Am I Doing EVERYTHING Wrong?
The exhaustion of never feeling fine.
Week two! This newsletter is really happening. A reminder: 1982 does not publish free content. If you’d like to read my work you’re welcome to become a paid subscriber to this newsletter. This week’s essay is about feeling wrong all the time. As though there’s always something about you that needs to improve, change, or stop at literally all times. I wanted to remind everyone that what we are, how we are, is not only okay—but necessary in the world, too. A little further down you’ll also find a few things for your closet and bathroom for autumn, plus an actual recipe that I eat five days in a row without getting bored. It involves pistachios. You’re welcome.
Am I Doing EVERYTHING Wrong?
I give word hugs. I can’t be there to buy you a coffee I mean a wine, and let you vent to me even though venting accomplishes very little, and I certainly can’t make the overwhelming realities of like…being alive go away. But I can write to you in a way that I hope makes you feel seen. I hope I can help us feel less alone, and give us permission to experience some ease. It’s permission that was always really lacking in my life and so I tend to hand it out like rave flyers now. Being a person is kind of a lot, and I hope for the time you spend reading my work you feel like you can relax a little.
You’re not wrong all the time. I never know who needs to hear this, but I’m always sure someone does, and given that my audience is people who went through puberty in the 90s I’m certain it’s falling on wide-open ears. We’re the “peer pressure” generation, and while drugs and alcohol and other things kids cooler than me did while cutting class always got the real attention, do y’all remember how peer pressure actually referred to everything else about your existence? I sure as shit do.