I Don't Give a Fuck About Cool

Dear Diary,

It is the first day of 2024. Happy New Year! I graduate college this year! That is a huge feeling. A huge feeling. In terms of my long terms plans I am wavering between two goals: law school and PhD in English at Oxford.  Also, alongside that: I am thinking to take 1 year off and write or do something meaningful somehow, someway. Whether that be working at a women’s shelter, working for a literary magazine or publishing house, working at the ucla center for women (Streisand center), writing about music as a journalist, doing Teach America, attempting to get a Fulbright scholarship, attempting to get a travel grant from the UCLA women’s center, all of this means something to me and is that which I hope to pursue. I just need to figure it all out. It’s all very daunting and all very exciting. A quote I heard this year that I want to echo is “chase excellence, not people.” This. I spent so much of this past year caught up with not even loneliness, but the expectation that I should be surrounded. I think it all came with changing schools, with shame about being alone, a lone wolf by nature, also intensified by health issues. I just want to discuss how I don’t want to feel restricted by this anymore . Being alone and not chasing people doesn’t mean that you aren’t kind. I want to be kind, but I want to move my own way, forge by own path, on my own. If someone desires to join me, let that be, but I’m not gonna force it. And I’m not gonna get caught up in the short term stuff: Partying, drinking, eating out, bars, the hierarchy of alternative cool. I’m not gonna sacrifice my long term goals for a sense of togetherness, for a short term palliative of aloneness. I can bear it, so I will. In loneliness lies darkness, but in loneliness also lies magic. I want to be a good daughter, a good partner, a good friend, a pure human being. I want to start praying again this year, speaking to a god that lies beyond all of this, in the ethers of the world’s tectonics. I want to help people. I want to be authentic. I don’t want to buy anything, I have everything that I need. I don’t want to be anything that I am not. I want my solitude. I want to step away from the persona of the artist and to be the artist, the writer, the thinker I authentically am. I want to spend time in nature, at the beach, on hikes. I want to figure skate. I want to read. I want to connect with all that exists here. I want to live in the footsteps of my mother. Of my father. I want to work hard, to live with meaning, to live for depth, and to live with care. I want to write, I know I can. I want to give it everything I’ve got.   

Here’s to 2024

With love,

-L