Fallon's Personal Essays

Monday morning, I woke up and realized I had yet again ignored all of my school responsibilities over the weekend. I came home after work on Sunday evening and tumbled down a rabbit hole lined with flickering screens. KC Undercover episodes on Disney Plus. Instagram Reels. I fell down, down, down, until I eventually slept, at 12. My Japanese homework, incomplete. My college essays still steaming heaps of word vomit if anything. I very much wanted to scream and explode and bawl my eyes out. Procrastination often feels like an unavoidable instinct. I have an intense need to get away from the seemingly insurmountable mountain of tasks which are always ahead of me, and I can, if I do literally anything else. It's hard to tell the exact extent to which it's present. It's sneaky. It’s a massive and vague concept that can mean so many things. Because sometimes I’m obviously avoiding impending deadlines, watching social media instead of working. But sometimes I'm not. Sometim...

What assumptions do people make about you? “You’re so cute.” “You don’t look like the kind of person who’d curse.” “You have a young voice.” I’ve heard those a lot, and I hate them. I’m not saying that people are wrong about these perceptions. I don’t curse. I talk like a distressed dog toy. Sometimes it just feels demeaning. That's what people feel the need to comment on, that’s what they notice about me. I recognize, consciously, that it's meant as a compliment, but every time I hear the words, I want to jump up to defend my skills and my experience. A few weeks ago, I was working in the Flying Monkey Cafe. I was hesitantly pushing some water bottles across the counter towards a customer. I was new in this particular role, so I was timid because I had no clue what the procedures were. They laughed at me, obviously. What I was doing was funny, after all. Objectively, pushing the water slowly across the counter instead of placing it in a hand. That’s unexpected and absurd. But ...