The Stories I’m Learning to Listen To

The fluorescent lights cast a yellow hue that makes you feel like it’s 1979, and the rusty old blue lockers give the same effect. Where might this place be, you wonder? The good old Downtown YMCA in my hometown,just about the most magical place you can imagine (kidding).

Lately, I’ve been into swimming laps, a routine that connects me back to childhood. The water is a home of homes for me. But it’s the post-swim shower where I’ve been having some intense thoughts, surrounded by old naked ladies after their water aerobics classes. There is something about showering among these wrinkled and beautiful old women that has been bringing up deep-seated notions within me: that my life looks ordinary, but there’s a war raging inside of me.

Whenever I’ve been going to write lately, I find that it’s mostly about the past. I feel my present is not enough to share; my day-to-day is nothing too exciting. I wish I could write about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro or backpacking through India, but showering next to saggy ladies at the YMCA while having an existential crisis? That feels… less cinematic.

I imagine that one day, when I sit down to write, I will have been on so many tantalizing adventures that the words pour out of me with the power of a person who has seen so much. The narrative will be obvious as I sit in a coffee shop in South America, right? Yet I’ve also had the realization that perhaps it won’t be like that. Great adventures make a good plot, sure, but they don’t make good writers. The in-between seasons of life create the roots of the tree, which only grows and grows. There is no sudden blossom; and creation is only as good as its creator.

Maybe my life has looked like swimming laps at the crusty YMCA, watercoloring in my journal at night, and working—but internally, during all those things, I’m questioning everything. I envy those around me who appear settled, yet I fear settling myself. I feel trapped most days in the imaginary walls of this place… my keyboard, my sword, trying desperately to free myself from these confines.

When I look at the older women around me, I wonder if they know the war raging in my head. Did they feel it too when they were in their twenties? The quiet but loud noise they worked every day to silence—the one that whispers: Do not settle here; there is so much more to discover.

It seems that when I’m presented with opportunities for settling down or choosing the socially “right” thing, every part of my body shudders with the knowledge that it is not right for me. Yet I look the part. I look like I should and would want all the nice and shiny things from life. How many other women felt like this but pushed it down for the promise of a career and children and a nice suburban home? Thinking to themselves; I want to live on an island with strangers, but packing sandwiches every day will be okay too. What would have become of them?

We no longer live in a world like that, yet now there’s so much to choose from that I don’t know what to be. I still want to be an astronaut and a dude rancher and a fashion designer. I still want to backpack through Southeast Asia and have a bunch of babies and raise them with my lover. The abundance of choice is both a burden and a blessing, especially when you feel the ethereal push and pull of your decisions and have promised to be the messenger of your stories and dreams. How can I share my life when I don’t even know what to do with it sometimes?

I feel like I’m on an old pirate ship roaring through waves, and on the cliffs next to me are beautiful sirens, each singing their songs: “Sequoia, come run away with us.” “Sequoia, go back to school.” “Sequoia, cut off all your hair.” Are these my inner voices? Yes, yes they are. But it’s fun to personify them as gorgeous, tempting mermaids, okay.

I’m sure that if I asked for advice on this topic, a therapist would tell me: Just choose something and go with it. The outcome is never promised, but if you’re happy and stable in yourself, it won’t matter what you do. But the thing is, I don’t want to just choose. I want to embody all of life. How can I be a living and breathing collage of all of it; of every decision, love, and moment—held behind my brown eyes and flesh exterior? It’s not just choosing; it’s being. And when you feel all that, everything becomes bigger and smaller at the same time.

I feel envious of those who seem so simple and find purpose in the mundane, who do not feel like life is a maze and they’re on an eternal quest to find the center. But to give up the mission? I could never.

Perhaps what I must come to accept is this: expansion does not require external chaos. You can be rooted and a storyteller. You can be an amalgamation of anything you want to be. Abundance often creates anxiety in me, that choosing one path feels like the death of another. But looking at the smiles of the old women around me, I know not one of them is that simple. Choosing is not erasing. We are not a sculpture; we are rotating collages.

I may tell myself that summit winds, ranch dust, and Southeast Asia will be the adventures that give me stories to share. And I bet the women around me once felt the same way. But here’s the thing: the difference between them and me isn’t whether they had grand adventures; it will be whether they stopped listening. And I sure haven’t.

So instead of asking yourself next time, Is this life big enough to share? Ask yourself, What’s alive here? There are always stories around us, especially the ones that happen in your head. Your thoughts? Sexy mermaid sirens. Your curiosity? The map that will guide you through the maze. Your day-to-day routines? The seeds you’re planting in your garden that you will get to watch bloom.

You do not have to share crazy stories to have a voice. The most fascinating ones will be the magic you find day to day (even existential doom in the public changing room).

Thank you for reading about my in-betweens on the Qoi Pond today. You are loved, and you are worthy of being heard.

— Qoi

Multifaceted Magical Goo Bot Manifesto

It has been some time since I have felt compelled to write of the mystiques and mishaps of my life as of late. I attribute this to the fact that I already leave nothing to the imagination. Sometimes I enter a social situation like: Okay, Sequoia, be cool and mysterious and leave them all guessing, and then five minutes in I am like: “You guys ever masturbate and then you’re like, what if this is the time my dead grandparents decided to come pay me a visit and now my dead grandma is watching me flick my bean?” Some may call this a classic case of oversharing, which is true. But what is the point of this existence if not to put it all out there, to be silly and weird and show up as yourself?

So lately, the compulsion to put all my odds and ends even more on display has lost a bit of its allure. But then I remember that without sharing my words, I might as well just throw in the rag and quit, because I need to write. So that’s why we have gathered here today, to share. About what exactly, I’m still not sure, but the need for vulnerability feels higher than ever, and I happen to be a master of putting it all out there.

I began this blog five years ago. The idea actually came to me on a trail run during peak COVID times, when I was just a baby of nineteen years old. Of course, at the time I felt like the captain of life, and now at age twenty-five I feel like I don’t know a thing about anything! Yet that is why I feel compelled to revive my written world that I created years ago, at a much different time in my life. Because the experiences I was having then (and the ones now) differ vastly, but still consist of stupid nights out, unlearning and relearning everything, trying out new things, maybe a bit more self-care, falling in love, and being just a silly guy in an awfully serious world.

I write in hopes that I still resonate with someone out there, to offer a place of vulnerability and honesty in this rapidly changing ecosystem of society. To be a reminder that WE ARE ALL PERPETUALLY connected through our life experiences, and collectively confused as all hell. But to keep creating your own individual multifaceted magical goo bot is the key to escaping the confines of normalcy and submission. As always, you may resonate with the words I write here, and equally you may choke on your coffee and immediately click out of this website. Which, again, I encourage you to do both. But if you stay with me a little bit longer, I think we can have some fun together.

One time my blog cringed out my ex-boyfriend so hard, and I think now about how that may have been the exact intention of it, of how shit works in general. The people who stay are the people I’m writing for, and the ones that leave? Well baby, that’s a part of the ritual!

Lately, the world feels like when you were a kid and you bought a pack of Hubba Bubba gum and stuck five pieces in your mouth at once, and then you try to chew it and you’re just suffocating on goo. I have tended in the past to write about the common experiences we all endure during our time here, but it feels that as my readers and I begin to get older, the things that separate us are becoming more apparent.

Some of my fellow young adults are embarking on the journey that is marriage and career-hood, the corporate world and tending to their offspring. Meanwhile, I am gathering my tribe of puppets and still running around like a rat that got released after years of medical experiments being conducted on it. I suppose this is how life works, time unfolding differently for all of us, creating more distinct experiences. But this does not have to mean we cannot still sit down and share a cup of metaphorical tea, though we may be in entirely different realms of human existence, because the through-lines remain.

And what are those lines? Here are some of my thoughts lately. Maybe you will relate, and maybe you will not ( Also, these are unorganized as I am too ).

1. Are harmonicas the next big thing? ( This one is from my dad )
2. How our parents made the blueprint of us, but are most certainly not the architects of our lives.
3. Let your inner jester play (how to enact sacred silliness every day).
4. Using my voice to speak up for the people around me who cannot. Community is only created when conscious participation is enacted.
5. Vibrating nipple clamps?
6. Wearing elf ears whenever possible, because this world needs more ethereal elements!
7. It’s hers, his, or their first go at life too.
8. Creating habits that allow us to become aware of the natural rhythms of our bodies, so we can then be connected to the rhythms of the universe.
9. Intentionally listening to the stories my friends are trying to convey, even if it’s about how they ate their eggs that day.
10. The pipeline from wearing jorts to committing tax evasion?
11. To feel everything is not to heal everything. To let the emotions in is to be a potent participant in your life, while releasing the notion that you must fix all the bad feelings. Engage with your thoughts!
13. Freestyle with your homies, put on a beat and rhyme and repeat!
14. To put out your creations (as imperfect as they may be) is literally a sacred act of independence and individuality in our society! Fuck capitalism and fuck the patriarchy. 

My best friend/cousin recently said, “being free is my love language,” and those words have been dancing around in my mind ever since they said it. What does it actually mean to be free? To abandon all your responsibilities? Sadly, no. But maybe freedom lives within the mini, everyday moments that feel unmistakably like yourself. This blog is my offering to that kind of love, a digital pocket of freedom for myself, and in turn I hope for you too. And truly, it’s not that deep. These are just glorified poop thoughts anyway. Thank you for meeting me here at the Qoi-Pond. I can’t wait to do it again. Go spread your magical goo!

Q signing off.
I love you.