig. I’ve never vaped or done coke or done adderall or smoked cigarettes or had zyns… But I’m starting to think these could be viable avenues if all else fails.
I fear that my brain is running a debilitative operating system. I simultaneously want to be in the best shape ever, write way more often, get 8 hours of sleep, and actually develop a social life here in Minnesota. The only problem is that they all contradict. Plus, there’s only so much time in the day. And when I don’t accomplish all of those things on a weekly basis, I beat myself up over it and feel shitty.
Even if I run my weekly 20 miles, I feel shitty about not weightlifting. And even if I workout every day all week, I’ll feel shitty that I’m prioritizing fitness over writing. But if I write instead of workout, then I feel shitty about how I look and feel. And if I try to squeeze both into the same day, I’m dead tired and the last thing I want to do afterwards is go out and be verbal amongst other humans. Or even when I do go out and socialize, then I feel shitty about eating and drinking things that set me back fitness-wise. And if I go all-out as “fun Kelsey” and drink and stay out late, then I’m just a bag of bones the next day who can’t accomplish any of the above. [Cue the “I started to wonder” in Carrie Bradshaw narration] Can’t a girl just have it all?
Maybe it’s a cycle I perpetuate: wanting to feel shitty about myself because in a sick way that’s what motivates me. I’m sure there’s a simple solution, such as being on an antidepressant and just enjoying my day-to-day. But personally I think I sadistically enjoy the, “What will I become?” of it all. Although some days, I feel so exhausted from the sheer mental pressure I put on myself that I end up showering after work, putting on one of my (four! new!) Nike sweatsuits, and posting up in the living room with my dog. If I’m going to be doom and gloom, I’m at least going to do so in a comfy, matching fashion. I guess I could try the whole glass-of-wine-before-bed thing, but I can’t imagine looking forward to that every night is a helpful tactic, either.
It’s not much, but it’s an honest blog.
I know I have a million reasons to look back to five years ago and be like, “I’ve done a lot! I’ve learned so much! I’ve come so far!” I just don’t dwell on my successes the same way I do my shortcomings (yes I’m aware that’s probably a mental illness – fuck off). And I also don’t have all the answers. Like, I’m not this established person who figured it out and achieved peak happiness, preaching that others can too. I was just telling someone the other day: in every city I’ve ever moved to, I’ve packed an air mattress in my carry-on and blindly arrived at an apartment building that I’d never seen in person, proceeding to sad-sleep on the floor until my moving pod got there a week later. Sounds glamorous, right?
I also struggle a lot with “fate” and “the way things are supposed to be.” When I was in Seattle, I blogged about loving hockey and wanting to move to Minnesota, and even planned my 30th birthday in the Twin Cities: not knowing that it’d be where my next job opportunity took me. I guess in hindsight it’s a crazy coincidence, sure. But after being here for a year and a half, I don’t know if I’m actually in the right place.
My job and my apartment are great. Can’t beat it. But I want to be around more people like me: single girls who want to mope around and complain about everything in life over martinis (sorry), especially boys (sorry again). Minnesota just isn’t that. It’s very Start-A-Family vibes, very “Build-A-Bear, but for the entire rest of your life” coded. That’s why I’ve been extinguishing myself in Sex and the City episodes, because it’s the only thing making me feel okay about not fitting into the culture here. Plus: when it comes to going back to the same shitty guy a million times and bothering all your friends about it, the show makes you feel like it’s chic instead of positioning it as the straight up clown show it really is. Carrie’s a writer, I’m a writer… well, on and off anyways. We’re both annoying to everyone we know. So I think constructing a new path in line with a fictional TV show seems like rational next step.
What I can say is, I do find peace in my own history. I know that being uncomfortable has always only benefitted me. And I suppose leaning into it at this point doesn’t hurt. So that’s what I’m going to focus on: Timmy Turner’ing to the beat of my own HBO theme song. And possibly adopting a cigarette dependency.
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