albums i listened to all the way through

posted this week and every week (21)

Jun 29, 2025

I feel like a bad artist—or creator or whatever it is we call ourselves here.

I’ve felt an increasing sense of malaise creep into my body and mind lately. With Summer now fully spread across the Northern Hemisphere like a wet t-shirt, I thought things in my work life would make way for things in my artistic life. I had so many plans. Towards the beginning of the Spring, I committed myself to a few new projects here on Substack. I was writing and reading and thinking and volunteering constantly.

GenX_Zine. The Zine-O-Sphere newsletter. The Resource/Template Guide for Zinesters. The Spotify Transfer Project. An endless amount of albums, shows, and meet-ups.

I’m afraid to admit I’ve overcommitted. Now, I’m paralyzed by how much there is to do.

I’ve struggled with overcommitting for a long time but especially in the last few years. Because of a variety of new and evolving health problems, I’ve lost a lot of the stamina and energy I once possessed as a teen and young twenty-something.

I hate not being able to meet my own expectations, much less the expectations of others. It feels like a massive cop-out. It’s complaining about something I have the power to change. Right? Just gotta get my ass up out of bed and outside.

Some days, it really is that simple. Other days, not so much.

As Rilo Kiley once said, “The lows are so extreme that the good seems fucking cheap / And it teases you for weeks in its absence.”

Well, it’s—whatever that is—been absent from my life for more than a few weeks.

I’ve been reading a lot about the idea of body failure. I’m not necessarily talking about full-on organ failure, though my small intestine, joints, and uterus may disagree with me. I’m referring to the omni-present inflammation, pain, and frustration any chronically ill person experiences in the midst of their disease. How that inflammation, pain, and frustration all lead to performance failure and, ultimately, a loss of self and identity.

I experienced a version of this phenomenon a few weeks ago.

At work, we have this annual staff-wide luncheon. It normally takes place in late May or early June as a celebratory “Hey, we made it through another academic year!” The event is catered by the catering company based on campus.

This year, the theme was “A Taste Of The South” and included all the “fixins”—BBQ, fried chicken, mac-and-cheese, corn bread, and coleslaw. I felt really weird about it all as a hyper-vigilant Southern transplant but wanted to support the staff and committee. I went out of my way to ask if there would be Gluten-Free options.

Instead, I got a legal notice from the catering company telling me the following:

“The official classification of items made in the on-campus kitchen is “avoiding gluten.” The kitchen is not a gluten free kitchen, so while _____ can make an item avoiding ingredients with gluten, there is always a possibility of cross contamination. This is to say that if anyone has a severe gluten allergy, they may want to avoid.”

I have been warned by numerous health professionals not to risk any amount of cross-continuation if I can help it. So, I went and ate nothing. I watched a hundred Yankees eat all my favorite food and drank my Diet Coke in silence, debating on whether HR would ever even deign to give me a true accommodation in the future.

If only my body could process gluten, my identity as Southerner would be intact, right?

That’s sort of a stupid example, but the sentiment remains.

I’ve never talked publicly about my Celiac Disease because—well, there’s a lot of baggage attached to it—

classic gluten free white bitch stereotypes
a deep misunderstanding of the difference between an “allergy” and an “autoimmune disease” (Spoiler alert: I have the second one.)
“Someone always has it worse.”

It just serves me better to keep it all inside my mind and the pages of my therapy journal. Or—so I thought.

The truth is, I wanted so badly to be this new Substack writer version of myself that I pushed my body and mind well beyond their capacity. I let so much fall through the cracks and am just now seeing the effects of those choices. I have experienced so much performance failure lately and can’t manage to express that without sounding whiny or annoying.

No one wants to admit they need help or a break, least of all a twenty-something with imposter syndrome. But I do. I’m realizing I need some time to rest without the fear of disappointing someone. Even the list of albums from this week deserve more from me. I just can’t swing it beyond saying I enjoyed all of them.

I don’t really know what any of this looks like yet. All I know is I’m running on empty and need to fill up before I can go any further.

Thanks to Dave Conrey and ✧ brooklyn 𓆏 for your album recommendations :)

Here are the albums I listened to all the way through this past week: