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Dear Friend,

Hey there, how’s it going?

Before Meditation for Mortals (one of my favorite books from last year), author Oliver Burkeman also wrote another book called 4,000 Weeks. The book's core idea is that all of us have finite time in our lives (or about 4,000 weeks in total), so it’s best to make it count. Well, the other day my inquisitive mind just had to go there… and it turns out I have about 1,755 weeks left. I’ve rambled on about mortality before, what with my mid-life crisis hitting me since my mid-twenties, but seeing an actual number associated with my life is still pretty jarring.

In The Time We Have

Earlier this month I came across “The Saturdays We Have Left”, a blog post beautifully written by an author simply referred to as e. In the post they reminisced about the Saturdays with their grandma over the years, until they ”eventually ran out of Saturdays". The post was trending on Bearblog for a good reason, because in classic show-don’t-tell fashion I felt so connected not just with the author; their memories of dim sum restaurants and the tightening of braces felt just like my own.

Speaking of trending posts, Why I Stopped Arguing With People was the featured article in my Readwise Reader (my RSS app of choice, btw). Though I don't agree with everything author Wang Cong wrote in his essay, there were enough gems to jog my memory of other books I loved on this topic. I also absolutely agree with his paradoxical point that the only time people will actually listen to you is if they actively ask for your advice — so in turn I must also explicitly ask others for help if I want to truly grow.

The Hope We Must Hold

I’ve mentioned before how my brain’s lost the sense of time since COVID first hit (i.e.: 2016 feels like just 4 years ago to me, still), and partly because of that, I’ve been living life in this wait-and-see holding pattern — holding on to get past lockdowns, vaccines, elections, inflation, wars, and overall bad times when there is, and will always be, the next wild ride to hold out for. That’s just how life is — even in the 90s which we now look back on so fondly — there were still wars in the Middle East and crime right down the street.

As a closeted teen, I remember feeling just as hopeless, if not more so than today. There was no way anyone could’ve convinced me that one day I’d be able to walk down the street while openly holding my boyfriend’s hand. That would’ve been absolute fiction to me — you might as well have told me I can breathe underwater.

But in a way, this parallels the present moment. Where civil rights, jobs, and livelihoods are violently ripped away from us, it’s easy to assume that this horrific reality can only ever be permanent. To think of any other outcome as possible is the very definition of delusion. But I must remind myself — force myself even — that I’ve actually felt this way before, this assured sense of hopelessness. But in my forty-plus years of living, the only constant in life is how impermanent everything is. I must live life today in order to dream about tomorrow, for I must keep dreaming about the future in order to build toward it.

Something Like Happiness

John Green posted a video of himself signing autographs for his upcoming book (a process that takes ~160 hours) while making a point that One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy, because it's up to each one of us to create meaning when the universe so blatantly does not care about our existence. Down in the comments someone mentioned something that really stuck with me, “The universe can't be indifferent, ultimately, because we are not indifferent… and we are a part of the universe.”

In that same video, John Green also made the point that when our lives are drawn to much loudness, sensations, and extremity, sometimes he just craves the mundane because while the quiet routine is not exactly joy, it is "something like happiness”. Like many times before, I once again recall my weekly runs at the nearby track. In theory it must be boring to just hamster around the same track, circling the same 20+ laps in my every run. And it is boring, but it's also so enjoyable to me — the predictability and flatness of it all. I love to literally count that "I’m 4, no just 3 laps away until my next walk break". It's not exactly joy but it is something close to that. And until then I can spend my time focusing on my breath or let my mind wander something random into a seed of an idea.

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And here's the rest of it…

Thanks for reading this and being with me on this journey. Reply or comment and let me know what’s going on in your world! You can also check out past issues of Dear Friend, here.

In/Out List

Inspired by The Verge, I figured this might be a good way to keep track of my latest and ever-changing interests…

Here’s the rest of it:

• The photos I took this month
• Interesting enough to share but not enough to write about:
  • Charli xcx presents Music, Fashion, Film | Full Film
  • Gen Zers on COVID, generational stereotypes, AI and more
  • No Effort is Wasted
  • A Rookies Guide to Watches
• Don't forget, I’m on Bluesky! DM me there!

— Love wins