Too many people underestimate the significance of having nothing to do. The paralysis of having to choose something to do forced me to realize that most if not everything that happens to me, and every decision I make, is actually pretty random. Also, usually beyond my control. There’s this song by Joyce Manor, “Eighteen,” and honestly I don’t really know much about what the lyrics mean, except that they’re vaguely angsty and solipsistic in that weird endearing punky adolescent way, but there’s a line that sticks out like the point of a knife aimed at my brain. “It seems so simple / When you step out and view it / Just find something to do / And then do it.”

I think Alan Watts said something like, there is no difference between what you do and what happens to you. If you decide to make your hand into a fist, you don’t decide to decide, you just somehow end up doing it. It feels like you made a decision though. So any decision you make is kind of arbitrary when you peel back all the layers from it, shucking it like a cob of corn where the corn is the realization of the designless nature of human will. 

After I went to a ten-day meditation retreat a couple of weeks ago, I got super inspired to try to meditate regularly, but usually when I decide to meditate I’m on the verge of sleep and approaching a hypnagogic state where hallucinations start occurring involuntarily and all I can do is be weirded out by the indiscretion of my brain. People are afraid to rely on their subconscious for things. I mean, so am I. The brain is so fucking scary to me.

You know, if you’re stuck in a desert, you can’t waste time deciding which direction to go. It’s hot and you’re thirsty and there are absurd numbers of cacti around you and you just need to start walking. In an effort to step out of the formless, empty void that became my life after I graduated college last month and came back from my meditation retreat, I’ve forced myself to do plenty of things. But there’s always this minor aversion. Like I could be doing something else. Maybe something better. Like I should have some overarching life goal or ambition or whatever. Which absolutely ruins me because that’s not living in the moment at all. 

But life is random, like very random. Nothing is meant to happen the way it does—it’s just beautiful that it all seems to come out so perfect anyway. The brain is just so fucking resilient. I think it’s so sweet when people mutually agree that they’re each other’s soulmates. And there was this study done, where people imagine what it would be like if they suddenly became paraplegic or quadriplegic and they imagine that they’ll have an awful life afterward. But the study proved that people who really did go through these body- and life- altering experiences reached basically the same happiness level they were at before, regardless of what happened to them. I don’t think things are meant to happen, or you’re meant to meet certain people, or you’re meant for a certain job, but sometimes it feels like that so much that I just can’t help but love how beautiful it all is.

What’s funny is that the number one cause of friends and relationships is proximity. Which seems pessimistic or lame to people but I think it’s incredibly cool that you can form these deep connections with basically anyone. Like when you’re a kid, a formless blob with no true personality to hide yourself behind, no illusion of identity, and you can hang out with any kid at the park and everyone’s your best friend and you never even have to see them again to know that.

In this book How to Do Nothing, the author—or maybe it was somebody the author cited—pointed out how social media makes you present one singular identity to the entire world. You’re expected to present one identity to everyone but that’s not how identity works. You talk differently to your friends and to your boss and this solidification of identity is weird and not the way reality is at all. Being genuine has nothing to do with being the same to everyone. 

When you listen to someone talk, your brain synchronizes with theirs—your brain waves start to reflect the same rhythm. To some extent, for a brief moment, you become that other person. On the other hand, every single person is an unsolvable puzzle that you’ll never truly understand. I mean, you’ll never truly understand yourself either, and everyone is a human mirror reflecting yourself back at you. Whenever I have a crush on someone or they don’t like me back, I just steal their best personality traits, the ones that attracted me to them, and incorporate them into my own personality.

One of the things I did while sitting in my bedroom in those formless weeks after my meditation retreat was compulsively draft an email to a local concert venue asking if they had open positions. It’s something I’ve done before and honestly love the work, and I meet the coolest people. It’s such a nice environment, because everyone is there to have fun. It’s like the exact opposite of the DMV.

I was talking to one of the security people—I think he was security, or just a bouncer, but his scalp was covered in tattoos with one long dread at the base of his skull, and honestly it looked like he could probably squish me into a tiny ball with just his thumb and forefinger, but his tone of voice was so calm and welcoming, it was like the beating of butterfly wings. His passion is baking—he runs a pop-up bakery where he makes vegan pies. I asked him if he would eat crickets if they became a viable source of protein and he said yes, which is how I know he’s a good person.

We both agreed that reality is stranger than fiction. 

So he told me about this experiment NASA did with these dolphins, they were trying to teach dolphins English and wanted to see if people and animals could communicate. So NASA modified a house so dolphins could live alongside people in it by flooding it with water, and they gave the dolphin LSD eventually because the English lessons weren’t going quite so well. It turns out all that happened is that the dolphin got aggressive. I looked it up and turns out he left out the part where the women would give this dolphin handjobs on the daily that she called “sensuous.” Turns out this really horny adolescent dolphin and this twenty year old girl were supposed to live together for three months in the converted dolphin house.

So later I helped the doorgirl I was basically shadowing change the marquee sign. And after I got the chance to clamber up the  ladder and consider what death would feel like falling sandwiched between the wall of a concert venue and the back of a foodtruck holding a handful of clear plastic letters, the doorgirl and I went to the bar where our boss gave us this French liqueur that looks like that light blue gatorade, called Hpnotiq (pronounced hypnotic). Earlier I heard somebody on the phone complaining about how nobody could find Hpnotiq for tonight’s event, but I guess they ended up finding it. 

So I looked it up and apparently it was made by a college dropout with no business experience, who sold his apartment and moved back in with his parents so he could work on his dream to create a liqueur that was inspired by the perfumes he saw at Bloomingdale’s. I’ve always wanted to drink perfume, or Windex. Honestly the Hpnotiq satisfied that craving, and it tasted exactly like what I think perfume should taste like when I smell it—fruity and just a little bit like vodka. Raphael Yakoby, the guy who invented Hpnotiq, would go door to door trying to sell Hpnotiq to restaurants, but no one wanted to buy his freaky blue drink. So Raphael partnered with this guy Nick Storm so they could promote it to rappers. But Nick couldn’t sell a single bottle for three months—and then what they did was they changed the pronunciation from hip-no-teek to hypnotic (hip-not-ic) and he sold 17 bottles the next day—just changing the way the name is pronounced made them move product. The brain is absolutely crazy. The tiniest things make the biggest differences. That absolutely scares me, so I try not to think about it. Then they started doing music video placements—which was pretty new at the time—and by 2004 they had sold a million cases. So it’s been promoted in music videos and rap lyrics by Kanye West and R. Kelly and Ludacris and I don’t know who else, just check the Wikipedia page. 

Did I say I’ve been reading a lot of self help books lately. Atomic Habits, Can’t Hurt Me, Deep Work. But honestly I haven’t been applying a lot of the advice. Perhaps it’s time to start. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that motivation is fake and it’s all in your head and you need to rewire your brain or you’re gonna be stuck in the same rut for eternity. 

There’s this quote I like, it’s by Anthony Bourdain which I didn’t know until I looked it up, and it goes, “I understand there’s a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons and old movies. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid, and outwit, that guy.” Anthony Bourdain has honestly some of the best quotes I’ve ever heard. He’s also had one of the most interesting lives I’ve ever read about. I literally knew nothing about Anthony Bourdain before I looked up who said this quote, but now I’m thinking Anthony Bourdain himself is ridiculously cool. Maybe I’ll read books by Anthony Bourdain next. I’m so sad Anthony Bourdain committed suicide. 

Teddy Roosevelt would literally only spend a quarter of each day studying when he was at Harvard, but that was because he was so intense about his concentration. The book Deep Work (where I found out about Teddy Roosevelt’s study habits) said something about not having to have the right job, but just the right mindset. If you’re looking for the right thing you’ll never find it. If you just find a thing, anything, and pour your heart and soul into it regardless of what it is, you’ll fill up your soul with it. 

So I think most things happen by accident but, I think that if you see something, and then see it again, it must be true. I mean it’s probably just your brain primed to see that thing over and over again—like somehow always checking the time when it’s 11:11 or 2:22—and it’s likely a random coincidence, but I take that serendipity to mean something compelling to me. The human brain is wired to recognize patterns, like I know that, but it’s one of the few things that I decide to ascribe some sort of divine intention to. Usually it happens with phrases people say, or certain words, but one day my friend and I saw a white car and I really liked the way it looked—like some big ass microwave—and we came to the realization that it was a G-Wagen, and then we kept seeing an absurd amount of G-Wagens on our drive back.

I’m such a bitch for instant gratification, but in an effort to not crawl back into a familiar and comfortable hole, I’m going to set an arbitrary goal for myself. I mean, every goal is arbitrary, but this one is really arbitrary. It’s not about getting something I want, because really in the grand scheme of things I don’t really want it. I just want to see if I have the tenacity to stick to a goal and achieve it. I’m going to get a G-Wagen by the time I’m 24. It’s probably the absolute worst thing I could decide to do with $200,000. And it’s a bit egotistical to even think I’ll make that much extra money, but I’m getting my Mercedes-Benz G-Class in the custard color with creme seats. I’m manifesting it or whatever. I’ll deal with the egotism of wanting a G-Wagen vs. investing in a house or donating to charity later. Now everything who reads this has to hold me accountable.