36 from 35

There’s nothing particularly special about 36, numerically speaking. It’s not a halfway marker between decades. It’s not a popular descriptor for cutting pieces of pie or measuring quarter-life crises. But this month, I’ll be clocking out of 35 and into 36. So right now, 36 means I’m still around.

As a gift to myself, I’ve come up with 36 things I’ve learned, loved, and listened to this past year. 

My 36 from 35, if you will.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

1. Who I am is none of my business.

“I never wonder who I am. I don’t think it’s my business to know.”

2. The Comfort Perspective

“If life is a never ending loop of dirty dishes and laundry then that means life is a never-ending loop of home cooked meals and comfy clean clothes.”

This is what the kids are calling the Comfort Perspective. Life, and all of it’s pieces, are always moving cyclically together. We ebb. We flow. There’s no state of ‘completeness’ to attain.

3. The time will pass anyways

For every excuse I’ve ever built up in my mind to stop myself from growing(read: learning((read: trying)), this phrase is the one assailant I am unable to defend against.

“It’s going to take years.”

The time will pass anyways.

4. Everyone thinks they’re Dumbo

5. Friendly Skeletons

The skeletons of friendship lie within our shared experiences.

In elementary school, our friends consisted of people from… elementary school. We shared teachers, bus routes, recess equipment, and spent time together in lunch lines.

As adolescents, we shared our taste in music, our identities, and our lifestyles. But as adults, we’re less prone to venture into new experiences. And therefore, we have less skeletal frameworks.

Friendships are forged by creating spaces to share with others- by making skeletons. So, we fill our free time with concert weekends and pickle ball clubs. We hatch plans to visit breweries and have dinners. We join group chats and fantasy football leagues.

The skeletons of friendship lie within our shared experiences. So yes, your fantasy football league is important. But no, it has nothing to do with the winning part.

6. Word of Mouth > The Algorithm

Don’t let technology drown out the suggestions of your peers. Word of mouth still reigns supreme.

While recommended song lists and ‘for you pages’ are fun, word of mouth is how the Noah Kahans of the world find their footing. It’s how the Chappell Roans root themselves and take up space inside our homes. Their music wasn’t a hit, “Until suddenly it was.” Because someone told someone who told someone else how much it meant to them.

No matter how hard corporations pay for, push, and promote themselves, the things we talk about with each other matter most. Word of mouth can make anything rise like a midwest princess.

7. But also, trust the algorithm.

Our suggested song lists and personalized algorithms are modern day “trail walks”. They’re safe, but you’re not quite sure where they’ll take you. And it’s fun to succumb to the algorithm and stumble upon artists, information, and ideas.

Don’t keep yourself in a constant loop of what you already know… Wander a bit. 

8. A sign’s a sign.

I don’t believe in ghosts¹ . But I’ve started to believe in signs. At least, I believe in the power they can hold, even if it’s just a placeholder for a religious experience.

@jacobxstephen

Ya know that thing the wind does? When it’s trying to say something? I guess right here is an okay place to be #grieftok #upstateny #upstate

A sign’s a sign. Take it.

9. River of Information

I prefer living right by the river, where it’s chaotic and fast and noisy. I want my information pouring out around me, unfiltered. I want to decide for myself whether or not it’s safe enough to drink.

But others prefer to live at the bottom of a stream, where the information has passed through multiple natural barriers. It’s been filtered of it’s silly and it’s profane, the useless and the disagreeable.

And that’s okay. You can’t force anyone to live by the river.

10. There is no ‘up’ and ‘down’

Time to reorient ourselves.

@cirruslyyesterday

Ill take any chance to talk about mercator #mercator #worldmap

11. Learning has no OFF switch

Being in control of a situation bears no weight on what you learn from it. For the most part, we aren’t in control of what we learn.

Did Pavlov think about feeding his dog every time he heard a bell ring?

There’s no way to turn off our learning. So maybe you are the company you keep. And maybe everything you do, does matter.

12. On Comedy

“It takes us further away from death.” - Phoebe Waller-Bridge

13. How to Get Lost

“Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing. There are objects and people that disappear from your sight or knowledge or possession; you lose a bracelet, a friend, the key. You still know where you are. Everything is familiar except that there is one item less, one missing element. Or you get lost, in which case the world has become larger than your knowledge of it. Either way, there is a loss of control. Imagine yourself streaming through time shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names. This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train. Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before. The material falls away in onrushing experience. It peels off like skin from a molting snake. Of course to forget the past is to lose the sense of loss that is also memory of an absent richness and a set of clues to navigate the present by; the art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.”

A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Rebecca Solnit

14. Weak Form Knots

You’re tying your shoes wrong.

15. Tadpole Moments

When I was a little girl, my mother would pick me up from daycare. And every day, we’d walk across the school’s dusty, gravel parking lot and hop around, dodging the potholes along our path. One day, after several weeks of rain, my mom noticed something making ripples in the water. When we got to her car, she grabbed a cup she had recently forgotten on her floorboard, as if it was meant for this moment all along. One scoop later, and she was walking back with a cup full of tadpoles.

I eagerly stared into the cup the entire ride home. I held it with such care. If we turned right, I leaned left. When we turned left, I leaned right. I’d never had tadpoles before, and I wasn’t going to fuck this up by spilling them in mom’s car.

Day after day, I checked on my tadpoles in the makeshift habitat we’d built. And day after day, I was completely heartbroken to find that they hadn’t grown any legs.

I began to give up on the tadpoles. In my mind, if they hadn’t changed yet, they never would. But every day, I couldn’t resist the urge to check in. Until finally, they began to change shape.

Eventually, it was time to set the frogs free, but I never forgot about my mother taking a few extra seconds of her day to invest in the adventure. And even now, I still catch myself peeking at puddles in parking lots after a rainy day. Call it a ‘core memory’, if you will, but I think we’re all foundationally changed by our Tadpole Moments.

16. Kitchen Talk

In our kitchen growing up, my parents always talked about bills and disagreed about responsibilities. There was a black stain beneath our cabinets from the time our toaster caught on fire. And our fire alarm was constantly being triggered by even just the idea of smoke.

I spent countless hours watching my mother and father argue upon stools, balancing on their tiptoes, pulling out 9-volt batteries. Maybe that’s why I so badly dreamed of a different kind of kitchen. The kind you see on TV.

It’s been almost 25 years since I set foot in that house, but I still pull toasters out from under the cabinets before turning them on. And I still wince any time a fire alarm sounds.

But little Amanda would be happy to know that we finally have a good kitchen. I’ve dreamt of some day having a kitchen like that one scene from Easy A. If I could, I’d tell little Amanda that our kitchen damn near rivals it.

17. Never To Heaven

“The whys in this lifetime I’ve found are inconsequential compared to the magic of the nowness- the solution to most questions
there are no reasons.
and if there are- i’m wrong
but at least i won’t have spent my life waiting
looking for God in the clouds of the dawn
or listening out for otherwordly contact
30 billion light years on
No. i’ll let the others do the pondering
while i’ll be sitting on the lawn
reading something unsubstantial
with the television on”

from Violet Bent Backwards Over The Grass - Lana Del Rey

18. We’re just kids that are getting older.

It’s a lot easier to forgive if you remember that we’re all just kids that are getting older.

@thequotecollection

We're all kids, just older - Theo Von | TheQuoteCollection • • • Follow for Daily Motivation! • • • Everyone is still a child growing u... See more

19. Veronika is cool

A year ago, a silly video dropped. But it’s slowly turned into a series of videos that walked the line of improv and reality.

If you don’t know about Veronika & Kyle, I’m sorry. Watching their lore build in real time was phenomenal and I wish you could’ve been there. Here’s where it all began.

@veronika_iscool

20. Mohawk Chevrolet

Mockumentary meets truck dealership meets The Office. There are 11 episodes, if you’re into that sort of thing.

21. Get Uncomfortable

I’ve convinced myself these last few years that being comfortable is good. And it was. It served me well for that time in my life. But I’ve started to make space for feeling uncomfortable again.

One obvious way is how I’ve convinced myself to do cold plunges 1-3 times a week. It hurts. And I’ve enjoyed the 10 minutes of freezing pain because it’s the quietest my mind has ever been - listening to my body and fighting my urge to run. I didn’t realize how much I was always running.

One less obvious way that I’ve made space for the uncomfortable is by telling my friends I love them. I love them so much.

22. Juna
Clairo

you make me wanna

23. Girls
The Dare

24. Lithonia
Childish Gambino

25. My Kink Is Karma… no really
Chappell Roan

26. Two Star & The Dream Police
Mk.gee

If my Alexa could talk, she’d tell me to give this album a rest.

27. The Great American Bar Scene
Zach Bryan

28. Sink Beneath The Line
Incubus

“this is the funniest song about a girl accidentally sitting on an anthill that i’ve ever heard”

29. Kansas Anymore
Role Model

Breakup album narrative. I eat that shit up every time.

30. 36

There’s nothing particularly special about 36, numerically speaking. So why hold myself accountable for six more?

until next time. -cd

1  Don’t you fucking dare tell any ghosts that I said that.