Meta-Writing – Page 4

035a – big changes

Really need the noise to quieten down. External, internal, all of it. Anxiety’s been pretty high lately. I “overthink” every little decision I have to go through. Wish some of the days would pass by easier. A 4-day long weekend in the middle of apartment hunting is just the worst. The first thing everyone asks me when they talk to me is whether I found a house yet or not. It’s frustrating, though I’m not sure why. Because I’m worried about it? It’s a trigger, I guess.

Everyone’s priorities in life are so different, it’s hard to remember that it’s okay that that’s the case. The context that’s shaped all of us is so different, even if we may have somehow ended up in the same location at this point in time. Someone said the past doesn’t really matter, it’s what you decide in this moment that shapes you. It sounds wonderful, but I’m not sure if I believe it.

Need to do some of the mundane things: cleanup, etc. Need my space to be better for relaxation. (and work too, lol)

I actually don’t have a lot of “things” to do right now, not too many. But until I finalize a house I’m just not able to focus on any of the smaller stuff, even if it’s really tiny. So far, I think I liked San Francisco better than Amsterdam.. though I’m aware the former has three whole years on the other. I used to think I’m good with casual parties every day and that I might enjoy them too, but man – this city really is on a whole other level. Or so it feels. I do crave some like-minded people around me though. Someone I could really share FeELinGs with.

I’m really envious of people who can adjust to big changes (or I guess even smaller changes) faster. I know I’m not like them, though how I wish I were. I miss the people I’ve said goodbye to, but even more – I miss the feelings I’ve said goodbye to. And it’s that classic problem – even if I were to go back to those people and try to feel the same things, I wouldn’t. Because they were unique to that time. And it’s fine, I’m not closed to what’s in store for me, I know I’ll learn to enjoy other things and other people, but I guess there’s just a lot of weeks I need to go through before I can get to that.

My third week here is about to end in a couple of days. Let’s see what it brings before it ends. Amsterdam, be good to me. 🙂 ❤

032b – how to say art

Content creation (and sharing) is so hard. It’s incredibly rewarding and addictive, obviously. But everything that comes up as soon as you post something, that can get pretty hard. So much vulnerability, so much self-doubt when something doesn’t go well right away. And yet, there’s something crazy about the dopamine (or whatever) that makes you want to keep going, again and again.

I guess it gets somewhat easier the more you do it, but I’m still for from a place where it doesn’t bother me at all. Wherein I’m detached from the art as soon as it’s out there. I think the trick would be to move on to the next thing as soon as possible. And then look at the past shares and how they did only when you’re ready to take feedback from them for the next thing. Feedback just to feel or inform your own opinion of your art seems useless. Your opinion was whatever it last was before you put it out into the world.
Maybe it’d be useful to record that opinion before I share the thing.

Anyway, it’s still hard to call my writings or music or pictures “art”. I don’t know, multiple layers of judgement and ridicule from my own self when I do so. (This is probably worth exploring in a future post.)

Things have randomly gotten hard otherwise. Friendships have suddenly gotten a little complicated. I suppose it’s inevitable. But I don’t know how to make much sense of it, or whether I want to resolve it. It’s hard to want to resolve things when you’re the only one who seems to want it. I suppose I can let time do its thing, and maybe we’ll settle into a new normal, or whatever. I’m aware this is quite vague for you, the reader, but I also don’t feel like changing it. My apologies.

Work’s been good though, my sleep schedule has been pretty decent too.

I really want to write 200 words more but I feel so exhausted right now. It’s a good thing, I know. As soon as I’m done with this I’m going to hop into bed. I have a long Friday ahead of me tomorrow, and I don’t want to be super drained tomorrow. Part of me wants to stop now and continue this later but I also know that won’t happen, and worse – I won’t feel like posting this useless word vomit out there. The only way I can post it is if I write it in a single stretch. Of course, I’m cheating right now with all the meta writing, but eh, I’m okay with that.

Welp, I smoked a little bit of weed. What a shift in mood. I’ve always wanted to write when high. Somehow never feel like writing when I’m high though. All I feel like doing is talking to people. Or listening to music. Or watching good content. I’ve always wanted to execute and lean into creativity when high, but execution is so hard for me in that state. I absolutely love talking to people when I’m in this state though. Okay, I think I need more ways of saying “when I’m high” / “when I’m in this state”. This paragraph is terribly tedious.

Alright folks, there’s my 500 words, have a great Friday!

032a – act during periods of clarity

It’s been hard to sit down and write. I keep getting up do something or the other. My reason for restlessness is mainly one – I have to make a life decision. Where should I go next? But it’s also the reason I need to sit down and write. I’ve gathered a lot of information and opinions in the last few weeks, I’ve been swinging back and forth between my two options, literally going from one to the other every week. I’m definitely under a little pressure to make a decision, but I seem to want to make it without doing the hard work that goes into it.

The hard work? I’m not talking about the information gathering, that was hard only initially, once I started it was easy. The hard work seems to be thinking about interviewing for one of the options, the prep that I’ll have to put into it.

Anyway, for some context, my two options are: Amsterdam and India. I’m looking to move within the company I’m currently at, and looking to move within the same role I’m currently at (engineering). That’s the easy part.

I think I’m finally realizing that the reason I’ve been leaning toward India (that’s home for me) is fear based. The more I realize I really don’t need to pressure my life to become a certain way or “fall into place” by a certain time, the more I see and accept that Amsterdam seems like the better option right now. I want to settle down and have some stability, but how can I find it when I barely know myself? If I really want to find myself, don’t I deserve to give myself all the chance I can? Ideally I really should be giving myself the best opportunities to grow (not as an engineer or whatever, but as a person). A person who knows she doesn’t want to be working a full-time engineering job five years from now. If I really want to find what I want five years from now, I probably do have to dive into the ocean that is the world.

And it’s true, I really am only 26. Whoever said that’s old? Whoever said I need to hurry and settle down? And who’s to say I’ll find that at home? And I’m not even getting into whether home really is what I think it is, etc.

A new country is daunting, an easier decision might be easy to take, but there’s a reason I feel restless when I decide to go forward with the easier decision. If it was the easy and right decision, I probably would feel comfortable taking it. But I don’t.

I feel some clarity coming in. This might not last long, so maybe the best thing to do is take small actions in moments or periods of clarity, and see where that takes me. I’m going to ahead with kickstarting the processes that are needed to go ahead with the Amsterdam option. I can always decide not to go ahead if things don’t feel right a few weeks from now.

029b – a case for content-creation

Had a terribly lonely week last week. Didn’t feel like stepping out and couldn’t stop ruminating over thoughts of lost love for almost four days in a row. Eventually, the week picked up though. I met some people. Crazy how that helps.

If I’m being fully honest, I do feel a bit tired of plainly introspective writing. I’ve decided I’m going to publish poetry on here as well. And I’ll count it as a full post since it takes much more effort from me to complete one of those.

The other day I mentioned “content creation” as something that I perhaps actively would want to do, and I realized that it was the first time I said that out loud. I think I always had this image of content creation not being a ..respectable (?) activity? Because I always that there’s too much content to consume. I guess I need to find the case for content creation.

Personally, what had initially drawn me to it was of course, validation and compliments over stuff I made. Or just the feeling of being seen. But eventually, I think I’ve realized there’s a little more to it. There’s resonance and connection. The more I accept that I do seek connection with other humans, the more I can see how things I create help me feel it.

I think it’s got a little bit to do with owning these dimensions of yourself. Whether you’re making Instagram reels over silly things, or making covers of music that you like, or clicking pictures of things that appeal to you – there’s a layer of judgement which you’ve shed in order for you to share it with the world. It’s natural that connection would follow.

Plus, isn’t that the ultimate (or perhaps, only) cure to loneliness? Moments of connection, even if they are fleeting or temporary?

But, I also heard something about over-expression being the bane of our generation. How it can lead to a lack in actual intimacy between people. Is this worth paying attention to? I don’t know. If I think of the people closest to me, I don’t think emotional intimacy’s missing in any of those, so maybe I don’t have to worry about this just yet? There’s never a shortage of things to talk about or do.

Okay so I’m almost at 400 words now. To summarize,

A little tired of plain, introspective writing. Need some variety. Poetry is a good option.
I have a case for content creation – clarity and acceptance (for self), feeling seen and heard, resonance and connection (with people). Probably a good counter for feelings of loneliness too.
Over-expression doesn’t seem like a problem yet. Can potentially learn a little more about this though.

—

I wrote this almost a couple weeks back so I’m adding a little more to it, since I don’t think I have enough stuff for a separate post, and this one was missing a bit anyway. Had the 4th July long weekend this weekend and it ended up being super-duper social. For the first time in a couple months I felt like I didn’t get enough of the “sleeping-in” time or “me” time or “chores” time. (Don’t think all of these words need the quotes but eh.)

Oops, I just realized it’s already midnight and my evening has completely gone by in a blur. Time to get ready for the last holiday of the long weekend tomorrow!

Also, my god the last 10k words have been a drag. Definitely need some more (and potentially different kind of) motivation to keep this up.

027 – find the why of whatever you’re doing

The other day I was talking about goals with a couple of friends. I mentioned how I’ve started this project where I’m hoping to write a 100,000 words. Both of them reacted with surprise about how that sounds like a lot. And I explained a bit about how it’s just 100 posts that’s a 1000 words long, and then I immediately shifted to how “it’s probably a wish, not a goal”. I’m wondering whether there’s something worth examining here. I know that in the past I’ve had problems with being ambitious in public, and I generally prefer to err on the side of underselling myself. I know where all that comes from, but I wonder if it’s worth continuing. Did I need to change the terminology of this project from a goal to a wish? Did it have any consequences?

I’ve been writing less since the last couple of weeks and part of me thinks this might have affected my motivation. Though I think most probably there’s other factors that might have affected it and this might be *completely* unrelated.. I still feel like it might have had at least like a 10% role to play. Almost like not-owning up to the goal in that moment made me subconsciously relax from it.

I stumbled across a post of Visa’s where he examines his reasons for doing this, and it made me realize it’s worth doing that from time to time. It’s like when you’re questioning your love for something you try to remember why you started, and why (if at all) you want to keep going.

Earlier (way back in my first post), I’d listed these few reasons for wanting to do this:

To “fight off” vulnerability
Developing as a “writer”
Developing as a person / growth
Potentially meet people + have more / more interesting conversations

I think I’ve successfully handled vulnerability now (this is huge for me, btw)! I don’t feel this urge to backspace words or delete posts, I rarely feel hesitancy before publishing. I think I still feel some hesitancy while sharing specific posts with individual people (especially people I know IRL), but overall, in terms of publishing on the blog itself, I’m in a good place.

I’m pretty sure I’ve developed as a writer too. I scoff less every time I use the term. I’m okay with calling myself an “aspiring writer” and letting it exist on the home-page of this blog as well. I’ve become much better at talking about this in real life conversations as well. I’ve already talked about this in some of my previous posts, but words flow easier now too. I don’t second-guess my sentences much, unless I’m trying to do creative-writing. Which brings me to another gain. I didn’t think I would actually end up writing creatively at all when I’d started this – but I’ve found that I’m able to (even if not too much), and I’ve also found it to be quite satisfying and inspiring.

Definitely developed as a person. My weeks are better when I’m writing enough, it’s showing up in my mood and my therapy sessions too. I feel like I’m able to process difficult things without always having to wait for my appointments. Realized that I can feel empty, if I want to. I don’t always have to feel overwhelmed with thoughts. Realizing that I don’t always need to share thoughts and feelings with people, pretty much writing about them is good enough as well. Since I was testing whether there’re limits to introspection, I think I might have found my answer for that as well. (It’s most likely a yes, as discussed here.)

I haven’t had a lot of the last one, but I haven’t felt the need for it either. I did initially try to share some of posts with specific people to initiate conversations about certain topics, but turns out it didn’t go the way I wanted. I think once you’re sort of done with writing about something, it’s hard to care about it again. This is weird and I’m not sure if that should be the case, honestly.

And then one other unintended gain I’ve gotten is that I’ve gotten quite decent at titles. Earlier the titles would end up being very straightforward summarizers (which is fine too), but I think I’ve gotten much better at making them a bit more catchy.

Looks like I’ve met most of what I wanted to achieve from this, so it makes sense my motivation might not be as high as it was when I’d started. Time to redefine goals and OKRs then?

Creative writing – Do more creative writing (not sure what this will look like but I must investigate)
Research – Delve into the dark cloud of research – why I don’t like it, why it’s scary, what does a well-researched piece of writing look like, what’s the line between being inspired by existing work and “generating” new work almost entirely by existing work?
Sharing – Think about sharing work – why I should do it – how I can do it better?

I think I should be able to come up with some more goals (these don’t seem enough) but it’s funny how this looks like a classic case of “I want to do something, so I’ll find reasons to do it”. I wonder if we often function like that? How many “needs” in the world are “created” needs?

Okay I think I’ll wrap this up with a third unintended gain I’ve had. I realized I’m definitely able to enjoy this (writing) purely by itself too, not just when I’m using it as an escape. Quite happy about that, nothing else to say here!

023b – frustration over the lack of time is generally about something else

Turns out there are limits to introspection. They’re not as straightforward as “I’m done now, I have nothing more to think about”, but more of a gradual decrease in the number of times you get triggered into introspective loops, daily, weekly, and so on.

Since I was mostly doing personal writing so far, my posting frequency has drastically decreased. I feel emptier now, in good ways though. It’s good for me generally, but not great for this “numbers goal” I had. I might have to consider sitting down to write even when thoughts aren’t coming up naturally. This means there’s going to be deliberate effort needed now. And we all know how bad most of us are at keeping things up when they get even a little tough.

I’ve been watching a lot of Netflix for the last couple weeks. I don’t think I watched a super unhealthy amount, but I do feel some sort of negative feelings around it, which could be worth paying attention to. The good thing is, the show I was watching is over, so I don’t have anything great (or bingeworthy) queued up for the next few weeks.

I think every time I feel frustrated about not being able to meet my writing goals, I think about time-management and end up on the “how do I make time for everything that I want to do?” question. But I think the truth is I’m not frustrated with the apparent lack of time, the frustration is simply about not having anything to write when I do actually sit down to do it. It’s a frustration about being distracted, about thinking of Y and Z while doing X.

I think the frustration is also about not getting enough engagement on the things I’m posting lately. Be it blog posts or song covers. Although I’m aware that I’ve been putting in less effort in “sharing stuff” and engagement is only in limited ways a reflection of the quality of my work, it’s still generally nice to keep getting engagement on it. Even though it might not be enough to create motivation when it doesn’t exist, I think it can keep the flame burning, so to speak.

I’ve been thinking about whether I feel ready for “society” in the post-pandemic world. There’s still a decent amount of time to go before I absolutely have to start working from office, but even then, it’s something that’s on my mind. I’d be excited to see some people, some old hands, some new ones, but I’m also anxious about some of my old worries that used to come up when I was going in to work everyday.

Lastly, feeling grateful. Grateful that I get to do this. A weird random thought about how I probably wouldn’t be able to carry on a lot of the things if I had kids and/or dependents? Not sure whether it’s true but feels like it.

Sometimes I feel like reducing my minimum required words to 500 from 1000 is a little hacky. Since some of the interesting stuff is only uncovered much later into a 1000-word post. I feel like 500 words come around even with some of the surface-level stuff, and it allows me to exit before I can get to the juicy stuff. But I’ll think more about this later. Adios!

020b – 20,000 words + keep connecting the dots

Well, after this post I’ll have written 20k words in the last month, and I’m kind of proud of having reached this milestone! I know the pace for the rest 80k is almost certainly not going to be the same, not even sure if I’ll reach that point, but it’s good to have come so far. I think I can afford to reward myself with another meta-post.

Words flow easier now, thoughts get stylized easier too. Maybe some of it is placebo, maybe some of it’s real. Regardless, I love it. It’s definitely easier to write a 500 word post as opposed to a 1000 word post, but it’s a compromise I’m okay making from time to time. Happy that it allows me to keep moving.

I have more drafts sitting in my word editors now, I have more half-formed stories waiting to be completed. It’s a good feeling. I have enjoyed this process with photography and music before, but it’s nice to be able to enjoy it with writing too. Part of me worries that at some point I’ll get sick of writing meta-posts and sick of writing about my own thoughts and feelings, but another part of me knows that when (or if) I weed through all of it some fun stuff might come up too.

Since I’m sitting here reflecting again, I want to think about the few things that might keep me going forward:

Creating feedback loops for writing more
Thinking about what people might want to read
Organizing and structuring more / Writing about a single topic as opposed to only free-writing
Not being afraid of writing about scarier (for the lack of a better word) topics like loneliness, heartbreak, sadness, depression, anxiety, therapy (I do a decent amount of it but it’s still not enough.)

I’m watching my mother go crazy with knitting (a hobby she picked back up recently, after many years) and I feel aligned with this stint of hers in some ways. She makes a clothing item a day, I write a post once every few days. It’s all about connecting the dots, isn’t it? Dots that don’t necessarily connect for anyone else, except perhaps our own selves.

Sometimes I think everything can connect, if you want it to. Every little action can be a metaphor, every word a story. Every story a goldmine, every person a landscape. Every landscape art, every piece of art magic.

Don’t really have much to write about anymore so I’m distracting myself with food and coffee. Not the best idea, perhaps. But it’s not that easy to write a 100 words more when you’re kind of out of thoughts.
I’ve been going on a lot of walks lately, it’s a nice habit that I want to keep up. Getting that time and space to think, think about difficult things without necessarily having to feel the related physical feelings. It’s peaceful in a way very few activities can be.

019b – the mundane is all we have

Thoughts think themselves. Words write themselves. Is this what they call free writing? Just letting your vessel do its thing? Thoughts can create feelings. Feelings can create thoughts. By that logic one can never be out of words. And maybe it’s true. Maybe we’re never out of words. Maybe it’s just the question of which words we want to share, and which we don’t. Is writer’s block real then? Or does it become real only for writers who need to get paid for their words?

I was thinking about how vulnerability on the internet doesn’t really get easier – not as much I’d expected. I went back to doing a bit of private journaling and realized I preferred it. I thought it’d have gotten easier by now. This could be another reason that I’ve been leaning towards trying to fictionalize my thoughts. Or preferring to write fiction, even though it’s tougher and slower.

Any person who’s successful in any field will tell you to do as much of the thing as you can. And yet, it’s hard to subscribe to quantity as a goal by itself. I know I need to set up more feedback loops to stay motivated. Intrinsic feedback and motivation is not sufficing, I know it’ll eventually die out. Or I at least need them for a push when I’m low on the intrinsic motivation.

I scoff at the mundane sometimes. It feels overused and weary and tiring. The green of the leaves, the blue of the waves, isn’t it all used up by now? But I know there’s a reframe there, it’s just about the arrangement and patterns. There’s just seven basic notes in the land of music too, and yet people have created beautiful things out of those.

You gotta keep practicing, that’s the only thing I can tell myself. That’s the main reason I want to keep doing this. And to remind the 5th grade me that I haven’t forgotten her. I haven’t forgotten how she wrote an essay for fun and thoroughly impressed the secondary English teacher who had no idea who she was, but was eventually happy to learn that she was one of her favorite students’ younger sister. To remind the 9th grade me who’d discovered the world of fan-fiction for the first time and was completely mind-blown for years to come. So much of who we are is where we’ve been, so sometimes I find comfort in drawing inspiration from the past.

I suppose we all like sharing stories, sharing parts of ourselves with parts of the world. Some of us like to do so with crowds and tables full of people, some of us perhaps with fewer people. Some of us from behind our screens, some of us from right in the spotlight. Engagement (that social media easily provides) is nice, I’m not going to deny that, but there’s definitely something significantly more satisfactory about writing a post of a decent length. Of course, I’m the one who gets to decide what that length is for me, so it’s all chill.

–

References: [1]

018b – thoughts are cheap, my darling

She sits in a chair and looks at the pink lilies sitting on the table. She’s divided them into different bottles since she didn’t have a vase to put them out into, but she’s happy with the arrangement. She’s grateful for the one who helped her pick them out, she’s not sure if she’d have bought them if she was alone. She doesn’t fully get why these small acts of kindness make her so happy, but they do. She feels a little silly when she thinks about all of this, but she’s also happy it’s generating words for her.

Night time’s precious to her, it always has been. She tries to conform to societal rhythms to function better but she just does so much better from the hours of ten and three. She now thinks of it with the context of her generalized anxiety, and it makes much more sense. Lesser interruptions, fewer people demanding things from her, lesser accountability, fewer things for her to solve..

She doesn’t actually have problems with focus. She knows she’s good at focusing for hours on end if the conditions are right. Conditions that the night easily provides. She doesn’t think it’s super sustainable though, since waking up around eleven in the morning leaves her with little time to chase the sun.

She’s been using these friendly hours to write lately, but she might have to consider using them to catch up with some of the work from her day job. It’s quite ironic, she knows that.

Even the motorbikes don’t sound as noisy when she’s writing about them at 12 am. They drive her crazy at 7 pm though. She wonders if if she can use the flexibility of working remotely to her advantage. She knows she was enjoying it all when they’d just started out, almost a year ago. She doesn’t know when it all went haywire.

One thing she likes about the act of writing is how she can go from “thinking” to “doing” without much effort. She knows it’s almost common knowledge how thinking is easier than doing, and writing allows her to become a doer, for whatever it’s worth. Even if it’s often a thought dump, she likes how she ends up with something to show for it. For the time she spends thinking said thoughts.

It wasn’t easy tonight. She got distracted multiple times, she got distracted by the internet, she got distracted by tiny chores. But at some level, she knew it would happen as long as she came back to it. She recently read something about how there’s five elements to the human experience. These are – the form, the perception, the feelings, the mentality and the awareness. She thinks when she writes like this she’s almost speaking from the awareness’s perspective. It’s interesting to her, she almost becomes detached from the other four. And maybe she does. She likes to believe she does. When one becomes detached from the other four, they’re left with a purified form of awareness, she’s heard them say. She likes the idea of it. Ideally though, she’d want to be detached from the awareness as well. But it’s okay if that’s too far into the future.

She knows she’s taking it one week at a time, one day at a time, a few paragraphs at a time. That’s all she can do, really.

–

References: [1]

017 – we have no egos to protect

Sitting on the couch and thinking about the ego again tonight. There’s a strong inner critic in me that puts me down left and right so others won’t. I’ve had negative history with people who’re overconfident and assertive that at some point I decided to “never” be that way. I internalized that so strongly that I never evaluated whether I have a choice. I want to work towards a healthy self-perception.

It makes sense that I could supposedly deal with my fears (being disliked, rejection, not belonging) if I realize that I have no ego to protect.

I suppose it might be insane to think of these big clouds of fear and try to resolve them. I can only take them on case by case. Notice when they come up, acknowledge them, analyze situations cognitively and take action accordingly.

One thing I don’t love is how much they also show up in my language. I am so afraid of being assertive and saying anything too strongly. I am not happy with the amount of “I think”s and “I feel”s I add in my sentences. Sometimes they’re warranted, and I can let them stay if they really feel right, but right now I think I’m erring on the side of having too many.

I’m struggling with my motivation behind writing. There’s a part of me that wants to write for myself, there’s a part of me that wants to think about the readers. I talk about this struggle in pretty much everything I write these days. Should I consider if there’s ways to solve this? Did I quick google search and god there’s a ton of writing advice online. Don’t feel ready for that yet.

My fear with writing “only for myself” is whether all of this is coming across as “too self-indulgent”. I don’t really have an ego to protect though, so I could technically be okay with that. Self-work can be embarrassing when we’re starting out, and I suppose accepting that can make this easier for me. But accepting that requires continued doing, so I suppose I just have to keep building the muscle. I also know that I can only get to the potentially interesting stories that I want to tell once I get these surface level stories out.

I know that publishing everything I write has been good for me, though. It’s made me more consistent, I’ve never written so much, so consistently. But it has been a bit addictive in that I don’t always feel like going out and getting things done. Maybe that’s the self-indulgent part of me. I keep getting the feeling that I’m trying to think my way into satisfaction and happiness. Maybe I do need to set some goals for the month this weekend. Cannot keep reflecting my way out of them.

I suppose I have to look at the cost to this kind of self-indulgence (for the purpose of this post I’ll just call it that), if I want to decide whether it’s a problem. I have a couple of ideas that I want to explore and write about, in ways that could be more satisfactory (since I believe they can be more coherent and meaty in ways these self-talk posts can’t). Or, thinking about it more clearly, adding aesthetic or functional value to even a few more people could be better than only adding value for myself.

I’ll also have to confront myself a bit, am I just lazing around when I’m doing this? Is this actually adding much value to me or am I just running around in circles? I don’t know if I’m ready to think about these questions yet.

I can think of a helpful reframe though. Once we get done with the things we need to say, we can start thinking about the things we want to say.

I’m considering adding a satisfaction rating to each of these posts. 0 being the satisfaction I get from not publishing anything at all, and 10 being the satisfaction I get from publishing something I’m really proud of (in terms of aesthetic quality or meaningful content or perceived value add to other people), I think these reflection-y posts lie somewhere around 4/5. If I can observe this over a period of time and throw in a higher satisfaction post once in a while, I should be good. I won’t tell you guys though. 🙂

I’m definitely being lazy. I know it’ll involve more time and effort if I start thinking about quality. It’s alright though, I know I could get there eventually, if I wanted to.

It’s a new day. Sitting on a chair and trying to wrap this up. I’m feeling quite proud of the relationships I’ve built and deepened in the last year or so. Don’t know whether it has to do anything with me or their own niceness but regardless, these are things that I’m extremely grateful for.

Sometimes I consume content which distracts me from the things I wanted to write about. I don’t even remember them anymore. Detachment feels quite depressing sometimes. If I am detached from the world and detached from myself then I won’t have as much to write about anymore. Though I know that’s not true and connected detachment can be a thing, I don’t yet know how to balance the line.

There’s a lot happening in the world these days and I often feel quite guilty for not keeping up with it. What is up with the collective pain of humanity and the numerous ways in which it shows up? Politics feels like a scary, dense realm to even think about.

I’ve jumped around a lot in this word-vomit (we’re back to calling these that, aren’t we?), so I’d like to end with an exchange of words that took place around six months back. I’d met someone new and we were talking about our hopes and dreams. Naturally, I’d mentioned writing. “What would you write about?”, she’d asked me. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”, I’d questioned back. Thinking about that wistfulness again tonight.