another loop
Life Lately
Two stacks of books, uneven on my dresser. A pair of pants shoved into an open box between them. A broken lamp. A short stack of thick magazines at the foot of the bed. The forgotten closet.
Each week is a loop: bedroom, office, dinner table, bedroom.
At the office, nothing is predictable. Projects converge. My brain diverges. I wear collared shirts and blazers. My badge.
Today, I can’t wash my hair. There are three meetings for three separate projects. I’m part-time. I’m asked to lead some of them. I forget why one of the meetings exists while I’m in it. The tasks grow in all categories: overdue, due soon, ongoing, new requests.
At home, I look for jobs. The badge hangs by my door. I’m in bed at 9pm and disappear into web comics, waking up in the morning to the middle of a panel.
Another loop.
I got the magazine I pre-ordered a while ago. Another one for the foot of my bed.
The Unserious
I found it. The hand puppet I made about 10 years ago. A short-lived alter ego that I had to put away before I slept. She made me laugh. She made me cringe. She made me feel free to play, staging tiny improvisational skits over Snapchat. At the time, I was juggling multiple gigs and a heavy, dark season. When I go through these elongated phases, I try to make something unserious, something that lets me embody the bizarre, just enough to feel alive, not lost. She was a bit of sweetness and light for a short while.
My favorite skit (not shown above) was with my sister, and the puppet’s hair slips off by accident. A short silence. Then my sister burst, and I tried to keep myself together to keep the skit going. It was so fun. But I could not—would not—fix it after, so I let the puppet go.