URGENT: CLICK 2 HELP KILL MOTHS IN PANTRY

my next side hustle is gonna be phishing scams

The new year is supposed to be a fresh start. Definitionally, it is. No two ways about it. January is a different kind of month. And our January started with fucking maggots. 

I need to stop calling them maggots. They’re not maggots, they're pantry moths. and every article I've found has assured me that coming into a case of pantry moths is not a moral failing. So don’t go thinking I have morally failed or anything. They just happen, because of a simple case of being in the wrong place doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Like buying dried food products from a trader joe’s at a time where they had some bugs in their stuff. 

I guess technically that’s not how January began. January began the day after my last newsletter, waking up surprisingly un-hungover in Tampa, Florida. 

I was hanging with my best friend in the world, Rithvic, who is a med student. We’ve known each other since freshman year of high school, but we’ve been friends since sophomore year of high school, which is a crucial distinction that I explained to so many medical students last weekend but will not to you guys because I need to keep some things IRL secrets.

We’ve been friends forever, and our lives have always mirrored each others’. We met on the freshman year tennis team, and did the International Baccalaureate program of our public high school in Southeast Michigan. I don’t wanna say the name of the high school because I’m worried one of you will go there and try to shoot me or something and just end up ending the life of some other poor Indian kid with hoop earrings. That shouldn’t be a concern because I’m not in high school anymore and I think most of you know that but the internet is a weird place and you can’t take any chances. 

We both definitely had complexes about achievement, and about college, at that time. Senior year, we both got into out-of-state private colleges that were said to be best-in-class for our chosen fields: I, accepted to Northwestern’s theater program, and him, to Johns Hopkins for pre-med. I think we both saw it as our tickets “out” of Michigan, which is a very midwestern complex to have, and in upper-middle class desi communities, most of adolescence felt like an accelerated dash towards college acceptances. Our admission into two top-ten universities felt like a rocketship towards a life that would continue to be defined by accomplishment. 

God we were idiots. I guess I shouldn’t speak for him, he’s still one of the smartest, most hard working guys I know. But I was an idiot for sure. College quickly showed us the cracks in the ivory tower. Now he’s at the University of South Florida for med school, and I’m pursuing whatever the fuck in LA. We both flew South for the winter. 

We’ve continued to commiserate about our lifestyles, which share some common ground despite how different they might appear. Woaahh things that are different are sometimes kind of similar? You bet. For starters, we’re the broke friends. I write for a nonprofit that funds cancer research, while trying to make a career out of having fun, and he’s, again, in medical school. We are both in fields with delayed gratification. Our lives, at the moment, are sisyphean. Before he becomes a doctor, he has to spend his 20’s head down in the library, in class, and in rotations. I have to manage a day job while creating a body of work, searching for and attacking opportunities until, someday, I have made enough money from creative work to retire. While very different tasks, we have always both understood the importance of living a life guided by passion. 

I only spent five days as a medical student this January, so I know this statement is dripping with ignorance, but I found it super awesome. I love being around people who are spending their 20’s taking in information: learning dense and technical material, becoming experts on the cutting edge of what humans have discovered keeps each other alive. Sitting in class, studying with his homies, I felt so comforted by the Disneyland version of reality that the university simulates. We walked to class with familiar faces, grinded (ground?) at coffee shops with the people we went drinking with, and attended a game night where somebody showed up in scrubs. More than a few of the kids I met had nice ass rings on their fingers too. Not to lean too heavily into stereotypes, but in the back of my head I thought: maybe the copy-paste Indian-American micro-economies have been onto something here.

To be clear, no one I know in med school is hyping up med school like this. They kept telling me it’s “really hard and soul-sucking” or something. I am just foolish and easily entertained by the pictures inside of microscopes. I’m sick of artists, and was thrilled to be around SCIENCE! There is a one-to-one quality about the medical school environment that I appreciate. You pay your tuition, learn the material, pass the exams, and you become a doctor. The people around me at med school seemed to be saved from the delusions that plague the creatives I know. We have to work without a predictable reward system, without an exam to take or application to file that could advance us to the next tax bracket. We have to not only create our own structures and routines, but also create or find the incentives that legitimize that infrastructure. It requires, above all else, a thick, syrupy, sticky if not, for the lucky ones, completely solid, sense of faith. 

Again, the med students do not like when I glamorize their lifestyle. A few of the friends I made (that I now have on speed dial even though they keep telling me they are not doctors yet and I should be looking for a primary care physician) critique the institution of medicine for its tendency to attract and reward risk-averse personality types. People who are keen on the one-to-one transfer system of work-to-reward that medical school provides. Which is all fine and good, that rocks, go save lives and cash that check. But it’s no secret that the healthcare system we have in America is one that could stand to be shaken up. 

Before med school, Rithvic studied public health at Hopkins. At my day job, I work with cancer research and statistics. As a result, we often discuss inequities within the healthcare system, and how they negatively impact patient outcomes. Like any other industry that is a part of the fabric of the American Empire, there are changes that need to be made, for the wellness of those who that system should be serving. And changes are, definitionally, risks. So what happens when those with the power to influence changes and progress in the medical system have been cooked up with a recipe that rewards tepid behavior? 

On my last day in Tampa, Rithvic and I put on our best podcast voices, and had this conversation:

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Back to VO:

We were mainly just shooting the shit. The reason I’m an actor-writer and not a podcaster, is because I can either be articulate when given other people’s words, or when I have time to revise my own. If you’re someone who has taste in that medium, avoid this recording. If you do have 20 minutes of free time and very low standards for discourse, listen in, and name the artists you hear playing in the background.

There is much to critique about the system of medicine, and about the institutions that instruct each generation of doctors. As there is much to critique about the systems that deliver artistic products to the masses. Being at med school, I was surrounded by students who, like me, were following their passions, but with such a different set of terms and conditions. Add two and two, you will get four, and become a doctor. 

I never considered medicine for a career. As a child, sharing each step of the educational journey with my twin sister, the agreement (I can’t remember if it was ever implicitly or explicitly stated) was that she would pursue a STEM field, and I would pursue the humanities. We grew up in desi communities where kids heavily gunned for stemmy careers. There are lots of reasons for why this stereotype, and pattern, shows up in immigrant communities. It both comes from the challenges these groups face as well as the privileges they obtain and keep. 

That being the case, I was raised in an environment that was incredibly risk-averse. That created a strong fascination within me for rebellion. The kind of poser attitude that can only develop out of extreme safety and security. The world really has a way of balancing out like that, for better or for worse. I do wish sometimes that I was better at doing what I’m told. And sometimes I wish I could shatter the mold with more confidence.

The most gutting acknowledgement I had to make, during my time at med school (obsessed with acting like I was enrolled in med school btw,) was that many of them were literally cool and normal. After all, they were all in community with my good friend Rithvic, who is the coolest and kindest guy I know. I think everyone who meets him gets that impression as well, so I was around a lot of people whose values and attitudes reflected my own. The way friendship draws like-minded people into community with one another is magical. 

I realized, in real time, how seemingly insignificant the little choices in career and lifestyle really are. The essence of a person, the large range of attributes that each person possesses, is so much more than their resume: what state they grew up in or what they are doing for a living. I felt totally in sync with these people whose day to day lives, and overall trajectories of career, may not resemble mine at all. 

That was unsettling. Because it made me much less confident that the path I am on is the only one that I could be taking. It got me thinking about all the different, equally fulfilling and engaging lives that there are to be lived. I saw myself in these people too. I saw myself all over Tampa fucking Florida, believe it or not.

And thus, my first day back in LA was bad. I suddenly had doubts, flashes in my mind of other lives and other worlds, spent around more of the people I love. It feels so cruel sometimes, to be so far from so many people I love. I sensed that this was a pot beginning to boil, and I went on a walk to take the heat down to a simmer. 

On the walk, I ran into a friend outside the local coffee shop, who would be attending the game night that my friends were hosting at our house later that evening. We caught up, and I asked if she would join my errands for the day. I brought her to the gym, we shopped for groceries, and got snacks ahead of the game night. We arrived back home, and sat in the living room with one of my roommates, and I was comforted by the harmonious relationship of spontaneity, community, and normalcy I had experienced this afternoon, another one of those magical feelings. I rode that high from the living room to the kitchen, to the pantry, where I opened a jar of protein powder and discovered some fucking maggots. 

Not maggots. Pantry moths. Maggots sounds way grosser, which is useful for describing how I felt about the predicament, but not helpful for comforting the guests who are beginning to arrive for game night. My roommate and I quickly began wreaking havoc on these settlers, swatting the moths down and throwing out all the food in our pantry. Speed-running every article about this kind of infestation until I felt like I had obtained a graduate degree defending a thesis in how to cause devastating harm to a community of gross fucking insects. 

We got the situation under control enough to feel like adequate hosts, and the game night went on without an issue. But almost immediately afterwards, the pot I was watching boiled over. The moths entered my home, and had evicted me, in a way. I am throwing things out and purchasing anew. This could be poetic, revealing a silver lining about new beginnings at the beginning of the year, but that interpretation feels completely dishonest. It’s just been frustrating, not inspiring. I’ve written about being a houseplant, who is greatly influenced by my own access to sunlight, water, and nutrients. In that sense you can predict how I am to be affected by an infestation of bugs.

That unsettled feeling took over. I wish I were anywhere else. I miss those I love. Which is so confusing, because why can love feel so sad? Is love like a flower, a beautiful face with its roots stuck in mud? I’m doubting my roots. Asking myself if I get too much sunlight. I’ve been taking a lot of phone calls recently, from old friends and other wayward souls asking if I have advice to offer for an uncertain new year, and the truth is that right now, I don't. I’m just filled with questions, and the desire to superimpose my existence in a million different pots, anywhere that is not my own.

I lie in bed, close my eyes, and plunge into my own imagination. I envision life with those who I have loved and left behind. I wish, like we all do at times, that the world revolved around my desires, and I could fill this room with all of the people, places, and things that have ever given me comfort. I place myself in the past, or the future, anywhere where my body can recreate the sensation of having more of the things that I want. 

Some of these alternate worlds feel far. In one, I too am a medical student, spending life around Rithvic, the only friend who’s known me for all of the last decade. In this world, maybe I’ve put a ring on someone’s finger, and am being proudly introduced to their family. Who wouldn’t want to marry a doctor? 

In another, I’ve swept the awards season with the performance of a lifetime. The life choices I made with hubris at 17 years old and continuously after have finally paid off, hundred-fold. 

In another, I’m traveling the planet, having coffee with strangers, without a care to be found. 

Another world is just a memory, re-living cold apartments wherein I felt very loved.

But when I open my eyes, I am just who I am, what I am, where I am, with glue traps in my cupboards. 

This year, when I have these feelings, I’m turning to creative expression instead of, idk, being on my phone about it. I tried to capture this particular feeling in this audio, here:

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Last week, my friends and I went to this attraction, Luna Luna. It is basically an exhibit of this long lost combination of art installations that were designed to operate as rides at an amusement park. In the 1980’s, an Austrian artist named André Heller recruited 30 of the biggest names in modern art to create this open-air museum/theme park. Some of these artists were Basquiat, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, even Dalí. At some point the exhibits were packed up into shipping containers, and legal issues had them stored away for the next three decades. Recently, they were brought back, apparently because Drake was into it. 

The attractions are now indoors and unrideable, which made for a fascinating experience. Many of the descriptions of the artists noted that they were motivated by ideas of creative expression against capitalism, yet the park cost about $50 to enter, had some attractions paywalled for another $100, and at the exit there lies a gift shop selling $40 baseball caps and $300 T-Shirts. Hey, Drake knows business. 

All of that aside, the best part of the attraction was, for me, a timeline they had installed that discussed the influences behind the participating artists, as far back as the 1800’s. They presented artists from those times, and described the socio-economic and cultural events that inspired their work. Many of the modern artists producing these absurd, abstract creations seemed to channel a sense of whimsy and imagination into their work as a direct response to the increasing political tide of fascism that dominated their era. In short, in a society where power is concentrated in the hands of very few, who shout loudly that there is only one way to live, and one set of answers to follow in order to be rewarded by the dominant culture, these artists created as if to show the world a small set of alternative approaches. 

These artists used art, specifically abstract art, playful art, art driven by whimsy, by silliness, to show people that their minds, and thus their worlds, are much less confined than they think, much more nimble, and much, much harder to break. At least, that’s what I’m taking into the rest of this election year.

Last thing and then I’ll shut up.

Believe you me, one of these days, I’m gonna come up with a hobby that also might make me some money some day. But until then, I’ve been doodling. For years now, I’ve been making these little one page comics- kind of a character expressing a thought in a scene. This is one from 2021. 

I’m filling this notebook I have with them, but doing them in color, and doing them often. These are four I’ve done in the last week. They are very simple, but serve as a nice example to me of how process and product become more refined with repetition. 

These pieces are simple, silly, small, but they help me escape from reality, industry, convention. They are products of my imagination. Hopefully moth-proof.