july 8 2026 bloggy

i am not going to worry about this being ~*percieved*~ because it is only being posted on neocities, and thus the pressure to perform, to curate, to manage the facade is slightly lowered. and yet i am my own internal audience, my own internal critic, constantly judging myself with hungry eager eyes against a rubric i inherited from parents who inhereited from parents who intereited from

anywho i hate feeling ashamed about money! !! well i hate feeling ashamed in general. but especially about money because it feels like an absolute kick in the teeth to my value system. the hypocrisy of touting anticapitalism and how i'm always striving to decolonialize the way i move through the world (which is at best incredibly abstract and at worst internalized word salad) yet constantly ragging on myself for the number on my paychecks is not lost on me.

to rewind a bit, i was making the most i ever had right before leaving that job for grad school. it was a horrendously stressful job and it wasn't very much in terms of san francisco money, BUT i was affording to live in my own junior one bedroom apartment in the city, which sounded like a myth for so long. it felt like i had **made it** and was actually "financially secure" (which, when i think about it, is really the "myth"). during grad school i worked part time but regressed to making minimum wage. because of internalized capitalism, this felt like a huge blow and i did a ton of weird meaning-making out of it - that it somehow was finally, accurately reflecting my self-concept. duh this is confirmation bias, but it FELT like i was finally getting a peak behind the curtain of some truth that was always looming there: that i wasn't worth shit! there was finally a number assigned to me and it was low.

i graduated (yay!) and i celebrated and was/am proud of myself, but landing a fulltime role has been hard. i've been out of school for a little over a month now and i've applied for roles at all the spaces our fascist(!) mayor hasn't shut down yet. i was offered a role but then they had to redact bc the funding was cut last minute and it felt like whiplash in my heart. i'm glad i'm still working part time and that this job gives me health insurance (unbelievable literally i am so grateful) and i'm feeling frustrated and hopeless and impatient and scared about money.

i started doing occasional gigs on craigslist and it's not bad but it's not great either and i keep trying to (whats the opposite of optimize?) dumb down? my resume because i'm overqualified for everything. and when i'm hustling i feel even more ashamed, even though i should be proud of myself for being tough and making money and making sure things are OKAY; i still feel scared and frustrated like theres someone out there (my inner critic for sure) thats going to shove all this back in my face and say "see, s couldn't make it" even though obviously i am 'making it', making it is just hard sometimes! ! what is 'making it' anyway? how to we quantify 'making it'?? ?

not to repeat myself, but it feels weird being vulnerable on the internet. well, it feels weird being vulnerable in general. and by weird i mean scary. but thats why this is neocities and not, like, my instagram. if you're reading this, hi, i don't know you and these past few blurbs are the ominous shape my shame has taken as of late. if you're reading this and for some reason i do know you, please be gentle with me, i am more tender than i let on.


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