Notes App Deep Dive, Part Two

Here we go again...

Last month ended up being pure chaos. This time it was pure medical chaos that ended up with me suddenly packing my bags and moving across the country for treatment. It’s been all homesickness and fear - I am sure I will reflect on it all when my brain feels awakened again to come up with words, but I thought it had been a while since my last post, so what’s better than a Notes App Deep Dive - Part Two?

I always make an effort to make the most meaningful toasts to only the things that truly matter in this world, this is the most important one to date.

Sometimes I wake up and find notes I do not remember writing, yes my vessel is a timebound being, and yes this means absolutely nothing. Perhaps nighttime me is even more pretentious than daytime me - who would’ve thought? Not me!

Erica is the name of a car I have spent countless hours eating McDonald's and singing cheesy songs in (she even has her very own playlist right here). This note, however, was written about my beloved bright yellow cabin-sized suitcase named Tamara, but there was a name mix-up situation.

Tamara is named after the best possible character to come out of the best show MTV has put out (in the past few years) called ‘Awkward.’ Jenna Hamilton the insufferable FOOL never deserved my queen Tamara.

Tamara has been with me from my very first friend’s only away from family holiday. She’s weathered brutal cobblestone, piping hot sand, and all forces of nature - earth, wind, fire, drunk teenage girls. She’s endured bumpy car rides and falls from great heights. She’s sat in the backseat and listened to all the terrible songs - and only the loudest, most feral conversations.

Rest in power, my Love. I will forever look out for you in crowded airports and I forgive you for the annoyance you caused in your last year with your wobbly wheels (it’s not abelist if I’m also disabled).

My aim for 2024 is to use this as much as possible but I keep forgetting to say it and it makes me grumpy when I remember too late.

I told my dietician that I managed to finish my entire meal in 9 minutes, which was a record compared to my usual 6-7 mins. She told me I have to chew each bite 30 times and do a mini meditation before meals because I get too excited and then my tummy hurts. I just need to remind myself nobody is out to grab my plate from me. However, my pack of crisps is not one I will ever take that risk with.

The category is: Things to add to your 30 before 30 list (?) (Oh go on, don’t judge me, don’t be so boring now…)

Also! Eyelash glue + fringe = fringe stays in place! You’re welcome.

Yes, he does. No, do not offer to patch it up using the mini thread and needle fix kit in your handbag. No, don’t ask him if he can feel the breeze when the windows are down on the bus. His eyes are up here.

I love representation, I love seeing disabled women on screen, and I would love to see Kurdish people up there too (the last Kurdish person I remember being on screen was the actor that plays in DJ Grindah in People Just Do Nothing).

But, to consume art solely to see reflections that don’t even accurately represent whatever room the topic takes place in, and to create art that portrays rooms that arent flawed, don’t have issues, and don’t have underrepresentation problems- only makes what is created feel very much uncanny valley, it feels like a paint job done to cover up scruff.

It also silences very real issues of representation out in the real world, because it’s being so loudly over-compensated for in what we consume it’s easy to think it’s being over-compensated for in real life - newsflash! it’s not! A lot of people still don’t exist in a lot of the rooms you watch. Falsely representing that they do allows assholes to claim they do. They don’t! I want to see a mirror of myself in real life and then on the screen, not the other way around.

Also - and this is not to do with the issue of how things are mirrored, but more so when people consume art with ‘bad people’, and as a result it makes them not like the art itself because the people are assholes and the consumer doesn’t see themself like that… I personally quite liked it when I could consume things without thinking about what part of me to project parts of characters onto, and just naturally find bits of me within it instead. The simple truth is that we are not polished people by nature. Listening to songs about women being feral and messy and keying pretty little souped-up four-wheel drives, or watching a deeply flawed Carrie Bradshaw cheat, lie, hurt, and be a terrible friend at times, or reading about tired and disgruntled women who don’t want to be everything all the time and especially don’t care to be successful, change the world, or leave bed … were always so interesting for me, they tapped into a corner of my brain well-polished mirrors simply do not right now. We don’t want to see our ‘ugly’ sides, we do not want to feel guilt or hurt or shame, we want perfection, a mirror of only the cleanest versions of ourselves, a reverse Dorian Grey.

I do not want to see a mirror of a pretty, hopeful, idealistic, unachievable me, I also do not want to see a mirror of a tired, overwhelmed, sickly, homesick me, I just want to watch something and escape, I just want to watch something that means nothing but makes me feel everything, I just want escape without the funhouse to walk through, or the moral and ethical minefield to sweep first.

We aren’t all perfect people with perfect reflections, and we aren’t surrounded by perfect people with perfect reflections bar one bad trait or ‘big mistake,’ and it makes us feel like there is something wrong with us when that’s all we consume and then we go out and be human and be messy and be not so that. So stop creating and consuming art to mirror anything! Create escape! Consume escape!

This was a long tangent/rant that started on one topic and ended on another, I do sort of apologize, I just have lots of unfinished thoughts, always.

More ramblings of a girl who thinks too much. I won’t write 5 paragraphs on this one I promise, all I will say is that our need to relate and feel seen is killing not only us but all also we are consuming and creating.

I’m pretty sure I saw or heard this somewhere, agreed deeply, saved to remember it as my goal for the next decade, and then overshared with a stranger again the very next day. This is my impossible task. I love opening my big mouth.

I have always been aware of what a privilege it is to be gifted love. But perhaps I was unaware of just how lucky being gifted love was until suddenly I packed up and left everyone and everything I knew behind. To be gifted conversations that ask how the weather is over here, to be gifted luxuries of phone calls, to be gifted a space to cry out of nothing but sheer fear for all that is happening and all there is to come. I have been gifted so much love lately, here I sit in this new cold unfamiliar apartment, surrounded by wrapping paper and colorful ribbons of love, I’m not quite sure what shelf to display this one, I’m not sure how to hold it without hurting it. I’m not quite sure how or why people were so quick to gift love, but I know how to be selfish with it, to pocket it and keep it by my bedside when the nights get too quiet here.

Nobody told me the night breeze would sound different 300 miles from what I once called home.