I sent you a voice memo

Heavy chest feelings & rough puff pastry

HOT – Listening to a podcast at 1.2x speed. Listening to the news. Listening to one song over and over. Listening to the ocean crash. Listening to a child be quiet. Listening to a crowd joyfully erupt. Listening to your dog's heartbeat. Listening to a stranger's woes.

NOT – I have been unemployed since March 15 and had a soft goal of re-employment by September because it is my birthday month. It’s the beginning of the month, but I’m starting to feel that heavy chest feeling. I’m also just struggling with all the feelings of unemployment: worth, purpose, self-esteem, cost, time, intelligence and experience, enough, etc.

This is the ceiling inside the lobby of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, one of the theaters in The Music Center–where I’d really like to work!

I recorded several voice memos this month. Below, I transcribed them. I mainly left them as is but made edits so you could actually read them.

• Question: Why do some dogs just hate people? And how come it’s unpredictable? Like, why does Jolene often dislike people, feel afraid, and bark a bunch, but then there’s just some random man she’s totally fine with and very sweet and cute with? Sidenote: maybe Jolene liked him because he called her “mama.”

• How long does it take to determine that you are allergic to something? I think I’m allergic to peaches, and I think I’m allergic to my chapstick, but part of me doesn’t believe that I’m allergic to either of those things and maybe I just feel a little bit itchy and hot and warm.

• Does anyone actually ever successfully keep a food diary? When I was a kid, I was kind of obsessed with it. I wanted to record what I was eating all the time. Honestly, it never lasted more than two days and was really inaccurate.

• Impatience for slow care.

• I made a friend in barre class. It’s been a while since I’ve been outwardly friendly and had it returned back to me. It was so interesting tracking whether our humor clicked. It’s just so awkward trying to read someone but also have faith that you’re connecting, and then it’s really weird being like, “oh my god I think we could be friends,” but then you know, could you be friends?

• Why do the lyrics “So I keep on taking and yes I keep on taking. Seven Jeans, True Religion, I say no, but they keep giving” randomly go through my head when I’m just walking around? It’s almost like a form of counting my steps, but instead, it’s that song. Side note: I looked up the lyrics, and I have them wrong/out of order. I think it’s too late to change them in my head.

• I like replacing words like “draft” or “unedited” with “rough puff.” I learned about rough puff through The Great British Bake Off. I think it refers to a cheat, less-labor version of “true” puff pastry. So, I would say, “It’s a bit rough puff” when something is incomplete or needs shaping. The thing is that no one else has made this comparison, decision, or metaphor.

Walk about in the sun.

“When we are working so hard to tell these stories archived in our body, it isn't just to release ourselves from these stories and to express what we've been holding this entire time. But it's also to write towards each other, into each other, through each other. Because this is how we grow and transform and survive. Your story is the collective story. Your story is our story. We carry it together, including the grief and the loss.” – Janice Lee & the Corporeal Writing Squad.

Lotus flowers in Echo Park

Jolene and her stuffed Tardigrade (Water Bear).