mallika2608

047b – sadness is freeing

There is a question that various artists and creators have addressed over the decades: Is sadness, pain necessary to create art? [1]

Everyone has their own answers, and I’m not going to attempt to share a version of my answer to this today. But I do want to share another observation, somewhat related. I do find that there is a certain freedom in sadness that I don’t feel in happiness. With happiness, I find myself getting attached, wanting to hold on to it longer, wanting to preserve, and overall just very afraid to mess something up. With sadness, or other “negative” emotions, on the other hand, I feel extremely free. There is no pressure to be a certain way, “you’re already sad”, things can’t really get worse, and I feel like that opens up ideas, the page, the canvas, everything.

So while pain may not be “necessary” to create art, I do think it lends better to most art than positive emotions do. But of course, this may differ for people.

One part of this could be my particular relation with positive emotions. Why is it that positive emotions demand more attention and preservation from me? I guess it’s insecurity at some level. Maybe I’m more confident in giving up control when it comes to negative emotions (because I learnt that I needed to, and there wasn’t another way), and in that way I’ve actually learnt to process them even better than positive emotions. I need to let positive emotions also take their own course. I need to accept that those, too, cannot last.

The other part though is the “sharing” of art, and not just its creation. Firstly, I do believe that more sharing leads to more creation, and that is the primary reason why sharing is important. But even with sharing, it’s easier to share stuff related to negative emotions (for me), because even though happiness gets more rewarded on social media, I’m almost worried about conveying that I’m happy and sorted. Because if I convey that once, I worry that people are not going to be around when I’m sad again. But maybe that’s related to same thought around permanence. Maybe because I want happiness to be somewhat permanent, I think that other people look at it the same way as well. Maybe I feel the world has an idea of permanence around happiness as well.

Okay, to summarise: I feel more freedom around negative emotions as compared to positive emotions. I think negative emotions are not necessary but do lend better to the creation as well as sharing of art. I worry that the world also has the same ideas as me when it comes to relating happiness or positive emotions with a certain amount of permanence.

[1] Ocean Vuong talks about this in “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”

047a – the value of thought-dumps

People can be quite afraid of thought-dumps. Or self-deprecating about them. Like that isn’t “good writing”. But I (along with a lot of other people) think they can be super valuable. Like if I wasn’t afraid of thought-dumps I’d tell you how happy I feel when I have a nice time with a person I’m getting to know and learn about and how great I feel when I’m able to express that to them. If I wasn’t afraid of thought-dumps I’d tell you how excited I am for my morning blended iced-coffee and how I can’t wait for it to arrive. (The light is out so I can’t make it at home or I would’ve.) I’d tell you how grateful I’ve been feeling for some of my friends who’ve taught me how to communicate more, and better. Who make the logistics part of things easier. Who taught me that you can exchange goodbye hugs before you wear your bags so that the quality isn’t compromised. How bad I feel that I’ve been procrastinating on calling some people just because I’ve been unable to find blocks of time but I really do want to talk to them and get caught up with their lives. Thought-dumps show you what you care about the most, at the moment. Clearly, for me it’s people things. I didn’t fully love Bangalore as a city. This has been surprising for me since I’ve visited a few times and I’ve never noticed anything non-positive towards it. I like that I have so many people here, of course, but objectively, I don’t know if this is a city I’d want to move to, even to “just try” it. Maybe definitely not to “just try” it. If I had another reason to (like work), maybe then.

The other day a sufficiently close friend of mine told me I can be quite intimidating. The reason, he said, was that I have a really strong sense of boundaries and I’m also strict about making sure to set them, and not allow people to cross them. I think, his reasoning is fair. And of course, it’s not pleasant to hear that you can be (are) intimidating, especially if that’s coming from people you consider close, but then, I also think maybe that cost is unavoidable. I’m generally pretty socially satisfied and I don’t think that’s possible without strict boundaries. I have been letting loose quite a bit overall in this trip though. I’ve hung out with people throughout the two weeks, and let myself be in their physical presence for really long periods of time, even though I didn’t always feel safe or comfortable. I was realising yesterday that emotionally, my capacity to be vulnerable is quite high, much higher than most people I know, but what’s hard for me is vulnerability in physical space. (This includes just hanging out as well.)

So anyway, thought-dumps can be quite valuable. I hope people can see it too.

046b – i feel shitty when i don’t journal enough

Haven’t written anything for the last 4-5 days and it’s getting to me. Last few days have been quite emotionally exhausting since I’ve been spending a time with a lot of old friends and in general, what seems like an insanely new environment. I did expect a lot of discomfort to show up during this trip, but knowing that didn’t help me too much in navigating it. Finally got some time to myself today though, and that’s been helpful with recharging etc.

I’ve been having an explosion of thoughts right around midnight which then keeps me up for at least 2-3 hours before I finally fall asleep, and needless to say— that’s not pleasant at all. I think journaling before bedtime (like I’m doing right now) will be helpful.

There’s a few triggers I’m recognising which I probably need to be mindful of when I’m hanging out with a lot of people (old and new):

Happy couples, relationshipy things
Overly work-focused conversations
People who are seemingly thriving, well-adjusted and sorted wrt more than 70% of their life things
Being “bad” at anything

That’s all I can think of right now but I’d love to keep coming back to this list because I’m sure having it written down in front of me will be helpful.

Otherwise, things are okay. I’m getting to explore Bangalore as a city a little bit and that’s nice. The (good) weather does make a difference, I’ve found. More like-minded people around (as compared to Delhi) and that might end up being important too.

Sometimes I feel like going really deep into the micro-ness of situations. But I’m afraid. I’m afraid of putting it all out there. I think something I’m going to struggle with is how to talk (write) about the people around you without revealing too much. Not because I’m afraid of the truth of certain situations to be out there, but because sometimes the situation isn’t completely yours to tell.

Feeling a lot of pressure to create and share more. I think I need to focus on skill development as opposed to just having this vague goal of “creating more”. Need some structure with all of these (creative) activities. Or at least some of them. Or maybe this is part of me realising I don’t actually enjoy them as much as I thought I did and I’m just not ready to accept that yet. Man, it’d be very disappointing if that were the case.

I think lately, even though I’m not always happy (which of course is not possible either), I’m definitely more satisfied with life. Like overall, I’m satisfied and content with the decisions I’ve taken. And of course I’m still working on a lot of my shortcomings, some more important than others, but despite that, I’m definitely content with certain things:

Having a regular journaling / blogging routine
Making enough time for emotions and myself
- Through regular therapy
Improvement on my ability and speed to come back to the present when needed
Having taken the decision to take this work-break & move to India
My social connections

Alright that’s enough of the good and the bad. Write soon!

046a – time distribution

The part of me that worries about the future is also the part that has a really good imagination. I imagine being 60 and realising that I’ll have a lot of time to create all the art that I want. Provided my health stays somewhat okay, I can still do creative stuff at 60. Which also means it’s worth investing in the skills I want to pick up. Which means even if I’m not making great paintings right now, it’s still worth just doing the thing since I have around 20-30 years at least to get to the point my current self might probably be super proud of, then.

I don’t have to rush over anything. As long as I’m not irrational or completely stupid about the way I spend my money, I think I can afford to take my time with things.

In other news, I miss Amsterdam a little bit. I imagine everything must be really beautiful now that the summer must have arrived fully. I miss the afternoons, the evenings, I miss biking for errands. I miss storytelling nights at Mezrab and poetry nights at Labyrinth. I miss the coffee and the bread, and a random “Bedankt” here and there.

Reconnecting with my friends here in India has been great though. There’s a level of familiarity and familiality (this should be a word) that is almost unbeatable.

May has passed decently and June is going to be occupied with some travel. Once I’m back (ie July) I’ll start looking for apartments and move out of my parents’ place as soon as I find one. Looking forward to that, quite a bit. I’ve kicked off dating again and that’s been good, at least in the sense that I can afford to feel optimistic a bit, and don’t have to beat myself up about not putting in the effort on this front. I’m going to be 28 soon! Despite theoretically being in what I call “my yolo era”, of course the weight of societal expectations will trigger me about all of this from time to time. And the best defence to that (for my sake, I mean, not as an answer to society) of course, is — action.

I’ve been struggling a bit with how much time and bandwidth I want to reserve for the part of me that feels duty bound towards certain people (like family and friends). I think this is how I’d want to divide it*:

Dating (20%) (14 hours)
Creative Goals and Pursuits (30%) (21 hours)
Well-Being & Health (20%) (14 hours) [Includes recreation]
Social (15%) (10 hours)
Responsibilities (15%) (10 hours)
Misc [Future Planning? Lol idk? Other things]

Okay I think this helps. This tells me how much I can afford to spend on these buckets and if I did actually spend my time this way I probably wouldn’t be unhappy. Currently I’m not living in ideal conditions so my time is not distributed this way, which is fine. I’m hopeful that once the distribution moves closer to what I’ve listed above, things should be better. I’ve left a bucket open for other things that may come up and demand some of this usable time of mine.

Anyway, good sesh. Let me know how y’all spend your time and if I’ve missed important buckets!

*Rough weekly estimates. Calculated on the basis of having 10*7 hours of usable time every week after accounting for sleep, food etc, commute.

045b – gratitude + journeys

I am absolutely in love with the world today. I don’t know if it’s because my dad did a really cool ally thing* today morning or because a cute girl called me cute on Bumble or because I took the metro to go somewhere after ages of being fed up about traffic and the (perceived) lack of public transport in Delhi** or because I spotted (and bought) a super cool t-shirt at Uniqlo which gave me major gender euphoria (and general euphoria) and made me feel like I have great taste or because I had a nice time hanging out with this really close friend of mine or because… just. It’s probably all the things, not just one of them.

Regardless, it’s a happy day.

Overall, more good days than bad days over the last month. And that’s really great.

Having time for your emotions and ideas is really great. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back to the constrained ways of living. I mean, I still practice “discipline” a little bit, I haven’t let everything run amok. But I don’t think I can do the 9-5 routine thing anytime soon.

I like the idea of having “certain things” that you do do everyday. Like I like playing online Catan and having cold coffee for breakfast each morning (or noon, when I wake up). I like watching a little bit of good TV with some good food sometime in the day. I like reading, I like doing at least one creative thing (painting, singing, writing). And lastly, I like some physical exercise (workout at home or preferably a walk outside). I do like having these set things that I do do, almost daily. But I don’t like having “fixed” times around them. Or I don’t want a compulsion around any of this.

I love the journey. Some (very few) of my thoughts (very tiny thoughts) lately have been in colours. And images. I really like that. It’s like learning a new language. And then to truly learn a skill would be to directly be able to think in this different language as well. Because, sure, translations are important. But the real magic I think will happen when your consciousness directly receives these thoughts and feelings (from inside you) in this different language. (Think words, melodies, colours, movements, sounds as the “different languages”.)

Anyway, I’m not high. Point is, the universe is great, life is precious, routinely activities are nice, and learning a skill is like learning a language, and if you’re lucky, you get to enjoy the journey.

*cool ally thing: he forwarded me dates of a pride march that his company is doing in various cities

**public transport in Delhi is actually pretty decent, compared to some other cities in India. But of course, my latest point of comparison is the Netherlands, which is hard to beat, so I hope I can be excused.

045a – book review: on earth we’re briefly gorgeous

You know you’ve consumed something great when it changes you. Really changes you. Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” does that for me.

I’ve been wanting to get back, really get back into reading for the longest time. And while this year has been better than the last couple years in terms of “successful” reading, it’s only now that I truly feel like I’m back. Ocean Vuong is obviously someone who loves words the way they are meant to be loved. And it’s this love that washes over you, dissolves a bit of you with every page.

Every page is cathartic, every sentence is magic.

It’s a book that makes you want to read more, write more, feel more, live more.

Side note: this is what inspiration must truly feel like, to want a layer of this person added to your layers. And then you could apply this new combined layer as a filter to all your thoughts and everything you want to express, and that’d all be really great.

Anyway, the language in the book, by itself, is simple enough, and I mean that in the best way possible, and it’s the arrangement, the tone, and the content that makes it an absolute gem. I could tell you that it talks of war, of immigration, of love, of abuse, of family, of friendship, of art, of addiction, of identity but that’d give you very little information.

What I want to tell you instead, is this: with every feeling that the writer expresses, there will be five more of your own that you’d be able to get in touch with. And then of course, there’d be some that you might just directly resonate with. Both of these experiences, when they occur truly, are priceless.

If you had to read one book this year, make it this one.

044b – three weeks of living at my parents’ house

Man, it’s been tough. In the last year or so, I’ve spent a lot of time at my parents’ house. And though it always does come with its share of hardships (I call them “red dots”), it’s been a little harder this time. Primarily because everyone thinks that because I’m more “free” (ie because I don’t have a job), they are entitled to more of my time. Or well, maybe not everyone, but my grandmother definitely seems to think so.

My sister was around for the last couple weeks so that was relatively nicer, since I absolutely love having her around (and so does everyone else). But now that she’s left, my grandmother thinks that she doesn’t “have anyone”.

Okay maybe this is going to be a grandmother rant more than anything else. She’s 83, and doesn’t really have a good relationship with anyone. She hasn’t treated her kids (one of them is my dad) very well throughout her life and is now (I think) suffering the consequences of her actions. Old age is of course difficult for most people (I guess), but I don’t know, it feels really difficult to take care of her.

Overall, I’ve been questioning some things as well. ie how much suffering can I see in front of me? How much of myself can I actually sacrifice just to attempt to ease her suffering a bit, though any of this sacrifice or charity (of my time, for example) doesn’t actually make her feel better on a deep level, which then makes me wonder whether there’s any point to my sacrifice at all.

I think I just need to set some boundaries. ie know my boundaries. I will always get frustrated when she wakes me up in the morning or noon or asks me to have meals with her, so that’s something I can allow myself to feel. But what I can do is spend some time (around 20-30 minutes) once in a couple days talking to her, and then even if that isn’t enough for that is eventually not my problem.

Had some small arguments with my mother as well, but I think they’re small in the grand scheme of things. My parents have overall been quite understanding of me, my preferences, etc. So that’s really nice of them and I appreciate it. (I probably need to tell them that, since I know one of their complaints is that I don’t appreciate them enough)

However I know that living here isn’t very sustainable, so I definitely need to move by July, latest.

Some things are nice though. It’s nice to have regular food, and two nice balconies, and most things smoothly running. It’ll obviously take some time to get that all once I move, wherever I move. And obviously it’s nice to save a bit of money as well.

I’m slowly trying to find time and solitude to engage in mini creative activities which has been really fulfilling. Also finished reading “Steal Like An Artist” (really short book, highly recommend for anyone) and started working on some the recommended things mentioned in that and that feels really good too.

So anyway, that’s what’s been up. Write soon!

044a – jetlag, first impressions

Jetlag is real. And not great. I thought I finally beat it earlier but I guess not. I’m up at 4am, though I did catch around 5 hours of sleep, I wish I’d been able to sleep a little longer. I don’t know whether it was my brain or the rest of my body that woke me up today, but I’m not going to think too much about it. I have a relatively early morning thing anyway, so maybe I’ll just stay up for the rest of the day.

The week is slowly coming towards an end, and it’s been quite interesting, to say the least. The last week was probably one of the hardest weeks of my life. Moving was quite.. a lot. Both logistically and emotionally. And of course, it was followed by many “Oh god what have I done”s for almost two days after I’d landed here in Delhi. Surprisingly, talking to mom helped the most. I hadn’t really been able to lean on her for any emotional support over the last couple months, so that was a nice surprise.

Anyway, there’s a lot of good things to note. I’m realising the “break” part of things (ie the freedom from work) does feel good. I’m also realising I don’t really lack motivation or energy, just focus (ie big picture stuff) essentially. I’m decent at focusing on “an activity” for a few hours when I’m doing it.

Something I don’t enjoy at all is texting. For example, I really need to make new friends, talk to more people to collaborate with them, but ugh I hate the texting part, maybe I can (should) ask them to switch to calls instead.

I’m definitely afraid of the logistical things here. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to learn to drive here or not, I went for practice with my sis today and it was okay, doable, but I don’t know if I can do it alone. It’s quite tough. But I want the option. I want the ability. Let’s see.

Overall though, it’s nice to be among family and friends. Something I missed while living in Amsterdam was getting to hang with kids. (I had some family in San Francisco so I was still getting some quality time with my nieces, which was nice) but in Amsterdam this was completely missing. My sister and I went to meet a family friend of ours today and they have a 10-year-old son, and it was really nice to talk to him for a bit! He’s super sharp and really interesting to talk to.

I’m going for a backstreet boys concert tonight, lol. I’ve literally only heard two songs of theirs, so we’ll see how that goes.

043b – checking your privilege & other confusing phrases

Over the last few months, I’ve felt an increased responsibility towards giving back to the society. This came through a variety of sources, the primary being a book called “All about Love” by Bell Hooks, where she talks about how the western society doesn’t believe in wealth sharing, etc. (She said it better, I don’t remember the whole thing).

It’s also come up in discussions between friends, discussions related to privilege and what it really means to “check your privilege”. We don’t really understand this phrase, but our hunch is it means to be aware of your privilege. And I think, fortunately, most people around me are somewhat aware of it.

It also came up because I recently decided to take a break from work and do nothing. Which, as a friend pointed out to me (though I already knew this), is something very few people can afford to do.

A couple years ago, I’d discovered this beautiful tool: https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/ — you can basically input your annual income and it tells you how rich you are, globally. It’s really impressive, clean and concise.

I’m currently unemployed, but while I was earning, I was basically in the top 3%, globally. (And 1% when I was in the US). So, yeah, privilege. Anyway, now that I finally had some mental bandwidth, I signed a pledge!

Of course, a discussion about privilege would be remiss without me mentioning the areas I’m not privileged in: I’m a woman of colour, I’m queer (now living in India), and I have an anxiety disorder (GAD).

However, here’s the crazy part: I’ve found that it’s easier to accept these things (ie what’s not good) when you accept what is good. And it’s easier to accept how privileged you are when you’re not feeling guilty about it.

So, the simplest way to accept your wealth privilege? See how significant it is. And if that clarity calls you to do something about it, that’d be awesome. If and when you do donate, feel free to be happy and vocal about it. I firmly believe that the whole “donations shouldn’t be talked about or should be more under the radar” school of thought is not necessarily helpful. If being vocal about sharing your wealth makes you more likely to share it, I think that’s okay.

Share your fortune, folks! Spread the love.

043a – body dysmorphia ft. other feelings

I’m tired. Tired of living in my head. And yet, coming back to the present is so tedious. I don’t know why though. I don’t know. Maybe there’s feelings I’m trying to avoid. Who am I kidding, of course there’s feelings I’m trying to avoid. Feelings like.. like I’ve “wasted” my weekend. Like I actually don’t even know what I want to spend my time on. Like the things I want to spend my time on aren’t appealing anyway. Like it’s terribly hard, living in my body, because I constantly feel shitty. I’m sad about how anxious it makes me to step outside on a day I’m not feeling good about myself. My body dysmorphia is so strong. My avoidance behaviours make me feel so disconnected from the world sometimes.

Okay, 2 minutes of meditation just helped me just now. I also remembered the first time I’d successfully been able to use meditation to feel okay. It was after after my first big/ever breakup. And I vividly remember the pain I was feeling at the time, and this insane urge to “just want to see her” once. I don’t know how I knew what meditation really was (I mean, it wasn’t as big and common a word back then), but I somehow did. And I looked it up and actually went out of my house to just try out some walking meditation. And man, it really was something. I guess awareness can be magical. The awareness that lets me observe myself feeling the shitty feelings.

Yesterday was the first time I was actually overwhelmed by a positive emotion. I was feeling a ton of excitement about an idea that came to me and I really just couldn’t hold it or process it. I think it was combined with anxiety too, perhaps, which is why it wasn’t purely pleasurable. But I knew it was like 70% excitement and 30% something else. I don’t know. Eventually, I was able to calm down.

I only have two weeks until I move and that’s kind of not sinking in either. I seem to have a lot of time but nothing to actually want to fill it with. Read a little bit about body dysmorphia on reddit and about how some people struggle with the same shit I do and I feel a little better now.

There’s a lot of things I do to simply “avoid regrets”. I know that’s okay but I do wonder what life would be like I were able to do things because I “want to” do them. Basically, can pure “regret minimisation” be a good strategy? Maybe not, right? I don’t know, this needs more introspection.

I really wanna move soon so I can start dating again. It’s been incredibly boring and hopeless over the last 1-2 months since I haven’t been able to do that.

I think note to self: The third day is always a stretch. I did step out of the house for groceries yesterday but it still wasn’t enough. I think three straight days of “no plans as such” just does not work for me. Gotta stop at two, at max.