Listen, I love substack. I love newsletters. But have you checked this one out?
From Charli to Ayo to Yasi Salek to just literally the coolest people, this was originally just another blog alternative to music journalism—but the founder has made a social media using Perfectly Imperfect’s default interview format: 10 recommendations of things that give you joy.
For professional and personal reason, I’m trying to decentralize my online activities and share less on Instagram. So here are 10 of the many things I found enjoyable in the first month of 2024… Oh and happy new year!!! Text me and tell me how yours has been <3
YOGA
Um, holy shit, for years I thought this is a fraud; but I’ve reached a point of 24 with a full time job where my spine and neck hurt all the time. UNTIL I started doing yoga!
Stretches really help—I’ve also become so surprised by how stiff I’ve become given that as a child I was a trained dancer. I’d like to believe that it’s been helping my balance as well, we’ll see about this in a couple of months, but my long limps never provided me the best balance.
And I’m using meditation to fine tune myself (for the lack of better words)—I’m a bit scared of therapy at the moment as it’s been 3 years since my last appointment and frankly the last time around, though helpful, therapy can feel like a lot all at once for someone who bears a lot of emotional burdens (me). Last time I cried was during one of my first meditations this month and it felt very healthy and I feel a lot more emotionally stable, so perhaps the next time I do one of these I’ll let you know how therapy is going…
CUTTING PEOPLE OUT
Fuck. This is so liberating not gonna lie. I started multiple unfollowing sprees throughout the month and even blocked someone. One of my ongoing issues is the need to be the bigger person—and to be honest, last year was so bad that I just gave up.
I understand we all need to reminisce on good memories, sometimes. But I started asking myself “At what cost?” a lot and it’s given me clarity that I’ve previously avoided. Sometimes you have to let a relationship die so you can still savor the good times from the past. It’s a point of no return where you feel it in your guts that it could only get worse from now on, so I might as well let it go.
I also started doing this in micro-doses—true friends know I’ve been doing this for years. Not sure if it’s the healthiest practice… But you know, sometimes I just don’t want to hang out anymore! You kinda never appreciated me the way I wanted to be! So I’m just gonna fade out of your life and hope we don’t hurt anymore feelings…
NOT CUTTING PEOPLE OUT
I’ve always been a firm advocate for not keeping in touch with your exes / ex-crushes. Dunno, it’s just easier that way usually, it’s too much to expect people to have a decent degree of emotional maturity.
But when you ARE both emotionally mature, and your appreciation for each other goes beyond romance and intimacy, it DOES work. I really liked someone last year, to a point where I found them, and still find them, so fascinating as a human being. Of course, you gotta give time and space at first, but eventually you’ll get to a point where you can learn to be friends again.
I’ve long learned that I belong in the camps of anxious and avoidant attachment styles—but for once in my life I learn that perhaps with the right person and the right communication your attachment styles shouldn’t really be a damning factor. I feel at ease talking to this person now, I love his (our) friends. And through it all I now understand why my crush can comfortably talk about his ex, and how I can be at ease with the mere presence of infatuation and not let it overwhelm me…
HAVING A CRUSH
Hahaha, yes I’m 24. There’s something so pure about having a friendly little crush at 24. He probably knows about it, I think he really likes me too, but there’s nothing we can do about it at the moment so I’m just gonna let this be.
I would say this, I don’t ever recall a crush being this easy. I live my life not worrying about my feelings towards this person, get giddy when I hear from him, seeing what he’s been up to—it’s just something this all-or-nothing Aries has never experienced.
So for the first time in my life I actually recommend having a crush :)
PRIORITIZING AND LIKING MYSELF
Emotional??? Stability?? Woah.
I saw this tweet about how your mid-twenties is crazy because you’d wake up one day and find yourself sexier than ever—and that’s pure fact. This has been slowly brewing since I turned 24 (turning 25 in two months what the fuck) but emotionally I think I just wasn’t there till recently.
I think I really do find myself cool now, like genuinely. I feel like I’m learning more about what I like and don’t like on a daily basis instead of blindly taking my friends’ advice. The other day I wrote down “it’s actually quite cool to wake up and be Gomi Zhou every day” and I meant it.
Part of this also means I’m being kinda a bitch in certain situations, haha. I find social media lingos really annoying because it morphs people into each other in this very insidious and unhealthy way. And a lot of people’s whole personality collapses at a merely rhetorical question—it’s just a bit thrilling and I’d like to think it’s helpful.
ALSO, perhaps the most important discovery is that I LOVE being an immigrant AND an artist AND a business woman and all of the above. I find caucasian, all-American approaches to be more and more irritating on a daily basis and in exchange feel more and more obligated to serve my heritage AND protect/support my BIPOC+ friends.
HAVING A HEALTHIER AND MORE ACTIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH MUSIC
Most of my adult life I’ve been spoon fed cool music. I have the privilege of being a part of one of the coolest college radio stations, then I was a music journalist who got to sit around and just have people sent me cool music 24/7. Being a music PR is actually, SUPER cool, but it does mean that for the first time I have to learn to be more careful with allocating my short attention span and go out of my way to find music that doesn’t dull my very well-trained ears.
And being friends with some of my favorite musicians helps SO much, and every time my talented friends eagerly show me what they’ve been obsessed with my heart melts a little. Almost 100% of the time they know what I’d like—because I like almost everything they like.
Bonus trick: search for city playlists on Spotify and you’ll find the most obscure bands in random cities. I went to Pittsburgh this month and found this really cool band by doing research on Spotify after I got back. They feel like a more melodic version of Hotline TNT:
PITTSBURGH
Just a really fucking sick and real city. People know how to relax and just be and are SO nice and chill. I got good Asian food, watched “Poor Things” in an indie theatre, went to cool modern art museums, also went to the aquarium… Bar culture there is also really cool, it was really cold when I was there and people left scarves in the public square for grabs.
Basically it felt like a real city. I feel like I’ve only ever lived in fake cities in America (even with my LA, you know how it can get sometimes).
MOVIES
Yet another thing that somehow holds my ADD attention span—after years of trying and failing I’m finally succeeding.
Since December I’ve realized: A24 isn’t actually good. I like movies with very vague plots that are feeling-driven and pretty looking (thanks Diego for pointing that out lmao). Renting movies is cheaper than my daily coffee. Doing research and going down rabbit holes post-viewing really helps keep my photography brain active.
By the way—everything Barry Keoghan touches is gold, and my recent favorite movie is “The Banshees of Inisherin.”
+ Movie podcasts are so fucking good. White men arguing over things that don’t matter like how they were made to do.
MY FRIENDS
Taylor and Nate got engaged and I took photos of them that made me really want to have my own family. Every time Zach and Scout and Diego go feral when they get to be together makes me feel so happy to just be around. I sat on the couch with Taylor at a party last weekend and we just showed each other photos of our childhood college best friends—and I’m once again reminded that Kaz and Maggie are so fucking cool.
I texted Wes on Friday thinking we should go to art crawl together—because I just associate that as a Wes activity now—then remembered it was the Grammys and he might be out of town. Turns out he wasn’t! So we grabbed dinner and talked about so many things and how adult friendships are hard to maintain sometimes.
But I do think I’m kinda good at it. All my friends are so unique and I treasure the time we spend together so so much.
LIVE IN YOUR ART BRAIN AND DELUDE THE MUNDANE
Can’t explain much more than this for the moment… But I’m wrapping something up this year and maybe after that I’ll come home.