Tadaima.

I've done more shopping within the past few weeks than I've done in the past few years. I'm not a huge shopper. I don't like looking through racks of clothes and then trying things on and then (the worst part) making decisions. I'm the type of person who usually waits until I absolutely need something, something specific, and only then will I look for it, and usually online where I can do it on the couch while passively watching something stupid on TV. This form of shopping isn't that bad to me (when the clothes actually arrive and I have to try them on and/or send them back is a different story). But lately I've had to do some serious shopping as my current wardrobe is a bit on the casual side and my upcoming trip will involve me going to "fancy" places (allegedly) and having to impress people. So obviously shorts and hoodies ain't gonna cut it.

These past few weeks have reminded me of all the reasons I've hated shopping: it takes forever, clothes are too baggy/too tight and/or fit weirdly, can't find anything, it's expensive AF if there's no sale going, it takes all day, it's not fun, it's exhausting.

I've always hated shopping cause my mom was obsessed with it. As a child, I have so many memories of being dragged to department stores and being trapped there forever, one time for six hours. I remember telling myself, "When I grow up, I will never shop for anything ever again." Unfortunately, as I've grown up, I've realized that I do need to shop for things and, annoyingly, I do like looking good. So now this feels contradictory. I hate shopping, but I also don't want to look like a broke college kid all the time.

One weekend I went shopping with some friends, and the contrast between the way they shopped and the way I shopped really illuminated the difference between people who like doing this and the ones who don't. My friends are really into fashion, so when we went to stores they already knew where to go, already knew what the stores had, knew which items were a bargain and which weren't.

My friend pulled out some denim jumpsuit and said she'd been coming there every weekend to see if the price had dropped yet so she could get it. I told her, "Oh, that's smart!" But in my head I was thinking, "That's a lot of work!" I can't imagine being so into shopping I'm hunting for deals and hitting these places more than once a year tops.

Since my husband and I only have one car, I've had to drag him along on my shopping excursions and he's been in agony. One day, while leaving the outlet mall after being there for hours, he exclaimed, "Why can't we just wear potato sacks!!" And although I rolled my eyes, I understood the frustration. Because fashion is largely just social/societal pressure anyway. I probably could wear a potato sack if there wasn't this constant, looming fear of judgement. Plus, when you're a woman, there's this additional pressure to look "feminine" all the time. Like, you can wear a potato sack, but you need to wear a belt on top to cinch your waist and accentuate your curves so that people know you're a woman. 🙄

Yes, it's ridiculous, but I don't think I have the luxury and/or privilege to not be a rule-follower. After wasting all this money, hopefully I'll feel even closer to being human.

Everyone in my life (including myself) has experienced one "big death" in their life, the kind that changes everything. Something I've noticed is that, whenever the dead person's name comes up, people start asking these hypothetical questions. "Do you think if ______ was still here that they would have liked that movie? Do you think they would've liked that person? What do you think _____ would think of today's politics? Do you think they would be MAGA?"

I once accidentally did this to my husband. "Do you think if ______ was still alive that she would like me?" He got really quiet and eventually said, "I don't know." And honestly I feel the same way when people ask me hypothetical questions about dead people. They're not here anymore, so how could I say? I really don't know; nobody knows. And, on a larger scale, am I really the right person to be the spokesperson for somebody else? Would they even want me to speak for them?

My mom was the worst about this after my brother past. She would say things like, "Oh, he would've loved so-and-so! I bet he's up in heaven so happy about blah blah blah!" There was always a part of me that thought, "Um, actually you don't know that." But when someone dies, who else can speak for them besides loved ones? And by speaking about them, it keeps them alive in a sense. But speaking about them within a future context feels a bit out of line, like we're trying to take their personality and flatten it into a character.

My mom (once again, the worst culprit) used to send me birthday cards written in my brother's voice. My mom's a boomer and knows nothing about current slang, so on the inside of the card she would write something like: "Yo sis, what's up?? Happy Birthday, yo!!" And I'd be like, what the fuck? That went on for a few years before I finally begged her to stop doing that. Of course she didn't take the criticism well. "I was just being a good mom!!! 😭"

I definitely feel like there's a fine line between preserving a dead person's memory and treating their memory like a cheap characterization, where you embellish things that didn't happen or imagine scenarios they were never in.

I don't know what any of the dead people in my life would be like if they were around today. I don't know if they would be MAGA (God I hope not), if they would remember my birthday, or, hell, if they would even still be talking to me. There's just so many what-ifs. Who am I to speak for them just because they no longer have a voice?

I just think the whole "Aww, [dead person and/or pet] would've really liked this!" is so false, because after a while that phrase starts being used for everything and then, sooner or later, the memory of the dead person starts shifting and morphing into something else. The other day I caught myself saying, "Aww, the dog would've really liked this park!" before I stopped and remembered that my dog hated other dogs and hot weather. She would've hated that park and probably would've pulled me down the sidewalk angrily until we got back in the air-conditioned car. The whole "[Dead person] would've loved..." is most of the time just an idealized fantasy.

That's why I think it's important to stick to stories. I like telling stories about the dead people in my life. Me: "Remember when grandma had that breakdown in the middle of Walmart?" Everyone: "Uh, no??" Well, I do, cause that was the real her. She was a little crazy, but that's a story that's authentic to the person she was. Making up hypothetical situations and imagining her placement within them isn't.

Some people might like the power of rewriting someone else's life and telling someone else's story, being their spokesperson, but not me. If you ask me about [dead person] I'm just gonna tell you the honest answer: I don't know.

There's a telenovela I started watching called Las hijas de la señora García. My Spanish still isn't that great yet, so I mainly enjoy it because it's a show I can actually understand. The storylines are rather simplistic and over-the-top, so it's quite easy to follow. When I started it, I thought it was just going to be a stupid show "for input" and nothing else, but I surprisingly got sucked into it. All the characters are either insane for no reason, evil for no reason, naive to the point of stupidity, or just plain annoying. And yet, despite this cacophony of horrible people, the character I hate the most is the "good" main character.

The show centers on an ambitious mother and her two daughters. One daughter, Mar, is young and naive, while the older one, Valeria, is head-poundingly annoying. In the show, we're supposed to root for Valeria because she doesn't care about money, status, or material goods. She believes in hard work. She thinks her mother is overbearing and is teaching her younger sister to be a golddigger (which is true), but Valeria possesses a sense of duty and pride that borders on foolishness.

Throughout the first quarter of the series, I could barely stand it: how she rejected generosity, acted ungrateful about positive occurrences, and bitterly clung to her "virtues" with a proverbial chip on her shoulder. Every time she would stick her finger in someone's face and go on some long monologue about how she "was different," I wanted to pull my hair out. I actually started liking the deranged mother more because she became the unlikely voice of reason. Every time she called Valeria "necia," I almost wanted to clap.

About half-way through the series Valeria gets in a fight with her boyfriend's crazy ex-girlfriend. The woman barges in, ties her up, and tries to set fire to her house (subtlety is not this show's forte). Instead of fighting back or using any of that stubborn bravado she normally uses for people being nice to her, she cries. She begs for her life and apologizes profusely. Because despite her hard exterior, Valeria's not really about that life. In the end, her boyfriend saves her (of course), but the whole scene made me realize something about her character (and embarrassingly, myself).

Usually when you hate something to an irrational degree, it reveals something about our shadow self. The things that trigger us or enrage us the most, this feeling that seems to just come from "somewhere," usually comes from there. It's a side of us we're repressing. And that's when I realized the main reason I hated this Valeria character so much was because she had qualities that reminded me of myself, and I shockingly didn't realize it until she was at her lowest moment.

Because here's the thing: Valeria's pride doesn't come from ego, it comes from fear. She lacks the courage to love. She lacks the courage to trust. She even lacks the courage to imagine a better life for herself, because she's fearful that hope is not something she can truly rely on. So instead of being vulnerable to the world's hurts, she puts on a mask and pretends to be someone else, even when the only person she's hurting is herself.

Obviously I'm not just like this character (I don't have two hot dudes fighting over me IRL), but there are enough similarities that I've started evaluating myself. I'm also someone who stubbornly rejects everything, takes pride in "being different," expects the worst from people until I feel I can trust them, etc. I don't think this makes me a terrible person, but it does make me notice things about myself I didn't before. And it's crazy all this came from a cheesy telenovela.

Of course, because of that, most of Valeria's character arc is tied heavily to her romance with some rich dude named Arturo. "She's just afraid to love!!" the show screams on top of a sappy love song. At the end of the day, I guess the writers can't get too introspective for a show meant for bored moms and abuelas.

I'm almost done with the series, and now that I know Valeria is just an amalgamation of the crappiest parts of my personality, I no longer hate her that much. I probably should learn how to ask for help and be less stubborn....uh, maybe next year.

Being consistent and sticking with a routine is something I only seriously started doing like a year ago. For most of my life I would start things with insane enthusiasm, to the point that it would take up all my time and mental space. Then I would quickly burn out, grow bored, and then abandon whatever it was I was obsessed with.

The mainstream advice when it comes to productivity and consistency is always the same: come up with a routine and stick with it until it becomes a habit. Procrastination is just resistance, and resistance is just fear, and fear is just our stupid brain thinking there's danger where there is none. The only way to break the cycle is to teach your brain that stress is not the same as fear, and you do that by completing tasks. Like an overbearing parent, once your brain sees you can actually do things, it starts to trust us more and stops making us feel anxious about everything.

I know this, everyone knows this, but I still hate routine. I hate being forced to do things when I don't feel like doing them. So I came up with my own system.

Since I'm good at having big, explosive amounts of energy followed by weeks of burnout, I use it to my advantage. Take this blog for example. I was pretty inconsistent at first, but then found a way to stay productive. Instead of writing posts here and there then feeling completely over it, I now batch-write several posts at once whenever that burst of energy hits. I leave all the posts in draft and just let them sit there. Then, once a week, I go in and publish whatever draft that makes the most sense and looks the least sloppy. Easy peasy.

Any time I'm not consistent, it's usually because I procrastinated and let the cache go empty and now I have to find the time to refill it.1

I have a similar system with other writing projects. During bouts of energy I'll write a ton without stopping, without sticking to a particular goal. Then, during burn-out days, I'll only write a little, like incoherent/stream of conscious-type stuff that doesn't take too much energy.

It even extends to reading. I have a goal of reading 2-4 books a month, which I have stuck to even though I don't always read every day. Sometimes I'll read a quarter of a novel over two weeks and then finish the rest of the book in one night. Even though I do it a bit differently, it's all still a routine at the end of the day.

Routine and consistency. It's boring, but it works.

1. Like today. 👀↩

A few weeks ago I went up to see that MAGA friend.🙄 I had written about her in the past, but after an unrelated post brought in some unexpected traffic, I unpublished that post about her since it suddenly felt too personal. Long story short, I have complex feelings about this person that goes a bit deeper than politics. But when I was up in NYC, I went to see her anyway.

Things were a lot worse than I imagined. She told me her doctors put her on Lithium and she's thinking of suing them because the original dosage was too high. She said she's on a lower dosage now, which is crazy because it was so obvious how strong the drug was even on the lower dose. She was aware of this and told me, "The lithium makes your body so stiff, it's hard to speak or move."

On the Uber ride away from her house, I kept asking my husband, "How is this different from a lobotomy?" I understand my friend has mental health issues, but is this seriously the only solution? Just turn people into zombies, sever them from the neurons that make them "act crazy," and then ignore them?

I've been thinking a lot about this after reading Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess by Dr. Caroline Leaf earlier this year. In it, the author describes how she disagrees with the current mental health trend of simply diagnosing and prescribing instead of treating. She explains how this system avoids treating the real issue by simply telling people their brains are "like this" and the only way they can fix it is to take drugs indefinitely. This might be true for some issues, but Dr. Leaf purports that this trend is failing people since a lot of the more common illnesses (like anxiety, depression, PTSD) can be healed in the brain instead of suppressed with drugs.

I'm not an expert on neurological issues, but I do have a lot of mentally unwell people in my life. When I think of a lot of my friends that are prescribed a cocktail of drugs, they're simply "stable." There's next to no improvement outside of that. They still spend all their waking hours on social media, ruminating, obsessing over the thing that traumatized them, and doing all the things that made them mentally ill to begin with. So what exactly is the drug fixing?

Dr. Leaf said our thoughts are like trees, and the more we focus on them they grow roots and spread. If you're someone with anxiety or depression or someone who had a traumatic event happen to them, whatever that issue is will consume you, to the point where you're no longer in control of your brain, your brain now controls you. And instead of telling you this, whatever specialist or psychologist you see will simply prescribe you something and then send you home. Oh, and there's also side effects to that drug, both from being on it and from when you try to wean yourself off of it. Addiction is likely as well. Good luck!

But of course, there's no profit to be had in teaching people to control and heal their minds, so why bother?

Isolation and rumination are two of the biggest mental health issues I'm seeing in almost everyone in my life. These people are on social media from sun-up to sun-down, have no hobbies, read no books, do nothing with their brains but obsess over the thing that ignited their downfall, and when they get professional help, they're prescribed pills but aren't told to change what they're doing. Now, a therapist might, but most can't afford to see one.

Technology also plays a huge part because it exacerbates people's obsessions. It feeds you algorithms that echo your narrative and cocoon you in your victimhood. And when you get hungry, you can DoorDash food to yourself so that you never go outside or get vitamin D or talk to any human being besides family members who are tired of your shit.

Modern psychology says these people can't change; all they can do is manage the illness. But I call bullshit. The current methods are, much like the lobotomy, looking more and more archaic. All I can hope is that the people in my life find the real help they need before it's too late.

If a stranger is annoying me, they'll probably never know it. I have tremendous patience and will put up with most things as long as I can maintain the peace, even if I'm seething inside. But there are other times when I reach a breaking point and I have no choice but to be a little petty.

Recently, I was on a plane flying home after a short trip. At first I was in a pretty good mood: the seat next to me was empty and I was engrossed in a good book. But then the person in front of me decided to move their chair back. I didn't mind at first (as this is something that always happens on a plane), but they kept moving it further and further back until I had no space for my knees. I tried to move my own chair back, but mine was broken and wouldn't move. On top of that, the person kept hitting their back against the seat, so that the seat would lean back and practically smack me in the head.

I turned my knees to the side and tried to ignore it, but then (and it was either the same person or someone else) I started to smell farts. Very strong earthy farts that grew and dissipated, off and on, for about two hours. At that point, everyone on the plane was asleep while I sat in my chair, my knees getting crushed, inhaling someone's unapologetic farts.

And that was when it hit me: Why do I have to be the only person on this plane who's uncomfortable? Why do I have to be the only one inconvenienced? My inner passive aggressor was kicking in. The entire cabin was dark and everyone was asleep, so I did the unspeakable: I turned on the overhead light.

I then sat pathetically in my seat thinking, "That'll show them," hoping the light would annoy the people around me and wake them up.

Is this the true meaning behind passive aggression? Is it just passive justice? It's not like it made my flight any better. All I did was make people feel as miserable as I did, but I guess that's always the goal, isn't it? It's just to drag people down to whatever mood you're in.

After the flight, I was telling the story to my husband who thought I didn't do anything that bad and said it was "cute" that this was my version of rebellion. Most people curse and throw hands, meanwhile I'm possibly disturbing people's sleep!!!!

I guess it wasn't really that big of a deal, but I did learn something: that passive aggression isn't just a cowardly form of revenge, it's about making yourself feel less alone. Why did I never notice that before?

Couples who don't have children all do one thing together: play board games. I feel like that's all me and my husband and all our friends do when we're together. Someone cooks and makes drinks, while the men get way too into the game and the women step outside to smoke and talk.

One time, my husband and I were playing a game where you had to give hints and have the other players guess the color that was associated with the clues. After getting in an argument with another player who said my clues were terrible, I felt nervous about giving the second hint. When I threw it out there, the only person who got it right was my husband. Then, when it was his turn, no one got his clues except me. We ended up winning the game.

On the ride home, my husband turned to me and said, "Aww, you really know me." I rolled my eyes cause I thought that was an odd thing to say. We've been together for a decade, why wouldn't I know him? But then I realized what he was really saying: "We won the couples' competition!" Because, as pathetic as it sounds, these games you play with couples often do dissolve into a relationship competition. And it's interesting how something as innocuous as board games is used as the barometer.

It sort of reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons where Marge hosts a dinner party for the other couples. It becomes awkward when Milhouse's parents show up, as they fight in front of everyone and make things tense. It all culminates to a game where Milhouse's dad asks his wife to guess the picture he's drawing. She says she doesn't know, and so he responds, "It's dignity! Don't you know dignity when you see it?!" Exasperated, Milhouse's mom stands up and asks for a divorce. It's one of my favorite episodes, but it's interesting how it was a game that revealed the fractures in their relationship.

Maybe that's why my husband was happy. A weaker couple would have fumbled and argued over the clues and not have been on the same page. Is this the real reason why couples play board games? I have another friend who often jokes, "Whoever wins this match has the strongest relationship." And if me and my husband loses, he'll point to us and scream, "I knew it!" Maybe that's why couples like board games so much. It's all just an elaborate excuse to have that long conversation with your spouse/S.O. on the drive home about, "What's up with so-and-so? Did they seem a little tense to you?"

As a staunch individualist, I find all of this annoying. I often prefer to play against my husband than with (and he's usually the same way). I hate the "coupleship" of couples, or how (especially women) are expected to sew themselves to their husbands, how every interaction gets filtered through the awkward intimacy of who we're attached to.

I wish I could avoid it, say it's bullshit, try to pretend like I'm above it, but based on what my husband told me in the car, it seems to be unavoidable. Everyone's thinking it. All I can do is play the game.

It's funny reading posts from people talking about how old they are, how they're changing, how things aren't the same anymore, how they're worried about the future, how they miss their childhoods, how aging is scary, how they miss the wild abandon of their youth, et cetera, et cetera...

As someone with aging parents, I have some (maybe good?) news to share. You get a second childhood! Really. It starts in your 60s. If you're someone who has ever been around old people before, you're probably already aware, but they basically act like teenagers. One day you wake up and realize you're now their parent.

People going through "second childhood" don't listen, they pout, they're stubborn, they stay out late, and they won't tell you when they'll be back. You have to drive them to "play dates" with other old people and find hobbies/classes for them so that they do more with their life than rot their brain with Facebook. They also can no longer be trusted with spending their money wisely, usually wasting their cash on dumb/frivolous things for make-believe grandchildren that don't even exist. My parents have all these qualities now, and I'm not prepared to deal with it.

For some reason, none of the older generations warned me about this. I knew old people became senile as they got older, but no one warned me about the "second childhood." It's a period that happens before complete senility. My parents still work, still drive, are still cognitively fine, it's just they act like teenagers now.

My dad, for example, has worn glasses his whole life. Recently he has decided to not wear them because he thinks they make him look old. He now just drives really slowly while squinting at the road like Mr. Magoo. I told him it was dangerous for him to not drive without his glasses and he just shrugs. "You can't tell me what to do."

My mom is addicted to shopping. She spends her entire social security check on random, cheap crap from Amazon. I told her she needed to start saving her money and be more responsible about her future and she told me, "You can't tell me what to do with my own money."

My once super smart, responsible parents have transformed into surly teenagers.

At first I thought this was just an issue with my parents, but a few months ago I was on r/Millennials and someone posted, "Are your parents acting like teenagers?" Thousands of people commented on how they were going through the exact same thing with their aging parents:

I empathize. After 28 years at her old company my mother accepted a new position 2 hours from her house so she lived with her single friend M-F. It was the first time in over 30 years that she was away from my father and she behaved like a reckless college kid. She started a love triangle between 2 men, threw parties with her roommate, got drunk every night, drunk texted multiple colleagues. Her behavior earned her a bad reputation and she was eventually let go from a very decent paying position. She has absolutely no self control. I have to frequently block AI videos of big-boobed women on YouTube from my father and remind him to wash himself. I’m tired, friend.

So, to all you younger Millennials/Gen Z who are worried about the future, fear not. Don't mourn your childhood or yearn for simpler years because, like most things in life, it's cyclical. Your childhood will return, and it'll happen in your 50s-70s. You'll pierce your ears, you'll ignore your kids, you'll impulsively buy flashy gifts for yourself as you leave Earth on a high.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

I have an Obsidian note titled "Copypasta" where I copy/paste random shit I stumble across that I think is weird/funny/interesting and don't want to forget. The other day I was looking at it and found a weird Amazon review I had saved from last year. It was so unhinged, I had to keep it:

"worst pillows ever and way to firm and just slides up your back enough to make it even more uncomfortable and the arms are so little. not what i thought they would be. got these for my elderly mother who's getting out of hospital tomorrow after getting her foot amputated and wanted her to be comfortable in her bed and on the couch. iam not physically able to send these back so i can get the money back to buy different kind and cant afford to buy different ones right now. i used money out of what i had saved for a car. iam a struggling single mother with health issues who cant work and tryin to raise a baby on my own and now tryin to take care of my mother. iam so bummed out cause i really needed stuff to work out right and with these pillows and a mattress i got here also it has went horribly wrong....like iam not overwhelmed enough. so its just $30 some dollars i lost in these."

I guess the thing I find the most interesting about this random review is how much unhinged emotion there is for something as innocuous as a cheap Amazon pillow. It's a really great example of fundamental attribution error, a cognitive bias where people judge others' behavior based on what they do, while ignoring the situational issues that causes that person to act that way.

I always think of this when I'm driving in my car and I'm cut off by some asshole who swerves in front of me without signaling. In my mind I immediately think, "Ugh, what an entitled asshole." But then I think of "attribution errors" and wonder, "Hmm, or maybe he just really needs to get to a bathroom." At the end of the day, we don't know individuals as much as we think. The person who takes their anger out on a McDonald's employee might've just buried their dad that morning. Everyone is going through something.

Of course, critics might say that attribution errors are just a way for people to avoid accountability. I mean, we're all adults, right? And we should all be able to regulate our emotions like adults. But clearly some have a harder time than others.

The fact of the matter is I often stop and think of that random Amazon lady: how stressful her life sounded, how everything seemed to be going wrong, and how she couldn't even get a stupid pillow right. I think it's important to always remember empathy, especially when I stumble across unhinged things on the Internet. You never know what people are going through.

I've been progressively getting into dream symbolism lately, but it's been a long, slow road because dreams are so abstract. Most of the time I wake up and, even if I remember the dream, I have no idea how to even put them into words. What's even worse are the dreams that are so weird, they make me question if symbolism is real and if the whole thing is just subconscious nonsense.

Let's take last week's dream for example: In it, I'm with the cast of The Real Housewives of Atlanta as they record an episode (so already we're off to a weird start). For some reason, the producer asks each housewife if they can take a shit on camera. Each housewife tries, but after a second, they give up. Suddenly, in walks reality star Nene Leakes who, after a long hiatus, is back, baby! She struts in and is like: "Out of my way! Want me to shit on camera? No problem! Watch this!" She bends down and, with the camera zoomed on her ass, starts straining to shit. It's obscenely graphic, and since I can't lucid dream, I have no control. In fact, I'm physically not even there, I'm inside the camera, getting a full, uncut view of everything.

It felt like torture, and within the dream it felt endless, like it went on for hours. The whole time I kept wondering, Why can't I wake up? As for Nene Leakes, she was grunting and sweating and all "Ooo, chile!" the whole time.

And then, the moment happens: she starts to defecate. The thickest snake-like shit slithers out of her ass like a power hose. It's endless. There's shit everywhere, all over the floor, all over the walls. The producers are ecstatic as they start celebrating and jumping up and down and hugging each other and crying.

Fortunately, once that part of the dream is over, I'm back in my physical body and I'm at a party hosted by Rihanna? She's glowing and going around touching people and ordaining them with the same glow. She walks up to me and touches me, which makes other people suddenly want to be my friend. They all follow me into this huge party full of IRL friends and dream friends. We're having a great time, but then a screen lowers from the ceiling and, although no one says anything, there's an understanding that we're all about to watch a brand new episode of The Real Housewives of Atlanta. I'm horrified, because although no one else knows what's in store, I do. And I was not about to sit through that shit again (pun intended).

In a panic, I run out of the party and stand outside on a street corner. For some reason (even though I don't see this in the dream), I could sense, telepathically, that Nene Leakes was in her mansion somewhere shocked (shocked!) that producers left her 8-hour uncut, raw footage of her uncontrollable shitting in the show. She's embarrassed and humiliated and vows to sue the producers.

As I stand outside the party, I see an IRL friend helping two old women out of a car. I run to help, but the old women are slow. As they take their sweet time, I start to feel bored and miss the fun party happening inside. But when I go to leave, I remember Nene Leakes, get a 'Nam flashback, and decide to help the old women instead. The dream gratefully ends there.

So obviously I woke up thinking WTF was that. The only interpretation I can think of is a bit literal, but I think my subconscious is telling me that I'm increasingly finding reality TV to be shit and that I think it's bad for me. A part of me likes reality TV because it keeps me social, and it's easy to make friends when we're all watching the same trashy shows, but the lesson of the dream seems to be that I belong outside of it. The dream ends with me standing with the old women, who represent wisdom. So basically the dream is saying I should reject low brow entertainment and social popularity for quiet wisdom, peace, and introspection. Or so I think? 1

However, a problem I have with dream symbolism is how spiritually narcissistic it all feels sometimes. Is my subconscious really saying this, or am I just full of shit (😏)? Who knows.

1. While editing this I thought of a second interpretation that might be more accurate, since dreams are rarely this literal. Usually when you dream about someone, the dream isn't really about that person but about the emotion around that person. When I think of Nene Leakes I think of narcissism and delusion, so I wonder if the dream was actually a warning to my extroverted/narcissistic side that's eager to please, eager to overshare, eager to be popular, because that mentality can backfire on me and leave me feeling regretful and humiliated. The lesson could be to abandon that obnoxious/social/extroverted side and choose wisdom (old women) instead. Although, who really knows? Could just be a weird dream that I'm trying WAY too hard to intellectualize!↩