Hello and welcome to Thoughts 4 Ur Convenience! I doubt anyone is reading this right now but I have to make my first post at some point. I don’t know what to make of Substack yet. I come on here and read beautiful posts from beautiful people. Sometimes it makes me feel insecure or even jealous of how well people write, how eloquent people are and I’m… just not. I’ve always wanted to write though. When I was a kid it was a dream of mine to have my very own magazine. I remember following through with that idea when I had the wonderful idea that 80’s rock should make a comeback and Guns N’ Roses were on the cover of it. I wish I could remember the name of that magazine but anyway I had lots of ideas when I was a kid. I guess writing on something like Substack was one of them.
Today is Sunday which means tomorrow is Monday which means it will be my brother’s 25th birthday which also means it is Shawn Michaels’ birthday. If you don’t know who Shawn Michaels is, he is my brother and I’s favorite wrestler. We don’t watch wrestling anymore but we watched Monday Night RAW religiously at 8:09 PM, not exactly 8:00 because our mother decided to enroll us in CCD classes on Monday evenings that just so happened to end at 8 PM. We would beg our mom to speed home (this church was literally down the street from us) and we’d burst into the house, run up the stairs to my brother’s room and turn on USA Network. We’d scream for the entire hour, we’d make bets on who would win each match and after it was all over, we’d have a match of our own, my brother’s brown carpeted floor turned into our wrestling ring. We didn’t find out till years later, a night when we would smoke weed together which led to the curious google search of how tall Shawn Michaels is, that my brother and Shawn Michaels share the same birthday. We instantly reverted back to our 8- and 10-year-old selves, screaming at each other in excitement. So ever since that day, my brother is probably the coolest (and luckiest) person I know.
If you haven’t guessed by now, I am an extremely nostalgic person. It’s actually kind of sick. I could spend hours talking about the same stories, looking through old photos that I’ve seen probably thousands of times, and I could never get bored of it. Anyway, I have this idea for my Sunday posts where I do a little ‘de-brief’ of the week.
So far this de-brief will consist of the following:
- My very important, very crucial thoughts on what’s been going on online the past week
- Conversations with my boyfriend – we talk about any and everything under the sun and he is the number one person in the world I love having conversations with. I think he is really cool and smart, and I guess it also helps that I think he’s really cute!
- What I’ve been reading/watching/listening to this past week – I thoroughly enjoy reading about this from others!!
- And lastly, I want to give myself 3 goals for the week and follow up next week!
Here we go!
INTERNET THOUGHTS
This week’s thoughts have a lot to do with women and their looks….. what a surprise.
- The 35 year old woman who wants to bring wedges back to the club. I thought this one was fun. Usually when people online as a collective disagree with a woman’s choice of clothing, she gets bashed. Stoned. Banned from the TikTok app. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, a woman made a video saying how she’s 35 and she’s so tired of seeing these younger girls at clubs wearing flats and sneakers. She says it’s time to bring back heels! My thoughts do not wait until a video is finished so I thought, like majority of the internet, that she was out in her 20’s in some Lady Gaga type heels. I mean she looked like she killed it at the clubs back in 2011. The internet was not prepared for what this woman, fighting for the rights of high heeled shoes at clubs, was about to wear to the club. Wedges. It’s so silly and so stupid. But I thought it was really funny. This build up for…. wedges. Should this woman be judging the younger generation? Should we be judging her? I didn’t really care either way but the videos that have been made in response to it show how we can still poke fun at someone, ourselves even, without being a total asshole. Which brings me to my next point…
- It’s so confusing sometimes to be a girl, GIRL! As much as I really want to talk about BRAT, I will refrain from doing so right now. I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting a lot of videos on my FYP of girls who are hardcore judging other girls. For what they wear, how little or too much makeup they wear, their hairstyles, etc. You know what posts make me want to scream? The ones where a young girl is asking the internet to be brutally honest with her about her looks and how she can “glow up”. The internet is FILLED with insecure teenage girls! I would know! I was one of them! And do you know what insecure girls like to do for fun? They project. They are MEAN. They will tell you every single thing wrong with you because their opinion is the truth and that is that. I feel really bad for the girls who post these videos. 1. You do not need any type of validation from other people. 2. All the makeup and hair dye in the world will not permanently make you love yourself. And 3. PLEASE STOP SETTING YOURSELF UP TO BE EVEN MORE INSECURE!!! I’ve always judged my own looks since I was a kid. I’m 27 now and I still deal with insecurity but the one thing that has made the biggest difference in how I view myself is literally not caring what a single person thinks. This is who I am, this is what I look like and I have learned to love it. Why? Because I’m no longer searching for people to tell me I look good. If I don’t care about what good someone has to say about me, I definitely don’t care what bad you think of me. I like to be a little bit delusional and think someone is automatically wrong if they have anything bad to say about me. Basically, be your own judge and learn to accept the body you’re in!
- How old do you think I am? This ‘trend’ has been going on for some time now but I still hate when this post comes up on my FYP. It’s not because I think these people are setting themselves up but it’s the comments. Again, from insecure teenage girls. Or really just insecure women too! I know these are just comments on TikTok but realistically if I were to get one mean comment from someone, (me who claims to not care about other people’s thoughts about me – I’m still human!!) I would think about it for at least 4 days. If someone told me at 27, I actually look 40, I would be…. hurt. I’m realizing as I type this that the comments are a mix of insecure girls and people trolling but then this got me thinking… why is it that I’ve only seen women do these trends? I mean isn’t it bad enough we hear what men have to say about us? I think it actually hurts more coming from a woman than a man. Not because we should stick together but because you also know exactly what it feels like to be picked apart just for being a woman and now you’re doing it to someone else. I don’t know, I can go really deep into this topic which I might have to one day, but anyway… it’s NOT COOL. Let’s please stop asking the internet to pick us apart!
Moving on…..
Conversations With My Really Cool, Really Cute Boyfriend!
- What was it that made everyone go crazy for The Beatles? – This is the only one I have for this week because it happened just yesterday and I haven’t been writing anything down so I simply just do not remember anything of this past week at this moment. I will work on it!
Sebastian’s favorite band are The Beatles. He’s loved them since high school. Throughout our relationship I would always say I hate The Beatles or Led Zeppelin is actually the superior band just to get a rise out of him for fun. Secretly, I have always liked how passionate he gets about his favorite band, and it would always go a lot deeper than just “they make good music”. I’ve gotten over my “hatred” for the 60’s boy band but decided to ask him this question yesterday. I learned a lot. The Beatles came out in the 60’s which means we had 50’s music before them. We talked about how Elvis was one of The Beatles’ biggest inspirations. This led us down a rabbit hole of who inspired Elvis, who inspired Nat King Cole, etc. The Beatles were the first boy band that weren’t a ‘ 50’s group’. They were dressed up, yes but they were also taking off their jackets in the middle of playing which is something no one really did. Scandalous, if you will.
Basically, The Beatles were brand new. We talked about how once their first album took off; they kept pumping albums out for a few years. Two albums a year to be exact. Listening to the sound of these albums, one can deduce that a major record label got a hold of them, kept pushing all these ‘pop’ sounding albums until The Beatles got burnt out. This is when they started to make the music THEY wanted to. We started to talk about the evolution of music from The Beatles to The Stooges to The Velvet Underground to Led Zeppelin to Pink Floyd and on and on.
Music just sounded better back then. I believe that record labels work differently now compared to 1969. I think artists back then had a lot more freedom to create whereas now it’s all about Spotify streams and making a really catchy single. I think the focus back then was to finish an entire album then get the CD’s/cassette sales. Now it’s more like: have a catchy song → go viral → let the streams do the work. I don’t know how exactly these things work, I’m not a music person. I enjoy indie artists, but I am also one of those people who listened to Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Espresso’ on repeat when it came out.
But Sebastian makes a good point of how different the music industry and the music itself is today. People did not go crazy for The Beatles because they came out with one hit song. I believe they were given the creative freedom to make the music they felt was missing in the world thus inspiring other bands to also use their creative freedom to do the same. I believe that fans appreciated this from The Beatles. Music was always made to be different, expressive, original. I don’t get that feeling from today’s music. So what went wrong?
I’m honestly really curious to know Paul McCartney’s or Robert Plant’s thoughts on the way music is put out today…
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING/WATCHING/LISTENING TO:
READING:
Salt Slow by Julia Armfield – 3/5 stars | I really enjoyed how all of these short stories had this common theme of really odd and not normal things happening but was made to be seen as normal in this universe. It reminded me a bit of Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata. Tender Is The Flesh even. It all felt very dystopian but dystopian made normal. I think I struggled with this book a bit because I am used to looking for a point or the moral of the story when in this book, it is what it is and maybe there really isn’t a point. Very beautiful, poetic, prose-y writing and I highly recommend if you’re into weird fiction!
Big Swiss by Jen Beagin – currently reading | So far, I am 25% of the way through and I am loving it! Do you know how hard it is for a book to make me laugh? I’ve already laughed out loud several times and I am very grateful since I have not been reading any books lately that have really caught my attention. Hopefully I’ll have a review up next week!
WATCHING:
My 3rd re-watch of Death Note. This is my favorite anime of all time. I can never get enough of it. If you haven’t seen it, I am begging you to right now. A boy named Light Yagami gets his hands on a Death Note, a notebook where you write down the name of a person and they die. Light starts writing down criminals’ names in the Death Note and the whole world knows him as Kira. Nobody knows it’s actually him though. The police/FBI are trying to figure out who Kira is so they call in a special detective, L, who makes it his mission to take down Kira. The TENSION?! The way Light takes his job at playing God so seriously?? So good. There’s so many twists and turns and it’s real fun watching it back to see if L overlooked something or if Light wasn’t careful enough. Oh, and the Shinigami are really cool too. 10/10.
Youtubers I’ve been loving lately:
WURLD – video essays, super funny, I love her personality
hunter is kinda cool – more like a video diary, I just reeeally love her thoughts and opinions on books
Ana Wallace Johnson – impeccable book recommendations!!
OneSpottedFriend – keyboard ASMR, she plays games on Roblox and I like falling asleep to the keyboard sounds hehehe
Waffle Cat ASMR – I love ASMR and this is a CUTE AS HECK animated cats one.
Listening To:
BRAT – the entire album is always on repeat.
Jazz In The Background on Spotify
My evening playlist which consists of Elton John, Steely Dan, Etta James and The Doors.
WOW this post was super lengthy and if someone did actually read all the way through… I literally love you. Anyway, I’ll have to work on editing down my posts but it was nice getting my thoughts out from the week. With that being said, my 3 goals for this week are:
1. Finally pick up my library card
2. Start walking every morning
3. Get down to 3 cups of coffee a day (I usually have like 5)
Thanks for reading and I will be back next week! I hope you kill this week ahead!
Ok.
Bye!!
Love Always,
Nicole :)
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