So here we are, over a week since I launched my blog with much gusto, and since then haven’t written jack shit. Not only have I not posted, I’ve also spiraled from my personal journaling, broke my 60+ day streak of meditation and my Duolingo Spanish informed me that my discipline is no bueno. Also, I ate a chili dog yesterday.

These waves of ambition followed by a floundering sense of defeat pretty much illustrate my personal creative struggle. It’s something that I’ve wrestled with – being my best self means being my best self all the time. So if I’m not always my best self, am I never my best self?

But I’m from the Bay, so for the past years I haven’t faced any of these questions because it’s so much easier to blame it on lunar cycles.

So I should make it clear that I still believe in it. I believe whole-heartedly that the 75% liquid that comprises our bodies are tugged and nudged like the tide. Often on sleepless nights I lie in confusion as to why my eyes won’t stay shut, until I glance outside to see the full moon standing there like a bouncer keeping me from my slumber. Once, a singer named Golda Supanova read me my Mayan totem. “You’re a blue rhythmic monkey,” she said, with voice smoky and eyes half-mast. “You organize in order to play.” Truth is the truth is the truth.

A couple years ago I came across a lunar calendar for self-optimization, in the pages of Douglas Rushkoff’s Present Shock. Here’s a fascinating video breakdown, but if you want to skip to the lunar cycle part it’s at about 3:45 when he starts talking about chronobiology.

When I first read it, I didn’t internalize it. Just wasn’t written in the stars at the time. But over the past few months I’ve been trying to be more understanding and accepting of my routines, my inclinations and my reclusions. I’ve been trying to find a better explanation for why one week I’m bursting with ideas and energy and vision, and a few days later all I want to do is watch Boardwalk Empire forever and ever. How do I reach such moments of zen that I feel I’ve risen above the silly game of social media pseudo-fame, and the next day wake up feeling all bitter that no one liked my IG picture of a door.

It’s so easy and neat and productive-feeling to just compartmentalize it neatly in a weekly moon calendar. Here’s a creepy graphic I constructed as a quick reference:

The problem is, I never know where the hell we are in the lunar cycle. I really wish I was the kind of person who could detect things like this based on how the hairs were standing up on my neck, but the truth is I have an app that tells me, and even still I can’t keep track. I only check on the moon cycle when I’m feeling shitty, because it’s a safety net. Because on weeks when I’m not waking up on time and my conversations are awkward and I have anxiety for no reason, it’s comforting to stare at the sky and attribute everything to magnetic pull.

There is so much potent wisdom in reading the cosmos, but it’s also so tempting to let it be an excuse. Mercury in retrograde, gemini tendencies, planets not aligning – I’m not saying they’re not real dynamics, but you have to admit they’re also good excuses for dropping the ball while sounding hella deep.

I was so prolific during my writer’s block. From 2005-2011, I was up until 3 every night, gigantic laptop heating up my stomach while I clicked together my tormented blog posts. My favorite topic was (and still is) how frustrated I was that I couldn’t write anymore. I had written so many poems throughout college, and they were dope. I was getting famous for them. But at 23, I felt like time was ticking, the ability to identify as a phenom was slipping through my fingers, and soon I would be the prehistoric age of 25 which meant it would be way too late to lead the interesting life I wanted everyone in the world to pay attention to me living. Eventually, after a few years touring the country, I moved with my band iLL-Literacy to New York, and the drudgery of trying to survive in the most exciting city in the world got to me. Nothing was interesting about fighting through my first blizzard, or lugging laundry four blocks through Crown Heights or trying to record a hit song but instead spending the entire evening troubleshooting ProTools. My life wasn’t interesting enough to log anymore, so I stopped.

Now I’m 33, I’m a curator at the Smithsonian, and people keep telling me my life must be so interesting. Meanwhile, in the past 5 years which I thought were too uninteresting to write about, I moved to Harlem, met the love of my life in DC, spent a semester living in a forest and half a year in Beijing. In 2013 when I got this job, I thought to myself, This will be soooo interesting! Now’s DEFINITELY the time to start writing again! But, like most things in the universe, this job is way more exhilarating on an Instagram bio than it is in daily life. The reality is much more fraught with long staff meetings, moving emails from one folder to another and stressing out over people not signing forms on time.

It is just as mundane as toiling over a bug while coding the website that got me interested in contemporary art, or rerecording the 50th take on an adlib with the members of iLL-Lit whom I miss so much. As the great curator Kitty Scott once told me while crossing Japan on a rickety plane, life is basically a series of turning no’s into yes’es.

But fuck it, I’m going to start writing again. I’ve been throwing the word “storyteller” around too much not to. It does help that I have some things down the road that, even if they’re half as interesting in life as they sound on paper, will make for some excellent pixels. And when life is really a drag, when there’s absolutely nothing of significance to share – I’ll revisit my late nights in Oakland, amidst my fourth attempt at finding a Netflix movie that will bring some excitement into my hollow day, and find a story in that to retell. Sometimes these things just take time.

Some things coming up 🤗🤗🤗

This Sunday 10/16 I’m speaking at the Creative Time Summit with curator Kayleigh Bryant and artist Sheldon Scott

Then on Monday 10/24 I’m sharing my vision for the future of D.C.’s art scene at State of Art DC @ National Museum of Women in the Arts

Tues Nov 1: ILL-LITERACY REUNION!!!!!!!! Show @ UC Berkeley

On Nov 5 I’m going outdoor rockclimbing for the first time!!! Did you know that I climb rocks now? I’m doing it in West Virginia 4 days before the election. What could go wrong?

Nov 12-13: CTRL+ALT, a humongous culture lab in NYC about imagined futures that I’ve been curating for the past half year with my compadres at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

Right after that, I head to Buenos Aires (first time in South America heyyyyyyyyy) for Chaos at the Museum

Straight from there I’m spending a few days in the Algarve, Portugal, because I need a mufuckin vacation. Also, custard tarts.

And because I am insane, I have begun a new pet project called Cartoons Curated. Each week I will select three cartoons to share in your inbox every Saturday morning. You know you want it.

✌🏽