Let Easy Be Easy

I celebrated another trip around the sun on Monday. I won’t share how old I am now because while I’m too young to care about the number, the discomfort of getting older felt heavier than usual this year- another drop in the granny bucket and my hangovers have already taken a tremendous blow.

Celebrations started on Friday with a fancy-pants dinner cooked up just for me, and four bottles of wine that I did not feel fresh as a daisy after. My beloved chosen family took me out for pasta and pizza, and surprise! - more drinking. On Monday night at 6:00pm, I sat in my building lobby alone, all dressed up, wearing a child’s pink “birthday girl” tiara. It’s my own damn fault for showing up for everything ten minutes early- more than enough neighbors walked by to whom I felt the need to explain myself. “Happy birthd-”

“I’m waiting for people! I’m not just sitting here in a crown by myself. My friends are coming.”

These weren’t even neighbors I knew, these were just strangers I decided needed to know that I wasn’t alone on my birthday. But so what if I was alone on my birthday! (I wasn’t. I’m not a loser, guys.)

I intentionally didn’t write about New Years Resolutions because, ewww, how trite. And I took the week off from writing last week because the government was nearly overthrown so I decided to read the room and spare you the bit about my anxieties around getting older. 

I was walking home after looking at an apartment and these little words found me. “Let easy be easy.” I’m a professional at overwhelming myself over the absolutely figureoutable. It’s like my brain gets bored and the freak-out army goes to work to exhaust every thought that I might create, until I feel the overwhelm of an indestructible Limewire pop-up virus (that’s how old I am).

Let’s pick apart the problems I’ve made up in my head over the last week, shall we.

Work burnout - Sigh. And another deep sigh. There’s so much wrong with the way we work. And when I say work, I mean the 9-5 desk job I’ve had the privilege of enjoying in sweatpants for the last year. Thanks to relentless burnout, I’ve given up on doing all the things and being the most impressive, however, there’s this tug of war between being the reliable martyr and opening the desk-whiskey at 3pm on a Tuesday. So myself and I have agreed to find the still-impressive gray area between that. I’ll never wish I would have worked more, I know this about myself. 

Birthdays and getting older - Let’s get down to the root of why this feels stressful. It’s just a number anyway. For the entirety of my adult life, I’ve maintained the silly idea of timelines - the pesky idea that one has to be at a certain point in life in order to feel successful. If there’s anything I learned upon moving to the hungriest city of success, it’s all arbitrary and timelines don’t mean shit. So it’s probably best I surrender that worry and let my timeline work as it should. Thank God for my $80 face serum and tryhard wardrobe, I still pass for 26.

The Apartment Hunt - So far, I’ve looked at eight apartments within a week and I have nearly two months to find a place. I’ve been talking about this hunt with the “enthusiasm” of a vegan who was once really into Game of Thrones. Or Crossfit. Or both. Apartment hunting in New York is a hurry up and wait debacle and this girl is handling it like a noob who hasn’t already been through it enough times. Meanwhile, I’m shopping for couches for the apartment I don’t have yet. The apartment will come, then the couch will come. And it’ll all work out because it always does, come hell or high water. Girlfriend, chill.

Business management and book procrastination - I still have no idea how to run a business. I’m still somewhat stuck on this notion that I have to be one thing- a writer, a photographer, just one box to check please. Except why do I need to be one thing? Welcome to another fake problem I’ve made up in my head. Businesses take time to build, books take time to write and as long as I am patient with myself and this daunting process, I’ll get there- with many deep breaths, more bottles of wine, stress baking and course-altering glimmers of inspiration. Discipline would help too but there’s a current shortage of that at the moment, please check back after the global pandemic. 

There are plenty of hard things that will stay hard. This is not as sensational of a post as you’re used to from me because I haven’t had any of my dating horror stories lately and I haven’t really had to stick my head between my knees and breathe- I’m really truly happy. Life is good. Marina, can you just enjoy that for a second, goddammit!?

Any problems I create for myself right now are entirely for funsies, but they’re actually the opposite of funsies, they’re exhausting. So this is me having a conversation with myself, asking her to respectfully cut the crap. Since I boycotted resolutions and didn’t set-up this post as a listicle of all of the symbolic gifts I’m giving myself starting now, I’ll narrow it down to just the one- to let easy be easy. 

Let easy be easy.