Status Updates Feb 2025

1. New Job

My new job starts next week, bringing nearly 3.5 years of ''voluntary poverty'' to an end. Overall I feel quite pleased about the entire stint; I didn't write a book or anything super cool and successful like that, but I've tried enough things to know I can comfortably make a modest living doing random things. It's nice to know that the option is available if I ever want to be an artist or something.

With this new job I will quadruple my income to $72,000 a year, which is very seductive. I don't think there will be much lifestyle inflation, though, having already tried it over the past year. Try as I might, I can't seem to form a Chagee habit, appreciate fancy ''natural'' wine or coffee, attend concerts by artists with whom I am barely acquainted, or enjoy luxury hotels. I guess it's lucky that my idea of fun is being a hobo. What I do want is to bankroll projects with the excess income. (Left-wing bookstore, funding working-class culture, possibly both under the co-op's name. Solo travel, too, but not so much for ''leisure'' as to investigate how these things are done overseas.)

My new job is actually an old job. I'm going back to sponsored content in publishing, to a company I've worked in before. So on the surface it doesn't look like there's any ''growth''. But my stint outside employment has deeply altered my attitude towards work. In the past I buried myself in work to find myself; now I view work as as instrumental, practically irrelevant, to my identity. This will sound ultra-cynical, but I now enter the work marketplace as a producer exchanging her commodities (creativity, skills, time) for currency, while at the same time withholding the best-quality output from the market, the way an apple cider-making smallholder might reserve the best batches for friends and family only.

2. Wedding

I am looking forward to the wedding. Or maybe I should call it an unwedding, since, between the 2 of us, it represents the formal release of marriage expectations and obligations. Although apparently making a commitment to the institution, we will actually be privately rejecting it! Subversive eh? Now that, I can celebrate.

After all our discussions in the past weeks I think we have come to a much clearer understanding of how to move on from here. In the past, owing to lack of deliberation and communication, we allowed socially-dominant conventions to influence our behaviour. Compelled monogamy, over-entwinement, co-location in same country by default... it really felt like for a long time we as individuals were subordinate to the couple/family unit. I reject it in favour of relationship anarchy, and now I can sleep at night.

3. Crush

Last week my crush added me on Instagram. I hadn't been on Instagram since 2019, but I downloaded it and things went to hell, predictably. Insecurity + Instagram: can you think of any worse combination? Before long, I was posting Stories in the hopes of attracting his attention. Fucking Instagram knows when you're crushing on someone: it's an evil capitalist wingman with no regard for your actual heart, constantly pushing their content to the top of your feed, encouraging you to ''give each other nicknames'' in your DMs, etc.

Before this happened I already had a strong hunch that my feelings were a one-way street, but each time I made up my mind to move on, he'd throw up some low-stakes micro-interaction (fire emoji or whatever) and derail my plans.

After days of admittedly self-inflicted misery and self-neglect, I decided ''NO MORE'', and texted him a confession and self-rejection all rolled into one. (I like you, I know you don't like me, let's ignore each other.) His reply was ''OK take care''. MF, that was so painful it made me dizzy. I was a 13-year-old sexless blob all over again.

When Jon came home and we caught up, he made me laugh so hard: ''that's like confessing your feelings to a wallful of Che Guevara posters'' and ''maybe if you grow a large beard he'll take notice of you''. My partner helps me feel better about my crush: how stupidly lucky am I?

I done fucked up, though. There's a major flaw in my confession: I self-rejected because I didn't want to hear it from him. The pain-reducing tactic deprived me of closure, and so, like one of those 2am cockroaches, the limerence got a whack but survived, scurrying off to live another day. Lol. I need an exterminator.