you're very opinionated

6.28.26

I took my Fujifilm camera out for the first time in months to attend a birthday party where picnic blankets covered the shade of two trees, paper pinwheels hung from the branches & kids blew bubbles nearby. I forgot how fun this camera is. The colors, straight out of the camera, captures moments exactly how I want to remember them.

I wish the video capabilities were better because the new vlogging camera I got fucking! sucks!!! Pardon my french. I don’t recommend the Canon Powershot V1! I’m selling it and going back to my DJI Osmo Pocket 3! Ugh!

The picnic was fun. It feels like my boyfriend’s friends are becoming my friends too, slowly but surely. With some of them, it’s because we did shrooms together a couple months ago.

Sitting around a table with a roll of paper stretched across, we brought out crayons and fidget toys and a green laser that made insane shapes on the ceiling and I laughed until I cried. It’s hard not to consider someone a friend after a shared experience that brings you so close to childhood again. So close, you could have sworn you’d never feel that way again, until you did.

Ari looked at me and said “You know what I like about you Anna? You’re very opinionated.” I earned the compliment by saying his salad looked gross. I would not have said this if it wasn’t Ari I was talking to. He loves absurdity and thrives on call-outs. His brand of humor is a little mean. Now that I know this about him, I know he’s a person I can unleash that opinionated part of myself around. Moments like this remind me: the things I typically censor about myself when I’m meeting someone for the first time are the same things they end up appreciating the most later on.

6.29.26

I’m in a pissy mood. No other way to put it. J is being super sweet and I’m being a gremlin. Nothing he does right now is going to change the fact that I don’t want to be talked to or looked at. I want to crawl under the covers and turn off the lights and I’m being a bitch because I can’t do that today.

Oh! & what do you know, I just looked at my period tracking app and today’s the first day of my luteal phase. I suspect I have PMDD & it’s not diagnosed because I’ve never raised this to a doctor. But holy shit! It’s like clockwork.

All of the lightness of being, the playfulness, the emotional regulation, etc., just drains out of me until I’m a husk sitting at the breakfast table eating eggs that are too runny and failing to respond appropriately to lighthearted conversation.

With all of that said, I think I have an unusual imbalance going on. I’m not saying any of this to suggest that women are controlled like puppets depending on where they’re at in their menstrual cycle. Madison Huizinga’s article Luteal Madness was a fabulous critique of the industry popping up around cycle syncing, highly rec reading it!

6.30.26

There are moments when I feel so sensitive to sounds, an unexpected clank or crash sets my teeth on edge. Normal sounds of domestic living rattle me & I imagine my skin shattering off of my body from the impact. Unloading the dishwasher, closing a cabinet, sifting through drawers, it’s all so normal and it’s all. so. loud!!

I feel this way and immediately…start making noise. Singing, humming, whistling, doesn’t matter - I’m drowning out the noise with more noise. Luckily, J is unbothered. He even said he finds my noises cute. He told me “when you stop making noise, it’s kind of like when a bird stops singing. It makes me wonder what’s wrong.” A miracle! This is one attribute that makes it clear to me I could not date myself.

Going down Canal Street on the way to suburban New Jersey , I put in my headphones and started listening to my ‘28’ playlist. I have a playlist from every year of my life since I was in 8th grade. I’ve tried to break them up based on vibes or concepts but it never sticks. I like this method. It allows music to be time travel and I never have to go searching for the songs I’m most obsessed with currently.

End of August by Noah Kahan played while I watched a group of people negotiating for knock-off designer bags, a man practically taking a whole ice cream cone in his mouth in one bite, a woman with pink hair, pink converse & pink headphones walking home, a group of pigeons moving in time with the music. The city always looks most enticing when you’re leaving it. Cinematic, drenched in a golden hue.

We drove through the Holland Tunnel while Sand Drawing by Judah Earl played, the strings swelling when we reached sunlight again. The drama!! This type of music makes me feel like I’ve been plopped into something real.

At J’s childhood home, we ate flatbread and went on a walk where we saw cotton candy skies and water in a pond that was so sludgy it looked like a tarp.

7.1.26

Today’s the day! Our flight is taking off at 11PM tonight sooo we’ve got some time to kill. This morning, I went to yoga with J’s mom. The instructor told us to lean into what feels good, notice what our body wants more of, instead of focusing on pushing ourselves through the parts that feel bad.

I think that’s a good notion to bring into this trip. I’d like to focus on embodiment, being aware of what feels good in my body at any given moment and leaning into it. I have a feeling a lot of bread is going to be what feels good. But I’m willing to be surprised!

7.2.26

Our flight was delayed until 1:20AM. We had little eye masks tied to the seat to stop our heads from lulling forward. They were promising but they didn’t work for me. No REM sleep was had on the flight! I was having intrusive thoughts about my neck snapping due to turbulence + an eye mask that restricted movement. Still undetermined whether that was a legit thing to be anxious about or an over-estimation of the eye masks power to hurt me.

Dropped our stuff off at a hotel with a tiny elevator, cartoons on the wall, and a skylight pouring a perfect square of sunlight onto the middle of the bed.

We didn’t let ourselves sit or lay down!! We will not be defeated by jet lag! I put my camera around my neck and headed out with no particular destination in mind. Our plan was to dilly dally and keep ourselves awake until the sun went down at 10PM. Summer days in Paris stretch beyond my American comprehension.

We came on the day the heatwave broke. So, welcomed by a gentle breeze, we stopped for iced coffee and a cinnamon roll and went about wondering.

The woman at the boulangerie was very kind. In fact, everyone we’ve spoken to in Paris has been very kind. The uber driver, the woman in the bakery, the waiters at Marché couvert des Enfants Rouges, the two women in line for the public restroom at Marché couvert des Enfants who told me they would be using their phone flashlights since the overhead lights wouldn’t come on & giggled with me afterwards while we washed our hands, they’ve all been lovely! Fuck the stereotypes!

J and I walked around for hours doing one of our favorite things in the world - pointing at things and saying “I like that.” We also learned that Beef Tartare is…not really our thing. I tried to capture some of those moments as they happened.

This journal is already getting long so I’m going to break the rest of our time in Paris into a separate entry. I’ll leave you with a few pics from this first half day <3