October, 2020 | Adriel Luis

note from volunteer isolation #50: finishing

October 23, 2020

today i finally finished reading ross gay’s the book of delights, the book of gorgeous essays that inspired me to begin my series of “notes from volunteer isolation,” a materialization of my commitment to write more regularly than i have for years, which is to say that this book has saved me.

if you’ve been reading along with my posts, you may be asking didn’t you start this shit way back in march? and then you may quickly calculate that waaaaaaay more than 50 days have passed since then, and if you were the handful of blessed people who were following my posts religiously (thank you) you may wonder if maybe you missed the last few ones, to which i can assure you that it’s not your fault, it’s mine.

see, i suck at finishing things. more specifically, i have a hardest time tending to the last 5%. i drag my feet to the final touches, find the mixing and mastering painstaking, or in this case, have taken forever to get through #48-50.

i began really liking my writing probably around the #20’s, and was feeling myself by the #30’s. maybe i should publish these, i began thinking. but who would publish it? who would want it? with all that’s happening in the world? what good would it do? why do i have to turn everything into a hustle? maybe this is stupid.

i know that everybody has regrets – shoulda-coulda-wouldas – and for some, these regrets are tied to deep existential sorrows. shoulda expressed my love more. coulda quit harming myself sooner. woulda been the life i know i’m worth living.

so i’m grateful that the kind of regrets that haunts me, the kind that compels me to sigh long and deep at random points throughout the days, are largely the regrets tied to my creative endeavors that never fully manifested (which is most of them). that album staling in my hard drive. that short film locked in an outdated final cut file. the endless ideas i was ready to drop everything to pursue, until the high of inspiration came down and was swallowed by doubt.

in june i reached the #40s, and by then had been determined to at least reach #50. a low enough bar, i told myself. i had been writing and posting at least every other day, and if i kept it up could finish before my trip to the bay, and offer myself the rare satisfaction of actually seeing one of my personal projects all the way through, as opposed to adding to my cabinet of lost momentums. that’s when the excuses became louder, eventually engulfing.

i spent the summer only writing sparsely, and #47 was the last one i shared on instagram. just a couple more, you’re so close, i’ve told myself each morning since then, only to watch the sun set on another opportunity to complete. it was also in june that i was getting to the last few pages of gay’s book. for the past few months i haven’t been able to bare completing either of them. maybe i just can’t stand finality.

it’s not like i haven’t written anything since then. i started new “just for me” exercises, posted a bunch of private posts, left some easter eggs in secret links, even thought i could reacquaint myself with pen and pad. this is to say that after #47 back in july, everything started bleeding together, mostly with entries deemed too personal to share, writing accused of not being good enough to expose, and of course, plenty of weeks where i backslid into not writing anything at all.

so i finally finished the book of delights today. words that come to mind are satiating, fulfilling, liberating (i’m describing the last couple of essays, as well as the act of reading them). i felt the best way to honor this moment is to return to this intention, too, to finally finish my series. no matter how incomplete, anticlimactic, out-with-no-bang it feels.

before finishing this final paragraph, i went through all that other writing, only to discover that, due to my inability to number shit properly, i actually finished 50 posts months ago! the guilt that has sit tense in me, that has lingered on my to-do list for all these months, was in my head all along. in truth, the only sense of true isolation i’ve experienced through this writing exercise has been the loneliness of always being too hard on myself. for those of you who have read along, commented, encouraged me, thank you. it’s difficult to finish something you started, but even more difficult not to.

on meetings

October 22, 2020

didn’t take me long at all to fall off my writing streak. tends to happen on wednesdays. lately – but especially the past few years of holding this job – i’ve really leaned into humpdays. they are the ones that tend to be stacked with meetings, and the monotony that is packaged with them. contrived smiling, checking in on personal matters only to turn them into tasks and bulletpoints. the offline texts, the talking shit. by the time they’ve wrapped up, it can seem impossible to find the joy in thinking. the promise of the future is replaced by the pettiness of planning. is this what it means to be making a living? to fill one’s schedule with weekly episodes about what we’ll talk about next week? agendas that will expire by the close of morning? logs and minutes that will stale in the cloud?

one thing’s for sure, it’s that meetings are good scapegoats. this is why i didn’t write today. this is why i can’t get anything done. this is why i can’t stand my job sometimes. without meetings, i’d have to explore more deeply, more honestly, why i leave my wednesdays for the dogs, why i allow a 2-hour call to consume my brain through sunset. i call into these meetings already cranky, already pessimistic, already ready to assume that all will go to shit. so big surprise when it does.

but is it my fault? or are meetings just inherently wack? my mind goes to the reemergence of tech after the popping of the bubble. how workers were enticed to silicon valley on the promise that meetings would be short – standing, even – or sitting on colorful foam cubes and giant beanbags, situated by foosball tables and with laundry facilities nearby. life can just be one long exciting meeting? i rolled my eyes at that concept, thanked myself for the wherewithal to commit to never holding a full-time job, until i did.

the poet mary oliver calls her practice of daily writing “a meeting with the self.” and as much as i despise my wednesdays, they have helped me understand what that means. if the meeting with the self is like any other meeting, they will be preceded by a dragging of feet, a confidence that it will lead to nothing productive, a mad search for excuses to show up late or cut out early, and in the meeting, moments of eye-rolling and “why are we talking about this right now.” but also an understanding that it has to be done, if you are going to call this a job.

short-term memory nostalgia

October 20, 2020

i woke up this morning with the rare occasion of my neck not hurting hella much. to celebrate, i spent the first three hours of my morning reading the news until my eyes felt like they were going to shrivel in their sockets. getting distracted by the internet is my favorite way to sabotage my writing and creativity. instead of adjusting my eyes to the mountains or greenery that are right outside my window, i fertilize my fear and anxiety by learning about the latest political outrage. rather than daydreaming or exploring the seeds of my ideas, i read other peoples’ thinkpiece about how problematic the latest sci-fi series that i haven’t watched is. before the morning dew has evaporated, i have primed myself to lift my head, squeeze my eyelids tight, and let out a deep, exhausted sigh. thank god for this technology, this access to information. what else would i do if i didn’t point my attention on any given tuesday to the dilemma faced by fruit bats of south america? or the horrific tweets sent by a congressperson in a state i’ve never been to? all these poems never given their linebreaks, these beats never laced with their melodies, these thoughts never released into text. instead, i can recall stories in zoom conversations that go something like “i read…i forgot where…that someone…i forgot who…said something…i forgot what exactly.” tis the best kind of nostalgia, the reminiscences of short-term memory loss, of brain overload, of poring over reams of headlines only to hold what i’ve learned in my tense shoulders. to know everything about the world, but nothing of myself – it’s so much easier to label this as a due paid to society, rather than squandering life in the selfish act of self discovery.