2026 resolutions

hi! i’m back, sorry for the sudden drop off… school has been kicking my ass. i made a couple of resolutions last year, to varying degrees of success. i figured i might talk about those/2025 and refine my resolutions for this year

1. parents let me use a cane —> successful! i had been using one in secret for several months prior to the end of 2024, as my parents were dismissive and my pain was bad enough that i was led to seek out other resources. while my mom’s still not handling it perfectly (she asks me to put mobility aids away during family pictures or not bring them to events where people she knows are going to be there), she is a lot more acknowledging of my pain- i not only got diagnosed this year, but started physical therapy. in the time since the beginning of the year, i’ve also gotten crutches, went to DC (lots of walking), and used a wheelchair! it hurt, all of it hurt, yet i live and do breathe- i didn’t think i could do any of that stuff a year ago.

2. a/b honor roll —> 50/50? i was a/b honor roll this semester, but last semester, i think i had a couple c’s and might have failed french? the end of the school year is always difficult for me, but i was at a point where my father had started drinking more heavily, i was extraordinarily depressed, and i wasn’t getting much sleep or food, and as a result i slept through a lot of classes, and just didn’t partake in others. chronic pain and fatigue is a bitch. i still don’t eat or sleep much tbh (i lost 30 pounds this year?!)… i’ve just gotten much better at managing myself and functioning better. my dad is also like, six months sober or something? crazy stuff. 

3. clean room & invite my friends over more often —> like 1/4 success. my room was kind of nasty for a very long time. not moldy or bio-hazardous or anything, i just haven’t been very good with keeping it clean. ever. i’m very good at making it halfway presentable and then abandoning the cause, but i can never find the motivation to truly clean it- procrastination, autism, schizophrenia, depression, laziness- call it whatever, just never happened. my mom went through and deep cleaned the whole thing a couple days ago without telling me, which i am extraordinarily grateful for. however. she took my binder, threw it out (along with my drawing tablet stylus-recovered from the trash later, thank god for paranoia) and then regurgitated her tired little speech about why she doesn’t believe in being trans and she’s concerned about my transness. blegh. worth it for the clean room though. i did not invite hardly anyone over this year, except cade and nova once or twice?

4. basic conversational polish —> FAIL…. not much to say about this one. i need to lock in. or maybe move to chicago? i did track down my(? uncommon last name but there seem to be two primary polish immigrant families with my surname) family history to the mid 1750s. this is a noteworthy achievement because i have virtually no connection to my polish side of the family- my father got sort of mutually disowned? and so we don’t see or talk to them a lot (see: at all), meaning i don’t know anything about that side of the family.

5. write one chapter of oc project - half fail? i just put all of the little tidbits i’ve written over this year in a document, and it’s 6,000 words. that’s like a chapter, but ideally it would have been more coherently aligned. each tidbit is no more than 400 words- i have a bad habit of scrapping ideas because i think im not good enough of a writer to properly express what’s in my head. 

6. get into city youth symphony orchestra… successful! i feel like im very fundamentally not a good viola player. i don’t practice nearly as much as i should and i definitely don’t put as much passion into it as i do literally everything else. but i like it. there’s 5 ranks of orchestra- i was in the third one last year, and i made it into the fourth one this year! the last rank is for super crazy instrument geniuses (god i love that word), i don’t think i’ll get into it, especially not before i graduate, but i’m okay with that. the nice thing about viola is that it forces me to be average at something and be okay with my own mediocrity. 

7. see new frankenstein adaptation in theaters - unsuccessful. nearest theater showing it was two hours away from me and the movie was… fine? i liked it but its a very campish sort of deal. and not book accurate 😒

ok. 2026 resolutions… i might elaborate on some of these but they’re either self explanatory or will only warrant explanation 12 months from now. 

1. write one chapter of oc thing

2. read 36 books - 3 per month. i got an e-reader (or rather, get to borrow my moms old ereader) for christmas and i’ve already read 3 books this month, so this should be easy? i know the majority of usamericans don’t read books, but i still feel bad that i can’t really get past 10-15ish a year, it makes me feel like a brainrotted teenager. i like reading! i want to do it more! i just need to lock in i guess

3 talk to nova about how you’re in love with him. 

 it’s been three years 🫩🫩🫩 idk i’m gonna graduate next year and like. wouldn’t it be oh so nice to go to prom with him if all goes well? but whatever. even if it doesn’t if i tell him i can at least properly grapple with it, which brings me to the next thing

4 GET OVER NOVA?

maintaining a romantic relationship with your best friend of 8 going on 9 years who you plan to move in with is a bad idea. especially in high school. as much as a sap as i am… this is probably best left forgotten or ignored until some fateful night in our mid twenties.

5. get real paying not volunteer job 

pinching pennies motion 

6. draw one comic chapter 

7. invite friends over - have party? 

i am a hermit and i need forced socialization exposure therapy 

8. 30+ act score

9. 4+ on ap exams? 

bonus: lose virginity. get strapped. smoke real true honest to god blunt. go to prom and have fun. get vertical medusa pierced. partake in zinefest. write marisol back and be good well behaved penpal. go to therapy? yell at american history teacher. go to chicago and eat good polish food. lose another ten pounds. go to true honest to god high school party and do normal teenager things. get youth radio show in working order and then quit. get drivers license. apply (and get into) nc state or chapel hill. pick major? 

january 10th corinthians 5:6

what do i have on this verdant earth but god? 

who may my body belong to but you? 

life is a constant revival act, reiterating blood and breath

you will spend every day looking for the point in which the loop starts-ends

for that little string upon which you may pull to unravel it all.

mycelium

written for nova october 28th circa 11:40

i am reading 1984 right now, for a banned book club. i’m maybe 50 pages in, but throughout the book, there is this re-enforced idea of love being intrinsically against the party. junior anti-sex league, cryptic wet dreams, poets being killed and what not- love is against the party and creation is against the party unless these things are moderated by the party. i guess love is an act of creation- we are two things developing ourselves by contrasting our own against each-other, creating a third thing in the process, a distinct overlap of you and me, a new personality. i have known you for a very long time, so i feel that “you” have become “we”- and i have become an “our” as well. it is with much hesitance i confess that i toy with the idea of leaving you behind sometimes- new school, new town, cut myself off. i never get farther than two minutes into the fantasy before the nausea of it all takes over and i throw it aside. 

perhaps mycelium is the best way to describe this phenomenon i spoke of. we are spores grown, claimed ground, laced it with “roots” until it became our mycelium, we are connected and therefore distinct (to tie two things together you must know the starts and ends of them), and yet the same thing, or at least inseparable. ten years is not a long time, but it is long enough for the fruiting bodies of you and me to surface everywhere. there is no future in which i can run away from you, is it perhaps selfish to say that this is our world, our planet now? 

electrical currents become thoughts, (may) become words, become spit, become water, become the world. touch becomes skin, becomes skin cell, becomes dust, carried to wind that punctuates that which is not touched (but one might want to touch). these things become the world. the point being, if i were to abandon you (us), you (we) would never be gone, and lord i would know it. after that long, no matter how you try, detachment becomes harmful, to say the least. i’m sorry to say, i  think it would kill me. and what if you were to abandon me? i would still be sorry. there is no foreseeable scenario in which it is not my own responsibility- i curdled artificial brotherhood, compromised what was perhaps a real and true unspoken covenant of family. we like to pretend this is (we are) all blithe. i like to pretend my subconscious can be swallowed, but bile is a humor, so perhaps it is a blithe sort of thing. 

i short circuit right around this part. i want you to be. i want you to briefly separate yourself from the union of us for an opinion not warped. i need to remind myself that you love me regardless, and it scares me because it renders you someone who will lie for the sake of emotional compromise. sometimes it feels like i have spent so much time over the past several years anticipating you hurting me that i want you to hurt me. i want you to be disgusted with me- it is easier to explain and understand than the probable truth of the matter.