Month 3 of my Year of Intentional Celibacy
I’ve been suffering a streak of bad luck over the past few days. My apartment’s lock broke and I was stuck outside in the middle of the night (twice), all my weekend plans that I had been looking forward to got cancelled one after the other, I didn’t get a job I was excited for and had felt pretty certain about… at this point I feel like any move I make might end in some sort of disaster. I usually think of myself as a pretty lucky person, so when multiple things like this happen in a row, I start looking for planets in retrograde (none) and believing in evil eyes (jury’s still out).
But still, I’m someone who can’t help but look for the silver lining in things. First of all, how lucky am I that the worst things going on in my life are that my choir director is an ass and cancelled rehearsal for no reason after I’d already left the house, or that I had to spend 300€ (that will be reimbursed by insurance, we hope) on a locksmith to get back home after a night out? At least I have a home, and I have things that I feel passionate and excited enough about that I also feel deep disappointment when they don’t work out. I missed one of my city’s big annual festivities of the year because we couldn’t leave the apartment while the lock wasn’t working, but I’m planning to spend many more years here. There will be more carnavals. It’s fine.
Second of all, when things that aren’t in my control seem to be going badly, I find a lot of strength and comfort in things that are in my control. I couldn’t go out, so I stayed home and worked on my website and drew and knitted and read and wrote. I tried to channel my energy into making things. I find a lot of comfort in doing good for other people as well. If I can have a positive impact on my friend’s life, the spadefuls of crap being currently thrown onto my own don’t smell as bad.
In other news, my heart is slowly on the mend and I fell in love with a bass player.
I went to my first punk show in ages, and I remembered how much I love it — getting lost in the music, the dancing, the crowd. And, yes, in the eyes of a bass player who looks like a hotter Paul Mescal. Have we spoken a single word to each other? No. I’ve also remembered how easily my mind randomly attaches itself to people and gets carried away by fantasies, allowing me to insert whatever personality I want into this man (aptly described by my friend as “just some guy”) and imagine a life with him that I guess is somehow better than the life I have now? My life is already pretty cool (minus recent incidents). I don’t need an imaginary bass player who lives in my head.
Anyway, I decided that’s not healthy and also goes against the principles of my year of intentional celibacy so I am going to be normal about it now. What I am excited about is getting more involved in the local punk scene and going to shows more often. There’s a lot of cool bands around here! And the people I’ve met so far have been really cool too!
Enough yapping, here’s some stuff I made.
What I’ve Made
I am still passionately working on my website every single day. I just checked my February newsletter, where I was excited about having finished two new pages. Haha. LOL. I can’t even count how many new things I added in March. Here are some highlights:
The bedroom: This was the really exciting page I mentioned last month. It’s a menu page in the style of a video game! You have to use your arrow keys to move your character around and find other pages! If you go to the bed, you’ll find one of my favourite projects: the dream generator. I promise you will not regret generating a dream.
Also in the bedroom you can find my writing page, which includes an archive of stuff I’ve written since 2015. I had a really great time going through my old Google Docs to find these gems. It’s mostly things I had written for school as well as some other random tidbits.
You can now find two shrines in the temple: one more aesthetically-driven shrine for the movie Call Me By Your Name, and the Beatles shrine — something I am actively working on right now. Click on the first two albums for a glimpse into what it’s like to live with Beatles autism (a terminal condition).
Other than webmastering, I got really into Hamlet this month, which I also wrote a whole essay about. Shakespeare, much like the Beatles, is one of those topics you could just study forever and you’d never run out of new discoveries and material. I haven’t even touched any of his other plays yet, but now that I’ve so thoroughly delved into Hamlet for the third time, I feel like I might be ready…
What I’ve Read/Watched/etc.
Continuing on the Hamlet theme: I watched the 2018 adaptation starring Andrew Scott. It was definitely interesting but not really my vibe. I kept cringing at the line delivery. I love Andrew Scott but his portrayal of Hamlet was kind of painfully awkward and not at all how I image him. The use of Bob Dylan songs and the Danish TV news segments made the whole thing so unserious to me as well.
I went to a screening of Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul, a documentary from 2005 on the Istanbul music scene. They showed my old neighbourhood and did a segment on Duman, one of my favourite bands. Cried multiple times. Would recommend.
I’ve been really enjoying listening to local bands Technopolice and La Flemme. I’d also recommend the Massilia’s Burning compilation albums if you want to hear more Marseille punk!
Some interesting stuff I read on Substack include another highly relatable OCD essay and this essay on disordered behaviours/thinking and control. Do I have control issues? (Don’t we all??)
OK I think that’s all! See you next month!