The Smiths has been permanently ruined by that one movie (if you know, you know).

East Asian, 5’1, 110lbs-ish with 6’5 energy (everyone tells me I don’t look 5’1 so I think it’s the energy I project). I like good conversation and do pride myself in being able to make it. I’m well-read for a doom scroller, and a good writer for someone who doesn’t do it as a job (I aspire to use em-dashes elegantly, to have better punctuation, and to tame my over-usage of commas and parantheses.)

I’ve been going through some personal things and have been dealing with them healthily by piling on distraction upon distraction upon distraction. And I hope you can be one too. We can go get a drink, karaoke it up maybe, or go dancing, and I can feed you instant ramen by the end of the night if I really like you. Or if you prefer Annie’s mac and cheese, we can do that too.

I could tell you about what I listen to, what I do when I have time etc. but I’m not that different from everyone else. So I’ll tell you a story about me. When I was a child, I loved stickers and collected them and I’ve always liked collecting things. The thing about stickers though is that I never ever used them because there was always this fear of committing to sticking a sticker to one place where it would be forever and you can’t move it without ruining it. And so all of my stickers lived in a box, all in their original packaging and I’d take them out sometimes to look at, and put them back. The only exception to this was when I’d write cards to people, in which case it wouldn’t bother me at all to use them because I wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of these little commitments I’ve made on paper. Nowadays, I’ve decided that life is too short not to make little commitments and break them, or, make them and then make amendments later on. For example, I have given up on this fear of hammering nails into my rented apartment and instead do it freely, with joy, for my pretty pictures in their cheap IKEA frames. See, people do change for the better.

More recently I’ve been obsessed with Clarice Lispector and will tell anyone willing to listen about her, she’s been enjoying a bit of a renaissance, to be fair. The most recent thing I read that I liked, I’ll share with you too even if you never end up messaging me. I liked it because it perfectly describes why I wake up at 5 am sometimes, and why even when I don’t, I have trouble sleeping. It is not a concern to me, it is a gift that I’m glad to have. At least for now.

So now you know two things about me; one, I am adult enough to have framed pictures on my wall, two, I take pleasure in my unhealthy sleeping habits. Now it’s your turn.

Insomnias Unhappy and Happy

Clarice Lispector

January 20, 1968

And yet insomnia can often be a gift. Suddenly waking in the middle of the night and having that rare thing: solitude. Barely a sound. Only that of the waves breaking on the beach. And then I enjoy drinking a cup of coffee, all alone in the world. No one interrupts the nothingness. A nothingness that is, at once, empty and rich. And the telephone is silent, not giving the sudden ring that always makes us jump. Then day gradually breaks. The clouds growing lighter beneath a sun that is sometimes as pale as the moon, and sometimes pure fire. I go out onto the terrace and am perhaps the first person of the day to see the white foam of the sea. The sea is mine, the sun is mine, the earth is mine. And I feel happy for no reason, about everything. Until, with the sun rising, the rest of the household slowly wakes up and I rediscover my sleepy sons.