Nice Things are Nice

confusing yourself is a way to stay honest

(Peach tree, 2025)

If I’m honest, I started this Substack because the Notes app on my phone was beginning to look a bit like internal monologue made manifest as ransom notes: jagged scraps ripped hastily from magazines, exuding a threatening energy. Yet I find myself wanting the scraps to be something more than what they are.

There’s a note that outlines how at the Bracken Cave Preserve outside San Antonio, guano was mined for saltpeter to make gunpowder during the Civil War, jotted down quickly as the guide stood against the backdrop of the largest bat colony in the world emerging from the cavern at sunset.

There are vignettes stashed with no qualifier, no declaration of intent, obviously intended to be used (but where? how?), like:

When I first moved to Austin, my roommates were my sister, her boyfriend, their friend (who had recently served time for possession of heroin, and who also regularly left his copy of Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet on the lid of our toilet tank), and his girlfriend (who he “married” in a cave ceremony that was, to my knowledge, not legally binding)

There are lists: for Costco, what to put on the curb for the next bulk collection. There’s the packing list from the work trip I took five weeks ago that required three major costume changes in 24 hours, necessitating taking down both a detailed inventory (silver heels and earrings, the neutral lipstick and the brighter one with a separate gloss application, the dress with pockets that you can carry your business cards in) and laying out the process in steps, so I wouldn’t have to think about it in the moment (remember: do your makeup first, and then your hair).

There are also various starts and stops, outlines of essays I’ve already started writing and have found myself wrestling with for over a year now (sometimes more). I seem to think “if only I write out the same outline over and over again, then it will finally work.” So far, it has not worked.

The problem with not finishing something I’ve started writing is that I never stop writing and rewriting it in my head. Solitary sentences, quippy setups, even entire paragraphs will play back to me like a reel, an internalized echolalia of my own creation. It’s a bit like torture. Like — it feels kind of good, but it also makes me a bit frantic, like a squirrel that’s been sealed in someone’s attic.

I suppose this is part of the delicious tension that is just inherent to the process.

I am appreciating the practice and repetition of writing here. I find the more I finish, even something as uncomplicated as this, the more I am compelled to keep going. Secretly, I hope that I will start feeling able to take on larger projects. There are things I’ve wanted to write for a while, but it’s tough to jump all the way in, opposite of cold-turkey. Mostly I’m finding that I’m getting what I want from this process, which is ongoing conversation that feeds me, and a sturdier foothold on connecting my internal world to how I live my life externally.

For me, this is living the dream.

When I started out sifting, and imagining how I wanted to highlight what I already have, I intended this to actually be a list of Nice Things. It’s not. It’s just one Nice Thing, that also spreads out to many other things. Will I explore the rest of the list later? Maybe. But this one is definitely top of the pile.

(Kingston, WA 2004)

I Got A Camera

I had been thinking about it for a long time but in the way someone might consider grad school — something distant to aspire to if other things don’t work out. It felt a bit like something I needed a degree for to approach to begin with. I’d thought I would minor in photography in college, but the required foundational art courses took me out at the knees (I remember cursing under my breath, frantically trying to keep up with the prompts the instructor lobbed at us in short time increments during figure drawing sessions). The expense of the program followed close behind.

But I digress.

For me, the things I really and actually want are the things that feel most personal and vulnerable. I don’t think that’s a unique experience, but it did give me significant pause. Stalled me out.

Then, I got brave enough to ask for help. The help I received was more specific, and far more gracious, than I expected.

Then, it got real. Like really real. It felt like maybe I should have a plan for how to torture myself adequately for a long enough period of time before I could let myself have it (not to brag but it’s one of my oldest tricks). I told the friend who dutifully donned a white nightgown and posed in fields of dead flowers for me the summer before our senior year of high school so I could use up the rolls of black and white film I’d stolen from class, and she said:

“Kirsten you’ve already earned it. You haven’t had a camera in forever and you’ve needed one. It is good to earn the things you want but you’ve been waiting for this for fucking your entire thirties. Go get it, maybe right now.”

So I did.

There have been small moments of hilarity, such as the times I’ve found myself rebuking branches out loud as they bounce in the wind, refusing focus (while I don’t miss my phone being my only instrument, I am still adjusting to using both hands to compose a shot). I’ve found myself still awake at 1:00 AM on a Wednesday night, making rudimentary edits, wondering if I’ve accidentally triggered some kind of ultra-specific manic episode (another thought-trick to dampen sustained joy).

I have new Notes now, with reminders like: go to the pedestrian bridge to catch the reflection on the buildings downtown at sunset, and: figure out which lens would help me best capture the sky. I carry a number of shots in my mind’s eye of various nouns. I can finally admit to myself the extent to which I am like, really into tree roots, as well as the texture and curve of different types of rock.

I feel centered in a markedly different way. It’s like in yoga when they tell you to ground down through all four corners of your feet, except I’m doing it while walking and stopping and standing and using my hands.

It’s also a little frightening in a way I can’t fully explain.

If I tried: It’s like a boulder unblocked something, and I think there might be a lot down there. I don’t particularly want to downplay it. I don’t have all that much chill, either. I want to get personal with it. I’m done fucking around.

Being in the process of it, and getting to share that joy, has felt a little bit like someone found the wind-up crank on the small of my back and turned it. I have some propulsion and momentum, I am lurching rapidly on wobbly legs alongside a ledge. I have a tool in my hands. It’s a bit like a Fool moment in the tarot, leaping without seeing (metaphorically, but like, it’s also a good thing I bought the protection plan).

I think about Jenny Holzer’s truism “confusing yourself is a way to stay honest,” something that I’ve kept close to the chest for the last 20 years of my life.

Excitement and fear can often feel the same in the body. I guess I’m ready to see just how weird I’ll get with it.