01.02.26 So against spending my night out in the smoking area

It's the first day of February and something I'm realising is that the perfect weekend comes at a cost. My friend Milky is always like: the perfect Dublin weekend! in a way that makes me want to emulate both his optimism and openness to having such a weekend. I, however, am the most tired anyone has ever been for reasons of fun, I'm waiting for Matthew (boyfriend) to come out of the shower so we can have lunch and am writing because I cannot possibly watch another youtube video about the videogame hades.
On Friday, me and my friend Gráinne went out to the club. Usually, when I go clubbing with a big group of people and we spend most of the time chatting in the smoking area, or dancing as a big group on the floor. This is an amazing time that saps my social energy while refilling my social heart. However, recently I have been itchy for a good dance. One of my favourite nights out of the past few years was one where there weren't loads of people there I knew, we were mostly with my boyfriend's friends and they were smoking sooooooooooooo many cigarettes. I bumped into a friend of mine and (because her gf at the time was DJing) we schooched up to the front and danced for the entire set. I was able, in that moment, to cut out all the other noise of a night out and engage only with the noise. After her set, we went and got water and I found my other friends, but I kept gravitating back to the centre of the crowd, below the speaker.
I like this from Mackenzie Wark, from her great track with Body Techniques, we go: "We always go for the front. We like the feel of the sub bass. We like the breeze off the big bin. We try to find that place. That place in movement. It takes a while. We go into the sound. We let sound into flesh."


And it does take a while! I realise this at Tengu, bound to the floor initally by social obligation and then by desire. [returning to this later]

Back on 02.02.26 after imbolc, and laughing at how I didn't even get to what I wanted to talk about. My intention wasn't that other good night, it was this good night. What was I trying to explain with that? I guess that going to the club is, at best, not a very social experience to me. It's a bodily one. I am writing some fiction with a lot of nights out, and I'm struggling consistency to condence what is special (both special good and special bad) about the experience of being in a club into narrative fiction. When talking to my friends about why I had such a good time I fall back on facts that fail to explain it: we danced so much we were out of breath, we didn't spend one minute talking in the kitchen. Under the speaker, the music was inside us (Mackenzie Wark calls this letting the music fuck you which I find annoying, but is maybe a more effective description than me going "it was nice." My inability to get something across also, in some way, pleases me. I don't really want to give someone else my night-- it was mine! Matthew tells me his friend didn't have so good a night even though we were in the same place, and I want to hold my night closer. How was it? someone asks and I say Good, or even: amazing. But I move past it; how was their night? what's the weather like? Mackenzie Wark again to do my work for me:
"You are all so annoying. At first. We try a different spot. Its better over here. Less annoying. Now it feels good. Not annoying at all. Everyone here is dancing. We are all dancing. Dancing is all we are. We sense each other’s bodies around and let a little of each other in. We are in this together. Whatever this is. It’s a time where everything is a friend."
And this is it. When you give yourself the space to let the music in, to resist going outside to smoke and talk to your friends, everything becomes a friend.
NOTE: all of this, all of what is good is like, always about the DJ, and I talk about this less because I have truly never understood how to write about music. In this instance the DJ was Angel Tabris, who has this mix I really really like:

24/01/2026

This is mostly something I do in work/to avoid work. I'm just home from yoga, and got an unexpected life home which is nice. I slept very badly and I feel that tugging at all elements of me. I've found that the best way to sleep (for me to sleep) is to be as unencumbered and able to move as possible. But this makes it difficult to share a bed with someone. See below:

That is how I like to sleep. But this is how a lot of things work: it would be easier not to relate to other people, because you would avoid conflict. It would be easier not to make a page on your terrible website for your friend because you would avoid work. I don't know what I'm saying. What I mean is that I'm going to learn to sleep better. I'm going to use the lavender sleepy spray that my mother got me for christmas, and I'm going to start going to bed earlier. I've recently moved in with my boyfriend and a friend, and one of the greatest joys of my life (staying up talking) means I keep going to bed at stupid hours, but I still get up early for the other greatest joy of my life (writing) so I can get good work in before the greatest tragedy of my life (having a job) begins.

All this is to say that I'm so happy. Every day I wake up grateful for my current living situation, for the space and closeness it has given me. I am just typing this up before I go out to the IPSC's march for palestine in town, and then I'll meet my friends at the cinema to see Pillion. This is truly a diary, not a blog or a substack. Intentions for next time:

What do I want from myself

• LEARN HOW TO MAKE COLUMNS!!! oh my god.
• eating more blueberries
• more sleep
• the theme of all of this: find a way to balance love with regimine, without regimenting my love

here is last nights dinner: