Another non-li.st list about my day. I want to write more in this High Mom Diary, but I’m feeling lazy, so, without further ado, here are some thoughts/insights/experiences/etc. from my Tuesday:

I had a stoned epiphany tonight about Enrique and beauty.

Funny thing happened today. Well, I guess it technically happened at Ms. Mahogany’s baby shower last Friday, but the funny part happened today.

Enrique had taken a bunch of photos of the work crew at the shower, which was especially lovely because, per the success of my office coup, we’re moving offices sometime this week. So while this means saying goodbye to people we love and genuinely care for, for me, it also means closure with my high school nemesis. To be honest, I was quite surprised when she showed up to the baby shower because (1) she doesn’t know Ms. Mahogany, and (2)  she hates me. But no, she walked in, sauntered passed me, and in a moment caught in the lens of Enrique’s camera, my face reflected my bemusement.

“You look slightly unhinged,” he told me this morning, as we sorted through the album he had posted on the shared drive. I couldn’t stop laughing at my eyes, my smirk, the unfiltered expression of a woman with a lot of petty thoughts on her mind. I later emailed the photo of my face and the sole picture of Anaid to Mr. D, with the note, “Enrique says he loves how I’m slightly unhinged in the first photo, but it’s only because my nemesis walked right past! She smiles for him though…” Mr. D didn’t respond, but Enrique followed up with a close-up shot of Anaid and one line: “THAT’S a smile???!!!”

God, I wish I had Mark Bowden‘s gift of description. Or Enrique’s casually cruel candor. The Kelly Kapowski of my high school… no longer looks like Kelly Kapowski. She looks overweight and feral. The combination of her face and his caption had me laughing so hard a coworker had to shut her door. I’m not doing a good enough job explaining the hilarity of it, so I’ll update this post later with an addendum from Enrique. (Speaking of whom, Enrique is the funniest person I know. One of my favorite images is of him, on his next job interview, being asked why he was terminated from his last position. He deadpans, “I was named a recurring character in a marijuana blog.” He is totally complicit in my blog, in case Ivanka’s reading and needs help understanding the word).

Anyway, it was hilarious, and I brought it up with Mr. D tonight. He called Enrique’s email mean, which always makes me wonder if he ever fucked Anaid, which I know he didn’t, although I could see how he could have wanted to, because there was once a time when she was Kelly Kapowski hot. But anyway, I told him how I couldn’t stop laughing, and I asked if my Facebook post was petty. (The same photo of me, after Anaid sauntered past, her body turned away, face hidden from the camera, along with the caption: “That face you make when your nemesis walks by,” and customized  mood: “feeling slightly unhinged, but in a harmless and friendly way.”)

Ms. Mahogany saw the post and reprimanded me online, writing my name in caps locks, followed by an exclamation mark. My high school BFF wrote: “You’re bad” with two unhinged slanty-face emojis and one “laughing in tears” emoji. I responded to my high school friend–but more broadly, to everyone looking at the post–with my meager justification: “The question literally haunted my dreams! For years, I’d wake up in the middle of the night and ask Mr. D why this person hated me, and even today, I have no answers. But I harbor no ill will! Just some slightly unhinged curiosity…”

I wanted to talk about Anaid tonight, but Mr. D was not trying to entertain me. He called her photo “unfortunate,” and I agreed but added, “Enrique just has a gift for taking truly awful photos of people.” To be fair, he also takes some great ones; he just has a knack for capturing reality’s stark ugliness. It’s a skill that suits a man who says “We’re all doomed” when reading the news.

Enrique is like an Asian tourist with his camera. For instance, we celebrated our first magazine by taking the day off and getting stoned at the Reading Terminal Market. After devouring Dienner’s roast chicken and contemplating the universe, we pottered around the various markets until his bulky camera bag almost knocked over a tray of overpriced essential oils.

Anyway, Enrique captures people at their most repulsive. There’s a photo of me from the last month’s conference looking like a woman who just farted herself into an orgasm. The only thing more embarrassing than my three chins is the fact that nothing in the keynote was worthy of such laughter.

I digress. Now I’m writing drunk. Testing out some Ernest Hemingway shit. What was I writing about? Enrique as a photographer? He took a brutally horrific photo of the Duck from the baby shower, and it was so bad I felt guilty for making fun of it.

I started thinking of beauty tonight. Of thoughts I’ve had since I began writing an essay (still unpublished) about race, gender, skin color, frenemies, interracial couples, Jordan Peele’s Get Out, and some other scattered but somehow interconnected thoughts. I discussed some of them with Mr. D’s Jamaican-Indian-Chinese friend, who made a particularly insightful comment about race and identity, in which he said he never thought of himself as Black until college, when he realized other people perceived him as such, and then questioned whether that knowledge changed his perception of himself.

I thought about Beyoncé‘s undeniable beauty and wished she had kept it real and unapologetic with her Buzzfeed pictures.

When Enrique and I drove to the conference in Baltimore, I asked him if he thought women eschewed intellectual pursuits to focus on superficial endeavors. His response? “Beauty is easy power.”

Is that why I want to be beautiful?

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Nothing especially witchy happened last night, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a witch. I mean, I might not be a witch, but I don’t think it depends solely on yesterday. I feel like the witchyness emerges on more than a single day. Or maybe all women are born witches and they just choose to embrace their powers at 33. I haven’t really thought the theory through.

Also, I think it’s good to acknowledge here that I’m being fa·ce·tious. (Copied straight from a Google search, hence the dots). I can never remember how to spell facetious or what it means, but it’s defined as “treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor; flippant.” Turning into a witch is not generally considered a serious issue, so perhaps there’s another word I should be using. I’m not sure. I’m high.

There’s definitely a correlation between the witch thing and the weed thing. I feel like I connect on a deeper level with the universe and everything in it when I’m high. I also feel like I’ve been turning into more of a pothead lately, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Enrique and I were conversing over a bowl the other day when I asked if there was an acceptable frequency for getting fucked up. “One-third of your free time,” he said after a minute. “Well, if you find yourself getting fucked up for more than a third of your free time, then it probably controls you more than you control it.”

Thirty three. Point three.

Drugs are a powerful force in the universe, and they scare me. Everything in moderation, Mr. D’s dad used to tell him, but he was speaking broadly.

I interviewed Mr. D’s uncle back in December because I wanted to write about his father. That was going to be my Christmas present to him, but I never wrote it. I’ve had so many things I’ve wanted to write, but I haven’t. How Simon and Garfunkle’s Concert in Central Park serves as the soundtrack to my immigrant childhood. My next project at work. Is it simple enough to say I’m scared of falling short? Is that even the answer? I don’t know. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

Enrique and I were stoned and paging through magazines the other day when we decided that the best writing is subtle. It’s pulls you in slowly, seductively, so smoothly you don’t even realize how deep you’re in. Writing takes you on a strange trip to the faraway places of other people’s brains. How wild is that?

Writing is my favorite drug. Maybe that’s the anxiety I feel. That I’m not doing it enough. Dan Jones, the editor of the New York Times Modern Love column, says writing is about discovering what you don’t know, not showing what you do.

I don’t know enough to be a witch. But I know that I’m grateful, that not a single day goes by where I don’t thank the universe for my girls, for Mr. D, for my parents, my job, my health, and my life. Nothing magical happened on my birthday, except for the fact that I spent it with people I love. There’s no force in the universe more powerful than that.

I’m taking a stab at high writing, though it’s hard to tell how high I am or how good the writing will be. I hit the bowl before putting the kids to bed, and now I’m trying to make sense of all the thoughts I had throughout the day. I know there were a few good ones in there…

When I’m high, I often find myself taking the same walks in my brain, down the same, familiar paths. Like, Oh, I’ve been here before. I know this place. The insecurities, the desires, the feelings of Anxiety and Gratitude and Contemplation, emerging like old friends from the murky shadows of my mind. Is this my religion, I wonder? I think about religion a lot when I’m high.

I met an expert in religious studies today. I’ll call him the Fox. He is shortish, with a slight paunch and an inscrutable expression. His Intro to World Religions course is one of the most popular university courses, but never once in his 27-year tenure has he divulged his personal beliefs. Then again, he doesn’t really believe in beliefs. He’s an open-minded skeptic who thinks faith is a cop-out. He’s not very interested in organized religion and prefers the sacred texts of thousands of years ago. The Secrets of the Universe. Man-made (“Because if God did it, you’d think it would be a little clearer.”). Ancient man, with ancient scrolls and ancient methods of communication, indecipherable to a Google search, so complex and esoteric that my head hurt hearing him explain how to read Buddhist poems.

The Fox doesn’t share secrets with the lazy. He wants his students to unlock the mysteries for themselves. To read. Original sources, preferably. To learn how to argue, reason, critique, and think. He’s paranoid of a conspiracy to “dumb down our kids.” People are all too eager to be told what to think, and it terrifies him. After all, stupid people are easier to control.

The Fox loves the subversion of teaching critical thinking through religion. “It’s like taking a 2-by-4 to the head,” he says, “because religion is the one thing you’re taught not to question.”

So what exactly is religion? He defined it as the connections we make to things larger than ourselves. He couldn’t define God. The problem, he said, is people think they can.

I told the Fox that I grew up without religion, but that I wish I better understood my Hindu roots, and that I think about religion more, now that I am a parent. “That often happens,” he said.

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Remember when Christine O’Donnell went on national TV to say that? Why be so ashamed, Christine?! Embrace that shit!!

Except, of course, you spouted Tea Party nonsense, and I’m digressing completely. I might be high.  Maybe I should do more high writing. Although I’m hesitant to, because parts of my brain sometimes move too fast for other parts to keep up. Like Writer Me and Stoner Me can’t get along.

Gah! See, right there. I’m high writing my thoughts. My dad told me today that my style of writing was “too conversational,” and I thought, “Whatever. It’s still good.” I get my arrogance from him.

But anyway…

Today. What a day. I think it was the Universe maybe rewarding me? I think Spiderman’s prophecy may have just come true. I’m still kinda like, whoa, wow, holy shit. In a good way.

All this time, I thought that if I worked really hard and poured my time and attention into the blog, then I’d get rewarded with an essay in the New York Times and  book deals in my inbox. As if that’s all it took. I was hustling without knowing the first thing about the hustle.

The hustle starts with humility. If you want to be great, it begins by knowing that you aren’t, that greatness isn’t a state of being, but an existence that looms forever out of reach. The hustle is in rejection. It’s the job you thought you landed but didn’t get. It’s the “thanks, but no thanks” from the Times. It’s the 12-page project you completed overnight–the one that sat on your boss’ desk, unread, for weeks, as your dog died of cancer–only to be told that you never met a deadline in your performance appraisal the following year.

The hustle is nothing without the heart. The heart is honor and compassion and gratitude and kindness and all the good you aspire to be, even when you fail.

In two weeks, I’m going to have a new boss. I’m going to have everything I dreamed of happening at work, finally happen. (For the record, I didn’t just hope, I hustled.) Ms. Mahogany shook her head when she heard the news this afternoon.

“You strategic little bitch,” she said.

“I didn’t think it was going to happen,” I told her. “It’s new and crazy for me, too.”

“How are you feeling about it?”

“Excited. Nervous. I successfully orchestrated an office coup! But now I’m wondering if I did the right thing.”

“There’s a Bible verse you should remember: To whom much has been given, much is required.”

I don’t know if I fully understand what she meant, but I’m grateful for the words. I need the wisdom of her counsel and the goodness of her heart. I need to kick ass in this role. I need to hustle. I need to kill it unlike anything I’ve ever killed it before. And I probably need to start blogging less about work.

On that note, I hid the post about the time I thought I was turning into a witch and did that whole thing at the holiday party. I thought it was my $333 ticket to a book deal, but that may have been a bit foolish.

I am not a witch. Or maybe I am. Who knows.

(Note the change in Bitmoji attire… I’m dressing for the job I want and committing to be a more professional me!)