ani place in time
a digital notebook and quasi-zine

2024-Jan 2025

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This has been a long, miserable, slow, stressful, powerful year full of firsts and lots I’m incredibly proud of, as well as many of my lowest moments. Throughout so much of this year, I have felt utterly helpless. I came out to my parents in July after the lowest point in (probably) my entire life – I might as well have said nothing because they still have never referred to me properly or spoken the syllables Ani. I also became aware that I have ADHD (this was professionally confirmed in October), something that, whether I was aware of it or not, has negatively affected me for a very, very long time. However, it was a (approximately) ten-month journey to finally be seen by a psychiatrist and arrive where I am now. Both of these anecdotes still have some hope attached though. This month I received a letter from my twin addressed to one Ani Wells – this was one of the first times in I-can’t-even-remember-how-long that I teared up from positive emotion (movies excluded). And! I’m medicated now! A few weeks ago (at the time of publishing) I began a starter dose of Bupropion. At the time of writing, I have finally gotten past the first week of treatment, an experience I am profoundly relieved to be finished with. For approximately five days I had a constant headache, constant nausea, and I was so goddamn grumpy, even in the best of company I couldn’t shake a constant irritation that my space was being invaded. But that part is over. I haven’t really started feeling any of the positive effects yet (again, at the time of writing), but hopefully by the time this is published things will be looking better for both my ADHD and depression.

Other firsts for this year include continuing to do new things at teeth school (and feeling more confident) as well as making the decision to move very far away from Pittsburgh. Nothing will be 100% confirmed until January 17, but it’s looking like this upcoming June I’ll be moving to Spokane, Washington, truly alone. This will be my first time moving more than one hour away from my family and my first time moving somewhere without any local support system. However, I did find out that a dear friend of mine lives only 1.5 hours from Spokane, and I am very excited at the potential to reconnect with someone I love and miss so much.

I’ve read extensively this year – the most I’ve read since 2022. I realize there was only one year between then and the start of this year, but last year I read so little that 2024 felt like a big step, not to mention that 2022 feels like it was a lifetime ago. Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad was a whirlwind of characters and their interlocking stories of trauma and casualty. I dove a bit deeper into the world of classic (pre-WWII) literature as well, finding love for Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (shout-out “book club”!!), and Melville’s Moby Dick. I also took another step into the world of Clarice Lispector, an absolutely fascinating writer from mid-century Brazil. I cannot recommend her works enough.

I fell in love with lots of movies this year as well, most notably the strange, surreal, queer-as-hell universe of Gregg Araki’s teen apocalypse trilogy. With so much in flux in my life this year and constant searching for myself, I have found great solace in movies centering teenagers, specifically Perks of Being a Wallflower and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (both Pittsburgh!) in addition to the works of Gregg Araki. There’s much to be said of the comfort I find in these films; in all of them I see outcasts within a community where they feel accepted and able to grow, an experience I wish felt more available to me at that time in my life. Not that I didn’t have friends, but it never felt that queerness could be centered in a group of friends when I was growing up, even though the undercurrents were always there. All three of us now have more fully realized our identities (and continue to grow and change) and identify as some flavor of queer.

Although my consumption flourished, I struggled more in my personal creative pursuits. I started doing more digital photography this year (21st century, whaddup), but I have barely gotten through two rolls of film (and an additional one that was loaded improperly, sacrificing images I thought were going to be some of my best ever to the void). Despite slowing down my photography, I feel more confident in my ability to create results I am actually happy with. My music and writing has slowed nearly to a stop, but that is something I am working to reverse. Moving forward, I am hoping to decentralize the results and focus more on the process. I just want to have fun with it :) and I think whatever results I end up with will do justice to that.

Reflecting back on this year, the strongest thing that I feel now is hope. Things can get better for me, and I have some level of agency in this. Things are not hopeless, and I am not helpless. That’s what I’m choosing to believe for today.

Thank you for reading this far. And thank you for caring. If you’ve ended up here, I care about you. I care about you deeply.

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I love you. I hope to hear from you soon.

~ani~