11.20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGBNq5FufmM&ab_channel=SiobhanBrierAguilar i listened to this while i was folding clothes yesterday and i really liked it. it's more comprehensive than the celebrity book club review of tendler's book, and it's endearing that this the youtuber's fifth youtube video. i like how she engages with goodreads reviews and is clearly reading off a script.

11.19 some mornings i wake up and i'm like..... i need to listen to the original sound of music soundtrack with julie andrews

11.17 i feel like the year is over (it's not). thinking about what i've done this year and how to spend the remaining ~1.5 months. these are just some first impressions, i'll come back to them later. what i've done this year:

- i engaged in running / physical activity in never before seen ways, ie: i trained for and ran a marathon 

- did the 9+1 to qualify for the marathon in 2025

- i learned tarot. another way to think of this is - i finally made material my longstanding interest in the occult lol, outside of listening to my astrology podcast 2x a week. could never have done this without the help of no longer being with my ex, shoutout to not having some guy tell you your interests aren't real. i thought after running the marathon i would get a new tarot deck, but i don't feel ready to move on to the thoth yet. i still don't feel i have a sufficiently complex understanding of the RSW, so for the remainder of this year i want to fully read 78 degrees of wisdom & my jessica dore tarot book. will think of a way to structure this

- i experimented with not drinking more seriously than i have in adulthood. i probably spent a quarter of the year not consuming any alcohol. i feel i am very much at the beginning of this, but starting to learn how to navigate social situations without alcohol is good. even if i return to drinking, it's good to practice setting and holding a boundary. also, i had sex sober this year. i think i only had sex sober this year. i'll spare you the gory details but i was really concerned about this and it's been really great, basically a non issue. honestly kind of huge!! 

- i read more this year, and more consistently. i don't know for sure what i read in 2023 or 2022,  but i'm confident i've done more reading this year

- on the flip side, i thought less about food and cooking than i have in previous years (at least it feels like). running so much changed my relationship to eating and cooking. also, i think my ex and i bonded over food more than i realized initially.

- i got blood work done / went to the doctor. i haven't gone to a regular degular doctor in adulthood, and i've never gotten blood work done because i was always afraid there was something pernicious lurking in my blood that i'd be better off ignoring. anyway it was fine and my obgyn is really nice and i don't think i'll be afraid next time i have to get blood work done.

11.12 my (boy) cousin had a baby and his brother (also my cousin) is being really sweet about it. he posted a carousel full of pictures of the baby thanking my cousin's girlfriend. the caption starts with "fuckin nuts" lol. it's the first baby in my family / extended family.  hard to not have your heart warmed by a tender babe....

i've had lots of sweet interactions with my cousin casey in the past year or so, he called me the night before my marathon with his mom, texted me the day after. in summer he got really drunk and was telling me how he works in this cage doing asset recovery and it was so funny, but then he was too drunk and he got his feelings hurt when we were all playing a game? he started to cry and it was alarmingly sincere, he said something out loud like: why are these people being mean i love you guys so much. anyway that evening was recovered and it was fine, i think it's sweet that my boy cousins seem to want to have an adult relationship with me, a few weeks ago i met the cousin that just had a baby in the back of his moving truck because they were moving a tattoo parlor in manhattan. 

11.9 in the week leading up to marathon & the week after i have been telling myself it's okay for the apartment to be messy. lol. it's not like i keep a super clean place but it feels like i spend a lot of time cleaning. anyway i love my dirty apt, it's giving me time to READ!!!! always nice to emerge from a reading slump

11.6 rattled after reading emily witt's recounting of her breakup, i have not read a breakup story as similar to mine anywhere else and it was really really upsetting. obviously differences in context but emotionally so similar. like the insane unmanaged anger, purposeful terrorizing of me in the home, him feeling great after being cruel to me, only being concerned about outside perception, not knowing what's true, losing his body, tiny moments of regret and then more being horrible, filming him being cruel and unreasonable to me, fighting about the filming, blocking doorways, all around being 'cognitively unable to accept that his cruelty towards me was real.' i did not have a good experience reading the end of this book

Ppl on goodreads are like why did Emily Witt stay with her boyfriend when he was a stoner trust fund loser from CA….. did they not read the 35 times she referenced how tall he was …….

11.5 worried about my relationship w my grandmother if kamala wins which is so weird. she has been taking so many jabs at me lately, like yesterday i called her about my marathon and she ended our call by comparing it to when trump was elected and then talked about how she hates that she has one liberal grandchild (she has more). i wouldn't know how to respond to this but luckily her rants are crazy and she is not expecting a response. 

it's annoying because i have been really intentional about keeping up with her ever since i moved out of my parent's house. more often than not, we facetime once a week. i don't think any of the other grandchildren are putting in the hours like this??? it's not helpful to compare but it's not appropriate for her to shit on me all the time when i've been doing active effort! i was at her friend's house last week with her...bc i made soup for her friend who has cancer... and she just spent the whole time berating me for being liberal (first of all i'm progressive) and calling me stupid and saying all her other grandchildren are smart aka love trump. okay also what's weird is she kind of has a history of calling me stupid, like she will not infrequently refer to me as a ditz?? if she references me being smart or good at school she only uses it to be confused about why, despite that, i don't love trump. she's just gotten way too aggro and i feel like it's out of place!! i shouldn't have to be insulted in my pursuit of trying to be a good grandchild or whatever. ROLL THE MARY OLIVER

lol scrolled down on my flounder and read another post where i complained about how my grandmother responded to something....i'm grandma posting....beefing w gma..... it's sort of interesting to look at the assumption i'm operating under where i seem to think that because i feel like i'm being a dutiful granddaughter, i should get to access some different version of my grandmother. or she should treat me in some special way. it's not transactional like that. my grandmother has always taken jabs at my sister and i. she isn't going to become a different person. whatever lol ok no more gma posting

10.30 when a woman writes a book and reviewers are like, 'narrator is obviously a self insert,' they say it like it's a bad thing. is it bad??? what do u think

https://x.com/allmychampagne/status/1851264528949883382

saw this tweet & thought about my own it's no use jo we gotta have it out moment. even though my love life has been an odd parade of painful horrors, sometimes looking back at them is kinda fun ... fort greene love confession summer of '22 ... the culmination of a sort of long insane romance... i guess it's at least interesting that that happened...

i feel like one of my only assets at work is using mildly colorful language that reads as cute & whimsical to millennials and above. like my coworker is really hooting & hollering when i call myself an excel princess or i when i say a SME is committing high illegal crimes by texting her on her personal phone.

10.23 i'm sad that the oldest reproducing grizzly bear in the GYE got hit by a car :( i have been following grizzly 399 for many years...

10.21

love my mom on goodreads...she gives the bell jar 4/5 stars 

10.20 Doing a lot of RUMINATING about the actions of others lately. Trying to direct my thoughts another way by yelling at myself: I SHOULD CONTROL OTHER PEOPLE LIKE DOLLS!!! which is the desire I’m expressing when I’m like WHYISTHISPERSONBLAHBLAHBLAH. That’s literally what The Sims is for …

10.9 enjoying the flounder phone discourse. i love how to do nothing and i want to be on my phone less. i had a really beautiful mushroom trip 2 years ago and at one point i looked at my phone and was so disenchanted. i was like why do i ever look at this black brick. it felt like such a dead object.

feeling overwhelmed but in a maybe good way, feels like time is goinggoinggoing. does life speed up in fall? or is it just marathon. unclear but in my head it's been november for a week already. trying to be where my feet are.

i think my heart rate has slowed down a little bit. or maybe i just spend more time with it sped up? but when i'm stationary i can feel the beats and they feel slow. on the subway today i was paying attention to it. it calms me down to feel my slow heart. slow heart fast brain

10.7 i haven't read intermezzo but i thought this article was very thot provoking... https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-trapdoor-of-her-own/

10.2 feeling evil

10.1 i can't believe my sister texted me two weeks in a row ... maybe nature is healing ... i love her sm

9.28 I’m so hungry it’s kind of hell

9.21 alex is surprised abt how much he enjoyed broadway play… I can see that he doesn’t know how to categorize this in his mind

8.29

labor day weekend goals:

1. run 15 miles

2. read my book

3. farmer's market tomato

many things i have been thinking about floundering recently. for example:

1. i found a lady bug on my dresser on tuesday and it was also there wednesday night so i thought it was dead because it was in the same spot. but i just left it there. and then yesterday when i was making my bed it was crawling around in my duvet. i put it outside.

2. my uncle got kicked out of anger management class because when he arrived he got frustated about the forms and them running late and he was like, IS THIS SOME KIND OF A TEST?!? to the secretary

3. considering recording every time i eat ice cream during marathon training and then trying to beat it next year when i am also marathon training

8.11 I try to direct every social situation I’m in towards ice cream

8.9 i can never convince anyone to watch brokeback mountain with me

7.30 told my grandmother about how i got my queens library card yesterday & she kind of laughed at me. i don't care TRI BORO LIBRARY CARD QUEEN. i wish i had my first library card, i remember getting it so vividly. it was blue & had a picture of a computer on it & i remember being at the desk with the librarian while my dad told me how to spell my name so i could write it on the back. 

7.29 getting a summer produce CSA box today, which I’ve thought about every 15 minutes since I ordered it yesterday

7.9 I love saying good morning to the bus driver

7.8 emotionally stormy enough that i'm lifting the adrienne lenker ban i basically permanently impose on myself to avoid depression

7.6 have been feeling quite bad the past ~two weeks... don't even have a quote to relate it to or anything...

5.29 a deep craziness stirs inside me

5.28 ummm but weren't we the stars in heaven?? weren't we the salt in the sea....?

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/all-good-sex-is-body-horror

i've been thinking about this article for the past four months. i don't know david cronenberg or his movies i know about the transformative power of erotic experience. it seems inappropriate to write about this anywhere

why does tragedy exist? because you are full of rage. why are you full of rage? because you are full of grief. anne carson i am thinking about her always....

5.20 i'm thinking about "in blackwater woods" by mary oliver

5.15 my parents…these people never miss at always missing…

this sounds kind of paranoid but i really do feel like my parents treated me better when i had a long term partner in part because there was someone basically witnessing their treatment of me

5.14 phone is the opiate of society

5.13 struggling with my corporeal form

5.12 when i desire you a part of me is gone

5.9 a child is the ultimate work excuse. in my next job i am going to pretend to be a mother.

5.6

two quotes about dancing

“You can do it like it’s a great weight on you, or you can do it like it’s part of the dance.” ram dass

"Yougottadance. Aslongasthemusicplays. Yougotta dance. Don'teventhinkwhy. Starttothink, yourfeetstop. Yourfeetstop, wegetstuck. Wegetstuck, you'restuck. Sodon'tpayanymind, nomatterhowdumb. Yougottakeepthestep. Yougottalimberup. Yougottaloosenwhatyoubolteddown. Yougottauseallyougot. Weknowyou're tired, tiredandscared. Happenstoeveryone, okay? Justdon'tletyourfeetstop.” murakami

4.29 EM. I literally almost floundered this morning: I'm working lateeeee cause I'm a singerrrrrrr

4.28 thank u to all the great people of nyc who support my amatuer running hobby by providing me with water clothes and coca cola. i have three shirts from doris and four+ jackets from alex from meeting post run and then needing clothes

4.26 I don’t understand the part in lose yourself where Eminem compares himself to a snail

4.24 a grocery store has always been a very comforting environment for me

thrashing against the circumstances of reality.....that's suffering baby.....

that's why i waited 25 min for the q54 this morning. practicing acceptance.

jmax i don't know who you are and i've never read your flounder until today but i saw your 30 rock reference and i love it. i think about 30 rock constantly. i'm trying to get alex to watch it with me but it's probably like a multi year goal.

4.23 first of all alex, you sent me that meme and then explained it to me. secondly, i read your blog. thirdly, stop bragging about worry and LEND IT TO ME. i want to make a little message section of flounder with em's cutie html (em all i do is steal your cute little designs. is it html idek)

4.22 ashley flounder fans will remember my work reply guy. he put a half hour mtg on my calendar for vague and mysterious reasons and then spent the first 15 min negging me about not talking to him. frustrating and weird. he said i had a heaviness about me. i just work on a different team at basically a different company now!!! idk!!

i'm like asking polite conversational questions and he's literally like: why would i tell you where i'm traveling? you keep secrets from me. we haven't spoken in a decade. like i'm AT WORK!!! BE NORMAL.

they are calling me the most cold, sleepy woman in all of queens

4.18 @alex men explain things to me

4.16 feeling as though much is obscured from me at the moment...

4.13 chappell roan's good luck babe coachella snippet is making me lose my mind

went to the Apple Store with Alex to get him a new phone which feels like going to the doctor with someone

4.11 i'm coming on here to say that i have been betting on losing dogs in a huge way

3.29 it’s me and my revlon one step against the world fr

3.18 questioning if I overuse the dot dot dot …. I don’t really feel like anyone I talk to uses it as much as me. but I’m a ponderous bitch ….

3.15.24 70 degrees in March …. Sundress interlude

3.13.24 Alex my flounder is broken

3.13.24 underneath these bangs there is a sad woman

Do you guys think my suffering will ever end or no

every woman in ridgewood has a glasses-wearing boyfriend who looks malnourished. 

everyone make sure you do your annual reading of dear march come in. https://poets.org/poem/dear-march-come-1320

i'm coming on here to say i'm reading moby dick and it's good actually

saw a picture of the snowy clark fork river running through missoula....insta tears!

does anyone have recommendations for something i can use to make sitting in my office chair more stable? i feel like my hips are all out of whack

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2024-01/marxists-and-christians-to-fight-together-corruption-illegality.html

lol alex so true. let us proclaim the mystery of faith. catholicism best religion. everyone post your confirmation names below ↓↓↓↓↓

i've also barely walked the past few days. the past two weeks i've been getting like 15k steps a day. the past two days have been my strongest urge to drink. it's not like. a craving. but i do wish i could drink. no exercise + working & hating it + too cold out. grumpy grumpy grumpy.

alex thinks i should be nicer to WRG. everyone at work who interacts with me is interacting with me really pleasantly like they know i hate this and also that my contract is ending soon. it's hard when people are being nice to me but i still feel like a bitch. sorry..............

haven't run in 5 days which is terrible. weirdly can't convince myself to get on my yoga mat. i walked margot assessing for runability and it still seems really icy out on the sidewalks. need 2 run. addicted 2 running.

going to use flounder to complain about work today instead of crying softly cam off in a meeting with my manager (what i did yesterday to manage my feelings)

i can't believe people from both companies i'm split between messaged me at 6pm yesterday. send me a crying emoji all you want if you ask me to do something at 4:40pm sorry that's a next day request. my contract expires in 6 weeks i unfortunately don't give a fuck actually at all. it's insane that these competing requests are my new manager vs my fucking work reply guy, always being maximally annoying at the the most inconvenient moment.

Alex maybe in a few years it’ll be soft like a blanket….

alex i like my wool hat but a wool blanket is a bridge too far ... it's not soft like at all

also em if you're reading this can i play your music game with you guys?? :):):)

woke up so nicely with Margot snuggled up to me, went to the farmers market and one of the farmers remembered me, ran 5 miles, walked Margot (who got a sweet amount of neighborhood fanfare)……. I slip into bed post-shower and see snow softly falling outside my window ….. beauty is all around us …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaPNR-_Cfn0&ab_channel=ChappellRoanVEVO i love her

alex i'm just seeing that. when did you do that i thought you couldn't see my password

Ashley was HACKED by me

saw a raccoon climbing on my fence this morning. two times!

kill me by indigo de souza ........ best song of all time

In middle school my best friend and I used to sing Billy Joel’s “goodnight my angel” to each other before we fell asleep at sleepovers in an act of extreme unrealized lesbianism. Look up the lyrics

they should let me do suicidal ideation at work

kingms bc my half marathon is on santa con

woke up insane. so grateful this happens less and less but a pure cortisol wakeup is so palpable to me, i'll literally go from in bed to dry heaving over the toilet in like 30 seconds because it makes me so nauseous. didn't eat enough post run yesterday, probably not eating enough in general. did something stupid yesterday that i probably wouldn't have done if i checked the astrology. yeah whatever, venus is conjunct the south node and it's fucking me up, that planet runs my life.

thinking a weird amount about my ex girlfriend from hs/college, not in a yearning way. i generally enjoy watching old videos of us because we had some bits that i still think are hilarious. thinking this morning about her life now and how she owns a board game store. when we were picking our colleges, i remember her dad telling me that he saved basically 100,000 for each of his kids, and if we went in-state she/(we implied) would have more of that money left over to get essentially as a gift post-grad. alex says no posting exact money amounts on flounder #salarytransparency #postgradgifttransparency.

it would have been harder for me to date her now because of how bitter-pilled i am. but it's really crazy what your life can look like if your parents give you a lot of money. lol. like when she got her license she got a brand new, nice suv. she didn't have a job after college, her linkedin is literally her working for her dad and then being the owner of the board game store her dad bought her (sounds creepy but if you google the store, like the third thing that comes up is her dad registering the business in his name). it looks really successful and has 5/5 stars with like 100 reviews. idk. always interested in the lives of people who seem to be really good at not working dumb shitty computer jobs like i have devoted my life to.

they should hire a recruiting coordinator who doesn't experience rage when literally anyone emails her

the comment section for fade into you by mazzy star is just a bunch of people lusting for the 90s

alex i'm watching your video but my phone is in the other room

i talk to my family for like 15 min a week and i swear it takes me 24 hours to recover. it melts my brain.

alex trolling around food reddit & i found two new places near maria hernandez that people say are really good for sandwiches. carmeta's & foster sundry. look them up. #lunchbike #bikelunch

just found out that the cheddar bagel twist i get like 3x a week from dunkin donuts has 16 grams of protein making it essentially a health food to me

experiencing some smugness

alex i can't get it to work

having to work is spiritual warfare

i no longer feel like god is smiling down upon me

writing an email to a 60 year old doctor to formally apologize to him for the second time that i sent him the wrong file. diagnosing him with gigantic fucking baby disease

alex lmao me https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/4qsxx4/how_to_train_for_half_a_marathon_in_4_weeks/

so tired from my run i'm considering watching a movie

nymetroweather predicting a snowy winter ... grocery store across the street opening... the universe is working in my favor... god is smiling down upon me...

angryworking. my b*** wants me to send out a survey to people who applied for a job asking them if they're interested in the job. makes no sense. they applied because they're interested.

i feel like i'm constantly doing things that make no sense or are thought-through like 40% of the way.

You are literally too boypilled to understand

https://x.com/whstancil/status/1722469723420369074?s=20

here's the tweet alex.

here's an unrelated flounder: going to bernie's tonight. maybe. NYC institUTION.

WRG doing needless violence onto me. i stopped working at 2pm yesterday and put a little status in my slack. so i didn't answer a slack he sent me. then he repings me AS SOON AS I LOG on this morning some cold chilly message that's basically "per my last email." then i instantly respond & give him what he's asking for & he's like. okay let's talk about this in our sync tomorrow. like obviously it was not urgent he was just annoyed i didn't answer his insane message. no being needy at work!!

putting on alex & listening to him like a podcast

insane to me that people think they need to let me know they're disappointed when they didn't get a job. "i'm sorry you're disappointed :(, you are really so great :(" says a 24 year old recruiting coordinator to a 47 year old doctor. are you happy now.

alex remind me to tell you about the ACAB interaction i had this summer in sturgis SD. also i think you should wear tweed in your talk. JK i think you should dress extremely normal, that is the best way to wear authority.

originally came on here bc i was thinking about that moose i saw. when i was convening with the moose in jasper...basically all down hill from there. i miss her.

it's insane how much working on a male or female dominated team changes the feeling of work. the team i work on is literally 3 glasses-wearing yoga-practicing under 35yo women. we share screen to show guys we have crushes on. we talk about astrology and our periods. we talk about how we're bad at math (because of social conditioning). i love being a woman in the workplace. alex thinks this is gender essentialism or something.

alex the shot 19 sec in made me laugh out loud. this is a crazy video. wear a black dress on a plane

alex says i can't go to suny purchase talk because i'm too low skill

we met at acme & the externalization of female anxiety: my forthcoming thesis

crazy how the nutcracker suite is - not an opinion a fact - one of the best pieces of music ever but it's so associated with christmas and then by proxy children that most live performances are for kids. last year i really kept an eye out for a way to see the nutcracker & not feel like i was crashing a children's event...putting my desire into the

ether...where is the nutcracker for Serious Adults ...

i take back the bad stuff i said about my b***

taught her what a femcel was

something i've realized is important to me (i honestly think most people with like medium-developed tastes demonstrate this) is that people care when i recommend them something. usually i will force them to engage if relationally appropriate. ex: i am personally hurt when my mom ignores my 1000 of recs to her (i shouldn't be but whatever). and i'm so happy when my boss is like: I AM STILL GOING TO TAKE THAT QUIZ YOU SENT ME A MONTH AGO

sorry but i love alison roman's extremely nyc wedding (looking at the pictures for vogue). the two minutes with my wife picture. the double decker bus.