...

it was just one of those weekends where everything feels wrong. satruday was okay during the day, but i tried to make a nice dinner for my partner and fucked up the recipe royally. the difference between coconut cream (for a lactose intolerant friendly Tuscan chicken) and cream of coconut is stark, but the difference between the packaging is subtle. guess which one when into the chicken. it turned out so overwhelmingly sweet, but the chicken was perfectly cooked and seasoned at least, and the red pepper flakes almost made it taste like a bad sweet chili sauce. my partner said she still liked it.

that night we were also supposed to meet my friends out, but then we ended up having a conversation about our future that was good but also very hard, and so we stayed in. sometimes you need to have conversations like that even though you haven't seen your friends in a month, even though they live a few blocks away from you.

then on Sunday i got this great tattoo, bought a slice of pizza on the way back, and had writing workshop with some other friends. it was nice outside so i walked the thirty minutes to the studio, which is in one of those industrial buildings around Bushwick and Ridgewood. i saw a meme recently that had photos of that building and two others, and it said "if you've been tattooed in one of these buildings, you know." i have been tattooed in all three of those buildings, but i wasn't sure what shared knowlege the meme thought i had sealed away. maybe it lives in the ink or something.

when it came to writing workshop, i was excited, as always, to read and talk about my friends' pieces, but i also haven't submitted anything in two months--i feel like i'm at such a stalemate with myself over an art form that's been my whole identity for the last fifteen years. people i know are publishing novels and they're in exhibitions, and even if they aren't publishing, they're working on writing. it now takes me like an hour to write 100 words, but there was a time when i could churn out 5k to 10k words in a day. it's awful. after workshop, i still had to do the pile of dishes from my failed meal on Saturday, and i told my parents i would call them and needed to do that, but i really just wanted to curl up and sleep.

i miss my partner when she goes home.