TGIS: Enjoying the Simple Stuff

Hello and happy Saturday/Sunday, Patrons! I’m currently on a WiFi-absent flight home from our quick, but ultra pleasant vacation in Hawaii. It was simple and beautiful and made me very grateful. My approach to vacations, and maybe life in general these days, is noticing and enjoying the smaller stuff. I used to travel with the itinerary of drinking as much and as wildly as possible and then letting that basically inform whatever happened next, for better or worse. Taking a break from drinking has shifted the focus. Turns out 90% of the way I vacationed revolved around booze. Which isn’t surprising since it’s tremendously easy to do while on vacation. And most touristy places package drinking into a lot of their activities. And the activities that didn’t have it I never really found myself interested in. Go figure lol. But now I’ve started to find other things I enjoy, and turns out I really like simple, cute shit. Of course I loved and was constantly blown away by the scenery and the breathtaking beauty/privilege of walking out of our hotel room down to a gorgeous beach. But I also loved waking up early (without an alarm) and exercising in a gym filled with old women in expensive work out gear and middle aged men in “Maui” shirts that their wives bought them the last time they were here. I loved walking down the street to the same ice cream shop with Elliott everyday for what became our ritualized “afternoon ice cream”. I loved finding a ski ball game in the game room meant for children and monopolizing the game to play each other every day (we have this thing where when we find something we like to play we play it until we don’t anymore…or until we have to check out). I loved getting recommendations about where to eat from strangers on IG and actually going to places we wouldn’t have usually tried (thanks to whoever recommended Tin Roof in a random parking lot near the airport - it was 🤌🏻). And I loved watching a woman who looked like my aunt get progressively more drunk at the luau and audibly “whoop” louder and louder for the male performers until her husband walked away from their table. Okay maybe the last one wasn’t as “simple and cute” as it was “layered and messy”, but I still enjoyed it while I shoveled what some might call “too much” coconut cake into my face.

In the last year (and more specifically in the last 6 months) I’ve been doing a lot more “inner work” … a lot more therapy and a lot more actual reflection… ya know all those woo woo healing journey cliche shenanigans or whatever you wanna call this stuff and when you do the work shit gets it’s pretty revealing. And the hard stuff starts to get a little easier. Like when you continue to work out and suddenly you don’t feel like you’re swallowing your own blood when you run anymore. Like, something’s working. Doing the actual work is actually starting to teach me more about who I am. Who I am when I’m not trying to be the persona of an entertainer or trying to live life as a means to generate content. And it’s terrifying and cool. Like a Penn and Teller magic trick. It’s terrifying because it’s unfamiliar, but cool because I’m getting to know me. We watched the new John Mulaney comedy special one night after a *Mamrie voice* deeelicious dinner (and after getting free ice cream for dessert because Elliott made the reservation and wrote in the comments section that it was our honeymoon 🫣😂) and he talks a lot about how much he used to care about what other people thought about him. To an obsessive degree. That part really resonated with me. Growing up as a shy unpopular kid you get easily hyper fixated on what other people think about you. Especially when you have no one to talk to about it, it’s all you think about. And that’s carried with me through my adulthood. That paired with trying to be a performer online can be a disastrous combination for trying to build your own sense of self, let alone any lasting self esteem. It’s like that lyric in that Taylor Swift song Mastermind about how no one wanted to play with her when she was as little kid and she’s been scheming to make people love her ever since. Ugh when I heard that lyric for the first time I was like GET OUT OF MY HEAD YOU BEAUTIFUL LANKY MANIC PIXIE WENCH! Once again I thought her music was for tweens who got pseudo dumped by their parasocial relationship, but once again I found myself relating to that other tall blonde woman who also happens to be close to my age. Who woulda guessed?! Anyone else?

Anyway this is all to say I’ve felt a slow internal shift for myself of getting a little more comfortable with finding out who I am and what I like. And that it’s okay to like silly, simple things. I don’t have to get hammered and have an absolutely outrageous adventure. All the time. I have this residual conditioning from monetizing the adventurous parts of my life over the years that I gotta keep things high octane so I have stories and so I have content and so, essentially, people like me. But that’s unsustainable and, ultimately, inauthentic. Don’t get me wrong I do love adventures. But I also love being in bed at 8:30pm watching an episode of “The Dog House UK” where a twelve year old wiry stray named Tiddles gets adopted by a family with a heart of gold trying to navigate life with their newly trans son. We watched it on our last night in paradise and it was a wonderful night. Look, I like sweet little things! And I’m okay with it! In the past I’d have felt lame or guilty for not doing more or having wilder times, but these times are changing. I get pangs here and there for a dabble with debauchery …but then I remember how tired and anxious it makes me when the pinnacle of fun is over. Like how I can only imagine the whoop-it-up woman felt this morning after the luau (it wasn’t all her fault, there was an open bar over pouring frozen fun for the the first two hours). The rush is fleeting and cyclical and sometimes maddening. This trip was a great experience for me to be present and appreciative of the seemingly smaller moments. And to release the stress and pressure of trying reach some arbitrary level of fun determined by some arbitrary group of “cool” people. Fuck those cool arbitrary cool fucks!

You might get sick of me talking about these little epiphanies or inner world reflections on a weekly basis but that’s okay. It’s just what’s been going on for me lately. And it feels nice to be able to write it out and make sense of it with you guys over here. Maybe you relate and maybe you don’t, either way I appreciate you being along for the ride. Well, I’m gonna wrap it up and post this as soon as we land. And I just saw they have Paris is Burning on this flight, so I have much to do! How were your weekends? Get up to anything simple and cute? Let me know! And thanks, as always, for being here! 💚G