dog person misses dog, unpacks a stupid number of books.

SQ-GOM-X-PUPPY.jpg
SQ-GOM-X-74.jpg
SQ-GOM-X-PORTOS.jpg
SQ-GOM-X-LAUGH.jpg
SQ-GOM-X-SMILE.jpg
SQ-GOM-X-BLARGH.jpg
SQ-GOM-X-CAR.jpg
SQ-GOM-X-BK.jpg
SQ-GOM-X-CHOMP.jpg

as my parents pulled away from the curb, my dog stood in the passenger’s seat, paws propped on the door, looking for me. i like to think he saw me through the window, through the glass, because his ears perked up with recognition, but the car was pulling away into traffic, and he was disappearing from my line of sight as i was disappearing from his.

i cried on my way up the escalator, through the security checkpoint, to my gate. i cried off and on during the five-hour flight. i pulled up photos of my dog from puppyhood to now and cried over those i edited them.

two days later, i started my new job, and it was a lonely first day. the company is tiny (so tiny), and i didn’t really talk to anyone and found that weird and disorienting and discouraging. i tried not to stay too late because i could feel the onslaught coming, because i didn’t want to cry in the office on my first day, and i managed to make it out and onto the subway before i started crying. i cried on the train ride home. i cried in the market where i went to buy some basics. i cried when i got to my apartment.

i cried so much that night, my eyes were painfully swollen the next morning, that i had to sit and ice my eyes before i could put my contacts on, that my eyes were red-rimmed the whole day. i cried some more that second day, too, on the street outside my office, in muji, in the office bathroom.

that first week, i thought a lot about quitting, about just screwing it and going back to LA — hell, i hadn’t shipped any of my stuff yet; i hadn’t signed a lease; and i hadn’t received my relocation bonus yet. it would have been easy enough, resigning and packing my suitcases back up and hopping on another flight across the country, and i thought about doing just that so many times, i don’t honestly know what was stopping me from doing it. i could have easily, and, maybe, a few years ago, i might have.

the thing is, though, that that same week, i went to dinner with friends for my birthday. i had brunch plans for that weekend and dinner plans. i had a reading i was going to the next week. i had more people to schedule catch-up meals with, DMs and text messages going back and forth of, we should meet up! when’s good? i was talking more with my coworkers and realizing that initial weirdness was that my boss had parachuted me in over their heads, had never put us in touch for them to have a chance to vet me and get to know me, and i really liked them.

because, yes, i did like my new job and the work i was doing, and, yes, i was happy to be back home in new york city, but the thing that kept me here was that i have a community here — i have people, and, as it goes, i love people.

ALPACA.jpg
SAMPARK-CEREAL.jpg
EGGS.jpg
CHIANG-CHAIR.jpg
SOLO.jpg
BOXES-BOOKS.jpg
SOM-BONE.jpg
SQ-LICK-SOM.jpg
SQ-LICK-GOM.jpg
PUPPIES-BLISS.jpg

after three weeks at this new job, the holidays roll around, and our office is thankfully all working from home. i fly out to LA, taking a stupidly late flight that gets delayed for hours because i want to see my dog sooner than later, want to cuddle him and his soft fur even if it means arriving at 1 in the morning, which, really, becomes 3 in the morning becomes 4 in the morning.

he seems hesitant to see me, and i wonder if the punk even missed me at all. i spent the last three weeks crying because i missed him so much, but he doesn’t seem that happy to see me, and i wonder if he’s forgotten me — but, damn it, aren’t dogs supposed to remember you even years later? something about your scent? no?

he’s more excited to see my brother later that morning, and i’m offended. goms! i love you! i tell him while he’s happily in the back seat, wagging his tail furiously while trying to climb on my brother’s lap. i’m in the passenger’s seat, alone because my dog abandoned me to greet my brother ecstatically.

maybe, though, it was hesitation because gom soon re-attaches himself to me, sleeping at my feet when i’m working, whining at me to sit on the floor so he can climb up on my lap with his toy, sprawling out against my leg at night. he follows me around everywhere, sitting outside the bathroom, wanting to go on car rides, pawing at me for whatever i’m eating and acting offended when he doesn’t get any.

som follows gom, so som gets in on the cuddles, too, jumping out of his crate in my parents’ room in the middle of the night and running down the hallway, pawing at my door to be let in. he runs over to where i’m sleeping on the floor on a futon, ignoring gom’s possessive, annoyed growls and barks, and curls up on my left shoulder, away from gom who sleeps on my right. there’s little that feels safer, more comforting, than two puppies curled up on either side of you, one (som) flopping around dramatically every time he wants to change positions, the other (gom) happily content to stretch out against your side because you’re his human and you’re right here where you’re supposed to be, and, yes, he missed you.


one of the biggest lies i told myself for over a decade is that i was a misanthrope, an introvert. i told myself that i didn’t like people, that i liked being alone, going things alone, and that was all my way of protecting myself.

for over a decade, i hated myself because i hated my body because i was told over and over and over again that my body was too big — it was grotesque, monstrous, and it needed to be whittled down in order for it (and, in extension, me) to be made acceptable. one of the consequences of that was this lie i told myself, this wall i built around myself so i didn’t have to feel like i had to put myself out there because that would mean opening myself up to rejection. what if people really were repulsed by me? what if no one wanted to be friends with me because i was so big and ugly and disgusting? what if i really were a monster?

instead of facing what felt like inevitable rejection, i retreated. i read a lot, saw movies alone, sometimes went days without talking to anyone other than small talk with baristas and cashiers. i always had roommates, and, sometimes, we’d chat, but i’d soon shrink back to my half of the room, plug in my ears, and pretend to study.

it’s not that i was totally friendless — i had two close friends whose friendship was invaluable, one of whom is still my best friend today. i had a handful of friends from high school i’d see every so often, even though we’d been scattered across the state for college. that was pretty much it, though, and, for years, for over a decade, i convinced myself that that was enough, that i was fine, i’d be fine, i could ignore the fact that i was often crying myself to sleep because i was lonely, that i felt so much sadness when a day, two days, three days had gone by and i hadn’t had a real conversation with a human being.

to be honest, i don’t know what changed. i moved to brooklyn for law school. i made it one year in law school before withdrawing from school because i was so depressed and suicidal, that was the only way to save my life. i’d spent that year retreating, too, because i still felt so monstrous — i’d just spent a month in japan and korea, had fled korea a week before planned because i couldn’t take the open judgment about my body anymore — and i hadn’t even wanted to be in law school, anyway.

i withdrew, moved out of law school housing, and maybe that was the change because withdrawing from law school was the first proactive step i took into pursuing the thing i wanted to do, the thing i knew i did well, and that was writing.


having a dog is a great way to meet people.

when you take your dog on walks, you’ll meet other people taking their dogs on walks, and not everyone is the same, but most dog owners like to stop and chat. if you don’t meet other dog owners, you’ll meet other dog lovers, especially when your dog is like mine and loves people, wants to meet all the people, flops over almost immediately for belly scratches.

i like meeting all the people, and i’ll stop and chat with anyone who wants to stop and chat and give my dog scratchies. so far, though, my dog has not been successful in getting me any dates, but maybe one day soon he’ll learn that that’s why i take him on walks. heh, am i joking or not? >:3

PLANEWRITING.jpg
SKY.jpg
SUNSET.jpg
MANHATTAN.jpg
FRIDGE.jpg
SELCA-MUG.jpg
ROBERTAS.jpg
BOXES-APT.jpg
DESK.jpg
UNPACKING-BOOKS.jpg
BOOKS-LIGHT.jpg

scenes from a move.

BEFOREWESTARTED.jpg

in december, i moved back to brooklyn after two years in los angeles … which was exciting and happy-making but also OH-MY-GOD-BOOKS-I-HAVE-SO-MANY-BOOKS panic-inducing.

BOOKS-PILES.jpg
FRANZEN.jpg
HB.jpg
MASHEDPOTATOES.jpg
INNOUT.jpg
LA-405.jpg

apparently, there’s been a controversial topic buzzing around bookish social media — and i say “apparently” because i’ve been hearing about it tangentially but haven’t looked it up myself.  marie kondo, declutter-er extraordinaire, has her new show on netflix, and books are among the things she helps clients get rid of — and, apparently, that is a horrifying thought, getting rid of books.

if you’re unfamiliar with marie kondo, she’s a woman from japan who helps clients declutter and live more organized lives, and her method (the konmari method as it’s called) more or less comes down to holding the object in your hands and asking, does this give me joy right now? it sounds kind of hokey, but i kind of like it because i like the principle underneath it — don’t surround yourself with things that don’t bring something positive to your life in the present.

in other words, be intentional about what you keep in your space. to expand on that, live intentionally.


there’s a fair amount of privilege in the konmari method because there’s definitely privilege in being able to pare down, to live in the present, not to worry about future hypothetical concerns that might arise. people hold onto things for various reasons, whether they’re sentimental or financial, and i’m not going to be one to say that the konmari way is the way to go — like so many other things in life, the konmari method is inherently neither good nor bad. doing the konmari method doesn’t make you a better human being than someone who doesn’t do the konmari method.

living minimally doesn’t make you better or worse than someone who lives maximally.

all that said, i didn’t use the konmari method when i was packing — i’d done it before, years ago, with clothes, and had honestly kind of forgotten it had been a thing. i mention it because i thought it was kind of funny that this “controversy” erupted so soon after i’d brutally pared down my collection, getting rid of at least half my books by sending them to people (i did a whole thing on instagram) and donating the rest.


my reason for paring down my books was mostly practical — moving is expensive, and i wanted to reduce costs as much as i could, and books made up the bulk of my crap. i managed to get my books down to 15 books boxes and 3 letter boxes, and i’m so grateful for usps media mail because that also helped me cut costs a lot, coming out to roughly $300 to ship my books alone.

then, there was the other part of it, the part of me that no longer sentimentalizes books and has little regard for the book as Object, the part of me that’s tired of carrying around this bloated collection of books i’ve been accumulating for so long. i hadn’t read most of these books, which is fine because all readers have to-be-read piles and i find nothing bad about that, but the thing is that i knew i wouldn’t read most of them — i’d acquired these books because publishers sent them to me or because i thought i should read them at one point or because i’d bought them on impulse for whatever reason.

that last reason was largely why i’d amassed so many books; i’d pick up a book here just because, then another book there just because, and so on and so forth, even though i didn’t have any urgency to read these books i was collecting — i just thought, eh, i’ll read them one day. i’ll be in the mood for this one day. i’ll be glad i already had this one day.

(maybe there is something critical to be said about massive to-be-read piles …

… but that’s a topic for another day.)

i didn’t sit and hold my books in my hands one-by-one, asking myself if they brought me joy. i moved quickly through my piles, dividing books into three piles: books i definitely wanted to keep, books i maybe wanted to keep, and books i’d give away.

i also had a clear goal when i started — to create a strong, honed-down core collection that i would intentionally build out in the future — and i knew i wanted my library to be a great resource for asian diasporic literature and korean literature-in-translation.

having those goals made it easier to prune and to prune fairly quickly. i donated books i’d read but knew i wouldn’t read again, and i donated books i knew i’d never read. i donated books that didn’t add to this library i was imagining in my head. i donated books that i knew i was holding onto for stupid reasons, like they were written by an author who was thought of highly (i.e. nabokov) or by an author people found daunting (i.e. proust).

i let go of any notions of “classics” or what i thought at some point i “should” be reading, and i went with my gut — and i have to step in here maybe to add that i was only able to cut down my collection as quickly and painlessly as i did because, fundamentally, i trust my taste. i know what i like. i know how i want to expand my reading. and i have the confidence not to care what anyone else thinks because i know my taste and i know i can trust it because, as egoistical as this may sound, i know that i know good writing.

SIMONE-DESSERTS.jpg
NAPS.jpg
PUPPIES-NAPPING.jpg
GOM-SLEEPS.jpg
PUPPIES-SLEEPING-BED.jpg
SOM-RAINBIRDS.jpg
SOM-SUITCASE.jpg

there’s all the book stuff, and there are all the meals with friendly faces, but this is what moving really looks like.

moving is having to leave my puppy behind and missing him so intensely, it hurts physically. moving is not being able to eat peanut butter or cheese or hard-boiled eggs because my puppy likes to eat peanut butter and cheese and hard-boiled eggs. moving is being that weird emotional woman wandering a grocery store, tears welling up in her eyes because she misses her puppy and there are all these weird, random trigger points because her puppy likes food. moving is getting puppy updates from my parents, facetiming with gom and cry-laughing as he tilts his head from side to side, confused because he hears me — or saying, goms, stay still!!, because he’s following my mum’s iphone around, trying to smell it, to find me, because he’s confused, he knows i’m there, but i’m not.

moving is wondering countless times a day if i’ve made a mistake, if this — this apartment, this job, this life — is worth leaving my puppy behind.

moving is avoiding going home after work because i hate going home to a puppy-less apartment.

or maybe none of this is about moving. maybe this is just want it means to give your heart away.


sometimes, i wonder if people must find it comedic or pathetic that i have so many feelings for my dog. before we’d go to sleep, when he was curled up on his blanket in the corner of my bed, i’d scratch his ears and whisper, goms, i love you; do you know how much i love you?, to him over and over again. he wouldn’t know what i was saying, but he was relaxed, sprawled out, limbs akimbo, and i’d take that as his way of saying, yeah, yeah, psycho human, i know, because dogs only sprawl out when they trust you, when they know they’re safe.

buzzfeed reader is doing a series of posts about debt, and you’d think i’d find a lot of it relatable because i carried a lot of debt (and debt was the main reason i ended up going back to los angeles for two years), but it was the piece written by a woman about going into thousands and thousands of dollars of credit card debt for her dog when she was diagnosed with cancer that resonated most intensely with me.

even before i had a puppy, money was what stopped me getting one, though, back then, i thought i was a cat person and really, really wanted a cat. if i were to get an animal, though, i knew i was committing myself to a life with that animal, which meant that, inevitably, at one point, money for health issues would enter the picture. i never said it in so many words to myself, but i knew — i could be that woman who went thousands and thousands of dollars into debt for her animal. i could be that person. and, just like her, i wouldn’t regret it.

having said that, though, one of the reasons my puppy is in LA with my parents is money. it would cost me roughly $600-700 a month to cover doggie day care, food, and other various daily expenses, and that’s not an amount to sneeze at. another reason (and the more pressing reason, honestly) is that my job has an expectation for ridiculously long hours, so i’m typically out of the house for 12 hours, and i’d feel so guilty leaving him for so many hours of the week, even if he were in doggie day care and having fun playing with other dogs.

i miss him, though, and i miss him intensely. my dog wasn’t just my dog but my emotional support animal, and not having him inflates all kinds of other anxieties and leaves me on high-alert all the time, on the watch for the familiar signs of an onset of another depressive episode, of another spiral, of another low. i’m afraid of how i’ll cope when that happens again. i’m afraid of going through another episode of depression and suicidal thinking without my puppy.

and, yet, maybe you’d never think that looking at me because that’s the thing with brain things — you can’t see them, so you should never assume.


here are things my dog has taught me about myself: that i have a deeper capacity to love than i thought i did, that i am able to care for another living being in a manner that allows him to thrive, that i will make the sacrifices i need to ensure his happiness. that i can thrive and care for myself and live, even when things feel so impossible in my brain.

getting a puppy taught me a tremendous amount about myself, and i hope i love another person half as much as i love my dog. a friend who is a fellow dog human has assured me that i will only ever love another person has as much as i love my dog, and, at that, i laugh and think that whoever that person is, what a lucky person to receive even that much love, indeed.

MAJORDOMO-SIGN.jpg
MAJORDOMO-FRIEDOXTAIL.jpg
MAJORDOMO-MAFALDINE.jpg
MAJORDOMO-BING.jpg
MAJORDOMO-CHICKENRICE.jpg
MAJORDOMO-CHICKENSOUP.jpg

and, so, after weeks of packing and cleaning and getting fabulous meals with wonderful people, i made it to brooklyn with two suitcases, my stuff in my parents’ garage in LA ready to be shipped — after two years, i made it back home.

SELCA-ARRIVAL.jpg

be more intentional.

REUNITED.jpg

I WAS REUNITED WITH MY PUPPY AGAIN!

though, hi, uhm, long time no see, you might need some context.

at the beginning of december, i moved back to brooklyn to start a new job in digital content at a korean skincare e-tailer, and i had to leave my puppy behind. it was an easy transition into nyc life in many ways — or it was an easy transition in every way but one: i. miss. my. dog.

i hate going home to a gom-less apartment, so i spent three weeks avoiding going home. my friend had a cat, and that helped and didn’t — it was nice to have a cuddly friend, but i couldn’t cuddle said cuddly friend because i have cat allergies (which i’m starting to lean into and embrace instead of fighting) — also, oh my god, cat litter smells, and i’ve been put off cats forever because i am just not clean enough to have a cat, to deal with the constant shedding and the litter everywhere. it’s not worth it when i can’t even cuddle the cat or give it scratchies or clean its damn litter without fear of my eyes getting itchy and watery and bloodshot and my sinuses going haywire.

(cat litter triggers my allergies so much more than the damn cat does.)

anyway, so, i miss my clean hypoallergenic puppy who loves to snuggle and pees and poos outside (for the most part), and i miss having his furiously wagging tail greeting me every day, and i miss his warmth and softness when he sprawls out by my leg at night. i miss his sweet little kisses. i miss the goodness that is a dog that loves you, and i miss the goodness that is caring for a dog and letting him know you love him, too.

i love new york city and being back home, but i miss my dog so much, i can’t even count the number of times i thought of giving NYC up and going back to LA because i was sad and lonely and hurting.

JETBLUE-PARK.jpg
SLEEPINGPUPPIES.jpg
FRENCHTOAST.jpg
GOM-LIGHT.jpg
FRENCHTOAST-BBANG.jpg
SUNSET.jpg

let’s see — 2018.

when i started planning this post last week, i thought i’d do a series of seven lists, each containing seven things. i wasn’t sure what those lists would be about, except for maybe two, so here is the first one.

7 things i’m grateful for from 2018

  1. gom and som — we got gom when i was on the cusp of a dangerous depressive spiral, and gom kept me alive this summer. he was always so cheery to see me, always wanting snuggles, always settling happily in my arms or my lap, and i only made it through the summer because i had to care for him, had to feed him and take him out to go potty and train him. i only made it through because he needed me, though the truth is that i needed him far more than he ever needed me.

  2. moving back home and getting a new job — this happened through such a series of serendipitous events, i’m still kind of stunned. a friend put me in contact with her sister who worked at the company, and i interviewed with freelanced for this company in may, but then they dropped out of contact, so i figured they’d hired someone else, someone already local in new york. as it turns out, i was right, but that person wasn’t the right fit, so i was suddenly offered a job in october, a salary reached, a start date of december set — and, then, at the same time, another friend decided to move out of her brooklyn studio to move in with her boyfriend, so that was that — a job i’m good at in a field i love and a studio i can afford in an area of brooklyn i like — it all really worked out too well.

  3. that memoir workshop through catapult — i didn’t intend to take this workshop; i applied for another one with nicole chung; but, instead, catapult asked if i’d want to take this memoir generator, said that the instructor (christine h. lee) had read my sample and loved it. if i’m being brutally honest, i agreed to take the memoir workshop because i was so totally flattered that christine liked my writing because i’d been reading her memoir and had been amazed at her ability to blend science and memoir, to touch at the heart while also explaining the clinical. i’m so glad i took this workshop, though; not only did it confirm that i have both personal stories to tell and the voice to tell them, but i also had such an awesome, brilliant cohort that has led to some pretty damn stellar friendships.

  4. essay acceptances — the catapult thing also has led to having two essays accepted, two essays i’m working on with editors. that’s both thrilling and absolutely terrifying, but i am SO EXCITED and grateful to be working with these editors as they are both really badass, smart, brilliant asian-american women.

  5. friendships — this has been something i’ve been realizing more and more over the last two-three years, but i am so lucky to have such wonderful people in my life. “in my life” doesn’t always mean a physical presence, either; the thing that keeps me on instagram is the community. there are people i’ve known for years now, people who have been with me and stayed with me though the really painful times that were the last few years, and i hope to meet more of these friends in-person this year and am accordingly planning trips to london, chicago, ann arbor, charleston, and DC.

  6. traveling, having the means and curiosity to travel — i’m lucky to be able to travel, and i never take it for granted. in 2018, i went to mexico city for the first time, and my family took a big trip to alaska, and i went back to san francisco and portland. i went to brooklyn twice. i almost made it to austin twice, but the forces in the universe wouldn’t let that happen. in 2019, i hope to do a fair bit of traveling as well, even while working so much, but i’ll be keeping things more local, planning to go up to boston fairly regularly, going to hawaii potentially for my dad’s 60th, making my one big international trip to london this time. and, god damn it, i’m making it to austin this year.

  7. creativity and ambition — there are times when i get down and discouraged and can’t write, and 2018 was a year of massive discouragement and stagnancy, especially with fiction writing. i almost threw away my book; the only reason i didn’t is that i had a new puppy who demanded all my attention, so i couldn’t sit down at my laptop long enough to find all my files and delete them. near the end of the year, though, i started thinking more about this book of stories i’ve been working on for eleven years now, and i kept coming back to a few big changes i wanted to make. and i read ted chiang’s fabulous stories of your life, and the best thing about that book was that it made me miss writing fiction. and then, over the last weekend, i watched all of the haunting of hill house, and that, too, made me miss writing fiction so much.

WORKSPACE.jpg
SKINCARE.jpg

look, i’ve gone five photos without my dogs. let’s go back to looking at dogs!

GOM-YAWN-01.jpg
GOM-YAWN-04.jpg
GOM-YAWN-07.jpg
GOM-YAWN-02.jpg
GOM-YAWN-05.jpg
GOM-YAWN-08.jpg
GOM-YAWN-03.jpg
GOM-YAWN-06.jpg
GOM-YAWN-09.jpg

it’s funny having two puppies because they have personalities of their own. gom and som look so alike (they’re brothers), but they’re so different, their personalities almost totally opposite from each other.

som does everything with a flare for the dramatic, whether it’s changing positions when sleeping or drinking water or chasing after a toy. he plays well by himself, able to amuse himself, and he has a lot of curiosity and a lot of fear at the same time. he used to dislike cuddling, wanting to be on his own, but, recently, he’s taken to demanding snuggles, wanting to be close and held. the funniest/cutest thing about him, though, is his ability to sleep wherever and whenever — it he’s tired, he’s going to sleep; he’s going to find whatever bed is closest or go into his crate; and he is going to sleep.

when he was a little puppy, he’d sprawl out on the floor wherever he was and sleep. we’d have to be careful not to step on him or kick him, which made it kind of a challenge to cook sometimes because, if he happened to get sleepy in the middle of the kitchen floor, well, that’s where he was going to sleep. nowadays, now that he’s four months old, he’ll go find a bed or his crate, but that’s adorable, too, the way he makes a beeline for bed, for sleep, the way he ends up hanging off the bed, his feet maybe hooked over the edge while he sprawls out on the floor.

gom, on the other hand, is more sensitive. he wants to sleep around me or around my parents. if we get up while he’s sleeping, he’ll get up and follow, even if we’re just getting up to use the toilet — he’ll follow and curl up outside the bathroom because he wants to be around his humans, wants to know they’re there.

gom, in general, is more even-keel with less of a flare for the dramatic, but he also has more anxiety. he has a lot of separation anxiety, which i also share, but he’s more sensitive, more emotional, more moody. sometimes, i wonder if it’s because he was left alone in a garage as he was being weaned, and he was the only puppy, no litter mates, and i can’t imagine how scary that must have been, to be a two-month-old puppy taken from his mother and put in a giant, dark garage by himself. whether it’s that or just personality or a combination of both, gom doesn’t like to be alone, will play by himself only if we’re around, much prefers to crawl in my lap and chew on his toys there.

his kisses are sweeter, too, more gentle, while som goes energetically for kisses, licking our faces with vigor. som’s also the one who’s always stealing gom’s bones and toys, and i keep telling gom to be a meaner hyung, to assert his authority and take his bones and toys back, but gom’s a sweetheart and will cry and bark but let som keep chewing and playing away.

god damn, i miss my dogs.

SOM-SLEEPING-04.jpg
SOM-SLEEPING-05.jpg
SOM-SLEEPING-07.jpg
PUPPIES-PLAYING.jpg
SOM-ANTLER-03.jpg
PUPPIES.jpg
MORNING.jpg
GOMSBUTT.jpg

i’m on a flight back to brooklyn as i type this, and, while it’s nice to be in LA to visit, it always feels like a literal weight is being lifted off my shoulders when i leave — or maybe it’s more accurate to say that there is no better feeling than my plane landing at JFK, the lightness and comfort that fill me because i know i’ve come home again.

that second list then, 7 things i want to do in 2019:

  1. create more and challenge myself creatively — i want to come back to this space and create more content, more book content and food content. i also want to keep building out my food zine, and i want to start editing video finally and start vlogging.

  2. go back to my stupid book — 2018 was a year of letting the book be, and i’m still conflicted over whether or not i’m glad i didn’t end up trashing my book, like i was dead-set on doing in may and june. i think i am glad in ways that gom saved me from that, and i am excited to go back to writing fiction, to these changes i will be making.

  3. travel — i’ll be staying fairly close to new york this year, doing a lot of “micro” trips, but i’m still planning and hoping to make it to london and barcelona. and maybe oaxaca. i want to go to oaxaca so badly.

  4. be kind to myself and take care of myself — my instinct is to work, work, work, to keep creating and doing and going, and it’s been a process being okay with doing nothing. maybe that’s one reason i hate watching TV — i feel like i’m wasting time i could be writing or creating or reading, which is stupid, i know, but weekends like this last one of 2018 when i did nothing but watch the haunting of hill house — that was good, too. sometimes, doing nothing is a gift — and nothing is ever nothing, anyway. TV stimulates the creative brain as much as anything, and inspiration comes from anywhere and everywhere as long as you’re keeping your eyes and brain and heart open.

  5. DATE!!!

  6. keep a clean apartment — i am not a dirty person, but i tend to clutter and can get super lazy with cleaning, putting it off instead of cleaning every week. i’m living alone now, though, and, as it turns out, i like cleanliness, and i like clean spaces. my mum is fastidious about cleanliness, and i used to complain about it, but, now, i miss it so much, how clean my parents’ house is, especially now when my studio is a mess, in that in-between phase where someone’s moved out, people have had to come in to paint and fix things, and i’m still not quite moved in yet, living on bare bones furniture while i wait for an ikea delivery and all my crap to arrive from california. i’m trying to keep a clean apartment, though, to stay organized and tidy up every week and not put my laundry off until it absolutely must be done.

  7. practice more gratitude — it is so easy to take shit for granted. one of the things i have in my bullet journal is a gratitude list every month where i write down at least one thing every day i’m grateful for, and, sometimes, that exercise is so hard, but i find that it’s also often so helpful, especially when i’m having a particularly shitty day. does it always work to turn my mood around? no, but i always appreciate the effort, and it’s something i want to keep being more intentional about this year.

PURITYMYTH.jpg
SUGARFISH.jpg
GOM-SLEEPS-01.jpg
BOXES.jpg
CAPITALISM.jpg
GOM-MODELWALK.jpg

here’s one last photo of gom who wishes y’all a happy 2019. make it be a good one.

GOM-BYEBYE-01.jpg