On Journaling To Be A Basic Ass Main Character (and for your mentals, of course)

Thursdays are my Fridays because weeks are made up anyway.

Like I told y’all last week, the boyfriend and I designate Fridays to do whatever the fuck we wanna do together that isn’t work things.

Hence, Thursday nights feel kind of fun and free.

For the last few years, I would have gymnastics practice at my favorite gym with the best equipment in town.

But sadly, that gym got new owners and they don’t want adults there anymore and it’s been kind of devastating.

Now, Thursdays are lifting days.

Here is a 13 second vlog of my workout.

And as you may have noticed in there ☝️ ...I got some new lifting straps!

My old ones were lost in an apartment flood a while back which is a whole other story for a whole other time that I won’t get into for this post.

But anywayyyyy it’s been years since I’ve even needed to buy a pair and the price and value has gotten so much better than I remember.

I got two identical pairs from Amazon, one for each of my two gym bags, so I’m never caught without.

They’re the SKDK Cotton Hard Pull Wrist Lifting Straps and they were only $10 bucks per pair when I ordered.

They have a nice squishy wrist pad and some kind of rubbery tread in the hand grip part.

10/10 would recommend if you’re looking for simple and sturdy straps that are inexpensive enough that you wouldn’t mind accidentally misplacing them or purposefully repurchasing them when they start to stink 🤮 (which usually comes first for me lol).

Friday we FINALLY tried a breakfast spot we’ve been meaning to get to for ages here in Austin called Bird Bird Biscuit.

It was DELICIOUS and honestly too damn fat of a sandwich for me to finish.

Perfect fuel for a lovely little Costco trip like the basic bitches we are.

Speaking of being basic.... I’m into it.

One of my favorite things about online publishing the last decade is that is allows you to make “art” of the mundane.

There’s no reason simple, predictable, everyday things shouldn’t be special.

If you’re like me and are old enough to remember how much fun it was to get a disposable camera to take it around the park or to your friend’s sleepover, it’s kind of like that.

Like sure, snapping the pics was fun.

But the best part was when your mom would finally drive you to the pharmacy to pick up those 4x6 photo prints so you could go through them all and make a collage for your bedroom wall.

Except now our phones and the internet let us do it every day whenever we feel like it.

We now have the freedom to romanticize tiny ordinary occurrences and solidify them, pick them apart in whatever way we’d like, and publish or share them with the world.

It’s main character energy, but like in a small low budget indie film without too much press or hoopla.

I’ve repeatedly found that making things like this Substack, and creating a highlight reel of your normal days (rather than only waiting until the big “instagrammable” events) has always been a form of gratitude journaling for me.

Last night we also finished watching “Painkiller” on Netflix.

It’s super intense and so fucking sad.

The miniseries is a dramatization of how Oxycontin was formulated, sold, and peddled around the United States with the exclusive aim of creating a fortune despite the devastating addictions and deaths that would knowingly be caused by it.

It’s yet another true story of how the trust fund billionaires get to stay billionaires at the expense of anyone else’s lives or wellbeing.

Unfortunately, no matter how many of these shows get made and seen by the masses, things don’t majorly change because of the exact same reasons these coups are allowed to transpire in the first place.

It only takes a favor or two called in by the right people or politicians and it all just magically takes care of itself, almost always in favor of the large corporations who will profit from it.

Woof lol this newsletter quickly went from extreme appreciation to intense anger real frickin quick!

Ah well. That’s just how the brain was working today.

Both emotions are important. So we’re just gonna go with it.

Thanks for hanging out. Talk to ya soon :)

xoxo,

AV