Brain Exercises for Quarantine: My Quick and Dirty Tips to Slip and Slide Your Way to a Smooth Brain

Now that I’ve passed the 60 day mark of my personal COVID19-Pandemic-induced social isolation, I’m confident that I have the perfect technique for passing the time in productive ways when you can’t go outside. 

All this alone time has helped me to meditate on the things that are really important. My mind is almost always empty and unstimulated by the perils of reality. I fall asleep promptly at 10 pm with a smile on my face and sweet baby angels playing harps in my ears. Now that I have all this extra free time, I’ve decided to experiment with thinking and really lean into the neurons in my brain. When I attempt to occupy my worm brain, it tends to sound like wind chimes rattling out of sync with gasping breaths of a poisoning victim, or the off-key bell of a haunted elementary school. The best way I have found to drown out this noise is through thought exercises, many of which I have listed here for your benefit. Begin by staring at a blank wall, ceiling, or empty refrigerator. This list is based on my own experience and the personal breakthrough I’ve had during the past month-plus of social distancing.

• Think about the last time you had sex in explicit detail but in a cringe way, not a fun sexy way! If you’re in quarantine with a sexual partner you don’t get to participate in this one. It’s best for people whose last sexual encounter was awkward and/or disappointing. The last time I was intimate before quarantine it was on a mattress on the floor in a bedroom decorated only by 3 Uniqlo shopping bags taped to the wall. Think about all that tenderness...replay it in your mind moment by moment. Remember that when quarantine is over you can look forward to more encounters like this one! 

• Picture your first day of middle school. What were you wearing? What were you nervous about? Who was your crush? How was your skin? Lean into this exercise. Add a mantra if you like. A go-to for me is “I will never escape my middle-school self…” over and over. Deepen the exercise by thinking about the last time you felt beautiful. You might still be beautiful, but who knows. If you’re like me, you haven’t seen your body in quarantine besides during the 15 minutes of your weekly shower. 

• Make a list of all the ways important people in your life have disappointed you. This works best with close family members, if possible. If you don’t have any family, think about that. If you have the time, and I know you do, call them up and take the disappointment to the next level. Air your grievances, create conflict where there previously was none. Burn those bridges while you can! 

• Make a mental map of every bedroom you’ve ever had. Start with your earliest memory and work up to your current bedroom, which you may never leave. 

• Conjure the taste of school lunch in the 10th grade. I like to concentrate on a particularly dry muffin I would buy at least once a week. The flavor may have been banana or apple but it mostly tasted like ash to me. I encourage those who are stockpiling and buying up half the supermarket to recognize that this is what you’re leaving the rest of us with. 

• Try to remember in explicit detail everything you said in public last time you were wildly drunk. If you hurt a friend’s feelings or said something obscene or offensive to a stranger, repeat it over and over in your head until it loses its power. This is a strength exercise. If you’re able to pull up drunk texts or DMs on your phone, do that. Desensitize yourself to them. These words can’t hurt you now. 

• If you’re over the age of 25 and have a uterus, count your remaining eggs. I find this is like counting sheep and really helps me fall asleep. 

• Create a fictional argument with the person you trust most. Imagine they say something devastating to you. Get really irrationally angry until it starts to have a physical effect almost like cardio. 

• Concentrate on your breathing. Wait...are you experiencing shortness of breath? Is that anxiety or a deadly pandemic? Meditate on that tickle in your throat. Allergies...or? You’ll find that this is a fun game that can help pass hours at a time. 

• Picture the face of everyone you have ever kissed. Next, picture the face of every person that’s ever rejected you. If possible transition to thinking about the people you rejected and wonder if you might have made grave mistakes that will leave you trying to fill an unfillable void for the rest of time. Physically feel the void inside you. Breathe into it. Celebrate what your body and mind are capable of. 

I know what you’re thinking, my brain is on some Megamind shit right now! Just remember to center your breathing during this mental workout. As you inhale, reach back into your deepest, darkest memories. As you exhale, sink deeper into the full expression of your grief. This will create a wonderful tension. Now that I have studied my own failures the way a priest studies a holy text, I feel emotionally armed for whatever the big bad world has to offer me, inside or outside of my living room. Quarantine has helped me to come to terms with many things, not the least of which is the fact that you can’t run forever. Reality will inevitably catch up to you and reality bites. 

Watching the Taylor Swift Documentary and Making It About Me

The central theme of Taylor Swift’s documentary, Miss Americana, is, as I understand it, becoming unmuzzled. Say what you will about Taylor Swift, I certainly have, but the film successfully tackles what some would consider to be a universal female experience. Taylor grapples with her relationship to her past self, her people-pleasing self conditioned to respond to praise and adoration. It was refreshing for me, as someone that grew up with Taylor’s career as an inescapable marker of time, to finally hear her admit to what many of us were thinking. She needed, almost pathologically, to be liked, praised, and seen as good. She says early in the film, “My entire moral code as a kid and now is a need to be thought of as good.”

What struck me was the honesty with which Taylor says she felt the need to be good not for goodness sake, but to be seen as good, to have people believe she was good. The climax of the film is, of course, Taylor stepping out and taking a political stance and for the first time, choosing to be “unmuzzled” in support of women’s rights. This shift was dramatic for Taylor because it came after years of personal silence to protect her image.

In February I had the privilege of seeing Amber Tamblyn and America Ferreira in conversation at The Wing in West Hollywood to discuss Amber’s book, Era of Ignition, which was released last year. Era of Ignition is the continuation of Amber Tamblyn’s unmuzzling since she has been an outspoken activist women’s rights advocate for years now. When asked about her age in regards to the subtitle Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution,  Tamblyn said that her late 20s into her 30s was the time during which she emerged apart from her career as an actor. She spoke to the experience of being an object in the industry and choosing to step out and achieve her potential after years of feeling silenced and repressed. This didn’t happen in her early 20s or even her late 20s, it happened in her 30s.

I’m so young. I think about that all the time. Often I laugh at how old I feel. I feel 17 and completely unprepared for life in just about every way. But also, in other ways, I feel like I have lived too long and seen too much. I do think I have a lot to say and a lot of experiences to share for someone who is essentially toddling aimlessly through life. Sometimes I feel like Boss Baby, but most of the time I feel like just a regular baby. This blog has laid dormant specifically because it is a Blog. A blog is essentially a public dairy. I have written and withheld many incomplete, rambling entries that are simply about blogging and how I’m uncomfortable doing it. I’m not particularly embarrassed about writing about myself. More-so, I am deeply concerned that I will write something now that I will disagree with and be embarrassed by years down the line.

The truth is, I have nothing to write about on this blog that isn’t somewhat intimate and potentially embarrassing. I love being honest. I treasure radical honesty and vulnerability from others. I found myself and my confidence through reading Rookie Magazine, may she rest in peace, and being endlessly inspired by Tavi Gevinson’s honesty and emotional vulnerability. People often tell me I’m an open book which I resent because, of course, I would prefer to have people believe I carry an air of sexy mystery. That’s simply not my reality. Despite having a big, loud mouth I often feel like I have left things unsaid. I love to share my most flippant thoughts as soon as they pass through my brain, but when it comes to my more intimate experiences, beliefs, and feelings, I find it hard to put the words down on the page.

You may be asking how I managed to make a Taylor Swift documentary and an Amber Tamblyn book talk about me. My answer is that, as a white woman, it is very easy for me to make everything about me. Then again, I think I might be the target audience for both the doc and the book. It makes sense that they would stimulate something in me. I don’t feel muzzled by society. Sure, I often feel that people, specifically older men, don’t take me seriously. But being underestimated by men (or seen as a semi-sentient fuck-hole) makes me roll my eyes more than it hurts my feelings. I’m not after the favor of any old men, I don’t need to win them over. Like Taylor and Amber, I think the only thing standing in my way is myself and my discomfort with the truths of my own life. The minute I say something I feel or have experienced it will become real, and I will be imprisoned to it. I won't be able to lie to myself.

Here is the ugly truth: I feel like I’m violently spinning and flailing in the vast emptiness. 2019 was brutal and 2020 hasn’t improved for me or seemingly anyone. I am desperate to write. I have to write and I have to post or I will simply disappear like Tinker Bell when no one believes in her. I don’t think I pathologically need to be liked so much as I need to be seen. I hope to not be this way one day. I hope to go offline and live in Santa Fe with my dogs, painting and reading Joan Didion until I quietly pass away. But I guess, before I do that, I have to write a fucking blog.

New England Tune

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Everybody wants to move away from the cold and gray. Let ‘em go, I'll stay

My move to LA has, in every sense, been more difficult than I expected. For a long time, I've taken pride in being almost fearless, undaunted by the future and unafraid of risk. It was not difficult for me to move away. I never expected myself to have the luxury of a sense of home. My life has always been defined by change, by incompletes, by goodbyes and separations. So moving to LA did not intimidate me. I wasn’t aware of how much of my identity has been tied up in Massachusetts, in New England, in Boston, in the North Shore, in Salem, and on the Cape. I’ve spent many Autumns away from Boston and the falling leaves. I’ve experienced quite a few sunny and warm Novembers. Still, this one feels different. Perhaps because I know I will not live in New England again for a very long time.

I met Ben Mueller of Low Ceilings in 2016 after moving to Boston from the Cape for college. He was buddies with my roommates at the time. I think I saw him perform before we ever spoke. The music of Low Ceilings became a defining element of my coming of age in Boston. It was the soundtrack of some of my happiest and most challenging moments. It was made by my friends and beloved by my inner circle. Seeing the band play always felt like a celebration of something, of whatever we were all going through, of surviving another frigid winter. In 2017 I took Ben’s promotional photos which I am delighted to see he still uses from time to time. 

Now, with the latest Low Ceilings release, I find myself nostalgic for something I didn’t even know I had, home in Boston. But it feels good to love my home even from a distance and to know that I can always go back, even if, at the moment, I don’t want to. 

Ben’s songwriting has undoubtedly grown over the past four years. It’s been a pleasure to listen to Low Ceilings in Boston, in LA, and on the road between. In college, I was grateful for a community and a talented group of friends whose work I was proud of. Now, I’m grateful for a little piece of home that I can put in my ear.

ol’ photo by me

Listen to Low Ceilings on Spotify

I Don't Know How To Ride A Bike

Once, as a child, I was biking in a gated neighborhood of ex-patriots in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I was with my only friend at the time who I connected with only on Nintendo DS games and our recent discovery of liquid eyeliner. I had to de-mount the bike and walk it around corners, a fact I was very insecure about. Near my friend’s house, I was startled by what I understood to be a hot French family. I went flying off the bike in front of them and tore my palms and knees. The family reacted with what I understood to be hot French concern. I have no idea what they actually said. I shamefully walked the bike back to my friend’s house and I have not been on a bicycle since. That was 11 years ago.

Boston, Thank You. I Can't Say I'm Sorry.

I’ve spent years rejecting any sort of sentimentality or nostalgia. I simply don’t look back. I rarely have. Now, I approach my upcoming move from Boston to LA in much the same way as always. I look forward, and leap forward, with little regard for what I am leaving behind. This approach is getting harder and harder to maintain. Boston has become the closest thing to home I’ve ever known. The city has given me so much, mostly in the form of incredibly important friendships, and difficult life lessons. But it has also taken a lot out of me. Or perhaps I’ve just given up on a lot during my time here. I admit I have accomplished absolutely none of what I set out to accomplish in Boston. Nothing has looked the way I expected. Boston has been the location of my greatest mistakes, failures, and injuries. 

I wanted to write a letter to the city. Not a love letter or even a goodbye. Just something to reflect on the importance of the past four years of my life. This post is not that. I don’t have the words. At the end of the day, I am just so, so happy to leave. I cannot magically muster up sentimentality within myself that doesn’t exist. I am so relieved to run away. Still, I know that I can continue to quit, continue to move, continue to run, and I will never outrun myself. I will never escape what I have for so long considered the center of all my problems: my own mind. 

My genuine hope and prayer is that this time I am running toward something, not away. I’m running toward a potential future that is outside of what I planned, outside of what I dreamed as a child. I’m starting over from 0 with no expectations except that I will try and try and fail and try again. 

These words may seem sad, but I can honestly say that I feel immense joy and hope. I don’t regret a thing that has lead to this moment. I can’t promise where I’ll be in a year, or even a month. What I can promise is that nothing will go according to plan. 

Thank you to my friends, the ones I am leaving for a time, and the ones I am moving toward. You have borne the brunt of my own sullenness. You have held my head up and given me the warmest, sweetest joy in life. I am overwhelmed by the love I experience daily. I know I must be the luckiest girl in the world when it comes to the people in my life. There are no words to express my gratitude for the safety I have found in my friends. I am so hopeful for all of our futures. 

I want this website to be a place of humor, but even more so, honesty. Trust me, I have a lot of juicy things to spill and laughter to share, mostly at my own expense. Those words are coming. But right now honesty has taken precedence. So here is the most sentimentality I can muster, and all the love in my heart. Boston, thank you. I can’t say I’m sorry.  

I Matched With My Professor On Tinder But I Couldn't Be His Bratty Sub

The year is 2018. It’s Halloween evening. I am a Junior in college and I find myself having too much of a good time at a small party of friends. There is, of course, someone at the party who has piqued my interest. I’ve never found it difficult to develop crushes, particularly on strangers. I arrive at the party, beer in hand, with a hopeful and flirty attitude. I’m wearing a wrap shirt and bell-bottoms with platform shoes. My skin is shit but I’ve done a bang up job on my makeup and I’m feeling cute and confident.

An hour or so into the party, two, maybe three drinks deep, I find myself not connecting with my crush quite as much as I’d hoped. It’s fine, I’m in the corner with some friends laughing about our Tinder dating foibles.

I’m swiping through tinder as I often do during an alcohol-fueled evening, and I’m empowered by my casual left swipes, rejecting almost every potential suitor. My tinder deck includes both men and women, ages 19-38. I’m choosy but I like a wide breadth of options.

Suddenly— I’ve just swiped left on a man who was most definitely my young, very crushable professor from Freshman year. I can’t let this opportunity pass me by. Lusting after authority figures isn’t exactly rare in my social circle. Imagine the hilarity, the jealousy of my friends if I were to bed this professor! So --I pay actual American dollars to retract my accidental rejection and swipe right on this man.

I am instantly nauseated by this decision but I play it cool and unembarrassed. We don’t match.

I wake up the next morning and promptly cancel my Tinder Gold subscription and basically forget the whole thing.

I rarely Tinder sober, and hardly ever open the app during the day. I’m busy with my vibrant IRL social life and, hitting on people on Instagram. My tinder notifications are off. And anyway, I’ve never been that into older guys. I’m pretty unenthusiastic about men, to begin with, particularly any man with something over on me like age or authority. I’ve been known to lust after greasy-haired man-children with asymmetrical earrings and dirty vans (thoughts and prayers please). Employable adults who wear v-neck t-shirts and slacks would be new territory. I recall that The Professor used to wear ridiculous little scarves to class. They were long and thin, draped around his neck, offering no warmth despite it being the dead of winter.

You can Imagine my surprise when I casually tap on the dreaded flame logo that afternoon to find that I have, after a formal waiting period, matched with The Professor. I remark to a friend over a convenience store tuna wrap that he probably doesn’t get many matches -- but I’m promptly corrected. College girls love older men, she tells me. I admit that in the fourth grade, while my classmates were preoccupied with High School Musical heartthrob Zac Efron, my childhood longing was directed at my very first crush, Hugh Jackman.

I start to wonder: Does this man even recognize me? I will admit, I’ve had several hair transformations since taking his class two years ago --, from jet black to snot green to peroxide-disaster-orange before arriving at my final destination as a bleach blonde. He doesn’t teach at the school anymore, as far as I know. My chances of running into him on the train are greater than my risk of running into him in the hall

In my naïveté, I decide to lead with a joke.

Me: Hey, teach, what are your office hours?

Of course, this reads like an invitation for sexy professor role play, a fetish I simply don’t have, or at least don’t have time to uncover.

The Professor: My office hours are Thursday from 9 pm to 2 am. Do you have questions on your paper?

I recall that sophomore year I conducted a phone interview with The Professor. He did give me some fairly helpful career advice about finding a mentor. He did not understand that I was trying to make him my mentor. Although I had wanted his professional guidance, the idea of him teaching me a thing or two in the bedroom doesn’t exactly turn on the waterworks.

Me: Only if you have answers.

Is this a smooth response? Should I have gone straight for “what are you wearing”?

I imagine him writing back, I’m wearing a pathetic little scarf and nothing else. Alright, this is getting amusing again.

The Professor: I think I can offer some guidance, yes.

Me: What kind of guidance?

I know I’m bating him but it’s just too easy.

The Professor: Firm but sensitive. Inspiring of creative abandon. Guidance to see you embrace your truest self and unafraid to give a spanking if need be.

I register that this may be sexy to some. And yes, I’ve played along and encouraged this. But the thought behind his words, the almost calculated flirtation and far-too-artfully placed offer to slap my ass have me practically jumping out of my skin.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a little ass slapping, but I think I’ve led this man into thinking I’m about to be his bratty sub. He might have held my interest longer if he had asked me to spank him. But honestly, I think my revulsion at the spanking comment goes beyond mere sexual preference.

I have a visceral, almost instinctual reaction to this kind of expression of male dominance. The only thing I can really compare it to is a fight or flight response. How very dare this man assume that because I am a younger woman (and you know because I actively played along with his professor role play) I am interested in being his sub, ready to take instruction, bend over and be spanked by this nearly 40-year-old man. As-fucking-if. And so, I get mean. I address him by name. Let’s call him Jack.

Me: Do you have any idea that I was one of your students?

The Professor: Hmm...yikes. Abigale Baldwin?

First of all, I become disturbed at how quickly he conjures my full name. Perhaps he did know the whole time? I recall he was always nice about my work, although he never graded a single assignment after the midway point in the semester. I think I left him a pretty complimentary course evaluation.

Secondly, I notice he can’t spell “Abigail” despite it being my display name on Tinder.

He continues to call me “Abigale” for the remainder of the conversation. Unfortunately for him, I only bend over for men who know how to correctly spell my extremely common, historical and biblical name. But I admit, I’ve probably just caught him off guard by revealing I was his student and he’s rattled. I look back at our emails from 2016 and see he spelled my name correctly back then.

He asks me why I swiped right. I consider admitting that I’m basically just gay for women and androgynous men with nose rings. I do not, however, consider sharing the truth of my drunken excitement on Halloween. Nor do I consider telling him that, yes, at one point I did entertain the idea of meeting him for drinks and fairly vanilla sex.

Instead, I tell him I swiped right for the laugh. It’s not a lie, but it’s certainly not the kindest version of the truth.

But I don’t leave it there. I drive the knife deeper.

Me: Truth is, I’m not really into the professor thing [true]. And tbh, you escalated way too quickly. You’ve got to leave ladies guessing especially if you want to get with 21-year-olds [not true].

Look, centuries of female oppression and degradation have reserved me the right to reject men in a less-than-sensitive manor. Still, I get the sense pretty quickly that I have embarrassed this man for no good reason at all. The truth is, I’m not freeing any oppressed women with my words. No, it’s more personal than that. I’ve always felt the need to prove myself to adult men, even as a child. I wanted to be seen as an equal but knew it was an impossible task. It hasn’t felt any more possible as an adult woman, and I’m jaded.

The Professor: Well Abigale, I hope you’re doing well.

...but I can’t be stopped.

Me: Trying to come back from the spanking comment?

Him: Well, obviously. But I really do hope you’re doing well.

He promptly unmatches. I can’t exactly blame him. I snapped at him fast, as if to say, Fuck you for using tinder to try and get laid (you know...what tinder was made for). And also aren’t you SO EMBARRASSED for being attracted to me, someone with no interest in fucking you! Perhaps I don’t take as much joy in humiliating adult men as I thought. Damnit! My conscience really does ruin all my fun.

Now I’m left with the memories and the funny story, but I’m decidedly uncomfortable with my instinct to punish men for being sexual beings. As if, with my attitude alone, I can reclaim the space that has so often been taken from me. I’m haunted by the times in which I have been made to feel small, an object to be used for the pleasure of men. I will hear no more about what they want to do to me. I want them to be afraid to say it-- to know that at any point I may enact my power to bruise their fragile male egos. But I’ve only managed to give myself whiplash with my sudden revulsion, my own inability to be delicate and patient. I feel remorse, but I go back to swiping anyway.

What To Expect When You're Expecting . . . To Read This Blog

Is blogging dead? I ask myself this etherial question shortly after buying my personalized domain name. What follows is a series of increasingly more difficult questions. Who am I? What do I have to say? Why do I want a blog? What is the point in my writing anything down? What is the point of anything? What is the point of life? What is the point? On this blog, I will set out to answer none of those questions. Okay, perhaps I’ll answer the first two.

Hey, it’s me, Abby. Or, Abigail Baldwin, as is stated in at the top of this website. I am a 21-year-old woman. I enjoy drinking, tweeting, and scrolling through hours of ASMR on Instagram. I have the confidence of an upper-middle-class white man but the insecurities of an acne-riddled 13-year-old. I recently left college without completing my degree in “Media Arts.” I do not, ostensibly, have any regrets. I have, however, made a lot of decisions I feel incredibly iffy about that I’d love to discuss here.

I’ve never kept a blog before, nor have I consistently journaled since I was 16. Despite this, I have some idea of the kind of topics I’d like to cover here. You can most certainly expect me to write about being a college drop (flunk) out and how I keep from hating myself! You may also see me mention being bisexual since I cling to my LGBTQ+ status as a reason to call myself oppressed. I’m not actually that oppressed. However, I have had some pretty colorful experiences being manipulated and indoctrinated in a variety of religious contexts. My hope is to use this blog to chat about sex and love, tell bits of my story and, from time to time, explore my relationship to faith and spirituality. I may also write about lighter topics such as music, movies, and my beautiful, dry, over-bleached and splitting hair!

On this blog, you will not receive wellness tips. I have none. You will not see product reviews unless you personally want to pay me for them. I am a huge sell-out. You will not be privy to stagey photoshoots of me in front of a brick wall, unless you personally want to take my picture. I am very vain. There will be no celebrity gossip, I save that for the group chat. Lastly, I will not leak my nudes, because this blog is free.

Currently, I live in Boston. I’ll probably be writing from various coffee shops while sipping a London Fog or soy latte and commiserating with my fellow self-indulgent white women. It’s sad but true.

At the end of the day, I’m doing this because I need a hobby. Writing is one of the only things that makes me feel like a person and not a tiny tit-less cog in the machine. Also, I want to be famous enough to peddle $30 multi-vitamins to innocent youth. That’s why. If you already find me grating I would love if you complained about me online, because all press is good press.

Please…

Like, favorite, retweet, follow, subscribe, friend, unfriend, mute, block, unblock, cancel, stan, promote, etc.

xoxo,

Gossip Squirrel

(this will not be a recurring tag)