Sometimes I think about how I've lived in SF for over a year and it feels like nothing has changed. Which is kind of depressing because, in theory, a year is a lot of time for things to happen. But then I found my old sketchbook from when I had just started interning last June and realized plenty of things have (thankfully) changed. The following are some 100% real notes and thoughts that I deemed important enough to commit to paper and remember forever from that time. Please let us all enjoy this glimpse into the psyche of 22-year-old Delaney. And then we can all vote on how much we think I've changed.
NOTE TO SELF NO. 1:
For everyone who isn't glued to the internet and in love with hot terminology of the year 2014 (like I am), RBF means resting bitch face. Aka you look mean all the time even if you're really only mean half of the time (like I am). Resting bitch face is great for riding public transit because then weirdies are slightly less likely to talk to you, but it's really bad when you have no friends and are trying to look appealing to any and all 20-something strangers at Starbucks in the hopes they will find your mildly-pleasant face worth spontaneously chatting to.
What has changed? Now I just look for other people with RBF and know that those are the people I want to befriend. Birds of a feather flock together.
NOTE TO SELF NO. 2:
Now this is obviously not a very polite note, but when you put quotation marks around something it means it has to be factual and that is really what I wrote. I'm sorry I didn't know that in the future I would be putting the verbatim truth of my profane notebook on the internet.
Anyways I have a nervous yawn which is a really terrible habit and clearly it was ruining my life enough that I needed to write it down to remind myself that it existed (how could I ever forget?). Any time something important is happening, I'm probably yawning. Job interview? Yawning. Going on a date? Yawning. Listening to my doctor talk to me about my health? Yawning.
What has changed? Unfortunately not a lot. The nervous yawn has not miraculously disappeared in the 365+ days since internhood, but it is not as much on the forefront of my mind as it was every day at my internship when I was getting design feedback and in constant fear of yawning in my art director's face.
NOTE TO SELF NO. 3:
Was this the beginnings of a haiku? I don't know. But the first couple of weeks of my internship, I didn't have a desk. I sat in a strange red pod which was basically like a gussied-up cubicle. And then sometimes I sat on a couch in front of a table. And then one day I came back to where I was sitting at the couch and the table was gone and my laptop was on the couch. WHAT! I know—I was also shocked. I stood there and side-eyed my fellow office workers for a bit and then just sat on the couch because no one had immediately presented themselves as the table-heisting menace. I was the couch intern. It was like a game of musical chairs, except I was the only playing and people were just removing my seating options from the office one-by-one. There was also no music playing.
What has changed? Well now I sit at a desk. I can leave my belongings on it and they don't go anywhere. And no one has taken my chair. Yet.
NOTE TO SELF NO. 4:
"People buying condoms. Me buying Ben & Jerry's."
Apparently I took this very important note down to remind myself of a time when I felt ultra-pathetic. Because I'm masochistic in that kind of way. Nothing like reinforcing the memory of your lowest lows by writing them down in your 'creative safe space'.
Around nine one night, I walked downstairs to the Walgreens to get a pint of ice cream. Walking to John's $1 Scoops around the corner would simply not cut it. Some scoops, John?! Get real. This was a Ben & Jerry's kind of night. I needed the pint. So after spending too much time having the classic internal debate about chunky monkey vs. phish food, I got in line to check out (don't worry, I went with the chunky monkey, as one always should). I distinctly remember looking down at my Chacos and my should-never-be-worn-outside tie-dyed shorts and then looking up to see a couple directly in front of me in line, tittering into each other's ears with a single box of Trojans between them. And not even the small, "we're not sure if this is gonna be happening on the regular" kind of box. Like the monster-sized "we're probably going to be having a lot of sex, you should watch out" kind of box. I think we had different kinds of plans for the night.
What has changed? Obviously now I have much classier taste and only get my ice cream from Bi-Rite. My palette has matured in a year.
NOTE TO SELF NO. 5:
Clearly my comforter was causing some major self-reflection. But really that is the only natural reaction to have when the first thing you do out in the "adult" world is start sleeping on a twin-size mattress with the same bedding you used at age 7. Especially when it's a dainty floral print quilt in pastel pinks and greens. Guaranteed quickest way to regress 15 years. It wasn't awesome.
What has changed? A year has been enough time for me to double the size of my mattress and purchase some stereotypically millennial Ikea/Target/West Elm bedding. I no longer have to feel my toes dangle over the edge of the bed or explain to people why my room looks like a JC Penney catalog from 1999. Definitely move in the right direction, I'd say.