I’m writing through my writer’s block. I’m pushing through it like a poop that isn’t ready to come out and I’m sorry for saying that but I’m also not, because I’m trying to apologize less.
I feel like I’m in the episode of Girls where Lena Dunham writes at an ad agency but she writes so much during the day that she can’t think of what to write on her own at night. I’m not trying to compare myself to her though because I’ve never dated Jack Antonoff, though that’s something I would have definitely done if given the opportunity (brown hair, glasses, stage presence, wears hats.)
It is hard to write outside of work. I come home and I’m tired and all I want to do is read or watch what other people made. All I want to do is eat a sandwich during an episode of “What we do in the shadows” and think about how if I were a vampire the first thing I’d do is climb a tree because I didn’t do that as a kid because I was busy choreographing a dance on the blacktop during recess.
I have a crush and I can’t talk about it because I can’t be a girl who writes about boys. I can become a lady who talks about dolphins, I don’t think pop culture has one of those yet. In the nail salon they were playing some iteration of animal planet with an episode about wild dolphins. Did you know dolphins are so intelligent they can form cliques and disparage other dolphins based on their appearance and body type? The high school cafeteria manifests itself in every environment.
One time my writer friend told me to stop using the word “I” when writing, and to be more objective. “I” is for memoirs and “I” haven’t lived enough life or stolen enough spoons from restaurants yet to be worthy of speaking in the first person. But that means I have to write fiction or maybe the news. Or maybe a recipe book where I never lead in with a personal anecdote about how this bolognese is related to the time I fell off my bike on a busy road. Then the recipe would just start with “ingredients” and the reader would have to dive into this meal with no emotional context whatsoever. A disaster.
What I’m saying is, “I” am all I have right now. My memoir-in-the-making from a recently 27 year old who writes McDonald’s commercials during the day and does stand up occasionally at night but not as often as she used to because now she gets tired. But I can do more stand up, I can write a pilot that I refuse to read to anyone for 4-7 years, I can talk about my crush in secret and vague ways. Everything can be different, because everything used to be different. What is lost can be found again. Except for my cuff earring, that is too small and it’s gone to the jewelry box in the sky.
I used to have pneumonia and now I don’t. I used to have a cat and now I don’t. A reminder that every state is temporary. Except for Montana, that one kind of stays with me.
Thank you for subscribing, thank you for reading or opening and then not reading and archiving this email. Thank you for letting me speak in the first person. See u soon!
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I think you should consider a career as a screenwriter. The part about the dolphins? It had thinking that you could sell some movie studio/streaming service/TV network into "green-lighting" your pitch to remake Heathers or Mean Girls - or even Square Pegs - with an all dolphin cast. And to get the boomers to get up from their recliners and become "asses in the seats", you might consider casting someone they grew up with in a small but meaningful part, perhaps a grandfather, who dispenses sage advice to the crazy mixed-up, unspecific gender or pronoun dolphin teen. "And in his comeback role: Flipper."