metamodernity?

a personal blog.

[metamundanity]

A Personal Rumination

I feel as though I've lost myself. Since almost a year ago, really. The only time I really feel like a person lately is when I'm high, staring out the window, listening to lo-fi, house music, or the soundtracks to The Witcher 3, Skyrim, and Lord of the Rings.

[metamundanity]

Fast Cars and Slow Progress

I put the professional out of my mind for a time. I won't talk about what happened when I thought about him again, or when I found out that he got promoted to a higher level role within his organization. I think I was a bit hopeful when I said "I truly believe that when I see him again in the future, I will either feel rage or nothing." I'm certain I'll freak out when I see him again. Maybe it'll be internal, maybe I'll just freeze. But, wow. With some distance.... That man made some phenomenally stupid decisions. I have to believe they were stupid, and not malicious. I hope that when he works with the public he's smarter than he was with me.

I don't want to talk about him anymore, though. I don't really want to talk about him ever again.

I do want to talk about what's gotten me through the past half a year: motorsports.

As I said in my last post, I got really into F1. Over the winter break, I focused in on other series that were racing. A lil MotoGP, WRC, IndyCar, etc. What's really gotten me is the Road to Indy. The USF Juniors races are streamed live for free on YouTube, I like the commentator, and the first race at St. Petersburg was delightfully chaotic from what I remember. These American races are way more accessible to me than F1 will ever be, so it's fun to plan for potentially attending a race in the future.

I've also been slowly watching through the 2008 season. I've started a race journal in Notion so I can keep track of which previous races I've watched. I write down the date of the race, the name of the GP, its location, the date I watched it, my review (with lil emojis to go with it), my driver of the day, who was on the podium, and some notes about the race — DNFs, DNSes, DSQs, sprints, etc. I also have these columns:

That's how I track how I've watched the races. Yes, it's a little crazy and obsessive. That's who I am, I suppose!

I've been watching Drive to Survive as well. I don't take it seriously, but it's a fun time. I've never been into reality TV, but DTS is what got me into F1. I put it on as background noise and then found out I actually love racing. So, of course, I abandoned the show after about half a season and spent all my time learning about the sport through reading articles and watching F1 YouTube. I've been trying to establish a bit of a routine though, so I spend the day trying to work and in the evening I put on an episode of DTS before I sleep. At least, that's the goal. The reality is... not exactly that.

I mean, I did exactly that for a few days. There's always something that derails me though.

I have one major chapter left of my thesis to write and two smaller sections, as well as edits. I was supposed to get it all done almost a month ago.

This is killing me, spiritually. I'm not quite sure how to get through it. I just have to.... Which has never been good motivation for me.

Every day is a new day. Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow has to be better.

To leave this off on a light note, and because I physically cannot handle talking about my thesis at the moment, I'll drop my spring 2026 playlist.

I'm So Bored - Sarah and the Sundays

Kilby Girl - The Backseat Lovers

Your Blood - AURORA

Beware of Darkness - George Harrison

Does He Love You? - Rilo Kiley

Starvation - AURORA

The Winner Takes It All - ABBA

Dissolve - Absofacto & NITESHIFT

The Less I Know The Better - Tame Impala

The Hand - Anabelle Dinda

It Is What It Is - Rachel Chinouriri

Two Halves - Richard Dawson

Love Me Not - Ravyn Lenae

Fils de joie - Stromae

Faster - George Harrison

Candy - Kate Bollinger

What You Want - Angèle & Justice

Vienna - Billy Joel

Tant pis pour elle - Charlotte Cardin

Sweet Hallelujah - Royel Otis

Disco - Surf Curse

Hell N Back - Bakar

Don't Let Me Down - The Beatles

Come on Mess Me Up - Cub Sport

drop dead - Olivia Rodrigo

#7, #9, #15, and #24 are all related to F1 in some way. 7 and 9 were in a lot of edits that I saw, so they got stuck in my head. 15 is a song about Formula One. I saw someone online say that 24 reminded them of Lando Norris.

#1, #2, #19, and #24 have absolutely been my shit recently.

#10, The Hand, was real big last season. I didn't like it, but then I heard a clip of Dinda singing it live and it suddenly clicked. I listened to it probably a dozen times within a few days after that.

I was really into #11 and #12 last spring and when memories started appearing in my apps of me listening to them, it reignited my love. Into the playlist they went! #5, #14, #16, and #22 are other previous major loves.

#19, #20, and #21 are all recent discoveries just from poking around on YouTube, in playlists, and other places online.

#13 and #25 are from my boyfriend. Surprisingly, he adopted #2. He likes the line about nose rings.

A lil image to say goodbye.

P.S.

I want to call out some songs that I added to my winter playlist after my last post and which absolutely dominated the season for me:

The Chain - Fleetwood Mac

back to friends - sombr

DtMF - Bad Bunny

Brazil - Declan McKenna (!!!)

High Tide (Demo) - Sarah and the Sundays

Silver Springs - Fleetwood Mac

P.P.S.

I really appreciated this article by Valtteri Bottas. As a warning, he talks about developing an eating disorder. Proceed with caution, but I recommend reading it.

[metamundanity]

Lately...

My last post was a letter to the professional, who I have now spoken to. The conversation was infuriating and I'm so glad it happened. I haven't felt the need to think about him again, and I truly believe that when I see him again in the future, I will either feel rage or nothing.

I'm not an angry person generally, but I welcome the emotion in this instance. It's so much better than the pain and the fear. I am happy to be furious with him. Giving myself permission to be mad, to be rude, to be flippant, is fucking brilliant.

I didn't read my letter back beforehand and I'm quite glad for that. I forgot some details by the time I spoke to him and I think I wouldn't have been able to be as neutral as I was during the conversation if I had remembered how much of a fucking creep he was.

He spoke about himself a lot. He's clearly afraid of losing his job. I don't think he did anything that warrants him being fired - if his boss decides he did, that's up to them. I'm done with this now, unless my professional organization asks more of me (maybe).

I'm moving on.

To intense stress.

I switched my thesis topic and I'm still struggling with it. I've had other things going on, though. I'm trying to enjoy being alive as much as possible whilst being holed up in my room and anxious as all hell.

Things I've been enjoying lately:

Formula 1 and other motorsports

GTA Online

Fiction writing

Heated Rivalry

Music & dancing.

Formula 1 is the new hyperfixation I mentioned in my previous post. It's absolutely taken over my being. I love it. There's this thing in the F1 fandom where people say, "You don't choose your driver, your driver chooses you." It appears I've been chosen by Oscar Piastri (and Lando Norris). I think I'm a bit too much like Lando to be really chosen by him. Honestly! I've noticed that my mannerisms reflect his, and these aren't things I've picked up from him. It's just how I've always been. I do love him, though. He reminds me of an elf. And I'm a self-declared McLaren girlie (gender neutral), so I was ecstatic at their WCC and Lando's WDC. I also have an intense soft spot for Charles Leclerc. There's no one of the grid that I dislike, honestly. And I am SO excited for Valtteri Bottas to return.

I just love the racing. My god, it's fucking beautiful. It's so much fun. I consider myself a bit of a luddite, almost. I yearn for spaces free from electronics and lit exclusively by firelight. F1 has changed me, though. I'm way more excited now by technological innovation and the aesthetics are sick as shit.

I could easily wax poetic for 5,000 words about how much I love F1, but that's not what this post is about.

This post is also about GTA Online. :)

I've been really enjoying playing lately. I played a lot at the beginning of this year with one of my friends, but he's been too busy, so I've been playing in public lobbies and making friends. It's super fun being able to recognize people just around the game. Like, "Hey, sup." We're all rich and fuckin' around. Truly, GTA Online is a life sim that's just missing some life sim features. I've spent hours hanging around in people's mansions, just lounging by the pool and dancing. It's goofy as shit, but it's fun.

I've actually been thinking about why it's so fun to literally do nothing with strangers in GTA Online, and I think it's because it's easy to approach others in the game. Sure, they may merk you, but you're still having a spontaneous interaction with a stranger. I think we're missing a lot of that in real life now. I had an interaction with a stranger buying hundreds of dollars of cheese at the grocery store the other day and it's been on my mind on and off since. It was so nice to have that brief moment of human connection. It's not the same in GTAO, but it's similar.

On fiction writing: I write for myself. Inspired by my recent motorsports fixation, I've been writing a story which I described to a GTA friend as such: "this one is about a dude who is a witch and also a race car driver whose teammate crashes and then disappears in the hospital. the witch is then haunted by his teammate. kind of like a queer practical magic except the guy haunting my witch is not a bad dude?" It's very fun. I've enjoyed developing the witch's practice, and I generally enjoy urban fantasy (which I think this fits under?). At least, as a concept. I don't actually read much (or any) urban fantasy. Anyway, I don't start any writing project with the plan of finishing it. The process is fun enough for me.

On Heated Rivalry: I don't remember how I heard about this show. I hadn't heard of the book. I watched the first two episodes, though, and I was hooked. It's basically fanfiction, and I admittedly have been a fanfic reader for over a decade. I think it's fun! And I honestly think that explicit queer sex is still a pretty revolutionary concept on TV, especially given recent trends of queer media (in that its presence is diminishing). I do wish there was a bit more focus on the hockey. Not because I like hockey, but because I feel like that's where the plot is happening sometimes.

On music & dancing: I recently started last in a race in GTA with some friends because I had gotten up from my desk to dance and I was so distracted. Somehow, though, I won? I don't know, they were struggling. I also started making seasonal playlists this year. I did that back near the start of the decade, but I stopped being into it for a bit. I'm into it again! I'm really enjoying having this shortlist of songs that are the soundtrack of my life at the moment, and I know I'm going to enjoy when I put them on. Here's my winter 2026 playlist so far:

Year-Long Winter - Johnny Flynn & Robert Macfarlane

If You Know Me - Hudson Freeman

First Light - Hozier

Wild Vines - Mother Sun

Coyote - Dylan LeBlanc

Insomnia - Keaton Henson

C'est toi - Satine

I'll Believe In Anything - Wolf Parade

Operator - Keaton Henson

Francesca - Hozier

Slow Sun - Aukai & Richard Houghten

Lost - Frank Ocean

Almost Gone - My Terrible Friend

#4 was poached from Valtteri Bottas's IG story. His life looks sick. He just hangs around with his girlfriend, goes on bike rides with her, and eats good food.

#7 and #8 are from Heated Rivalry. Whoever is picking the tunes for that show has taste!

My favorite thing right now is textpost memes that I find on Pinterest. For example:

They bring me joy.

I am in so deep with F1. It's great. I regret absolutely nothing.

Merry Christmas. <3

[metamundanity]

Things Get Worse...

When I was at an academic event recently, something happened between me and a professional. I was drunk, and I think he wanted to take advantage of that. I was very scared and very alone and very trapped (even if that wasn't his intention). I've been in situations like that before which have gone worse, but this one is truly causing me to struggle.

I don't want to engage with my work at all. I struggle to go to class. I'm having a difficult time maintaining connections with people in my field outside of my university (and haven't been doing well reaching out to my friends). I've thrown myself into a new hyperfixation as a distraction. I'm not sleeping enough. I'm not eating enough.

I'm in the process of setting up a conversation between myself and this professional. I don't know what I want to get out of it. I have no idea how it'll go. I want him to tell me his thought process that night. There are so many things I want to say to him.

To the professional:

Why did you not say, "I'm going to go get something, I'll be back in a minute?" Why bring me with you instead, and then point out that it was "weird" (your word, not mine) that I actually went with you to a private space?

Could you tell how drunk I was? I've heard that you saw that I was "uncomfortable" once we were alone. Did you see discomfort, or did you see fear? Why did you not say, "This situation has gotten out of hand, let's go back to the others?"

What did you want from me?

Why was I there?

You know, I'm not sure if he even knows, but my relationship with my boyfriend has suffered since this happened. He doesn't know the whole story yet, because the idea of explaining it to him terrifies me. It exhausts me just thinking about it. I've only seen him a couple times since this happened, and we haven't been speaking much. He may or may not have noticed me pulling away. I haven't given him the chance to talk to me about it. I shut him down when he asks about you.

Why did you insist to me that you were safe for me to be around? You have sisters, you'd never hurt me. Why did you saying that make me feel that much more unsafe?

Why do I feel like I have to take on the burden of your potential feelings about the fallout of this situation? I know we both know that people in our field have heard about it. I feel guilt over the fact that this situation may be stressing you out (if you ever think about it - which you may not). Genuinely, I fear that you're just a big fucking idiot and you truly meant absolutely nothing by getting me alone, and I'm overreacting and putting blame and guilt onto you that you don't deserve.

But I also don't believe you're that dumb, even though I don't know you. I can't imagine that a grown adult wouldn't know better than to invite a drunk grad student to be alone with them. Sure, I'm a grown adult as well, so maybe I should've been the one to know better. But I wouldn't do what you did. I wouldn't bring a drunk grad student somewhere alone, whatever the intentions. If we were peers, maybe. Probably not. If we were close friends, sure, we can hang out and drink more. We, however, are not peers and were barely more than strangers. We hadn't interacted until that night. I may have had a lot to drink, but I don't think we spoke for more than 10 minutes, and that's a very generous assumption.

Did you think... that I wanted you? Did I do that?

What happened that night and why did it scare me so fucking bad?

I had a fleeting thought recently. I've only told one person this. I was considering this situation and the next steps forward and I thought, "I wish I had been more oblivious, that I hadn't noticed all the signals and that something had actually happened. Just so I could report it and have a clear path forward and a way to fucking move on." I wish I didn't have to worry about talking to you. I wish I never had to fear seeing you again. I wish that I didn't feel like the only path forward is straight fucking through, talking directly to you, so we - so I - can move past this. I know how to ignore, and I know how to move on from an assault. I'm fucking lost in this situation. When I think about it too much, I drown.

I can't tell the world you're something that you're not, and so I have to figure out how to live with this, or give up everything else that I love about our field. I am fighting right now not to lose what I love.

I hate that you've done this to me.

[metamundanity]

Is This Failure?

I made the decision today that I'm going to extend my thesis timeline. I can't do the work that I need to do to the quality that it deserves in the time I have left this semester. I honestly have no reflections on this right now. It is what it is.

[metamundanity]

Zeus Made Me Cry, but I Love Him Anyway

Most days, I love when the weather is gloomy. Waking up to a cloudy sky — especially if there is fog — is exhilarating. Some days, though, it's oppressive.

Today is one of those days when I look out the window and think, if it were sunny, I could probably be a little happier. If I could see blue sky, I might not feel so trapped.

What I love most about gloomy days is how insulated I feel. Walking to class, to work, to take the train, it can feel like you're in a video game. The tops of buildings are hidden in the fog, like there's not enough memory to load them in. In a video game, you get to make choices, but there are no real consequences. There's freedom.

What freaks me out about gloomy days is how cornered I feel. Sometimes I need to see the sky and the sun and the moon to remind myself that I am real, I'm not a character in a game. There is a world beyond my home, a world beyond the few places I've visited and fewer places I frequent. I exist beyond my body, I affect the people and the environment around me, and it's okay that I do.

[metamundanity]

Grad School Woes

I'm in what is supposed to be my last semester of grad school. Less than three months to a master's degree. And yet, all the motivation that should provide me is entirely nonexistent. My burnout is so thorough that I can't write a three page thesis proposal.

I so badly miss the days where I could just push through. I haven't had a spark of motivation in weeks. The state of the country, world, and job market is not helping at all. I often feel utterly devastated. What is the point of doing my work, when, in better times, one could hope to get a decent job in my field ten years after graduation? Our funding is gone now. What place is there for an upcoming or recent grad from a program that doesn't get the recognition (I believe) it deserves from those in the field? I simply can't be excited about my academic work anymore when it feels entirely useless.

I say this as someone who has long believed that nearly all academic endeavors are useful in some capacity. Learning is always beneficial to the individual and, hopefully, by extension, their community. When facing the reality of finally being out in the "real world," it seems I've finally lost faith. Not in academia, knowledge, or learning. I've lost faith that conviction and community is enough. What value can my knowledge bring to a field that is facing ideological attacks and bleeding funding and that I likely won't even be able to professionally contribute to for years? Will I go through five years of schooling just to end up working as a cashier again? Will I be overqualified for a cashier position, ill-qualified for a managerial position, under-qualified for a corporate job?

Maybe my lack of motivation stems from the fact that if I don't finish my degree, I don't have to face the job market. I don't believe that, though. I've wanted nothing more than to obtain this degree for years, dedicated entirely to my studies. Hopelessness, that's what got me in the end.