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[looosey]

Overthinking > Write Tired > Nap Sad > Exercise Anxious > Meditate Angry > Listen to music Lazy > Reduce screen time Burnt out > Read Stressed > Go for a walk

[looosey]

is the prevalence of plastic straws why americans suck so much?

#recycling

[looosey]

Lessons from my first relationship: For what it is worth, I forgive you

In my previous post, I had written a lot about how having no boundaries affected me. This post is a follow up to that one: about how I finally drew my boundaries for the first time and how that led to me learning how to really forgive somebody.

One: I'm sorry

"I'm sorry... but also, I don't even know what I'm sorry about anymore."

What is a meaningful apology? I think it's really hard but helpful, if your partner is willing to listen, to be clear about what it is that hurt your feelings. It's a lot of work that you have to do, which you wish your partner would do on your behalf, but doing this work, I discovered some uncomfortable truths about my relationship, as well as some truths about myself...

Initially, I had been secure in my relationship because his initial infatuation with me was strong. However, as we spent more time in the school year, and I could pioneer less fun, exciting experiences for us, he started finding those experiences with his friends who were also working. And that became the source of his fun, and what he looked forward to. Whenever he put me aside, and sought out more and more fun with his friends, without thinking of me, I got more and more sad, and I literally couldn't figure out/verbalize why. I wanted someone who wanted to see me as often as I wanted to see him. The baseline of my life was life at school, such that he was the highlight of my week. The baseline of his life was life with me, such that seeing his friends was the highlight of his week. This is true even recently as he spends lavish weekends with his friends and comes back to reality and me to get back "on top of things."

How do you explain to him thus what it is that he did wrong? I was just hurt, and I couldn't tell him his behavior was morally unjust. Instead, I listed the instances that made me felt... discarded.

An apology was what I needed, I assumed at first. But there is no real apology if he does not understand what he did wrong and why it was wrong. If he says sorry but you think he goes to his friends to seek validation that he was right, that's not a sorry. I took the first sorry I got and tried to run with it, especially because people around me told me to forgive him and just move on. Be loving again. However, I literally lived in fear, because I knew he would take any opportunity to have fun without me, with his friends and a whole lotta girls, whether or not I was doing anything that day. And sure enough, again and again he showed to me that he wasn't really thinking about me and my feelings when he was just having fun.

I did not trust the first apology. I knew he felt bad, and hurt that the relationship was hurting, but I didn't think he took this seriously enough such that his behavior would change. Or that he would do the work of learning/generalizing what he thought was the handful of mistakes to a more general scenario and changing his lifestyle.

Two: These are my boundaries

A recent epiphany. Our first date in August was really cute, but he had hedged a lot, saying he wanted to go slowly. This continued for a couple days, and the day of his surgery? Crazy that he came out to see me that day. We went for a boba in the rain and he told me he was going to see me exclusively but that he still wanted things to go super slowly. I'm not sure what that meant, but I agreed and made a mental note to temper my impatient and intense affection. But as he walked me back to wilg, he asked me for a kiss. Which was so interesting to me, because he had just said a whole lotta "lets take it slow." It was so unexpected so I just gave him a hug, telling him: "this is taking it slow." He found that groundbreaking. I just found it curious back then.

But now I find it kind of trifling. Why do you warn me to back down with my affection, and then ask for what you want in the moment?

What I did back there, I realize, was draw my boundaries correctly. It's an act of self-respect. If this person doesn't want to give fully, it is on YOU to save your energy for when it will be appreciated fully.

It was only recently, this month, that I felt like I regained power in my relationship again, before he left for New York, by explicitly drawing boundaries. And maybe it sounds terrible or crude but it went like this: if you do _____, it's over. There were three of them.

If you go out with other girls or friends on a day that is special to us, it's over.

If you continue to go out drinking with friends and girls every weekend like you do now, it's over.

If you do any of the above and not tell me, especially, it's over.

It's literally sounds threatening, which is why it was so scary to say before, but for me they are protection. They are protection for me to remain in a relationship that I want to be in. Such that I relieve the mental load of what if he does this? Then how do I respond? How do I end things? Now, he knows it'll end when he acts. Thus, he is responsible for the consequences.

I hate telling people what to do. I don't believe in trying to change people. Which is why, I had hesitated again and again to tell him how to feel or act. However, I realize that when people say you can't change people, it isn't a message to not try, it's a message to act within your sphere of control, and then leave when you need to protect yourself.

Three: I forgive you

Drawing my boundaries gave me back my control. It felt like breaking through the surface of a rough ocean to take a deep breath of air again. It gave me back the confidence that he would act in a way within this relationship that would cause me less suffering or I would never have to suffer because of him anymore. And because of that, I could afford to think on his behalf a little. He was just a man, and had the empathy of a man, the foresight of a man, the friends of a man, the adrenaline addiction of a man. That he was a man who wanted to have fun like a young adult, and his girlfriend, a student, felt left behind.

"Forgiveness is an act of generosity. It requires that we place releasing someone else from the prison of their guilt or anguish over our feelings of outrage or anger. By forgiving we clear a path on the way to love. It is a gesture of respect. True forgiveness requires that we understand the negative actions of another." - bell hooks, All About Love

A partner can be an extension of you in the world but they are not you. I know what loving behavior looks like coming from myself and the girls around me, as I am a woman surrounded by other loving women. I expect that behavior, that relentless warmth and attention and softness, to come from the man who is supposed to love me the most, and obviously I'm hurt and disappointed when the gap is great. Not to say he does not put in effort. He used to at least put in consistent effort to see me every day. And cook for me on the weekends. But it's the one off events when he acts in a way that I would never to him even on a normal day, but on a day that I'm the worst: I'm sick and alone. When he says something so hurtful to double down on his point when I'm obviously already hurt and not trying to win an argument.

My mom said that he is not taking me seriously, treats me as a friend "with long hair," and generally does not seem to want a deep relationship with me. LOL. Perhaps that is the case. But perhaps this is just what he understands a deep, loving relationship to be like. And perhaps if he dated a girl who had grown up with brothers, and I dated a guy who had grown up with sisters, neither of us would see any of these problems. But because we are dating each other, maybe these are inevitable problems that come from having grown up the way we did.

Four: And now

I'm a little cautious. I try to live my life fully such that small actions from him do not sway me as much. My life has become much more meaningful and exciting again because I go to career events and connect with different researchers and put more effort into my classes. My mom thinks it's sad that I have to strategize and manage my signs of affection for him, but to be fair it can't be healthy for either of us for me to give and give and give and desire and desire and desire.

Now I know I am but a soft woman. My default subconscious desire must be to morph into one person with my significant other and live in the comfort of constant oxytocin pumping in my veins. That's something I didn't know about myself before him. Whereas when we were in our flirting stage, if he didn't text me back for a while, I would be mainly unbothered because in the end, he was just some dude and I was Me, now, I tend to feel deceived: he said he loved me so why is he acting like he doesn't? It's safe to say, I catch myself having unreasonable expectations for him, and I don't like either of these new tendencies, and am actively looking to find a safe balance.

It's tough because I feel a little jaded when I look at him now, and I really feel in my bones the notion that love is a choice: love is as love does. The naive butterflies that come with the hopes that romantic love will complete me have not returned with the blossoms this spring. But thinking this much about our relationship has also caused me to be better about detecting effort when it does happen, from him, from me, and from friends. And finding ways to put in effort that show him that I love him without feeling like I'm putting my life on the line.

For this amount of personal growth, I am so fortunate to be experiencing this relationship. I feel like I'm growing up late. That perhaps, if I had been less academic as a teen, I would've learned these lessons at the same time as the rest of my peers.

Love is hard, but for what it's worth, I'm still trying. There have been more rigorous proofs, but I hope this blog post will show an active form of love, growth, and the struggle of forgiveness that is foundational to both.

#bell hooks #all about love #modern dating #dating advice

[looosey]

Design Baby Thoughts

Mockups good

Iterations good

Monitoring/feedback good

Canva good, low floor

Adobe suite good, high ceiling

Adobe suite difficult

Pinterest and vision-boarding good

Documentation difficult, document everything?

#merchandise design #graphic design #product design

[looosey]

loosey lamb rebranding

[looosey]

bruhhhhh tublr?????

What caused you to get on tumblr, and what do u wanna write abt?

aur m gee.

My first tumblr post :D

The reason why I first got on tumblr goes way back.... to when I was in middle school. People were posting mad talented Phan art (dan + phil cannon) or amazing anime spin off fan fics LOL. Tumblr is actually how I got my first phone virus; I searched up tublr.com and then my samsung phone then stopped receiving calls and Dad got way mad about me not answering. I used this opportunity to be like ... I didn't receive your call I think i need an iPhone...

I want to write so I get better at writing. As you can tell I have a long ways to go. Thanks for being so inspiring bae <3

#y2k #twentytens #dan and phil

[looosey]

Lessons from my first relationship: Setting Boundaries

Saur, when I was a wee child, I was on the competitive swim team in elementary school. I was not very good, in fact my sister was a gifted swimmer so I even knew that I wasn't too good. But the structure was pretty simple: you would show up, change, hop in the pool, and swim your required laps of whatever stroke. So I would swim, and sometimes it would be so physically taxing, so painful for my legs and arms, that in the middle of the laps I would cry. And hot tears would fill my goggles making it hard to see, but I would push through because I simply hadn't finished my required laps. I felt angry and sad directed both at anywhere: the nonchalant coach, the difficult water, my weak self, and at nowhere: nobody really was forcing me to do anything. And then I would finish the laps, practice would end, and I would just go about my day. I never complained to anybody. I didn't really see a problem. And I would show up to practice again later that week.

I thought about this on my walk to campus this afternoon, because I realized! That I am still the same Lucy, fifteen years later. No one is asking me to swim these damn laps but I just do, swimming in my own self pity for no-one else to see but me.

What I mean is! This relationship I'm in? Sometimes, I find it so difficult but I swallow it all up for months on end. For the viewer, she seems fine, swimming in her lane rather averagely if anything. But of course, she is fighting demons and you would know if it weren't for her goggles. The problem is however, that in a relationship, at least the partner should know, right? And here I have been, just swimming.

An hour ago, I learned a chinese word from my friend while walking home from dance today, in regards to the MIT workload. kè kǔ means hardworking, but the chinese characters literally mean to hold bitterness. She said although she was perhaps ignoring some boundaries that needed to be there, she generally valued the ability to push through difficult times. It's close to midnight but my friend has a whole lot of work to do before her midterm tomorrow morning.

kè kǔ

She has it. I know that I have it, and I do it. But I also know that the bitterness is eating me up from the inside. And that a relationship shouldn't feel like an unswimmable amount of laps.

When I let a little bit of the bitterness out, for the purposes of "healthy communication", it feels like black tar oozing out of my heart in controlled amounts, dirtying up the place just enough to let him know that something is wrong but not all that I hold within me: that would kill us. But tar is dirty, and I can't guarantee his response to it all, and I usually just feel just as hurt as before if not more.

I know vulnerability is good, but I felt vulnerable and just vulnerable, and I didn't feel any better afterwards. Just vulnerable.

Saur, what is the lesson here? Well, I want to acknowledge that I have been suffering in this relationship. With some ups and downs but pretty much for a couple months now. Obviously it wasn't always this way, and I had tried my best to not suffer, by communicating my needs pretty early, but they were obviously not met and I compromised for months just in order to get on with my life and because I still like this guy.

LOL I used to just repeat "forgive and forget" like a mantra, but I just forgot the specifics of what had made me really really sad... and otherwise stayed pretty sad LOL.

I also want to stop swimming in self pity. I want to be a student of getting myself out of this situation. Of becoming a person with boundaries! What is not-okay behavior? How can I recognize it and call it out immediately, and before I feel megahurt by it happening? What is an inappropriate amount of burden for me to be carrying in a relationship? And how do I make sure that I never carry this much again?

I want to stop letting bitterness build up within me. This causes cancer. And it's not a good thing to hate your partner so much.

So in general, some how I wish to look back on this part of my relationship, and realize gee I learned a lot about myself so I'm glad it happened. I'm also glad I made my way out of it, and that I learned how to be a confident but caring and nurturing person that knows what to do when your partner cannot be fixed or if the communication needs work and time.

Lupe always says that sometimes the skill is in finishing the task at hand. I tried to continue this relationship with pure grit for the last few months, but now I need to run on some wisdom.

#first relationship #relationship advice #dating advice #grit

[looosey]

Manic Spirit

Listening to Rich Spirit by Kendrick Lamar

Previously at this Institute when I felt feelings of Mania, I would look internally: perhaps I am genetically more liable to bipolarity or haven't been exercising enough. However, as this familiar feeling crept on me starting the moment I woke up in my bed at WILG this morning, as I started looking around and experiencing 30 thoughts that need processing at the same time, against a list of 30 things to do, I realized that this might be the only natural response to living everyday working seemingly endlessly. During these times (episodes?) I intensely reflect on my life and where I'm spending my time. Perhaps this is the only right response[revolt] to spending day after day doing things that I do not want and perhaps do not even need.

Last Fall, I had a episode that culminated in me bleaching my eyebrows with Dasha and freeing myself from many of the psychological traps that I'd felt stuck in during my freshman year through sophomore fall. Something broke in me. In a good way.

Recently, I've been sucking at everything I put effort in. Dance, rap, and classes. And I pacify myself a little bit, having sucked at dance for such a long time, telling myself it takes an enormous amount of effort to get good at something, that natural-talent is overrated, and that if i really wanted to improve, my day to day could look very different. However, I am still sitting with the question of what to drop and what to dial in on... and that is the larger question in my life.

I think I need to stop doing this technical degree soon... if I spend another year working on comma separated values... Imma lose my mind. I used to have such difficulty making major life decisions for myself. How could I choose what university I wanted to go to, when I didn't even know what kinds of colors I liked? But this level of understanding my own values and what I like is necessary to do something bold and risky I think, to get closer to a life I'd enjoy. A lowkey dangerous thought I've been having, is the moment ___________, I'm going to drastically become more myself. Which is truly truly interesting and unhealthy LMAO. Imma need to resolve this more on my own.

Here are the things I've been working on outside of schoolwork:

Getting an internship: I'm working on a music generative AI startup this coming summer! I think this is the direction I gotta go, in the intersection of science and creative art. I was blessed for real to be doing the right thing in the right time, which affirmed my belief that there is good in working hard in areas you find value over some system.

WILG Rush: my friend and I were in charge of revamping the rush system for our independent living group. It was almost like running a small startup with a group of 20 unwilling employees trying to sell some empty rooms to a target audience of busy MIT students. But I got into making some canva graphics for the instagram which was very fun.

[looosey]

Lucy's DDR: What I'm up to

Improving dance is a stepwise function I feel, and I thought this semester was a plateau because of how busy I was with my schoolwork and new relationship. However, some things that I've been up to with Donk might change that.

#1. WOD

I performed this piece with my team at World of Dance Boston (the video is from the week before WOD at Mocha Move's RTA show):

Footwork last semester taught me to count my music more, in order to be on time, and I think I started to think for myself more in this aspect. Now I'm thinking a lot about performance quality, like walking with purpose, facials, cleanliness, and head direction.

#2. Donk Show

Eeeeek. So this is actually coming up at the end of November (11/30, 12/1), so get your tickets this week at donk's instagram page here. I'm choreographing a piece and I've procrastinated all semester, which I lowkey am trying not to hate myself for. But with pressure, I'm churning out the material, and I think I'm balancing my vision with my skills as a dancer a bit more, which is good.

In general, I'm crunching in so much more practice this week, I think I'm getting faster at learning choreo. :) I still love dance a lot, and I just need to convince myself to get out into the studio more often. :0

#lucys-ddr #dance progress #college dance #hip hop #Youtube

[looosey]

Lucys Main Quest: Hireability

I work very hard. In fact, I'm working all the time. I work all the time very hard, but I'm still not hireable. I have very few hireable skills.

1. Hireable on Resume

When I look at my resume, I am pretty distant from it, because it has few lines of substance and even those lines I don't really resonate with.

The best possible read of my resume is: she can code python and has done so for MIT labs and classes. Okay???

But can she code a server? Has she ever deployed a personal website? Does she know how to use public API's? No... Can she solve coding challenges? No. (Is she passionate about anything she has learned so far at this institute?) [1]

To think I have to put in hours outside of school to achieve these things makes me sad. I spend most of my hours outside of classwork on dance, painting, cooking, reading, writing, listening to music, and traveling on MIT money. When @tumblasha and I talked about dream job assignments, mine was organizing Lollapalooza. It was not programming graphics, video, and music software for the entertainment industry (as is written on my resume).

2. Hireability at MIT

My friend recently switched her major to design (in her junior year of college), and that's changed her MIT experience 180 degrees for the better. Which is inspiring because imagine if you aligned all of MIT's resources to back what you're actually passionate in. You would be unstoppable. You could do anything you really wanted.

It would be a shame to let go of this opportunity, a shame to trickle down the path of least resistance. Because I'm hard working enough to manage the burden of the path, but not hard working enough to sit down and forge my own.

I wanted to write something about hireability since the beginning of this semester. MIT's career fair was last month, and even before that I had an inspiring coffee chat with an MIT alum/startup CEO (I stepped in for a friend who wasn't feeling good). This Friday, I went to Harvard's creative careers fair, which was a small thing held at the top floor of the smith center. It was small and exclusive, see side story [2]. But I met an artist manager from Chicago who worked with people on Lolla last year. An old white grandfather. A Bizarre exchange continued.

He was very interested in my passion about music work, I was interested in the fact that he worked on Lolla, and I handed him my resume which had a bunch of technical gibberish on it, and he told me that he hadn't thought about paying his interns this summer but this could change if needed.

It was bizarre because I didn't know what I wanted from that exchange. Would I drop everything and be okay with bringing nothing MIT-grade to the table as an entertainment hunchman?

3. The future of things

But all is not lost at the same time. Inklings of hope arose this semester. I'm working towards something, because my classes have FINALLY began to move from fundamentals/tools to how to use this tool to build something of your own design. I can finally speak creative stories because I have learned enough of the technical vocabulary. So now, it's the next step: if I had a portfolio full of work that would attract the right crowd what would it look like?

My goal by the end of this school year is to have a resume I am proud of. Not by Course 6 standards or industry standards. But my own. To have done personal projects I want to show off to people and a body of work that speaks for me.

[1] I feel this cognitive dissonance/out-of-body experience when I read my resume... Exactly like when someone asked me who my favorite artist was and I responded Sza. I was weirded out at myself because I felt like I was lying: yes, I listen to her enough, but like I can't name multiple albums of hers. I am not a fan fan. I am a fan fan of Tyler the Creator, Billie Eilish, and Ariana Grande. But they didn't come to my head at all. What is going on????

[2] Security stopped me on the first floor because I was an MIT student with an email invitation but was not on their registration form. They let my boyfriend with a Harvard guest ID through. Harvard Career Advisors stopped him on the tenth floor because it was for current registered students only and then told him "you can go sit at that chair over there though." And let me through. So much gatekeep.

#jobsearch #faang #mit #leetcode #coding #artists #college #hireability #lucys main quest

[looosey]

Strange Dream

I was looking for a job and someone dropped me off at a sunny strip mall in Korea. Three floors at least. The restaurant, Korean barbeque?, place was on the second floor and there were quite a few people eating inside. The workers were young, and there was a man in his late 20s with nice styled wavy hair, very korean of him, walking around the floor, and there was a young woman, petite early 20s behind the bar. I can show up to work tomorrow he said. Nice. They're both wearing white polos with slacks.

I come back the next day, today, its equally sunny, and this time there are no workers in the second floor. Just some quiet, humbly dressed men eating, maybe the cab drivers. Then I take the stairs outside to the third floor and find a larger space to eat and there are a lot of people. There's a lot of noise people are already drunk and there's no one walking around serving them. I walk by and there are nicely dressed young people wearing white polos also drunk, so I'm not sure if today is an off day and they're workers? Until I see the petite girl sitting at a table on a chair but faced away from the table and into the aisle. Oh, I say! I recognize you. I'm here to work.

She sobers up for a second, and then smiles. She takes me into the back room where she'll find me clothes. She is quite pretty, and has an allure to her. One that made me confused about my sexuality. She opens a closet, but its's actually another dark hallway with a wall immediately close to the door, and a young girl drunk out of her mind comes from the side and asks her for something. Unfazed and laughing, she gives her something, so I also smile and look at her when she shuts the door and looks at me she says don't smile it's not a good thing.

Then she leads me to an open courtyard in the middle of the strip mall and its beautiful. Green grass covers the square, and the sunlight washes everything out into a bright light, and there are aisles and aisles of artifacts from a different time. Like a fairy gypsy costco. I need something there, so its perfect: I'm looking for a prism, anything that will diffract light. From behind me the young man worker comes up and asks me what I'm looking for. He shows me a measuring device that tells you the amount of pressure being squeezed between a pincher. Hmmmmm.... Maybe this is what I was looking for after all.

How did you get here? I ask.

He says he dropped out of college in America after realizing making podcasts was his dream, when his friend, my friend Zach actually, started making podcasts. Oh interesting, I say, because it's quite similar to my story, only I don't remember what mine is. I feel quite close to the workers here already, and think that this might be a good place for me to stay for a while. The sun feels so hot on my skin, and so I wake up.

#strange dream #donald trump

[looosey]

randomly came across your jindo post & just wanted to say smornty is so handsome! 🥰 ty for posting him!

thank you, bless you, have a wonderful dayyyy! The world is good.

#the world is good #jindo

[looosey]

Lucy's Side Quest #9: Too much is enough

Have y'all ever wondered what it's like to experience the other side of your flirting? Like whether all the shenanigans you say or do actually make you sound crazy?

I don't think I've ever needed to think about this, because none of my dates in the history of the last two years have amounted to a meta conversation like: remember the day we met for the first time, this this this thing you said made me feel like this.

Updates: the Sunday guy I met? Guy #3? Four days later, we became exclusive. That day, i.e. date #3 with guy #3, is when I found out through him what it is to experience Lucy when she's interested in somebody and the results are terrifying, because I be saying the craziest things apparently.

Anyways, I am very forward, which isn't always well received by straight men. Thank god it's working out well so far. :) I took my sister's advice and am taking it slow with the physical affection. I also took @yourebasicbecause's advice and really cooled down on the acts of service, which was hard because he was in surgery/recovery for a bit.

You know what's been an interesting topic though? In my last ship, I had a single long conversation with this "ex" that was of the nature of, remember when you did this ____, it made me feel like this. And it was, one day I asked him if he liked sweets and then next day brought him donuts. That really did something for my ex, apparently, and his group chat. I told this to my current guy, which he apparently thinks is hilarious and weird. However, I recently did a random act of kindness that is getting a similar reaction.

So... small acts of kindness go a long way. :) End of Message.

#love languages #gift giving #acts of service #random acts of kindness #lucys side quest

[looosey]

Film Review: Summer Movie Rec Masterlist

Getting this out early for @notesoncrocs, sorry I'll add more descriptors later!

There has not been a more apt time to post a list of recommendations, as a lot of us actual ihouse are apart from each other, away from home. I watched these in the past month, so best believe these are certified fresh.

Movies.

Asteroid City: artsy Wes Anderson film about science fairs and plays, and alien visitations with a star-studded cast.

Past Lives: a slow-burn angsty A24 film about 인연 (in-youn), a Korean American girl and her childhood crush reignite sparks as they live their separate lives throughout the years and reminisce on what could've been. I thought some parts were funny, but movie overall just made me think that ordinary love is unspectacular but still moving/spectacular.

Pride and Prejudice: the classic enemies-to-lover story. I don't know if Mr. Darcy wooed me as a watcher, but I will say the movie captures the feeling of "yearning" really really well, much better than Past Lives.

The Roundup: No Way Out: stellar action movie from Korea. I am a sucker for these.

Barbie: Hilarious and fun for my eyes. Some scenes really hit for me, a deep fear of the world as it is today. Made me think of Virginia Woolf's writing:

"The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance..." - Virginia Woolf's, A Room of One's Own

Nothing Serious: a nerdy columnist is tasked with writing a sex column, so he dives into hook up apps and meets a girl, a low-key sex addict. I liked the blend of fun in the movie, casual sex, and the more moral questions, ethics of surveillance.

Argo: Action movie about the CIA operation in the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis that put together a whole fake Hollywood alien movie script/company in order to extract 6 Americans who escaped the embassy and were hiding in Tehran for months.

TV Shows.

Atlanta: College dropout (Donald Glover) sees his cousins rise as a rapper as a way to change their lives. The humor, the colors in the shots, the range of the fundamental human experiences covered, and the crazy crazy episodes that leap out of the story line, make this show like no other I've ever seen.

My Mister: Written by my favorite kdrama TV-writer, a girl in her early 20s lives a miserable, lonely, guilt-ridden life, chased by loansharks, burdened her ailing grandmother, and with no hope for any better. She enters a 9-5 company as a temp, and meets an older married guy who is as miserable as she is. She likes him a lot and the drama teeters around her morals and their ill-adjustment to society.

My Liberation Notes: Same writer, this time a depiction of what it's like to be in the outskirts of Seoul life, but quite literally/geographically. A girl in her late 20s finds little meaning in what every one in her Seoul office find meaningful, nor her family in the country side. This ones as equally about familial love as it is about romance, about hatred.

Beef: Y'all have all already watched it already. I'm watching it again with Hanu and Diego.

#movie recommendations #tv recommendations #tv shows #kdrama #netflix

[looosey]

Lucy's Side Quest #8: How much is too much?

Motivations: I've been pretty open to y'all throughout this year that I'm interested in being in love, and finding a partner. So... I made it a goal this summer, once I got back to Boston, to go on 10 dates on Hinge (have y'all seen the 50 first dates girl on tiktok? [1]).

Method: Two weeks ago, I updated my Hinge profile to reflect more of who I am now: using photos from dance and ring ceremony, and changed the prompt answers to be much less verbose (I used to be so open to these strangers!). I took 1 week to let the algorithm soak, and then 1 week to go on actual dates. This meant, sending out a bunch of likes per day without really looking too closely at any one profile or agonizing over what to slide up with, a method I came to now that I understand more of how the world runs in Hinge [2]. The matches trickled in slowly, and I challenged myself to one standard only, which was don't be weird about this. Then, naturally some matches matriculated to texting and then to meeting up in person!

Preliminary Outcomes: I set up three dates early on this week and just went out without too much thought. The first guy was fun to talk to and cute, and the second guy matched me on a more fundamental creative level. They were both new to Boston this summer. Both dates were on Commonwealth avenue, and consisted of eating then walking around Boston in the nighttime afterwards.

Both dates ended well, and left me feeling happy! Objectively, they were definitely better Hinge dates than the ones I had in February this year. Yet, I was not so eager to the point that I couldn't wait to see them again.

The third date! Though! Was yesterday. It was so strange in a good way. Even while texting this guy last week, I had a good gut feeling about him, like I knew could be myself. Maybe because he went to school in Texas? And having set up three dates, and knowing he was the last one, I felt the most excited about him. Thus, subconsciously, I saved the best date course(?) for this one, which was, instead of just getting coffee or lunch, go to a bunch of Sunday markets in Boston Southend and a supposed Little Italy festival in North end.

And I was right! Almost immediately, when I saw him, I felt a sense of comfort and a happy buzz? The date went so well, and Boston was being so lovely for us, including North end and the esplanade. And I'll skip the details, but I think I like him quite a bit, and it's strange to be on the other end again of this dynamic.

I remember two of the guys I considered seeing this year, and how often they wanted to meet up, so quick so soon. They were very clearly into me, and I didn't know it yet, but I know retrospectively, I wasn't as into them. And so now, I'm on the other end, and I don't want to scare him off, because duh, I'm interested in him, and thus I'm much more careful.

Thus, how much is too much? How do you show enough interest while respecting boundaries, and sharing a pace that works for both people? Texting, meeting up, doing acts of service for guys, inviting him to other things?

Or do I have to learn to play The Game? And resist the urge to show my feelings completely?

References:

[1] the 50 first dates https://www.tiktok.com/@hannahzaslawski/video/7263401638700780801

[2] Analyzing hinge and best use cases.

#hinge #modern love #romance #dating advice #lucys side quest

[looosey]

Came across this incredible jawdropping video while on a Youtube journey to learn how to twerk. And thought I must share especially to our lovely heels dancers this semester. @emill-lirios and @notesoncrocs and any one else who needs a little push to get into dance this summer.

#how to twerk #dance videos #lucys-ddr #Youtube

[looosey]

Lucy's Side Quest #7: Southern Cabin Fever

I'm going insane. They've trapped me here, the U.S. government, by their demand for my presence at the mysterious oath ceremony for my newly minted citizenship at some undecided date in the "near" future. Bureaucracy with no face has served me Depression. I want to be back in Boston, I'm going insane.

I literally spend 23.5 hours a day inside my house, in silence, where the weather outside is 110 degrees Fahrenheit, my dad is blasting Korean golf youtube, and my dog is sleeping all day. I am going insane.

I have not had a conversation with anyone other than my family in a week. Now I'm at the public library chipping away at my research project which is just mind-numbing work. I was not built for desk work. We have progressed too far, I think as a society, for now I wish for manual labor. I dream of it. Of course not outdoors in Texas, where my skin literally stung under the sunlight on my walk to the library. Blistering sun is no exaggeration.

In the bathroom, I was taking a piss, and a lady was talking so loudly into her phone from on the handicap toilet. As I pissed, I wondered if the man knew he was being broadcasted into a public bathroom. Her voice rang in my ears and she kept talking through her own flushing. What has life come to? I came to the library to escape the cabin that was my house, and come into contact with people, but not like this, I thought. Not like this.

I imagined myself wreaking havoc by telling her she was loud while washing our hands at the sink.

But being miserable doesn't mean I need to rain on others parades. Here are some photos I didn't personally take, and what I have to say about them.

I don't have friends in my hometown any more. I don't have anyone to go to BJ's with to eat Tuesday pizookies hoping to catch some cutie that I lost contact with during high school.

The most interesting thing I did this week, in fact, was go to Half Priced Books yesterday to sell back a duffel bag full of old physics books and test prep books that I bought from them over five years ago and didn't read. This kind woman called my name over the intercom and offered me $10.82 for the books, which I giddily accepted even though I probably paid over $100 for them when I bought them. Then I went and spent the money and more on yet another book I probably won't read in full, but this time it is about film production designers: a job that I didn't know exist (they make the studio sets for movies).

Then I went to Costco with my mom and bought prosecco and aperol, which when mixed with soda make the famous Italian drink: the Aperol Spritz. I also bought cheese, spaghetti, tomato sauce, olive oil, and a baguette, which made me reminisce about IAP in Italy. This didn't interest my mom at all, which is why I also recently bought a photo album to remember my own journeys. But all my photos are in Boston.

I have one episode of Atlanta left. I think Fleabag might be next.

#cabin fever #the south #lucys side quest