Thankfully because of how I shuttered my old Insta my username was free again to be reclaimed.
This essay contains a collection of remediated, curated, and heavily edited handwritten, typed, and dictated personal journal entries dating between November of 2024 and November of 2025. Quoted entries that only have grammar, spelling, or formatting altered will be labeled unabridged. Assume all others are significantly modified.
Note: I have attempted to anonymize any and all people who are not celebrities or public figures.
“Fuck! I guess that happened. We’re standing down the barrel of a convicted felon conman about to be president again… …I’m still working through the hell that was Covid and 2020…” (Dictated, Nov. 11th ‘24)
The first week was hard.
The dread, uncertainty, fear, and anxiety I was experiencing was ubiquitous. I had spent many days that week, sitting on my deck, staring into the empty lot just attempting to grasp the gravity of what the results meant and, subsequently, how I felt. I struggled to reconcile the impending unknown and clamored for control over it.
“We proved it all that trauma and that challenging difficulty that we went through back during the pandemic and through that last presidency we got a little reprieve and now we’re right back fucking at it again.” (Unabridged, handwritten, Nov. 11th ‘24)
The lame duck was a time I spent looking for ways to hold myself together. Trying not to spiral I spent a lot of it with friends and a lil over 200 hours playing Factorio Space Age, which I highly recommend anyone that enjoys spreadsheets give an honest go. I found a lot of solace in being creative and spent an exorbitant amount of time writing and working on a plethora of projects many of which I shared on the insta I still had at the time.
One of those dozens of projects was a simple Gregorian New Year Ins and Outs list. I typically make a bucket list in the fall for the Days of Awe. However with the complexities associated with the dread I felt leading into January I attempted to lean into any form of intention settings, or Hopemaxxing I could grasp.
Outs:
Caffeine
Doom Scrolling
Video Streaming Services
Amazon
Surrendering to the unknown
Ins:
Saying No
3D Modeling
Colored Pencils
DVDs
Books
Camping
Science Experiments
Fish Tanks
Staying Sober
Thrifting
Up cycling
Climbing
Mirror Selfies
Understanding where this list caused my behavior or if my behavior caused this list or if this list was a manifestation of what I wanted. Is a mystery I intend to leave undiscovered for I fear removing the veil will shatter the meaning it brings. However recognizing how it has impacted my year so far is unprecedented in ways I hope to express soon™️.
As I entered the new year and January began my return to work post holiday was delightfully delayed as we had received an immaculate blanket of snow. The month toiled on uneventfully until the shutdown of tiktok and the inauguration itself happened. If tiktok was the Circus Maximus then my Incendium Magnum Romae had begun. I scorched everything and began my social media exodus and having already completed two books so far by this time I leaned heavy into reading and started unexpectedly paying attention to sports.
Carrying on into February I visited Florida for work where myself and my colleagues learned the worst. The company’s contract was potentially being renegotiated as a knock on effect of the tariffs.
Sometime after that, I ended up celebrating 2 years sober. IWNDWYT 🥳
March rolled around and I received a cryptic text from my boss at the gym.
“Hey can we please meet for a one on one tomorrow morning? 9 am at the office? We haven’t done one in a while”
I wrote the following Journal Entry.
“so I got this somewhat cryptic text from my boss and I’m anxious as hell. my dad seems to think it’s probably nothing and I don’t have any reason to suspect I did anything wrong but still so unbelievably anxious about it. I think worst case scenario is I get let go or fired and that’s just that just happens and that would suck.” (unabridged, typed, Mar. 25th ‘24)
I was laid off the following morning.
Dedicating the next 4 months to securing a new job; my separation from my community was becoming evident. I had the time though to do things the hard way and stubbornly I persevered. I sought out the happenings around my city and in and out of my community by directly engaging, texting, and asking. It worked well despite the labor involved and it truly was laborious. This challenge wasn’t the only one that was evident however, I noticed a significant shift in initial interactions especially with asking “what’s new?”, I noticed shifts in how I didn’t know what was going on or being talked about, memes, jokes, referential humor, drama, I was detached from it all.
“Both of us huh? Ain’t that something. I don’t know their pov or if they care or if they even know. I know that I don’t care. I certainly wouldn’t mind being a meta with one my friends. Would they? Should I even ask? Maybe we can just see how this plays out.” (Unabridged, handwritten, Sep. 5th ‘24)
It felt reminiscent of being in high school again. For a brief period it was fun and exciting and the similarities began to become demonstrative. That time period was not a highlight for me. I was an outcast for a majority of social situations and struggled to fit in amongst my peers. Some of this I’ve come to recognize as simply being a little egg. It was most likely perceivable by many how terribly hard I was trying to fake it. Being reminded of that period of time, especially as it connects to socializing, began to take a burden on me and express itself in ways I never anticipated.
“The idea of talking to a wall as being preferable to silence is funny. Especially because back in the beginning of Facebook that’s what we did. We talked to each other’s walls. What happened to that? That skeuomorphic analogy? It was so elegant, quirky, and fun?! Timeline just feels drab and soulless. Has social media always felt soulless to me? I don’t think so. I really quite enjoyed when I did use it. Especially as an early adopter in 2009. Do I miss having social media…?” (handwritten, Sep. 6th, ‘24)
I managed to find a job briefly through the month of August before securing the one I am at now. As I progressed into this new position and adapted to the schedule it required of me, the disconnect from my peers and community grew in an unprecedented way. My free time was suddenly scarce and the time I had for the laborious form of manual communication was falling through. Allocating my spoons towards my career, the challenges of sustaining the level of connections I wanted were taking a back seat. My wavering ability to sustain these efforts began to grow into a plasmodium network touching familiar nodes of that high school social anxiety as this distance between connections began to fluctuate.
Reflecting on how I was feeling, I started to list out what I wanted my online presence to look like. I reignited the blog I briefly hosted in February and started flagging poems, journal entries, tutorials, discord posts, and other multimedia excerpts I’ve shared with the world.
I started the process of remediation with the intent of populating this new corner, or as it is in 3D space an octant, with media. I came to realize during this endeavor that posting to Instagram again would be something I would enjoy doing. That realization was all it really took, I think, to make the decision to reboot my Instagram.