mallika2608

053b – if I die, do not say I was reckless and stupid

The mind goes to dark places tonight. I’ve recently moved to an apartment by myself in South Delhi, India. Delhi is infamous for being a terribly unsafe city, especially for women. I’m experiencing a bunch of strong thoughts right now, ranging from actual worries about my literal safety to judgement around having made a potentially bad, stupid, not a very thought-out decision. I’m also a little angry with the people who I did rely on for a “second opinion” during my search, who didn’t voice out their concerns when they could have.

I’m trying to access stoicism, even though that’s tough to access when it comes to the worst-case scenarios around this kind of a problem: sexual assault, rape, a range of physical harm, murder. I don’t have reassurance to offer to myself.

So that’s the first part of the problem, but considering it is not the average-case scenario, only the worst-case scenario, I want to address the other part of the problem. Let’s say I have a couple weeks of bad-sleep-nights, and I come to the conclusion that this wasn’t a good decision.. is that so bad? I didn’t originally want to make a fear-based decision based on my past philosophy, but maybe it’s okay to arrive to the conclusion that in certain situations, making fear-based decisions is fine too. (Of course, it’s the more rational thing to do for a lot of people, but the reason I hadn’t wanted to do that until now is because I run more anxious about many things, and I didn’t want my anxiety to impact my life, not too much.)

—

Slept off eventually because I was tired enough to, so maybe I’ll continue this another time. I’m planning to have some backups in place though, more self-defence tools, and maybe some self-defence classes. Obviously, if anything major was to happen, this wouldn’t help much, but one can only hope.

Anyway, the daytime is quite nice, apart from it being extremely hot, and I don’t want to keep the air-conditioning on all the time. I don’t know, I have so many conflicting desires in life, not sure how to find a middle-ground with any of them.

I really love the house otherwise, like I can envision everything, once it’s all set up, I can imagine having a really nice stint here, socially, creatively, I think. And post August I think it also won’t be as hot anymore, so that’ll be quite nice. I need to go out for a walk today to explore the area a little bit, though I’m feeling a little lazy.

One realisation I had yesterday was that I’ve had a lot of exposure therapy wrt my anxiety etc in the last couple days, so it’s good to know that when I do need to do things that are non-negotiable, I’m able to do them. This is good for self-trust.

My third month in Delhi has ended, but really, my time here only begins now. Delhi, be good to me. 🙂 ❤

053a – my relationship with envy

So, something (an emotion) I’ve struggled with for a while now is envy. Obviously, the comparison reflex hits most of us sometime during school, and that’s when I developed it as well. Part of it is of course societal conditioning, but part of it might be biological too, I’m guessing. Biology does make us compete, since we’re limited people vying for limited resources. Or at least, we were. Resources and attention are not limited in the same way they were earlier. (They are limited in many ways, but I think that’s a separate discussion.)

So anyway, I know theoretically, I don’t need to be envious of my friends who’re in great relationships, because I’m not competing for the attention of the people they’re dating. Or I don’t need to be envious of someone who has their life sorted, because that is most likely not affecting my capacity to sort my own life.

And yet, the envy does come up. I think part of it is just that it’s a reminder of the parts of my life I’m not necessarily satisfied with. Like the two things I most commonly feel envy around are

1. Being single and
2. People having geographic clarity

Another that sometimes comes up is related to my avoidance behaviours (wrt my anxiety), so if I see someone having a lot of fun and living their “best” life in terms of doing whatever they seemingly want, I do experience some envy there as well.

So, yes, the envy exists even when I know it doesn’t need to. Now, what I have gotten better at, is letting it exist. I don’t feel bad about it, I don’t try to resist it, I don’t shame myself for it, etc. So, I think I have become more accepting of it over the last couple years. Which.. I’m pretty happy with. At least I don’t feel a ton of turmoil about the envy. But of course, that’s just step 1. There’s a step 2 and step 3 here.

Step 2: would be, I think, to act in the best way possible once the envy has passed. For example currently I’ve been unable to call and catchup with a friend who told me she’s getting married because I’m just worried I’ll feel things I’m not ready to feel. Like, of course I’m very happy for her, it’s just that the envy is blocking me a little bit from accessing the happiness and all the other “good” emotions. But now that I’ve addressed this, I think I can do it.

Step 3: of course, would be, to tame the comparison reflex. To tell myself the comparison is unnecessary whenever I find myself doing it. Eventually, I hope the envy will reduce as well.

To summarise, envy is natural, and is completely valid from time-to-time. Mostly, it’s just signalling something in my life I’m not happy with, even though it may not directly be related to this other person’s news. I’ve gotten decent at experiencing envy, I don’t feel second-layer emotions about it. But what I want is for the envy to not block my access to the other more “positive” emotions. And lastly, I want to cut down on the (involuntary) comparison thought-pattern, so that I can reduce the envy at the root.

052b – forward-looking

I’m up at 5am like I usually am these days and figured it might be good time for a word-vomit. I have a few updates as well so might be nice to get this out.

Finally found a house! It’s a little heavier on the wallet than I’m completely okay with but the location is probably the best I could have imagined getting, and it comes with a sweet terrace, which I’m very excited about. I’m a little skeptical about the natural lighting, but hoping it won’t be a big problem. Hoping the outdoor space will make up for it. Excited to move soon and hang all my art on the walls.

Finally did my first music open mic last week! It went decently well, the nerves didn’t show up as much as I expected them to, my voice held up, and the audience was sufficiently engaged as well. I ended up having a bad hair day on the day of— a couple years ago this would have driven me crazy, and maybe even made me cancel, but none of that happened— so that’s a lot of progress as well. Of course, this was just the first one, and I’d love to do a few more of these to get a sense of how much I enjoy it. But so far, so good.

I started drums classes! I’ve just had two so far but they’ve been super fun. It’s challenging in a great way, and this is the first time in many years that I’m being super impatient about just getting to do something. Like I’ve always been a student who values theory and techniques etc a lot but this is the first time I find myself getting bored by whatever the instructor tells me and I find myself just wanting to play right away. But I’m quite happy to notice this, since it’s very different for me, and I do think doing is actually a better way to learn than all the theory in the world.

I’ve been working on an original composition with a friend and when we met a couple weeks earlier we pretty much nailed down most of it. Now we’re stuck on the “recording” phase, but I’m excited to do this soon and actually release the song as soon as we can!

Overall, I’m feeling pretty excited about all things music, so that’s been nice.

Three months of my break+move are about to come to an end soon, which kinda bums me out a little bit because it reminds me how fast time flies when you’re having fun. It also bums me out because another three months and then I’ll genuinely have to think about some of the hard questions I’m allowing myself not to think about much right now. ie jobs and money etc.

This break was a great decision. And I’m realising today that phases and times like these don’t come by that easily, so I’m going to try to cherish it as much as I can!

Onward 🙂

052a – daily adventures in my city

It’s raining cats and dogs. There’s a 2-hour traffic jam on both sides of the road, it’d be completely stupid to take an auto or a cab to get to where I want to go. My destination is only slightly over a kilometre away. But I know the walking route is not very well-built, a friend had once tried to walk the same route to get to my place and had informed me of its quality. She’d arrived at my place, very flustered, exclaiming “never again”, even though that was during a relatively better-weather month. I’m very unsure of what I’m about to do, but I’m going for my first drums class, and I don’t want to cancel it. I’ve been looking forward to it the whole day today.

I start walking. It’s not that bad. I’ve got my worn-and-torn shoes on, and there’s enough people doing the same walk I’m doing, dodging the same puddles, using the same stones and bricks for support that I am. Who needs to go to Yosemite when you have this easy-moderate hike right next door to you, I think. I had stopped liking this type of humour for quite a while, but when you start living in India, it’s hard to not to be a bit sardonic sometimes. I’ve grown up in Mumbai, I should be able to do this, I think. But I don’t put my earphones on because I need all my brain-power and focus to not get more mud on myself than I need to. I cover half the route without any major problems. But then the pedestrians start to disappear. I’m a little worried, though I know even in the worst-case scenario, it’ll be like a half-kilometre stretch. There’s a lot more honking. The sidewalk ends abruptly, but I see a man continuing to walk himself and his bike amongst the puddles and the traffic coming from the opposite side. I quickly decide to follow him since I think he might be someone who does this on a daily basis. I feel lucky to have found support before I have the time to regret this stupid walk. He looks behind and catches my eye, we both sigh and then simultaneously smile, frustrated by the weather and the state of our surroundings. I’ve seen Parasite, I know that environmental disasters (big or small) affect the (financially) underprivileged so much more than they affect me.

But right now, purely in this particular moment, we are in the same situation. And I know that our destinations may be vastly different (mine was recreation, his might have been work, I don’t know), but at least in this ten-minute journey, he seems as glad as I feel to have the company.

051b – late twenties are tough

Dating is hard. One minute you’re deep into the fantasy of falling in love with a new person you might have met, and the next minute you’re grieving the fact that they left you on “Seen” (albeit for a day). I’ve worked a lot on myself since my first dating-apps-sourced heartbreak of 2020, but there is only so much work you can do with the past and the present. There are scenarios that come up every time you meet a new person that bring up so much new stuff for you, and no amount of self-work, therapy, healing, non-fiction / self-help books can really prepare you for the real thing. I think. I shudder to thing how much I might have been affected by said scenarios if I was still the same person I’d been in 2020.

Dating is realising that the knowledge of your attachment styles, communication preferences, following @therapyjeff etc etc doesn’t actually prevent you from feeling shitty when things don’t go as expected. Partly because the people you meet may not have engaged in all of this. But also partly because at the end of day, lived experience will trump everything. Bottom line is, while you can look at your feelings with more awareness (and knowledge), there is no way to avoid them altogether. Pain and suffering is the price we pay for living.

Last couple of days have been tough. House-hunting was paused for a bit because I couldn’t really find good options, but overall I’ve been unable to focus on other things until this piece is figured. I think that’s the tough part for me, parallelisation. It does take around a month in most places to find a place, so I’m trying to just remind myself that, but overall optimism has been hard to find when it comes to this. I’m also conflicted about the area/neighbourhoods I’m looking in and whether I should compromise a little bit on that (since I’m unable to find good places in my most preferred areas). I don’t know.

I found a music open-mic event that’s happening somewhat nearby to my current house, thinking of going and participating in that. I was practicing singing today and realised that it does recharge me, even though I often forget that when I’m not actively engaging in it. So maybe it’ll be nice to engage in this goal of mine and get that done with. I also enquired about drums classes nearby and going for an intro session today. Excited about that though! Been meaning to try this out forever so if I can engage with this, I might feel good.

I was supposed to have therapy this Monday which got canceled which I think is the primary cause of why I’ve been feeling so low last few days. I mean, not the root cause itself but something which could have alleviated everything.

In summary, dating, house-hunting, physical tiredness, a canceled therapy session, potential pms – these are the things that have got me down. Let’s see what shape the week ends up taking. Onward!

051a – drained

Emotions are really hard these days. After I woke up today, I lay in bed for almost twenty minutes doing nothing, paralysed. Just thinking. Ruminating. Eventually, crying. I hope I’m PMS-ing because I don’t know if I can take more mornings like these, at least not this week. I’ve been trying this “morning pages” thing which allows me to journal right after bed or right before going to bed, which has been nice, and yet, today it didn’t help at all. The idea is to clear your head as much as you can and then go about your day. Of course, these word-vomits tend to serve a similar purpose, when I can manage to do them.

I started house-hunting which made me realise I was biting off more than I could chew, so then I decided to pause one other project that I was planning to work on. I think collaboration is something that doesn’t come very easily to me, not without external / organisational structures or the base of knowing a person beforehand, and so that added some icky feelings around this particular project in me as well, which is the primary reason that it was the one I chose to cut.

This weekend was very draining, emotionally and mentally. I had a long, open conversation with some of my family about queerness and sexual, gender identity and although it was much needed and I really appreciate them taking the time to engage, it was definitely tough. I don’t know if I can do this very often. The conversation also took a bit of a turn and people also ended up sharing a bit about some of their stuff, their past, etc.

I wish people of all ages and backgrounds (who can afford to) would be intentional about healing. I wish people would realise how much trauma they hold and carry, I wish people would put in effort to look at it. I don’t like that a lot of people hide behind their age and their “generation”. When you tell about anything that’s a little new to them, they’ll say things like “oh this is just not how our generation thinks” etc etc. But like, we’re not talking about the whole generation. We’re talking about you. Or me. Ah, it just feels like an excuse.

A lot of people will tell me that “when you grow up is when you’ll realise how difficult new things are for you to accept as well”. And I don’t know, maybe I’ll find out they were right, but I hope with all my heart they aren’t. I hope my curiosity doesn’t die. There’s a lot of things that I still don’t agree with or vibe with (AI art, for example), but I don’t think that’s got anything at all to do with age or anything similar to that.

Being in India for the next 2-3 years feels like a pretty challenging quest. And definitely I don’t know if I can be here for the long haul.

050 – two months of moving to India + 50,000 words

Lately I’ve had nights where I wake up with the same thoughts that were buzzing in my head when I was going to sleep. It’s kinda weird, because sleep is almost always a good way to get a “reset”. Without this reset, the day that’s coming up can feel really bleak (if the night had been feeling that way). I woke up kind of depressed today. I’ve been feeling low since the last two days. Which, of course, I’m generally used to, ie periods of feeling low, but things were still a bit tough this weekend.

This lowness was making me doubt my moving-to-India decision quite strongly. I’m okay now, did a bit of physical exercise, had my afternoon coffee, played a game of online Catan, and consumed a bit of nicotine too. In the meanwhile, my mind was able to come up with some counters for this doubt.

I did this to minimise regrets, and that’s still very important. If I plan to adjust to India even for a full year, I will have to go through the doubt days. The days when it feels like a bad decision. That’s just a part of any big move. I’ve had similar days in grad school in Atlanta, in SF and even in Amsterdam. Regardless of the place or the thing, I’m like a 100% sure that “doubt” is just a part of the package.

I literally don’t have the option to not be working anywhere else. So I just need to remind myself to be grateful for the career freedom I have right now. I don’t get that anywhere else. When I see people living in all these beautiful countries and “having fun”, I don’t see the 40 hours work-weeks they’re living for that fun. (Yes, that may still be enjoying that, but I personally wouldn’t at this time, so it’s just not an option for me.) I don’t get to compare the “fun” if I don’t keep in mind the work thing.

The other day I was talking to my sister, who was having similar feelings about her decision to be in the US. And we concluded that no place has everything, so even if we want to divide our time in multiple places in the long-term, in the short-term we still need to focus on making the most of where we are. That advice is obviously valuable for me as well. While I’m here, I need to focus on all the things I have here. ie the people, the art I want to make and all the additional time I have that I get to use on whatever I want.

That brings me to the next thing. How do I want to spend all this extra time I have? I think I’ve already addressed that here. Maybe it might be worth putting down some long-term goals to make all of those buckets a little less vague.

Currently, I think I’m also feeling blocked because house-search is taking a good amount of bandwidth, and I feel like I’m not able to fully feel the freedom that I want (need) until that isn’t done. And that’s fair. Since that is something I’m sure I need to get started on “life”, it’s okay for me to feel blocked by it. Of course, in ideal conditions, we won’t be waiting for X and Y to be sorted before we could work on Z, ie if Z was important enough, but I don’t think I’m there yet. And it’s not like I’m not doing Z at all. I’m just not fully able to enjoy it.

Since this is going to be my 50th post here, I figured it might be worth making it a 1000-word post. I was planning to reflect a bit on writing anyway, so maybe I can just do that here.

I’ve increasingly been feeling that setting up this blog was one of the best things I could have done for my writing goals. And my creative goals in general too. The freedom of just being able to write whatever you want and hit “Publish” without thinking much about it is amazing. The pipeline is easy, there isn’t much overhead, and I get to feel satisfied about sharing most of what I’m writing.

I have 70 subscribers here! Yay! While the number may not feel like a lot in today’s age of multiple thousands followers and subscribers that most people have, it’s still worth celebrating, since this is purely word-vomits, and by some miracle I have 70 people who receive updates whenever I share something. (They may or may not read it, it doesn’t matter, really, but I’m super duper grateful anyway)

Because dedicating a place for just writing was so helpful to me (and similarly the music account I have on Insta was as well), I do think it might be worth separating out my photography and art accounts too. I’m super conflicted about this one, and I follow a couple people who’ve experienced the same conflict too, but data tells me I should do it, if I really just want to do “more” of either (or both) things.

The other day someone asked me what is the one thing (activity) I feel like is “mine”, the one which I feel really called towards, or really am able to feel “attached” to in a way… and I said “writing”. I think that itself for someone like me speaks volumes. And I think I have this blog to thank for it.

I posted a lot in May and June! So having the spare time to do this did make me do more of this, and that makes me incredibly happy.

Getting back into reading has been good too. I’ve had 2-3 years of very minimal reading, and now that I’m getting back into it, it feels really good. While reading is not necessarily a requirement for writing, it does help to get some inspiration from time to time. I finally left the book I was stuck on even though I thought I didn’t want to leave it midway, and started reading a new one, which was a great decision because a. It’s been a really enjoyable read and b. It makes me want to write more.

Alright, that’s a wrap on 50,000 words on here. Happy July!

049b – desire

But what if everything I want, I already have?

Love, peace, connection, security, health, beauty, worthiness, achievement, success, fame, pleasure, validation, all that jazz. Maybe I already have it all.

Okay, this probably doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know. I’m pretty sober, but this thought came to me yesterday night. And I’d thought to myself that this maybe worth thinking more about. But, I don’t know if it is. Maybe it’s just one of those thoughts you’re supposed to feel and believe, without really diving deep into it. Because diving deep won’t really reveal anything you don’t already know.

These days, I find myself getting swayed by material desire, but I don’t want to give in to that too much.

In general, I want to be able to say no to all sorts of desires and cravings from time to time. Skeptics will say this is asking too much of yourself.

There is a person I miss— but I know talking to them isn’t very healthy for my “progress” in life, so that is a desire I want to be able to say no to. I think I’ve been doing decently well on this, haven’t “given in” since January. I do sometimes wonder if this will ever become a non-issue. I know that if I meet someone new (ie fall in love), this will become a non-issue more easily. But, that could take a while. And I don’t want that to be the only way this becomes a non-issue. Point being, I’m surprised by the amount of time it’s taking to get rid of this person’s trace from my life. I started writing some of it in a “book” of sorts, because I wasn’t ready to let all of it go completely into nothingness, and that’s been “helping” quite a bit, and ideally, I should just be writing over there so I can continue “working” on this letting go process, but I didn’t feel like it today. So— surprise, surprise— here I am, doing the same thing in a different format. Eventually, kind of talking about the same thing I didn’t feel like talking about.

Ah, that was a tiring paragraph. Felt clunky and circular to me.

I’ve been stuck on a book I’ve been reading for over a month now, it’s not super engaging but I really don’t want to leave in the middle, so really need to pick up pace and finish reading it. Because I want to read something philosophical / spiritual after it, I’ve been feeling the need for it. Not sure what, though. Something in the Ekhart Tolle / Alan Watts realm.

The other desire I’m struggling with is the one for social satisfaction. I met some friends earlier in the week but I’m kind of experiencing the need for connection again. Talking to parents doesn’t feel satisfactory enough. And while, yes, I can make plans with specific people and maybe attempt to figure this out, I kind of also want to be okay with the desire just not getting met.

I might have overused the word “desire” in this post. It is what it is, is what it is.

049a – what else is coming up?

Excited. Excited to finish 50k words soon. Excited to begin my Delhi phase soon. I’ve never actually lived in Delhi apart from college (which almost doesn’t count because we were so sheltered, but I’ve great memories of Delhi). I wanna do some research around whether safety in Delhi is actually as bad as it was a few years ago. Just based on “vibes”, I feel like things might’ve improved. But I don’t know, vibes can be misleading. Excited to setup my house and fill it with a bunch of art and plants. I’ve ordered new painting supplies so I’m also excited to practice some art soon. Excited to see this person-I’ve-met-a-couple-times, again.

Content. I took a break from this because the excitement to paint took over me. It was a good idea since I painted a couple of abstract-ey landscapes which I really enjoyed. And they came out nice too. I was drained after so I didn’t get back to this until now. Content with some creative progress as well. I’ve gotten faster at painting the same things I was painting a few months earlier. I’ve also gotten better at leaving things at 90%. (Yes, going to the 100% is very important in certain cases, but personally, more often than not it’s better for me when I’m able to stop at a “good enough” state.) Content with this word-vomit as well, I quite like this grouping-thoughts-by-feelings thing.

Anxious. Anxious about a dentist appointment I have tomorrow. Anxious about spending too much time with mom, I don’t know why. Anxious that I don’t have too many social plans for the coming week, and my parents are traveling so I essentially won’t have anyone at home. Which.. I was excited about earlier but I haven’t planned the week well enough to still be excited about it. But maybe I can do some planning over the weekend. Anxious about some of the tasks on my todo list which I really don’t want to get to. But I’ll have to, so that’s going to be tomorrow and the weekend as well.

Unmotivated. Unmotivated to think about certain long-term questions that I thought I can take my time with, but.. since 2 months of chilling are about to be over, I might need to think about some of them sometime this month. Unmotivated to respond to a bunch of texts I haven’t been feeling like looking at.

Doubtful. Doubtful about how much social media usage I’m okay with. I’ve been trying to cut down on Instagram consumption a bit, but not super seriously, but I know deep down that as long as I continue to get some amount of dopamine from social media, I’m not going to put (as much) effort into other things, the more real things. But I know I can’t cut Instagram completely since it’s a big outlet for art-sharing for me.

Dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with the amount of physical exercise I got today. Definitely need to get more tomorrow.

Theorising. I do think it might be important to cut down (or completely eliminate) social media if I want to increase satisfaction overall. The wanting-to-be-everywhere problem only comes up more when you get a bunch of exposure from a bunch of people in different places.

048 – solitude, after a while

Haven’t written a 1000-word post in ages. I’m finally back from Bangalore and it’s been an eventful trip so maybe it’s worth reflecting on and I can manage a longer post.

This was probably my longest trip (12 days) in many years. Although it was a different kind of trip (ie I was still staying at people’s homes and not in hotels or airbnbs), it was still the longest time away from “home”, in a way.

Something I found myself craving on a day-to-day basis was alone time. But not just alone time where I don’t have to interact with people (because I did get this), but alone time in the sense of not worrying about being perceived for a few hours as well. I found myself really valuing the experience I was having in between destinations (ie cab rides), just listening to music and chilling. I was reminded of my teenage years, or even the time you spend in hostels (dorms) in college, where you really have to work hard to find pockets of alone time as well as privacy. I was taking phone calls in balconies and in the common society areas, which was also really reminiscent of college, where we’d have to often get creative to find privacy. It was also interesting to see how many people were doing the same thing – ie when I was downstairs I’d often come across other people also taking phone calls, often long ones. It was cool to randomly feel connected by this activity.

I also didn’t play much music or sing during the whole stay, so I spent most of my time today just singing and playing, and I realised I was craving that a lot and thoroughly enjoyed it. Definitely experienced flow with it today.

Overall, I will admit that “experience” is so much more important to creativity than pure “time”. (ie the time dedicated to creative activities). Like the experience and the number of feelings I’ve had in the last 2 weeks has been quite valuable. I think I have a lot of material (maybe not direct) that I want to reflect on or use for art.

Got to reconnect with some of my older friends with whom I hadn’t had the chance to spend a lot of time over the last couple years, and also got to meet a lot of new people (some important, some just good in terms of meeting new people, but mostly good hangs), so pretty happy about that. Also, great food all around. Loved that.

Addictions went a bit up throughout the whole period so looking forward to cutting down on that a bit. At least, theoretically. Physically, thinking about working on quitting creates very strong feelings in my stomach, so that’s definitely worth noticing. I’ve decided on keeping a limit for 3-4 months, and then working on reducing the limit every few months. I’m committing to being more strict from today, and promising myself that I will come back to abide by the limits every time I fall off the wagon.

Other things: Most of my friends are software engineers, and observing them on a daily basis did make me think that maybe it’s not too bad to pick up engineering again. Apart from 2-3 months of higher workloads, I think most people’s work schedules are pretty decent. And a couple of friends also said work isn’t super mentally demanding, and although they meant this is a complaint, for me I think that’s a good thing to have. So, I’m optimistic about this option if I need to (or want to) come back to it a year or so down the line.

Had to cancel another trip that was due this week since I’m a little drained (mentally and emotionally) and as much as FOMO I’ll experience when I see my friend’s pictures, I’m quite sure that it’s the right decision. But definitely want to make a trip to the mountains sometime soon. Maybe August or September.

More other things: I realised that the reason other people’s emotions and problems affect me a lot is because I tend to sometimes take responsibility for it all. I feel a need to fix it or make it better or to really be there for them (even at the cost of my own thing sometimes). And I think I need to work a bit on this, ie I do want to be there for my friends, but I don’t want to feel their feelings for them. I guess I want to be able to empathise and be there for them without taking on (any part of) their emotions.

Alright, I think that’s all I have for the trip-reflection. I’ll now share some other thoughts that are coming up.

A progress-related thought on writing:

I used to worry that some of the stuff I’m writing about could already be covered in previous posts, but today I realised that it’s fine if that’s the case. If stuff shows up again and again, that just means it’s persisting, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s valuable information. In a way, if I thought repeats itself, the situation is still unique, because the thought repeating itself for the 2nd time versus for the 3rd time (at least when it’s written down) are actually two separate situations.

Last meta-writing thought:

I feel like I jump from vastly different topics and ideas when I write in a word-vomit / journal format. I think that’s okay, but I do sometimes wonder what the experience is like for a reader. For example, Ocean Vuong does that too in “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” but because his writing is so beautiful, I feel like it doesn’t matter whether the thoughts are super connected or not. In fact, sometimes the jumps create more beauty because they leave the reader a little bit curious about whether the “previous topic” ended or not. And if so in what way. Or rather, the incompleteness of certain thoughts adds more beauty, essentially. Anyway, that might be something worth working on. ie how to make seemingly disconnected thoughts connect, or flow, somehow.