Lazy POS Super Fun Day / Improv Show!
Woke up late and laid in bed for hours. Tiktok is a hell of a drug.
Makes me curious how other people spend their time at home. Especially those of us who live alone.
After a few hours of tiktok bed time I tried getting air by going to the Jackson Heights farmer’s market. I’ve been making these delicious tomato sandwiches (s/o J Kenji Lopez Alt) and went to the market in hopes of picking up nice heirloom tomatoes.
Got there too late and couldn’t buy anything so I wandered around the neighborhood for a few hours and got coffee at Espresso 77 (great spot would go again if I’m in the neighborhood).
Came home and cooked some meal prep (Garlic Parmesan Kale Pasta) and settled in for some more hours of tiktok and netflix.
An infrequent and uncharacteristically piece-of-shit level lazy day but I enjoyed it overall.
After some weeks at home and Kelvin staying over while he figures out his housing situation this is the first time in almost a month where I’ve been living alone again. Guess I’m just settling back into it.
Yesterday I had my first improv show. This is the first time since college performing/acting on stage in front of people and I had a lot of fun.
After my first choir season I’d resolved that for every subsequent thing I’d try hard as I could and not leave anything on the table.
Take risks, unabashedly put in effort and resist the apathy.
I did that during the show last night and am very happy because of that.
Here are the videos:
After the show we ended up at the bar for a final hurrah. I started talking with someone who had watched the show and she described me as “awkward with self awareness.” Apparently I also struck her as “particularly sad but that’s ok because we Koreans know sadness” (she was also Korean for the record). She was definitely a bit drunk but I thought that might be a decent assessment for someone who just met me.
Later on I was talking to a friend from the class and he said “don’t take this the wrong way but you seem sad and frustrated in a depthful way. A girl who lives and goes out in West Village without much thought might not have much depth but you do.“
At that moment I took it as a compliment but over the course of the night I was a little bothered by how people think I’m sad. But now that I think about it Naveen said similar things in the past (“You Berkeley grads are always so frustrated by how society is set up”) so maybe that is the image I give off.
It is what it is. It’s one thing to be sad and frustrated. It’s another thing to be sad and frustrated and do something about it. So I shall endeavor to do the latter.
Continuing to read Olmsted’s biography this week.
A general feeling I’ve had these days—we are not so different from people in the past.
It must have been some combination of youthful arrogance/hopefulness, but in the past I thought we were something really special. The best generation. Bright eyed, full of great ideas, hopes, dreams, and the potential to change the world*. Anything could happen.
But the more I read of the past the more I realize that people were like that back then too. They were all living their best lives. With their best hopes and dreams. Some of them even accomplished those dreams. And now they’re long gone and mostly forgotten.
What average joe has even heard of Olmsted these days? This vibrant, talented, successful, intense person so heralded in his own day isn’t even a household name now.
Anyways my takeaway and current line of thinking: the winds will shift. Everything you hold important today could be nothing tomorrow and vice versa. You can live a great life and even a great life will be forgotten over time.
If nothing matters much in the long run, then live in the present as much as possible.
It’s not a SAAAAD thing. It’s a restructured perspective. We are just blips in history but we are the heroes of our own story and that is enough. Focus deeply on the places, people, things directly in front of you. Drink as much of these moments as you can before it’s gone and you will love your life.
*To be fair maybe we do live in a particularly interesting/crucial time in history (the internet, globalization, coronavirus).
Besides the improv show I really didn’t do much this week.
I did start my first week of group jazz piano classes. Teacher seems fantastic so far. Very knowledgeable and patient—seems to really enjoy what he does. The demographics are not what I expected. Besides the teacher I am the only guy and there are more older (60+) women in the class than I expected.
Now that I think of it, in NY (and life in general) I rarely hang with the old and young. It’s an anomaly to see anyone past their 40s in the office and there’s no reason/opportunity I’d hang out with anyone in grade school.
Excited to see what’s next with class.