a very couch summer
local man swears he doesn't have FOMO anymore, peach season, the prince of reno, the minna no amai idoru wa?? pile on continues
Happy summer! FOMO season is here.
High school installed a fun variety of anxiety into my brain that comes with a vague false(?) awareness that everyone is hanging out without me, probably because of something I said.
Weddings and birthday parties aside (two nightmare projects so rough that I can’t fault anyone who keeps a small guest list), since my early 20’s I’ve felt a range of ways when at home while other people were not. Sometimes I actually wanted to be elsewhere. Sometimes I just wanted the invitation. Every time I’d roll my eyes at myself for even feeling the FOMO in the first place, falling into a deeper ring of anxiety hell.
This meant that when I did end up out and about I jumped from gathering to gathering with little time to be meaningfully present at any of them. More than solving for loneliness (got pretty used to that as a very online teenager!), I was worried about missing out on the moments that might shape my relationships, perspectives, and overall life path. As someone who worked across community organizations in my twenties, I met a lot of people who I loved. Why would I want to miss out on any opportunity to spend time with them?
But that impulse quieted during lockdown! My brain chemistry leaned away from a fear of missing out and leaned hard into a fear of carrying an illness that still no one seems to fully understand the effects of even though it’s literally all we talk about. You can’t miss a gathering when no one should be gathering. You can’t feel like you’ve lost out when literally everyone is losing.
Then, thankfully, vaccines arrived. Next nearly everyone got inexplicably bold and stopped masking and now it feels like the pandemic is over (it isn’t). With my brain rewired I was excited for a new life of knowing that even if “everyone” were at the barcade next to my apartment I’d feel totally cool about it.
But like a regenerated claw on a crab, the FOMO returned.
It must have first tugged at me when I missed a Zoom event or two (devastating) in the weird era between lockdown and whatever stage of this pandemic we’re in now. Then there were the non-invitations to a new wave of parties I couldn’t even attend and big things like seemingly fun meet ups at Coachella which I had no intention of going to in the first place.
I decided to follow that feeling back to square one and around this time last year I fell back into those old habits. I felt anxious and disconnected from the world around me, even though I was in it. I’d go to too many things in a night and forget who I met or, more unnervingly, I’d forget that I’d even gone. Finally after a particularly intense weekend last June, I woke up sick and had to miss a wedding. I was stuck in a hotel for a week.
That was the quick end to this new beginning. When I recovered I pushed back against the FOMO a bit harder, bending it into a different shape and somehow it stuck. Gone was the wishing to be where I wasn’t. Here was a new contentment with the present and the space I occupy. I am more in my skin now than I have been in years.
My FOMO no longer pushes me out the door (or more vulnerably, my dear reader, into someone’s IG Story replies). It has become a sort of friend. My FOMO is the bus-club-another club-another club companion with enough awareness to call the Lyft when I yawn. I’ve followed it to a new bar or a new quiet house party with new people I actually wanted to meet. I stayed out all night with it last Friday and took it to watch Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse (which, along with the other current blockbuster The Little Mermaid, is arguably a movie about FOMO — it’s in the air), both with plenty of time to rest after by saying no things.
I’ve spent so much time with this new FOMO in the past year that its learned to hang back when asked. It goes off to do its own thing or slowly burns down while I watch a movie alone at home or write this newsletter, content and unbothered on the couch.
In a year of unending social media-worthy gatherings, I am learning to disconnect my serotonin coffers from the hype. I can miss out — there will be other things to catch.
Let’s see if it lasts.
Takeaways This Week
Mood: I was flipping through TikTok during a break and landed on my friend Anthony live jumping between some incredible 11PM-appropriate R&B records. That playlist (linked here) provided the soundtrack for this week’s writing.
Also mood: Kaitlin by NoSo is the kind of feel good I think I need right now.
It’s stone fruit season. I went up to the Central Valley yesterday again with my friend Philip at Azay, this time to retrieve some peaches from Masumoto Family Farm who graciously donated some “ugly fruit” for this weekend’s Queer Obon in Little Tokyo (come through!). The fruit is all a couple weeks late in the valley this year but these peaches are beautiful. Make the trip to their Thursday evening/Sunday morning OUFab Box (“ugly” fruit) drive throughs - it’s well worth it.
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Philip and I also went to Yasutomi Farms to pick up some red shiso they had in abundance. My new go-to meal is a takikomi gohan because it’s great and all I do is shred a couple shiso leaves into one with chicken, carrots, leftover soup from Kouraku takeout a couple nights ago, and guanciale because there was guanciale in the fridge. Looked weird but tasted good!!
The grey stuff really is sometimes delicious. Speaking of things happening on drives, Nevada is currently facing a biblical plague. Don’t click if you don’t want to see lots and lots of crickets all over the place everywhere or read about cannibal bugs getting run over by cars en masse.
More about Spiderverse. *SPOILERS* As a local, after watching I wondered if the Spider-beings in the movie were all actually based on pre-existing Spiderman incarnation and omfg they are. I loved the movie and can’t imagine what it was like for hardcore Spiderman fans to experience Peter Parkedcar in a box office smash.
True to form, the first episode of the new batch of Black Mirror feels like a documentary and maybe that’s good, maybe it’s terrible.
I don’t actually know anything about KPop group Loona, though I would yell “STAN LOONA” once in a while a few years back when I was feeling ~silly and goofy~. They have all successfully sued to get out of their agency contracts and a couple of them threw up some pretty incredible reaction posts. Really liking this new generation of KPop stars who take things into their own hands.
I’m eight years late to this but am happy with the internet for once after learning about this Wikipedia user who is dedicated to changing instances of the phrase “comprised of” to “composed of” or “consists of.” He’s done this over 90,000 times, according to a TikTok I watched. Manifesto here. There’s also a whole decade+ long discussion of the project year-by-year that I’m slowly reading through.
Two autumns ago there was this four hour period when I convinced myself that I could make a Noguchi lamp myself. This rundown of 41 Noguchi lamps reminded me that I gave up on the craft and that also that I’ll never afford one. Ty media deity/Substack professional Delia for referencing the piece in her IG Story which consistently keeps me in the loop about what New York writers are being snarky about at Dimes.
This one looks like Baymax. I don’t have enough taste to finally sit through Succession but I do have enough taste to watch Love Village on Netflix. If you liked Terrace House maybe you’ll love this absolutely off the wall iteration where everyone is in the 35-60 year old age range and mostly divorced. No one has anything to lose, everyone has sense and is stuck in their ways, and the house is in shambles and they have to fix it. It’s great television.
Yesterday Los Angeles Metro opens the Regional Connector after what felt like a decade of hype and construction. It’s great for public transportation — I’m excited to take it. But there are unintended effects to a train hitting Little Tokyo. We can talk about the public transportation pluses while recognizing that the rail foot traffic is going to be pretty bad for small businesses if landowners decide to cash in and raise rents due to the uptick in foot traffic — as is already happening.
I think I need a full section for follow ups on things I shared in prior but for now I’ll just put them here. TikTok is still clowning the fake Japanese idol group. Zelda players have moved on from making WMDs and have discovered that you can use lasers and building materials to create music. At this point not sure who is more impressive, the game developers or the players.
And that’s it! Go sit on the couch!
this post cured my FOMO and I didn't even have to leave my room