i spent nearly two hours stalking myself on instagram last night and i'll never get those two hours back
walking the path, getting a little woo woo, and brain v gut
Hi and happy Friday,
I write to you with a confession: I spent an hour minimum looking at my instagram stories archive last night. From 9:15-10:34ish, I relived my life from December 2017 to present. This then lead to a session of search bar-ing through old text messages to give my time travel an added layer of context and an extra dash of dull aching nostalgia (if you give a mouse a cookie etc). I have an emotional hangover. Please do not do this to yourself. If you happen to know this practice well, my condolences. It’s a ride, and I’m vowing that last night is the last time I will subject myself to it.
The wildest part of it all is how far away and separate twenty-seven-year-old me seems. I have to acknowledge social media/technology etc etc’s at least partial role here, giving us the entirely unnatural ability to see and assess ourselves as other (WHY IS THAT SO ALLURING), but in any case, 2017 Ariella is strange to me in so many ways and yet she got me here: thirty-two and feeling like myself. I look back and am terrified and also grateful for all of the specific moments and choices and non-choices that piled up to get me to who and where I am right now. HOW DID I KNOW!!! And sometimes when I get into that grateful zone, the potential choices I make today or this week start to feel really big, really consequential. I begin to consider that the way I live my life right now will dictate how it will be forever and all of a sudden, I’m in a rush to get there (where is there? I’m not sure). Each day is an opportunity to plant THE seed. Lay THE groundwork. Each decision is Sliding Doors monumental. But I have to remind myself that ten years ago I had no idea that the small stationery studio I worked for when I first moved to New York would connect me to the day job I loved and had for seven years, and that this day job I had for seven years would give me the financial security I needed to experiment with my illustration work without needing it to be about the money, and that at this job I would give gouache another go and fall in love with it and make paintings I liked and that five years into that experimentation I would start a blog in my own little silo that would then lead to a book deal that would then give me the confidence to actually call myself an illustrator. I had no idea. Zoomed out, this ten year path I’m describing sounds so clean and nice and magically linear, but in the moment, it never felt that way. Zoomed in, it was scribbles and bumps and zig-zags and hills and valleys etc etc. And it’s very easy to forget that.
Things have slowed down and I forget that. I feel like I’m back at the beginning reaching for some vague goal, and I’m having to remind myself that at twenty-two I didn’t see a clear finish line and then neatly line up a sequence of events to cross it. There was and still is no formula. Earlier this year I felt like I was in a pit of sorts, resting at the bottom of that achievement, but I’m still on that same path. I’m just at the scribbly parts—which are actually the most fun in retrospect. I’m collecting and growing some really valuable things in this valley, even if it doesn’t always feel like it. It’s OK to be in the slow moments, stuck and frustrated or taking a walk and resting and doing fully nothing. It’s OK that I haven’t come up with another book idea yet, and it’s also OK if I don’t for a while. I need to remind myself (and hopefully it’s helpful for you to hear too) that the slow, stuck feelings are part of it. Essential, even. We can only go step by step. As Chani Nicholas said in the meditation from this week (shoutout to Chani App and astrology and the eclipse, I’m leaning hard into woo woo today): “the next right thing will happen.”
Anyway, all this rambling to tee up my comic that’s been marinating for a few weeks:
Pulling one card a day helps keep me grounded in that concept I was talking about up there—the idea that each day/mental place I find myself in has value. It’s part of the bigger picture and I don’t know what that bigger picture is yet. It’s none of my business.
I become a game of “should”s and “shouldn’t”s and tasks.
And this is the fastest way to not feel like yourself.
The last time I went trash can diving was at a birthday party in fourth grade. The lost item? My retainer. I took it out to eat and it was nowhere to be found when my dad arrived to pick me up. My dad (a dentist, so he REALLY understood the value of this piece of '“jewelry” as my orthodontist condescendingly marketed it to me) helped me dig through all four soggy trash cans and we found the missing accessory in an icing-coated napkin. Yum.
Being phone-less was thrilling.
AND OH THAT RUSH I got when we were reunited—new vessel, same phone soul thanks to the cloud.
Closing with some positive phone endorsements:
the notes app. this is actually a fun vehicle for time travel. i love old grocery lists, my growing group of restaurant ideas, and cryptic series of seemingly disconnected words or names left for me to connect. a personalized logic puzzle, really. a message from future ariella, perhaps.
google maps. i get lost in my own neighborhood.
again, the Chani app. if you’re curious about astrology at all, her readings feels practical, digestible and approachable.
spotify
philips hue app - i recently spoiled myself with one of those smart bulbs and i’m incrementally converting all my lighting to this system. it’s spa, it’s luxury.
my google cal
the do not disturb function
Thank you so much for reading,
💗ariella
I read some old blog entries from 20+ years ago recently and turned inside-out cringing at myself