february ins and outs

hello.

i’m a bit tardy with this month’s ins and outs list, but nevertheless, i’m sharing it with you today.

the other day i wrote a letter to you about religion, faith, spirituality… god-haunted: faith, martyrdom, and the romanticization of suffering in religion. over the past few months, i’ve found myself wrestling with my faith, something i’ve deliberately kept at arm’s length after years of church gatherings, private religious schools, and god-centered family dinners. i’m not entirely sure what pulled me back into this headspace, but i’ve fallen deep into the rabbit hole. despite all the time i’ve spent in religious spaces, i don’t actually know much about the bible, or even the nuances of my seventh-day adventist and catholic hybrid upbringing.

so many people claim to be religious, attending church every week, yet never truly interrogate what it is they believe in. i’ve always been a skeptic, a pessimist, someone who questions rather than accepts—wired more for science and logic than for faith. but i’m also deeply curious. i want to understand, to be able to have intelligent conversations about god, belief, and spirituality without relying on half-formed notions or distant childhood memories.

this, in some way, feels analogous to life itself—how so many people move through their routines without questioning them, existing rather than truly living. i don’t want to fall into that pattern. and so, as my neurodivergent brain tends to do, i’m obsessing, fixating, pulling at every thread until i find something that makes sense, something that either confirms my doubts or challenges them. until then, i’ll be fully immersed in my gregorian chant-listening, nun-aspiring, sacrilegious reading era—chasing answers before the altar candles burn out.

let’s get into this month’s ins and outs…

february ins

• anais nin

• dionysian hedonism and artistic melancholy

• designated smut time

• peeling fresh fruits for your lover

• hand-written love notes and to-do lists

• old books

• a longing for homoerotic relationships

• goya’s paintings

• moving to a foreign country in an attempt to cure melancholic disposition

• bossa nova jazz

• leaving me alone

• pomegranate poetry

• dreaming about a life as an off-putting librarian

• deep dive reads from internet archives

• haunting your local cafe

• dark chocolate dipped strawberries

• be my valentine, charlie brown

• being a little freak in your bedroom

• a lover i don’t have to love

• sacrilegious video essays on youtube about philosophy

• late-night ice cream treat

• goethe’s erotic love poems

• faye wong

• buying yourself flowers and chocolates

• candlelit baths with a book you’re not ready to finish

• perfume as an extension of self-mythology

• french new wave films about doomed love affairs

• haunting a museum like a ghost of unfulfilled desire

• tragic opera heroines and the men who don’t deserve them

• the thrill of receiving an annotated book from a lover

• slow, sleepy mornings wrapped in linen sheets

• candles and perfumes that smell like a gothic church sanctuary

• half-finished letters left in the margins of your journal

• lingering eye contact in dimly lit rooms

• the poetry of sappho whispered between sips of red wine

• slipping a love note into someone’s coat pocket

• playing with her hair

• intimate dinner parties with close friends

  

february outs

• small talk

• tech bros

• being plagued by concepts

• consuming more than creating

• being a valentine’s day hater

• self-help books and wellness culture

• getting the flu

• the tyranny of the hot girl walk

• overcomplicating pleasure

• treating literature like an academic checklist instead of an experience

  

more valentines day reading for pleasure…

okay that’s all i have for you today.

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i love you.

bye.

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