today, i drove through the suburbs.
why i regress when i visit my parents
🎶 drivers license (slowed + reverb) - Olivia Rodrigo​
I spent a week in the California suburbs where I grew up, and oh boy. I wish I could say that I had an awesome time, but I honestly didn't. Did I enjoy seeing my dad and my high school friends? Of course. But did I enjoy being in San Ramon, California? Absolutely not. Something strange happens to me whenever I visit the site of my most embarrassing and formative foibles.
the infinite regress of the suburbs.
I've always been one of those people who was particularly sensitive to environment. I studied for the LSAT at the Yale Law Library because I thought it would help me absorb the high LSAT scores of those around me. There's something awe-inducing about being somewhere that I know that others, who may have had similar confusions and ambitions, were.
But when I'm in my childhood home, I have no awe. I only have shame. The shame of getting my period in 5th grade and not knowing what it was. The shame of not knowing how to dress in 6th grade because I had clothed myself primarily in free t-shirts up until then. The shame of fumbling my response when a popular girl asked me "how are you" as a rhetorical greeting. (I thought it was a real question. Why isn't it a real question?)
In middle school, I met the girl who used to live in my childhood house, in my room, and I remember thinking that she was so pretty and well-adjusted. She had very straight brown hair and sang in the chorus. And every night, I lied in bed in the room where she used to sleep, and I could not feel connected to anyone or anything at all.
It wasn't until later in life, thousands of miles away, that I would ever feel like I truly "belonged" in a place.
🔖 open tabs
Whenever I visit California, I am utterly fascinated by its politics. The Cut's feature profile on Dianne Feinstein, a trailblazer for women in politics and the oldest sitting U.S. senator, was a thought-provoking contrast to The Atlantic's feature on the "failed city" of San Francisco in the wake of Chesa Boudin's recall. I followed Chesa Boudin's recall pretty closely because he was kind of a big-deal alum when I was at Yale, and he was a fellow of the residential college that I was in so would host events for students. It's pretty crazy to see someone I once looked up to go through such a public event like a recall--I get upset over public comments sometimes, and I can't even imagine how I'd react over publicly "losing" a recall election.
​Congress released a draft federal privacy bill, the "American Data Privacy and Protection Act." This federal law, if passed, would largely preempt state privacy legislation in California, Virginia, Colorado, Utah, and Connecticut. It's TBD whether the bill will actually be passed, given the upcoming midterm elections and Congress being on recess for most of August, but who knows! I honestly did not think I would see a federal privacy law in the near-term, so this is an interesting development, although I still don't think that the data rights framework is necessarily the most appropriate for protecting privacy interests.
My anxiety has been pretty out-of-control lately, and I'm so tired of hearing advice to meditate or practice mindfulness (like--I know, okay? I know). This episode from the Huberman Lab podcast was the first actionable and immediately helpful source for managing anxiety and stress that I found. The beginning is a bit like a biology lecture, but 40:39 onward provides actionable advice for real-time stressful situations and periods.