I'M EVILGENIUSMAXXING, I'M THE JALEN BRUNSON OF SELF-CARE

To celebrate the Knicks making history and the ensuant generosity pouring from my heart, this week’s journals are entirely free. There’s normally a paywall halfway through, so if you enjoy reading this, consider becoming a paid subscriber today! I’ve also removed the paywall from this short meditation on getting into basketball in 2024.

12:45 AM

I can’t believe how happy I am. I can’t believe how much I love my husband, the intimacy of standing three inches from the TV, arms around each other breathing fast hearts pounding stunned silent except for our breath which gets caught in our throats, in our wide open smiles. The joyful bias in Mike Breen’s voice like you know he’s been waiting his entire life for this—not with a BANG, but a whisper.

The New York Knicks are NBA champions. I can’t believe how much that means to me. I can’t believe just a few years ago I was too scared to watch sports, feeling like I should stay in my lane, never enter this microcosm of the human experience. I can’t believe how much time I put into watching basketball. Meaningless games, like the fucking Bucks vs the Wizards in December. Nothing was irrelevant; I was eating my vegetables.

I’m so proud of Jalen Brunson. I’m so proud of everyone in New York City for giving themselves over to the revelry but I’m so proud of Jalen Brunson. I think of all the times Doris friggin Burke went out of her way to say he’s “not a natural athlete.” The spotlight on Shai. On Tatum. On Luka. Meanwhile Brunson’s been in the kitchen sharpening the knife, preparing for this very moment. What’s more inspiring than watching a man fulfill his destiny in real time?

7 PM

Shaved with a safety razor this evening. I’m on a mission to have the smoothest skin on planet earth and razors with lots of blades—I was using one with six!—cause more irritation from the extra friction and the “lift-and-cut” design.

Andrew picked up the Van der Hagen from Target for me today without looking at the reviews, and now that I’m seeing them, I’m a bit sussed. Nonetheless, I found the shaving experience deeply satisfying. I even cut myself like, four times. Nostalgic!

Something about shaving with a really sharp individual blade felt like a natural evolution, like taking off the training wheels after a lifetime on a tricycle. I’m determined to find the right safety razor and continue on this journey. I am determined to be FREAKISHLY soft even though I already kind of am. Not to brag, but my husband sighs whenever he grazes my slippery little bicep, as if my skin just rubbed a knot out of his back. LOL I’M SORRY YOU HAD TO READ THAT.

My approach to self-care feels less and less like looksmaxxing every day. Looking at my body and every product and methodology as part of a lifelong science experiment has made me so much more present for the experience, more lighthearted. I’m evilgeniusmaxxing in my bathroom and yes, that’s a giant spray bottle full of glycolic acid… care for a spritz?

Dinner with the girls in Fishtown at a pizza place called Char. So fun. The highlight for me was dessert: a sundae with yellow cake, corn and blueberry soft serve twist, blueberry compote, and toasted meringue. WOW. OK. Dessert is soooo important to me.

Basking in the glow of that historic Knicks win. I hope one day when I’m old and gray, having coffee on my porch at 5 AM, I’ll feel the warmth of the sun and the gentle breeze and remember OG’s tip-in with perfect clarity.

Today my first article for Unwell’s newsletter Unsaid went live. This has been many months in the making and I could not be more grateful for the kindness of their team, the editorial expertise, and really just for being brought onto this project. It’s a testament to the fact that you never know who’s reading your newsletter—which, aside from my pathological need to write, has always been in the back of my mind, and has helped me remain consistent these last six years on Substack.

Just to put it on record, I am no one. I wrangled the rinky-dink bylines in my bio haphazardly, DMing editors on Instagram and shit. I have no media experience. No understanding of how Journalism works. But I do write my ass off. I write literally fucking constantly. I don’t get writers block because I NEVER STOP WRITING BIH. And I’m always eager to learn and help someone’s vision come to life. HMU for weird pitches?? <3

Sitting in my boss’s office right next to her making live edits to six different email campaigns I’m launching in the next 24 hours. Earn CASH PAYOUTS when you sell cybersecurity products this month! Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of having the soul hoovered straight from my chest for a middle-class paycheck. I dreamed of being able to walk into the COACH OUTLET and buy a trendy little shoulder bag without blinking, maybe grab a salad at PANERA on the way home.

My contacts are drying out and I haven’t eaten. I’m weak, fading quickly as Boss “hops on a quick call” with like, 20 different people for input on my copy. Gotta keep everyone happy! I have one of those email jobs where there are a million cooks in the kitchen at all times, so I have to be steadfast and clear in my recommendations to set a precedent of efficiency (for my own sanity).

We hop on a quick call with my teammate who went to the Game 3 of the NBA Finals at MSG last night. Part of a sales incentive we ran, so she got to take five winners for their grand prize trip. She kept apologizing for not being able to bring me. I don’t think anyone realizes how badly I don’t want to be in public right now, much less a historically dense and raucous crowd in New York City. I’ve reached the point in pregnancy where I exclusively want to photosynthesize in my yard, eating a chipwich and reading a book until my scheduled cesarean. At any rate, one of the winners said it was the best night of his life, even though he is a Knicks fan and we lost; those moments make the job feel worth it for a good 10 minutes.

Boss hops on a quick call with her boyfriend and they talk about what they’re going to do with their two extra Wilco tickets. I feel warm eavesdropping, hearing how happy they sound. She sent me a picture of them recently and he looks like young Vincent Gallo. She is a radiant crunchy Jewish yogi Phish fan who sometimes wears crop tops to the office and she deserves young Vincent Gallo. I like seeing people get what they deserve, which is usually more than they think.

At 1:30, I drift up to the 43rd floor for a turkey wrap with chipotle mayo, cheddar, lettuce, and tomato, pressed in the panini thing, which does not heat the turkey to 165 degrees. My blood sugar’s too low to care about listeria, though, and I grab a booth and demolish the entire wrap and the chips it comes with. I watch people get their afternoon pick-me-ups at La Colombe—bald guys with thick-rimmed glasses, polished Indian girls with cardigans draped neatly over their shoulders. I made the mistake of wearing JEANS today and I’m sitting here with them unbuttoned and unzipped, wishing I could rip my bra off and throw it in the trash.

Heading back to my cubicle, I forget about my undone jeans. Thankfully all was concealed by my baggy, Brat green button-up shirt. I think about that moment on the internet when people were writing essays about Brat summer, the politics of what I’d call our last vestige of monoculture. I fucking miss that. The vibe was exactly that shade of electric lime and people were bouncing ideas off each other, having conversations about hyperpop at the end of the world and I didn’t get to have a Brat summer because I was pregnant and I am always pregnant, or at least it feels that way. So I sit at my cubicle in a state of half-grief over the Brat summer that never was. My sister-in-law recommended we take a postpartum Ibiza trip. Let’s hope she remembers that when I come through with flight itineraries and hotel options.

On the train ride home, I listen to Lil Wayne’s No Ceilings freestyle over “Swag Surfin” like, 10 times. There is a man standing in the aisle hovering right over me, talking to his friend sitting across from me. I could move my bags and give him a seat, but his body odor is so bad that I actually fear what might happen if he gets any closer.

I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to write a line as good as “I leave the pussy micro-soft like Windows Vista.”

Laying in my zero gravity chair in the yard, humid morning but breezy, not too hot yet. There are downsides to living under a colossal, 200-year-old tree, but the benefits, like perfect shade cast over the patio, far outweigh them.

I’ve been out here a lot the past few days, trying to release my brainworms back into the wild. Tilting my head and slapping my ear like GET THE FUCK OUT! Popped a generic Claritin and now staring intently at a robin in the tamarack. I like to think we’re staring at each other; we humans flatter ourselves by calling everything an exchange. That’s the basis of most fantasy, anyway—that we hold the attention of whatever/whomever holds ours.

Beside me sits a Le Creuset mug of black coffee and a big grape-purple leather purse with cheetah print lining, filled with the essentials:

• Moleskine (also purple) and pen (Uniball Jetstream soooo satisfying)

• a copy of Salinger’s Nine Stories (research)

• phone on DND (I mean it)

• old drugstore lip liner (Rimmel in shade “spice”)

• Lindt 70% dark chocolate (daily multivitamin)

• an ancient tampon halfway out of its wrapper, despite only menstruating once since June 2024 (The other day I had to pee at the grocery store and the bathroom smelled so strongly of period blood that I gagged and ran out.)

In some version of my dream, this is all I need to be happy: a green view and a comfortable chair in the shade, five or six items to occupy my mind, activate my senses. But I am devoted to another version of improbable stature and near-constant want. I pulled the grape-purple leather purse with cheetah print lining out of my collection to stop myself from surfing eBay, or blowing my morning at the thrift store. To remind myself of the material abundance I’ve accumulated, thanks to the parasitic comorbidities of shopping addiction and grindset work ethic.

Everything is a distraction.

Are you aware of that?

I think I’m too aware of that.

This is the plight of the mindful diva, to constantly negotiate the Truths of desire and contentment, excess and restraint. I call myself “pro-distraction” and “an aspiring ascetic” in the same breath. Commitment is hard.

Yesterday I wrote in my journal that I’m struggling to locate the optimism that keeps a person alive, if you can find it in your heart not to cringe. This is not for lack of gratitude. I’ve just been a vessel for two years, and it’s starting to catch up with me.

Sharing my body with another being while raising a baby is a lonely experience. Because I don’t think loneliness is an absence of people or even love or support, but an absence of self. Personhood intact, I can balance my roles, be alone for long stretches and never feel lonely. I love that; it’s how I write. There is no “mindful diva” without ample alone time to luxuriate in both the distractions and the Work.

But with this double-whammy responsibility to the born and unborn, I’ve surrendered the personhood that keeps me grounded, that enables me to feel optimistic about life in my body.

Everything I do for myself these days feels perfunctory. Even when I allow myself the time to move slowly, my mind moves in zaps and flashes. Little hits of sensory reward disrupted by anxiety sparking—a fork in an outlet. You can only “means to an end” yourself out of so much, ya know? And forget the old “be like water” mantra; to be pregnant for two years is to be like LDL clogging an artery. I am sludge. I am waste. I am the fried stuff you ate for a year, blocking blood flow to your heart. I am lowkirkuinely depressed and spending too much time online about it. What the fuck, man.

Scenes from the weekend…

Friday morning, 8 AM: Andrew’s at the office, and I get the mischievous urge to hippie out with Bianca. We go outside and I plop her naked body directly in the grass while I throw the ball with the dog. Come inside for breakfast. Grab every fruit we’ve got, which isn’t much: frozen blueberries, frozen cherries, fresh strawberries. Blend them up in the Vitamix (rich person appliance) with Greek yogurt, maple syrup, cinnamon, and whole milk. Pour the purple goop into a bowl, ask Bianca if she’s ready for her “high vibrational breakfast,” and top it with multigrain Cheerios and a glob of peanut butter. A smoothie bowl for a baby! And because she is a Baby we are covered head-to-toe purple seedy milky disaster by 9 AM when I’m supposed to be logged on, head down. But we are laughing. Popping in the tub hosing down laughing purple smoothie in her NOSE and bellybutton laughing. Grateful Dead echoes through the bathroom, “Althea.” Why can’t I get paid to live in these moments? I’m so good at it.

Friday evening, 8 PM: Spiraling out. Hiding in the bedroom, wondering how a day can start so beautifully and end so hideously when nothing really happened in between. Just work and life. Work exists within a life. They aren’t separate, but they don’t necessarily inform one another if you compartmentalize hard enough. I can’t. My nervous system is fried. Pregnancy hormones make me scared of myself. I wish for more romance in my marriage, more touch; this is my fault for being so withdrawn. Andrew comes in and insists on staying with me for however long it takes to feel better, even if it means missing the Knicks game. I decide that’s the kind of romance for me, and we head out to the living room and turn on the TV. He sits beside me on the couch and I lay across his lap and when we hit big shots and eventually win, I drop to my knees and have to stop myself from doing the worm.

Saturday morning, 11 AM: Erika comes over with her sweet daughter. They’re up from West Virginia and we’ve got brunch plans at a New Jersey diner, stopping by my place first to meet Bianca. “Crazy that we have such big personalities and our daughters look exactly like our husbands,” Erika jokes. So real. We drive separately to the diner because I want to go grocery shopping afterward. I arrive first, and there’s a mother and daughter set up outside the diner raising money for the girl’s all-star cheerleading squad. Obviously I donate, get to chatting because I cheered for a decade and the sport really shaped me. Mom tells me she pays almost $400 a month to their gym. Geeze Louise. We head in and grab a table. Erika’s so gorgeous in a famous kind of way, like she could tell me she’s actually a renowned French actress and I’d believe her despite our years-long friendship. She orders a Greek egg white omelette with fruit and I go full sicko mode because I’m a pregnant bitch in a New Jersey diner: the SAMPLER with pancakes, eggs, bacon, and sausage, add a side of breakfast potatoes. Her daughter occupies herself with a bowl of half-and-half packets and a Tide to Go pen—probably for the best as we delve into a juicy kiki, the details of which benefit no child’s developing mind. What can I say? We are bad girls in adult women’s bodies. And it feels so fucking good being out with another mom who is also a writer and like, a person who wants a big, gorgeous life. Who shares in my sense of nihilistic online humor (Erika is something of a legend on X where she has become uncancelable.) When we finish our meals and head to the host’s stand to pay, her daughter grabs both of our hands, and the three of us walk very slowly together like a cute little family. Girlhood.