Week 3 of doing the journaling prompts from this post from Hannah Bay’s Substack, Midnight Crumbs, with 31 journaling prompts for July. See Weeks 1 & 2 here.
July 15: If future you stole your calendar for a week, what do you think they’d change first?
I think they’d delete the morning scroll time and have me stretch first thing in the morning. Stretching is one of my New Year’s resolutions, and I’ve been extremely bad at it. I just don’t have anywhere to keep my yoga mat permanently rolled out in my apartment and for whatever reason I cannot bring myself to unroll it to stretch for 15 minutes and then roll it back up again. Therefore, I’ve come to the conclusion that I just cannot stretch every day, even though I am sore from my workouts probably 70% of the time.
July 16: What’s one summer experience you keep acting like you’re “too old” for?
I remember my parents setting up fun sprinklers in the front yard when we were little. There was a pink flamingo one, and my sister and I would put on our bathing suits run through them in the mild PNW summers. I don’t know where it went, or how long that kept us entertained. I don’t know if I’ll have that experience again until I have a house and yard and child of my own, but could be fun.
July 17: Where in your life are you craving a little less pressure and a little more presence?
I feel like at least once a week, I’ll open Instagram to find that someone is announcing their engagement or pregnancy or home ownership. While I love that my friends and acquaintances are getting to all these milestones and love celebrating them all, it can make me feel a bit impatient. I want all of those things, but I want to stop trying to compare my timelines to other people. About 95% of the time, I don’t feel behind in life. In a lot of ways I feel ahead actually, but when I see those posts in the moment, my mind will do all the calculations to see if I can expedite those things even though 10 minutes later, I am rational again and know I do not want to rush into them at all.
I’m type A and definitely have a moderately loose timeline in my head and am excited about the future, I’m trying to enjoy my childless, mortgage-less life, which include microwaving string cheese and chips for dinner and impulsive purchases on Amazon.
July 18: What’s something you secretly want to happen this year just for the plot?
My boyfriend and I don’t really drink, and I love that for us. I think I’ve seen him order maybe like 3 cocktails in the past year and a half. I’ve joked about getting drunk with him, and he did not seem very keen on the idea haha. I mean, I’m not even that into the idea. But maybe it’s something I should experience once in my life, under carefully crafted circumstances, of my own volition. I’ve never had more than 1.5 drinks over the course of a 3- hour work dinner, and so for the plot, I do think it could be interesting.
I’m pretty sure I’m just a more chatty drunk, or at least that’s how I feel when I’ve been tipsy. I’ve never been belligerent, never sent a drunk text that I’ve regretted, never come even close to throwing up from alcohol. Not that I want to do that, gawd no. I’ve never had a hangover/hangxiety, and I’d like to keep it that way. However, I just want to know what my control freak brain would do after 2-3 drinks. Maybe it would be nice to give her a break. @Mayur plz confirm receipt and lmk your thoughts on the below:
- Pre-game with cider or a Barefoot wine spritzer at home then Uber to karaoke where I find liquid courage to sing some 2010s pop banger by Avril Lavigne or Natasha Bedingfield
- Order a pizza and buy alcohol from the grocery store and watch a movie at home that must be more fun when you’re drunk like Shrek or Ratatouille
- Get drunk on overpriced beer at a Dodgers game
- Go to the AMC movie theater bar and have a few drinks and watch a movie
- Eat dinner at a restaurant with fun cocktails and then go home and go to bed (all of these involve being in bed by 11pm)
July 19: Imagine you couldn’t choose the sensible option this weekend. What would you end up doing instead?
I pride myself in how I can logistically make a plan work, minimizing time spent in LA traffic, building in stops to avoid hunger, exhaustion, or boredom. A non-sensible weekend would be driving across the county.
Saturday: I’d do a morning hike at Runyon Canyon then get breakfast at Beachwood Cafe. Go home and shower, then drive to Long Beach to explore the Queen Mary ship because I haven’t been. Come home and rot for a bit then go get dinner on the eastside because all the best food is on the eastside.
Sunday: Sleep in and then get to Republique at peak brunch hour with friends at 11am and get hangry while waiting in line. Go watch a movie at the Grove AMC and then cross the county for a sunset walk at the beach and then dinner in Santa Monica.
July 20: What’s one ordinary thing you’d like to romanticise a little harder?
I feel like I’ve been romanticizing my life a good amount lately, going on golden hour walks, reading by lamplight in bed at night, and eating ice cream in the afternoons on weekdays just because I have it in my freezer at the moment and just because I can. Why wait until after dinner? Perhaps my skincare. I don’t do skincare in the morning except sunscreen, but I always take a shower at night and do my skincare then. I usually just rush to get all 2 steps of it done (yeah I’m like a teenage boy), but maybe I should slow that down. I also need to start using body lotion more and hydrating my whole epidermis. I would also like to use my candle warmer more often, but for some reason that feels like a fall or winter thing to me.
July 21: What kind of people make you feel more like yourself after spending time with them?
People who can yap. I love me a good chat. It energizes me, like an engaging conversation can literally give me a high (or what I think a high may feel like). It’s something Geminis are known for. I was simply born this way.
My elementary school bff Grace and I used to call recess “walkie talkie” time because we would just walk around the school yard and talk instead of playing on the playground. I love hanging out with the kind of person where you’re both fully absorbed in the conversation, phones away, and there’s a harmonious balance of sharing and listening, and the conversation just flows effortlessly from one topic to the next. Friends who make an hour feel like 10 minutes and you end up texting links to afterwards as a follow-up since you’re teaching each other about new things.
A few friends immediately come to mind: I love hanging out with my friend Katherine because we always find interesting things to talk about. We went of a walk before work today and we covered tarot card readers, her thoughts on The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and airline loyalties. My friend Yael is also so fun to talk to since she works in TV development and always has fun stories from work, is from my hometown, is the best networker I know and is always traveling and doing fun things.
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