I have spent the last two weeks hung up on this movie review. Unable to reach creative ecstasy and flatlining absorbed by extroversion. I cannot focus because I am too busy consuming Hunger Games installments to tune out unsettling noises and attempts to speed the world up. I think nice and slow when I’m all alone—not completely alone mind you, cohabitation is still conducive to productivity and my roommates being creative and passionate leads to inspirational conversation and some of my better writing.

I went to Miami and did nothing for 5 days. I read two books, got sunburnt, and didn’t see a single manatee. I guess it’s not like there are many to see these days. Miami was fun and somehow as a family we managed to avoid unnecessary expressions of teen angst, mansplaining, and 20-something year old panic attacks. Lulls in conversation felt like hurdles, and at one point we were talking about where the next vacation was and who else was on vacation and where, which made me feel we weren’t being present enough(??) so I disengaged. Do we really need a vacation from the vacation? Not sure this trip was entirely beneficial to anyone, but people were happy, and the food was good, and the coffee was even better. It’s just hard to appreciate the relief of a vacation when you’re in the middle of searching for a new car and your eczema is bent on adding minor physical pain to every waking moment of your life. So itchy. Part of me feels bad I didn’t appreciate Miami how it’s meant to be, like how Anthony Bourdain pursues depth in conversation with locals and makes an effort to connect with culture and really learn from every experience. There were moments where I felt a little bit of that; coffee related moments with green-eyed, tattooed baristas and flipping around like a hotdog on the beach with my sister.

I had a moment today that could plausibly lead to an ADHD diagnosis. I have a feeling if I have ADHD it’s social media induced. Possibly, deleting social media would improve my symptoms. Maybe if I can cure myself that way it’s not actually ADHD it’s something else, like anxiety? Anyway, my dad was eating lunch with me and trying to explain this show about hive minds but the people next to us were talking and I had already been semi-trying-to-figure-out their conversation (because I’m just a bit nosy), and when they started to get a little gossipy I could not focus at all on what my dad was saying. It felt like my brain was being drawn to a magnet for brains. This only lasted about 10 seconds I think.

Misophonia is so aggravating because when I hear tiny repetitive noise, I latch onto them, which makes it impossible to think. I can’t help being distracted. This might be due to my above average pattern-recognition. OH my god, I just spent 30 minutes trying to figure out my IQ to no avail. Who cares about pattern recognition when it does stupid stuff like keep you from experiencing imaginative euphoria. I hate that there is no volume slider in my brain. Music, I’ve realized, is one of the most beautiful, ephemeral, and wonderful human creations, only because our ears are such sensitive and delicate things.

Today I learned: Baby birds who never hear another bird’s song are still capable of singing, and after enough generations of a specific isolated bird are born, their song starts to resemble the song of the species.

Grief, I’m learning, is particularly fascinating and horrible given its immense power to both bring people together and tear them apart. There is a strange overlap between the acts of loving and grieving. They aren’t entirely the same, nor is it a square-rectangle situation, but they share things like tenderness, vulnerability, appreciation and reciprocity. I am listening to ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ for what may as well be the first time (although let it be known I was listening to this in middle school because I am so interesting and cool like that). I have been coming to the realization that one of my downfalls is that I don’t always listen to the lyrics of songs. Often nostalgia replaces the need for thoughtful lyrics and I don’t have time to truly listen and appreciate the poetry of it all. Now as I listen I hear the singer who has lost their love by taking for granted all that it offers. Security has become boring, and individual desires/pursuits feel impossible to reconcile. There are now too many excuses for why things should not or might not work out in the end that the couple decides whatever brought them together cannot overcome everything they once thought it could. Still, I hear “love will tear us apart again” and things seem hopeful or maybe bittersweet, like something will bring them back together to repeat the cycle. Spoiler alert, I think it’s all love.

Want to hear my most interesting thought?

I thunk this one real good I promise.

…

We humans have an average size ratio to the universe equalling about 1 unit³ : 10 ^ 26 units³ and guess what, the ratio of the size of an atom to the size of an average human is the same.

Is anyone talking about this?

I feel like more of us should talk about this…

Also noteworthy, every time I notice I am eating and reading the Hunger Games I feel a little guilty.

The day I publish this movie review will be a great day for me, I mean truly life-changing.