girls that never diary: week 75

GIRLS THAT NEVER DIARY is a (temporary) series where I try, once again, to create a daily writing practice. This time I’m also trying to reset some of my associations around writing, because my brain is tired of only wrestling with things that hurt me whenever I sit down to write. I’ve started writing these little diaries in my notes app, and they have mostly been helpful in that they get me to write something, and also in that they help me, when I reread them, answer the question for myself about what it is that I actually do all day, as a freelancer with barely any relationship to routine, as a writer who isn’t writing very much these days. I’ll send these out once a week until my brain is fixed.

FRIDAY

I wake up around 8:30 feeling a lot better. I make some coffee with cardamom and saffron. Chris is going to Santa Barbara and I haven’t left the house in days, so I take a quick shower, brew ginger tea in a travel mug, pack a toaster pastry, and catch the bus to the movie theater for a matinee double feature of The Invite and The Odyssey using my Moviepass. It’s like planning a heist: one movie ends right at the post-trailer start time of the next one, and I preorder chicken tenders from concessions to pick up in between the two movies (if I’d had a little more time I would have packed a lunch from home). One very quiet movie followed by one very loud movie! I go to the department store next door, try on some shirts for fun but don’t buy anything, then walk to the nearby bookstore and find a seat near the window to read Carolina Ebeid’s Hide and Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s Rocket Fantastic, and start reading the novels The Californians by Brian Castleberry and Girls Girls Girls by Shoshana von Blanckensee. I buy a copy of The Californians. Next on my big day out is an iced matcha and a long meditative walk around World Market. I go into the usual trance and after a deep edit end up with bean threads, honey, chili crisp, and dark chocolate McVitie’s (among the items I put back are several things of tinned fish, ramen noodles, and a pair of poultry shears). I catch the bus home because my phone is at 25% and if I don’t leave now I’ll probably find something else to buy. Back at home I heat up leftover coconut soup and add a serving of bean threads, and keep reading The Californians while I eat. Around 11 I get into bed to read some more, but a turn of phrase keeps nagging at my mind for a line I keep meaning to rewrite in a poem. I think I’ll remember it tomorrow but I do the responsible thing and put it in my Notes app anyway. I go to sleep around midnight.