fresh off a bender
pondering ~who i am~
y’all know this blog drops at 3:30 pm ON THE DOT every week but it’s very fitting that this one is coming late… given that i just wrapped up a whole,,
surprise bender week?!?!
i didn’t sleep more than 6.5 hrs any night, i drank SIX OUT OF SEVEN of the past days, and also ate out every day. i cannot afford to have another week like this anytime soon, physically, spiritually, or financially. i got home pretty late (10pm-midnight) every day and was at the office at 8am for a full day of real work. i’m high key exhausteddddd and don’t know how i contributed any value at work this week. however! i had a LOT of fun being out and about, charging my credit card as though it’s fake money, feeling freeeee and social and in the moment, and eating gooooood food!
if you know me, you know it’s rare for me to eat at restaurants. i don’t really “get dinner” with any regularity. but this week, i ate/drank at:
MZ’s gourmet dinner party (exclusive invite only)
soothr (kinda fancy thai place in LIC)
beer garage (in my former neighborhood <3)
din tai fung (shoutout to my roomie for the employee discount)
kong sihk tong in chinatown
saraghina in bed stuy
dirt candy (shoutout to AT!!) + gather wine bar
the joy of restaurant-ing
it’s really incredible how many amazing restaurants we have in nyc and how much good food there is to eat here. it’s a subculture/world i’m mostly unfamiliar with, save for the occasional grub street diet article SF sends me, but this week, i saw a slim and shimmering sliver of it. i can understand why and how people love restaurant-ing and bopping and trying different places so much!
drinking again
this week monday, when it was 70º and sunny, my entire cellular constitution shifted. i was no longer sad about situationships past; those feelings slipped off me like water off oiled wings. instead, all i wanted was an afternoon beer on a brooklyn sidewalk. so on monday i strolled through park slope, got myself a fancy ice cream, and got an outdoor beer with SF. it was absolutely glorious.
on tuesday, yet again 70º and sunny, i texted all of my unemployed friends at 3:30pm to see who wanted to get a 4:30pm outdoor wine. i realized i only currently have 1 unemployed friend lmao (how things change..!) and she was busy :( so at 4:30 i walked into cafe paulette, a quaint and fort greene park-adjacent bar/restaurant that opens at 5pm, and asked if i could get wine anyway. needing to scurry home to practice for dance before actually going to dance rehearsal, i tipsy-e-biked home, and what a delightful first bike ride of 2026 it was.
i went a lonnnnngggg time (months? years?) only drinking ~1x a month for special occasions. i didn’t feel called to drink much because it makes me tired and disrupts my sleep, and i didn’t want either of those things. this week, though, i did not give a fuck. yes i’m very tired and kind of living in a daze state of being super present because i’m pretty behind on all life admin and super booked, but WHAT. EVER ! it’s SPRING and life is GOOD and being tipsy by myself, on a date, or with friends is supreme. a spontaneous bottle of wine? why not!
i haven’t had a week like this in a looonggggg time, and it’s been aweeesomeeeee, living in this different mode. but truly i’m glad it’s over now. i will now return to my more normal, calm, and orderly life, and i will enjoy it.
before that whole bender happened, i was reflecting on feeling toooooo stable/comfortable, and i wrote the below section. with those feelings as a backdrop, i was primed for the sudden 70º sunny weather to propel me into SPONTANEOUS OUT AND ABOUT mode. it’s funny how my sentiments can change so drastically in just a week.
my friend NY recently remarked that i was “brave” for writing so transparently about my life and reflections. one of the reasons it doesn’t feel particularly soul-bearing for me, and that it doesn’t feel vulnerable or courageous for me to keep this blog the way i do, is because i feel meaningful emotional distance between who i am in any moment and who i was when i wrote the last blog post. at most, the latest post is a week old, but each post is a snapshot summary of some of the ways i was thinking/feeling in the week prior to then. often, i’ll start writing a post on sunday, so by the time it’s published on saturday, the sentiments are already of a week past, and i’m thinking about new/other things now.
anywho, about a week ago, i was ruminating over…
belonging in nyc
lately i’ve been looking at my predictable, stable, and comfortable life in nyc and i’ve been wondering who i’d be if i left it all. while some people around me who are also my age-ish (28), talk about being too old, i feel like i’m too young to have settled into such a life. i really enjoy my life — what i spend my time doing, and everyone in it — but i don’t particularly feel like i’m LIVING to the max.
a week ago, i attended a poetry event that’s part of a weekly series. i hadn’t been to that series before, but the point of it is to discuss poems. there’s allegedly normally ~5+ attendees to this event, but this time, it was just me and one other person. we spoke about poetry a little to start, but we ended up talking about being new yorkers (they also grew up near upper west corner of central park), being travelers, being writers, and our relationships to nature/water. when the time of the event ended, i invited them to join me in getting a sandwich across the street (from a place i loved and was planning on going to on my own anyway), and they accepted. we got our sandwiches and spoke more about letter writing, our high school experiences, our relationships to religion/spirituality, and being queer.
i then had to hurry home to get ready for MZ’s dinner party, but i wonder what would’ve happened if i didn’t. meeting someone out “in the wild” and then spending unnecessarily extended time with them feels like something i would — or could — do a lot more of if i lived in a new city where i didn’t know anyone and had a lot of time and social energy to spend. it was thrilling, willingly extending a hang with a total stranger because i enjoyed their company. that sort of thing just can’t happen if my days are structured around the same places and people as always.
i know in my heart that being 28 is SO YOUNG, and for that reason, i feel like i’m not doing things big or dramatic or interesting enough with all of my youth, energy, and support systems. i soooo SO appreciate the predictability and stability of my life, especially how my life was NOT predictable last year. and at my small birthday celebration, i meant it when i said i’m grateful to know who my friends are in this wacky world. but i wonder how much potential life experiences are not being experienced by this universe’s version of me because i’m set in my ways of being, and set in my ideas of who i consider myself to be.
i tell my friends everything, which i love!!! (seriously, what a blessing to have several people i can and do report the quality of my poops to), but it definitely makes me think twice before being ways that are out of character. i think i’m a little afraid of surprising people by being different than who i’ve been so far, and being so known makes me feel like i live in a container of who others (and i) expect myself to be. i imagine that if i lived in a new place where i knew no one, i’d probably feel more like no one was watching, and i’d probably feel a bit more at liberty to be whoever and HOWever.
it’s not that there’s anything in particular i’m hoping to do or be that i feel like i can’t. my friends have seen me through various career pursuits, hair styles, sexualities, and a trillion hobbies, and i’ve heard the phrase “i support whatever you decide” countless times. i’m ruminating more over the fact that i can’t even know who i’d become “on my own” without fully committing to starting anew. maybe i’d still be exactly the same! i just don’t know, and i’m left wondering.
even in 2022, i left nyc with the intention of returning to a non-nyc place because i wanted to give myself the chance to live without the defaults (city, friends, hobbies) i felt like i’d fallen into by living in nyc. so this nugget of curiosity of who i could be elsewhere isn’t brand new to me, it’s just resurfacing itself these days. after my farming chapter, i ended up landing back in nyc, of course, because i chose wanting to be near friends and family and to continue building relationships with the communities i’d left. every month i pay rent here feels like an active choice to be here in this dirty, loud, abrasive, expensive city, to live among the people, places, and worlds i enjoy belonging to. the largest and loudest thought in my mind is how special it is to have fallen into/developed such a whole, nurturing, and comfortable life. so why would i do anything to jeopardize that? i won’t.
settling into brooklyn
on monday, i visited JL at her home in park slope, my former neighborhood. i had some time to kill, so i strolled from barclays south down 5th ave. on the first WARM day of 2026, sun hitting my un-sunscreened face, i felt thick and almost sick with nostalgia. so much of the scenery was the same, and so much was entirely different. i moved to park slope in fall 2021, which is unbelievably almost 5 years ago. my chapter there was short, only 12 months, but walking down 5th ave, i was struck with so much emotion.
in many ways, i feel like not much about my life has changed since then. i live in a different neighborhood now, but my 2 biggest hobbies are still farming and writing. back then, i had a stint in a ceramics class, and right now, i’m in my dancing stint. being a big sister was a big part of that year for me, and it’s still a key part of my life. socially, i hang out w a lot of the same people, even though that’s also when i started making new friends.
of course, many things have changed since 2021: i was wayyyy more social then, but i also spent more intentional time by myself. it was a priority to me — that came naturally to me — to volunteer in different settings, walk through neighboring areas aimlessly, and explore what park slope/brooklyn was. now, i feel like i’ve reached a healthier and more sustainable degree of being social, but i’m not starry-eyed about this neighborhood or borough anymore, and i don’t explore new areas. i’ve just grown increasingly familiar and comfortable with this section of brooklyn i’ve lived in for 3 years.
i do believe that consistency and longevity reap greater rewards over time, like an exponential curve. for that reason — and for loving the constellation of my current life — i want to stay right here. i love that many places and people are so familiar, and it’s a helpful antidote to the time scarcity mindset to realize that i can be present in spaces and leave them and return to them whenever i want because i’m here for a long time.
but at the same time, i’ve never really lived anywhere else besides ny, and i’ve totally become the new yorker who won’t leave new york because they love it here. i feel like pippin, choosing the “ordinary” / simple life over one that’s big and bold and noteworthy. and so i think, did i already “settle” into this comfortable ordinary life at the ripe young age of 28?!? am i letting pass by the years i can afford to be most chaotic, risky, promiscuous, and daring??
this past bender week was perhaps a perfectly timed reminder that even in the same place, i can live in a different mode. i can pivot from very sober me into someone who drinks — 9 drinks in 7 days?! — and it’s totally fine. i like thinking that i can try on every version of me that i want to within this comfortable container of my normal life.
cutie pi(e) party
my coworker 2 weeks ago mentioned how she’d had a pi(e) party last year (for pi day, 3/14). i wanted to experience one, so i hosted it! we had 6 pies: 3 sweet and 3 savory, and it felt like a perfect celebration to the start of spring. i’m grateful to have friends who are so good at baking, and to be able to casually host 18 people. literally everyone is a cutie pie and i’ll take any excuse to share good food with neighbors.
how are you enjoying the start of spring? who do you think you’d be if you moved to a totally new place? how are you feeling old/young at your age?
XOXO, sue