one identity crisis at a time, baby

[NOTE: Astrology isn’t a science, nor do believers/practitioners claim it as one; no, I’m making fun of algorithms, which I understand significantly less than I understand the stars.]

Sometimes Co-Star Astrology tells me the most profound shit I’ve ever heard in my life. Sometimes it’s so on point that I have to assume someone’s living in my walls, like a coder who’s frantically entering my current emotional stats into whatever database Co-Star uses (like a Pokédex situation), or else the cosmic deity watching over me is stone-cold sober for once. And sometimes it’s just full nonsense generated by a computer that doesn’t know any more than I do; but there’s usually a certain charm about that, too.

Here are some of my greatest hits so far:

• I’ve been told on several occasions that fellow indie author Phoebe Woods and I “are ferrets in scarves, zipping around the room in circles to the beat of each other’s thoughts.” See, that’s the profound stuff.
• “Whatever you say, you’re actually thinking, sure, I’d fall in love with a rock if it were smoking a cigarette.” RESONANT. Somehow?
• “We are like the bee. We perish by our love.” Ominous junior high poetry, go off, girl.
• “Are you looking for a velvet-upholstered emotional parlor?” That’s the most Libra mood (and, incidentally, I’m still looking).
• “Allow yourself the space to be human. To screw up. To not have all the answers. You are still growing, and you deserve compassion—especially from yourself.” Lacking my velvet-upholstered emotional parlor as I am, we’re not unpacking this one, el-oh-el, MOVING ON…
• “Love ends fast, and never.” This one had me laying on the floor for a while to the tune of my portrait of an existential crisis playlist.
• “Love is already here.” Without Ben Barnes in my immediate vicinity, I cannot possibly imagine this one to be true.
• “You are proof that time is not linear.” I’m back in my Doctor Who era, baby.
• “Make friends with what’s going on inside you.” Nice try, Faustian bargains, but I’ll pass.
• “The void is an endless source of love.” 10/10 Tumblr goth aesthetic.
• “Are you looking for a new fling?” …I’m too demisexual for this.

Okay, so things tend to get more serious, too, and I’ve actually found a lot of comfort and possibility in some of my days-at-a-glance. Concepts like accuracy and probability and *insert air horn here* mean zilch to me when I’ve got the placebo effect on my side. Like, who gives a shit, you know?

2023 was… a year. I know good things happened—I published my book and reconfigured my whole writing career! I saw Bruce Springsteen in concert and thereby ascended! That’s all that immediately comes to mind but surely that’s all I need?!—but the overall mood was a drag. The year itself dragged, looking back on it now.

I know, too, that I’m not alone in feeling this way; I’ve seen the end-of-year memes, guys, we’ve all been through it. I’m not super prepared to publicly deep-dive into the specifics of all my issues—excuse me but I am an enigma—but I will say that if you feel alone in basically this whole year sucking, you’re not actually alone.

Let’s face it, things have been funky since 2019, at least. The years start comin’ and they don’t stop comin’ and we’re finally taking Smash Mouth at their word.

As for the new year that’s comin’, my first foray into the possibilities of it all came with my Co-Star birthday reading—which was as recent as mid-October, and yet I’d fully forgotten about it by the time I stumbled across the screenshot I took, while I was scrolling for other screenshots for this very post:

34 is the year you start writing thank-you notes again.

This year your task is to be the world’s best friend. Let yourself be lifted by the hands reaching out. Accept every invitation. Stay out all night and stare at the moon. Remember that you can never have too many friends. You made it through to this moment to be together.

As you begin the next year, decide who you want to be in your story and then start writing onto the next blank page.

“Your task is to be the world’s best friend” struck me, because so much of my focus is always on my writing, and this is what I want my writing to do—I want it to be a balm, a companion, a validation, a comfort. I’ve never thought that I could change the world, but if I can make someone feel better about themselves, I think that counts.

Whenever someone else’s writing has done that for me, it’s certainly changed my world, and I think sometimes that’s all you need; it’s every little bit, you know? It all counts.

As for the rest of it… That all hits, too. I’ve struggled a lot this year with the feeling that I am just fundamentally an unhappy person. Not in some grumpy-with-a-secret-heart-of-gold way (if only), but in a no-bones-about-it sad way. I haven’t been able to hold on to anything, there’s not so much as a crumb of joie de vivre—or maybe there was and I’ve forgotten where I put it.

I’ve been reevaluating my relationships, too, which has required a lot of hindsight and admitting to myself that some of these very important friendships I’ve had were, honestly, really bad for me. And I have to accept that there won’t be any closure for these things, either. So it goes.

Golly gee whiz, we’ve gone literary fiction macabre here, haven’t we? Introspection can do that to a person. I need to listen to some Carly Rae Jepsen and get ahold of myself.

(Not, by the way, to suggest that Carly Rae Jepsen isn’t introspective. Her music just makes me feel better, and it’s far and away better than those midlife crisis books about dramatic extramarital affairs that aren’t nearly as artistic and deep as they think they are, because really all that couple needs to do is get some co-counseling and they’ll work things out—but no, it always has to be some metaphor-saturated ~temptation of the flesh~ or whatever, and on that note can we please strike “nubile” and “supple” and all their constituents from commercial use? Please, thanks, and your check’s in the mail.

(But! Back to my post.)

I’m not sure what the fuck this year was. But the outlook for what’s next has ticked a few already-planned boxes (and remember, if I’m going down, I’m riding this placebo effect all the way):

2024: The year you…

Turn your middle school diary into a movie script.

On point! My next book (release date TBD) is titled How to Survive a Teen Sex Comedy: a millennial coming-of-age parody. Ergo, I’ve been just a tad bit mired—as much as you can be “just a tad bit” mired—in nostalgia and the teen movies of my youth.

I’m also meant to “Dress like whatever ‘Teen Spirit’ smells like,” so. That feels pretty on theme as well, doesn’t it?

Entering 2024 is like walking into a blizzard.

Snow swarms dizzyingly around you in droves, obscuring your vision. You turn to see your footprints disappear behind you. You look forward, and materializing out of the bright white ahead of you is a ragged wooden sign that reads: Amor fati, bitch.

The LAUGH I barked (because this is one of those times where the only knee-jerk reaction is to bark a laugh). I don’t know how else to encapsulate this mood than to say that the trajectory of this reading was like a playlist shuffle from Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” to Shania Twain’s iconic “Let’s go, girls” opener. Ya dig?

(Which, in many respects, suits me; every time I get profound or debatably overwrought—or maybe it’s just vulnerable and honest, whoops—I have to supplement it with some kind of self-aware joke to prove that I know I’m going off the emotional deep end, it’s fine, so just let me go already.)

I had to Google “amor fati,” because frankly I’m not as smart as people think I am—you’ve all been duped by the glasses but, alas, I don’t have any Latin phrases up my sleeve—and found the culprit to be Friedrich Nietzsche. That guy’s always sayin’ stuff.

Translated as ‘love of fate’ or ‘love of one’s fate’. It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one’s life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary. x

Well. That tracks with this stage of my life thus far. Maybe this year I’ll actually embrace it and, in doing so, I’ll get to move forward. Onwards and upwards. Et cetera.

And on that note…

Allegedly—allegedly, because I refuse to take any shred of hope at face value, which says far more about me than it does about hope in general—I’ll be falling in love and achieving the milestone of a “couples’ Halloween costume of a niche cultural reference.”

Total transparency here? I’m desperate for these things to be true. Do you have any idea how many niche cultural reference couples’ costumes I have in my back pocket?? I’ve been single for eight years and a hopeless romantic this whole time—’this whole time’ being as far back as my memory goes, and how embarrassing for me.

It’s a wonder I have any energy left to imagine couples’ costumes when I spend most of said energy wallowing in the loneliness that’s left me both jaded and hopeful at the same time (see: my sick of dating apps, just gonna pygmalion myself a boyfriend playlist).

The rest of the overview mentions watching out for some bozo on Hinge (no problem, boblem, I haven’t used Hinge since they tried to match me with a nineteen-year-old, fucking atrocious), and the foretold prophecy that I will not be minding my own business this year (moi?? I love minding my own business. Unless I’m hearing gossip about some friend of a friend of a brother’s friend’s neighbor person. So if you’re among my six degrees of separation crowd, consider this a warning to watch yourself, I guess).

I will, however and expectedly, be ‘creating chaos’ and ‘doing bits’ more than most. As mentioned, I’ll also be ‘falling in love’ faaaaaar above the global average. I feel like I already fall in love that way, if I’m honest, but it’s sure been a while. Maybe this’ll be the year it sticks.

I’m tempted to pony up the $11.99 (40% off for New Year’s, so I only have so much time to decide! Egads, and so on) to get my in-depth report. What can I say, I’m a sucker, and you can totally enable me via my Ko-fi, if you are so inclined, and we really ought to bring back patronages, don’t you think? We can give Mr. Collins at least that much.

Anyway, that about does it. It’s given me a lot to think about, which is nice, because mostly when I think about things lately it’s all like, lamentations, or otherwise pointedly ignoring the lamentations and hyperfocusing on the next day’s to-do list.

But maybe the next year will be acceptance, and moving on, and moving forward. Maybe it will be funny shuffles on my playlists, and writing what makes me happy, and feeling success in that happiness. Maybe I’ll typeset my books one time and get it right on that first go. Maybe I’ll stay out all night and stare at the moon, and maybe she’ll tell me something I need to hear.

Maybe I’ll dress like “whatever ‘Teen Spirit’ smells like” (which, I suspect, is ’90s grunge, and I’m happy to do it), and I’ll find my velvet-upholstered emotional parlor, and love, too. Maybe things will all work out.

Or maybe they won’t. And I’ll figure that out, too.

[In the distance, Shania Twain: “Let’s go, girls.”]