Vol. 161: I read an essay

Welcome back! I have nothing in the way of prelude except to reassure you that what was distressing me last week has mostly passed over. In retrospect, what I wrote feels very dramatic, but what can I say? I have big emotions!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, let’s carry on, shall we?

The format:

• What I’m crushing (accomplishing, achieving, attaining, fulfilling, something that I am being successful at.)

• What is crushing me (see definition 3b, something that is bringing me down.)

• What I’m crushing on (admiring, adoring, appreciating, cherishing, favoriting, etc.)

We are closing out Peter and the Starcatcher at Schiller Park — 4 more shows! Hope to see you this weekend!

I have been cast in two upcoming shows, which I am very excited about!! I feel very fortunate and very proud of myself.

I’m still pondering this essay:

But this excerpt stopped me in my tracks:

This was the first time it crossed my mind that a young woman like us — a knowledge worker, a writer, a leftist — might regret her independent youth and wish she had married a loving person at a young age. I’d associated this idea with a type of womanhood we considered totally outside of our zone of interest: anti-intellectualism, a belief in the primacy of motherhood. I was blindsided by the suggestion that we might be better people if we were recused from formative independence and struggle. I looked around at my friends and acquaintances, especially the married ones, and wondered if there was any truth in the idea that the years they spent as poor captains of their own ships, unmoored and often lonely, were in fact not remotely necessary or enlightening.

I have so often felt unmoored and lonely and the fact that this might not have been necessary or enlightening is a crushing blow. However, I am not entirely sure that’s true. As I mentioned, I am still pondering.

I get very overwhelmed at the grocery store, so I often do grocery pick-up. It’s free1 and convenient and makes me feel less overwhelmed. In a world where so much makes me feel overwhelmed and so much of that is out of my control, I am glad to have grocery pick-up.

I downloaded and deleted two dating apps in the past week, but in the interim, I got this gem:

Are experiences like these worth years of feeling unmoored and lonely and utterly disheartened? Maybe so, but only because I’m getting some good material out of it.

-Mal