Well then, I’ve had more social interactions in the past month than the two years that went before it. Yet somewhere people’s worlds are falling apart. It is hard to be perma-happy when you’re perma-informed. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be or that you can’t try.

Here, with half of the remaining communal sopas from the sopas party next-door wafting gently (or perhaps imaginarily) in my studio, the day’s events full and wonderful with new memories (I finally touched the people I met and spent close to a year online learning improv, and it was not weird) and nostalgia (really any crazy story from my twenties has a thread of four or five other crazy stories connected to it), Mame: Bosom Buddies playing off of a Spotify playlist assembled by a friend from the same friend group in Dublin, the weekend’s dishes still at the sink, the upcoming week’s medicine still unassembled, two water pitchers waiting to be filled for Monday’s water requirements, at some point I’ve even touched base with family about the upcoming renovations and have taken a nap, there are things I need to be doing, there are things I could be doing, but it’s Sunday, and man, what a great time to take a breath.

I wish I could show you what I’m feeling. It’s a neutral, non-threatening kind of okay that sits in between “too many people are talking to me” and “I’m so lonely I want to die”, a close to warm kind of lukewarm, now With a Smile playing kind of easy Sunday vibe, that kind of peaceful floating where you know you’ll be somewhat fine if this is where it all ends. I want more moments like this. I’ve had a lot of moments like this, it is always an honor.

I wonder how many people I know whose lives appear happy are truly unabidingly happy, I wonder with no judgment because I know how hard it really is. I wonder for a friend waiting on a medical diagnosis (at my age, everybody’s waiting for a medical diagnosis, almost). I wonder for the respondents to that survey that says people with kids become the happiest when their kids have become adults, but not during, but their brand of happy is beyond what single people can ever hope to achieve. Surely a biased survey, but I’ve seen it on Reddit, so it must be true. I wonder when everything’s relative. I wonder if I’m just tired of today or everything. I wonder why even that feels OK.

Around me, the world becomes a little bit friendlier in the dark.

What’s on my mind:

• Still randomly watching snippets of the Vincenzo Kdrama and related interviews because of the amazing cast and the strangely cast male lead (Song Joong Ki as a boy-faced Mafia consiglieri) who somehow, against all odds, pulls it off

• Currently watching Twenty Five Twenty One, because Na Heedo (Kim Tae Ri) and fencing is me and my writing, a prodigy who went nowhere, but still kept fencing for herself because it was fun, I don’t like watching shows still airing because I’m never sure if they’re worth it, but having been sucked in by Our Beloved Summer and rewarded a well-written, slow-paced, slice-of-life, lovers-to-enemies-to-chingu-to-lovers, gentle Poignant Central kind of romance pretending to be romcom), I thought, why not

• Considering watching Law School and low-key checking out Stranger because one can only juggle so many Korean dramas, and I’m still fighting with Thirty-Nine (which I only tried to pick up because of Jeon Mido as Song Hwa/Hospital Playlist memories and not the obvious female lead) because I cannot overlook blatant doctor-patient confidentiality violation issues that remain unaddressed well into episode 4 I think

• Started and meh-quit Gen Z when I previewed it with my friends even if I really wanted to see Joey Marquez (because my last acting memory of him was from On the Job)

• Upcoming house renovations, everything’s a first at forty for me, apparently one needs a basic design before getting contractors involved don’t fight me it’s really hard to figure things out when you’re not the disinterested party giving advice

• Speculative screenplay draft about known anti-establishment neurohackers in an alternative-to-dystopian but-of-course-post-disaster Filipino future selling out by joining a conglomerate that produces mood-altering devices is shouting in my brain EVERY FREAKING SECOND OF THE DAY and very, very soon I will blaze through it like a raging pubescent teenage boy with newly discovered strength

• Tagalog novel I’ve written throughout a decade (was Hoy Pong, Pangkantong Gabay sa Pagiging Ganap, but now working title) is ready for showing off, now I’m waiting, fixing, waiting, tweaking, waiting

• Currently reading Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood, I do not know where this story is taking me, but I have learned from Kindred and the Earthseed series to trust the process, there are strange, new creatures she imagined from the ground up yet are somewhat familiar, the Oankali, I will never be able to write like this, but that’s OK, the goal is to write like me