#237 - Final Times & Finding Rhymes Ring One More Chime for the 25 Days of Smokemas Day Twenty-Five | We Made It
or: the title of this is taken from a ten second sitcom jingle on an episode of 30 Rock
It was a very silly idea to write 25 blogs in 25 days.
But, like any wild deadline I set for myself I was determined to hit it. And I did.
I should probably start using my powers for good. Or more like financial gain.
But that’s not what life is about babeeeey! Art can be made to exchange nothing more than ideas!!!
I love art.
I love engaging with art. I love having an understanding of what the artist wants me to take away once I’ve already developed my own reaction and then I get to compare the intent and personal impact.
I love reading poetry and gaining a new understanding of life with so few words.
Words that I’ve seen before, but have never been arranged just so.
Color combinations and brush strokes that evoke emotions I didn’t even know I had.
I hate that art is now referred to as “content”.
I wish we were more specific in our language overall.
It’s been good to have this constant, this semi-comical crusade to anchor each day with.
Rarely have I known what I intended to write before I sat down. Despite all of the years of practice, it’s still exposing to send thoughts out instead of just keeping them findable.
For years I’ve wanted to be discovered. I guess it felt more poetic and less…showboaty. I wasn’t demanding to be seen, I was creating in the corner and waiting to be found.
There was something in me that was desperate to create. There still is. I’m never exactly sure how to market myself, really.
Sometimes I think I say things in such definitive tones that it leaves little room for interpretation or questions. I don’t mean to. Just comes out that way.
This month has been weirdly difficult. A lot happened that I didn’t expect. I went to a play that was great and then spent days feeling a particular kind of melancholy for the futures that women through the ages have lost.
There’s been a looming shift coming in the way I approach work and it’s here and I feel underprepared for the moment. After all of these months I still wake up and feel like I’m winging it. Maybe the performance is convincing but it feels hollow to me.
I went viral on TikTok for a random take on Taylor Swift that I spouted off at 3am after finishing two essays in one night. As of right now 803,000 people have seen it. The possibility of something like that happening is always present but the reality of it has been strange.
The perception of myself isn’t something I’ve been overly concerned with. The scale of this one video feels simultaneously enormous and therefore no longer real.
Because it’s not. No one who watched that video knows me. I don’t even agree with half the shit I said in it! It’s only up because now there are screen recordings of it floating around in other videos because fans have taken offense to what I’ve said and are scolding me for being parasocial and there’s some part of me that thinks keeping the original intact video will allow people to make up their own minds should they choose to seek it out.
It’s wedged in there between 7,000 takes about Gilmore Girls. (I’ve been discussing the drug mentions on GG the last few days—lotsa pills floating around in purses in the early 2000’s!!!) (Logan and his friends make a lot more sense when they’re on copious amount of cocaine!)
It doesn’t matter that I know I don’t have parasocial tendencies towards Taylor Swift. (There is only one famous person I’ve ever felt remotely parasocial about and that’s Suga from BTS and when I had a very close-friends style thought cross my mind about him one time and it freaked me out.) It doesn’t even really matter what random strangers on the internet think because they’re never going to have the full picture. So it’s judgement of such a figment of time. A moment of inflammatory expression.
I’m speaking in wildly confident tones about information I know very little about in reality. Story of my life in many ways, tbh.
(Also, based on the comments, people seem to think it’s hard or difficult in some way to…have thoughts. I’m being accused of being obsessed and like, there are things I’m obsessed with but I promise The 1975 is not one of them. Couldn’t match a single song babes!! One time someone put them on at karaoke and the entire bar went silent and that’s my only experience with their music!)
I used to think I had to lose weight in order to start living my life and it’s been really great to find out that’s not true. It turns out that people can find me funny while I’m fat. I have had to reckon with what I’m willing to say about my body on stage, but that’s been easy too.
I refuse to make fun of myself to make the audience feel “at ease” with how I look. It’s mostly gone fine! Existing as a fat person sometimes does feel like living in some approximation of a meritocracy.
They may not want to think of me as a person but if I’m funny enough, they have to.
There was a tweet that went viral (that I now can’t find) about how the best holiday movies capture the melancholy that comes with the season.
I think that’s why New Years Parties always feel so high stakes. We bring expectations—even when we don’t mean to. These days hold so much meaning and magic.
This year I mostly just felt tired.
A bit wrung out, really.
Maybe that’s because I’ve been staying up to write for the past 25 days. Maybe it’s because I’ve found it harder than ever to be vulnerable this year.
I’ve been hoping that if I look like I have it together I’ll be closer to actually having it together.
It’s difficult to change your habits and shift your mindset. Turns out going after your dreams and actually really caring about the outcomes of your actions makes everything in life feel weirdly high-stakes which in turn makes nothing feel real and then, all of a sudden, we’re having fun at the mic again.
Leadership is mostly the art of believing in your ability to make decisions that will benefit the most amount of people.
Turns out, the latter half of that statement doesn’t even need to be true.
Someone’s got to make the plan. Someone’s got to decide.
Why not me?
That’s been the motto this year.
Why not me?
Why not me?
The ramifications of gaining a modicum of self-esteem feel so overwhelming and drastic it’s all I can do sometimes to hang on through the wave of grief that passes over me. All the missed opportunities that weren’t really even mine to begin with.
I’m trying to remember to stay in the now. That I wouldn’t have been capable of doing this before. The comments about the color of my teeth would have sent me cowering in years past but now receive a block online and little lingering impact seems to have been felt.
I think my favorite “mean” comment was “do you have hobbies?” because like, yeah! I do! Talking about celebrity culture might be one of them though!!
It’s not what this commenter was looking for but I almost answered sincerely.
My hobbies include:
writing jokes
performing stand up
watching movies
reading books
making my friends laugh
smoking weed
playing with my cats
wandering around new york and taking pictures
thrifting jackets & ralph lauren sweaters
watercolors
writing personal essays
writing about pop culture
going to plays & musicals
cooking & eating delicious food
researching random historical events and finding all the ties to what’s happening today
talking about Gilmore Girls for hours on end apparently
I miss podcasting. I miss talking to some of the people who were in my life who are no longer in my life. I miss traveling more often and having more of a disposable income to provide opportunities to do fun events and go cool places for myself and others.
It’s all going to change again. If there’s one thing I’m taking away from this year (have I already said that?) it’s that nothing is static. Life has no guarantees of time.
Evolution is the only thing that’s actually inevitable.
Sometimes when we track things day-by-day we lose sight of the bigger picture. I don’t know how I’ve developed over the last 25 days but I do think that it was a kind thing to prove to myself that I really can do anything that I set my mind to.
Especially when it comes to writing.
I now want to find out how many words I’ve written this month including these words so far so I’m going to do that now! Not including titles because I’m lazy!!
Word count so far: 33,229.
That’s like more than half a book. Look at what’s possible when we make ourselves show up every single day despite mood!! It’s about frequency over consistency, but sometimes when you’re frequency is high enough, you’ll end up being consistent anyway.
This essay feels messy. But in an honest way. So I think I’m going to keep it and send it as is. If nothing else, as a Christmas Present to myself.
And with that, the 2025 Smokemas Sessions come to a close.
(I CAN’T BELIEVE I HADN’T THOUGHT OF “SMOKEMAS SESSION” UNTIL NOW!!!)
If you’re still reading, if you’ve read any or all of these, thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my heart. Writing without anyone reading is typing into the void and while I would have done that, it means so much more when others join in.
I hope everyone had a wonderful first 25 days of December and get’s to finish out the year with joy and laughter.
I love ya!
Claire 🩵