Goodbye, Again: Essays, Reflections, and Illustrations

by Jonny Sun

That freedom is crushing because it feels like looking at a big, blank canvas of usable time, and then being forced to solve how to use it best. It takes so much work just to get to figuring out what to do with the time! There are too many possibilities, too much potential, and by extension, too much pressure. Because what if I do the wrong thing? What if I squander the options? Is now the time to work? And if so, what do I work on? Is now the time to rest? And if it is, how can I rest in the best way possible? How do I get the most rest? But if it is time to rest, doesn’t this mean that I can use this time to be not resting instead? And so I feel like I can only find peace within focused and defined time. Without a focus, all that undefined time causes me to freeze as I try to calculate and plan and decide in my head on what the most worthwhile thing to spend my time on would be, and then suddenly I look up and the day is over and I’ve squandered my day anyway, lost to the promise of potential.

And now, work feels very much the same. I think I am trying to build myself up with what I work on, but when I finish any task, when I complete a row on the screen, instead of it being a layer to build this lasting foundation upon, it feels like the project just disappears—it’s in the past, it’s gone, it does not add to who I am, and suddenly I am just faced with another blank row, starting from nothing again.

but these incomplete rows are the proof that I’m working on something and they are the proof that I exist and they are there to prevent me from ever feeling like I am staring at a blank screen, worrying if I’ll ever be able to fill this emptiness again.

Stir, noting that if it doesn’t look like anything is happening at all, that means you’re on the right track.

Stir, noting that if it looks like nothing will ever change, that means you’re doing it right.

It’s just that my farm game promises that the work I put into it will have a consistent, measurable result that serves as proof that I put work into it.

One thing that has made me less anxious about talking to people is focusing on this notion that a conversation is a gift of somebody’s time and attention. The person you’re talking with decided in that moment that you are more important than everything else they have going on, and they chose you—and you chose them—to spend some amount of time with. That used to cause me a great deal of stress, because I’d worry that I wasn’t worth the time or the attention, but lately I have been recalling how excited I feel when I want to share my time and attention with someone and am imagining that the other person might be feeling some version of that toward me as well. I bring my time and attention, and they bring their time and attention, and we are both hoping that if the conditions are good—or good enough—that something will know how to grow out of it, and that makes me feel a little better about it all.

You can mourn your own changes, too. That you are no longer the person you used to be is, in my opinion, a good reason for mourning. It may be a cause for celebration, sometimes, too. But you can always give who you once were a send-off, a memorial, before you move on from them.

And I think I want to keep adding to it. And I think that means, that this is some sure sign, that I want to be alive.

caring for a plant feels like some way to do something when you don’t know what else to do.

I don’t think two people reaching into the same tub of popcorn at the same time is considered romantic. That’s not romantic! That’s just getting in the way of each other’s popcorn.

You have your entire life to worry about the rest of your life. Just get through today. Don’t tell yourself “don’t worry,” but just . . . worry smaller.

I believe that the things you notice—that you love, that make you pause—make up who you are.

Home, then, I suppose, is simply in the ways you take a strange space and make it feel familiar. Sometimes that means putting your stuff in it. Sometimes that just means putting yourself in it and giving it time.