Category: Personal

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. 

031b – welcome, september

Humans don’t provide much comfort today, so here I am again. Have to get over more feelings I recently acquired. Vulnerability doesn’t feel easy either. Friends are good, nice, magical even, but things are hard still. Art is nice, helpful, magical even, but things are quite difficult anyway. 

Been watching this show called Normal People and Hulu and it’s probably one of the best, most beautiful things I’ve seen on TV. Pretty emotionally intense, to the point that it can even become hard to watch sometimes, but man did they do a good job on it. 

Life is a little tough lately, the matters of the heart have come around to bother me once again. I will be spending the next few weeks attempting to get over someone. Once again, I find myself wishing that feelings were easier, though I know that wouldn’t achieve anything. I want time to pass faster because I’m hoping it’ll do its thing, but I also don’t want it to – for multiple reasons, one simply being that I only have a few more months here in the States. 

I spoke to an ex on call after a few months today, and if I’m being honest it made me feel really good – mostly because I realized how, given enough time, feelings do pass, and eventually you’re able to see people as simply friends, or people, regardless of how strongly you might have felt about them at a point in time. 

I have 1.5 days of the long weekend still left with me, I’d like to catch up on chores and some housework before Tuesday arrives – things have been pending for quite a few weeks now. I also wanted to work on some music stuff, but unable to find the inspiration for it. I know the lyrics are decent and the melody for the verse is pretty decent too, just haven’t been able to figure out how the chorus should go. Ah well, should probably treat it with a little more respect and just sit down at my desk to work on this, rather than hoping that it’ll come to me in my sleep or something. Also want to make some travel plans for the end of this month. And as usual, need to follow up on some emails. Wow, this might just be turning into a verbose todo list. 

Anyway, love (or lack thereof) is hard. I miss having constant friends (people) around. At this age people move around so quick, or they keep traveling, or they’re just busy. Everyone’s seems to be living in the abundance mindset, maybe I need to as well. My smoking addiction is off the charts – noting it down here so I have some accountability. Maybe I should get a vape to transition into quitting. Sleep’s been much better though. 

Clearly haven’t written in a while since 500 words is getting hard to reach. I know it’s not a big deal but I’ll try to be regular again (for myself, of course). Happy September!

031a – music stuff

Excited about all the music in my life right now. I ordered a second-hand keyboard, looking forward to setting up near my window and eventually playing some jazz on it. I want to remember how it takes time to build the skills, I can’t expect much in the first couple months. But I might do a Take Me to Church cover pretty soon. 

I want to find more people to jam with, I want to get more involved in all of this. I’m going to fix my sleep schedule and spend more of my weekends playing and creating more music. 

I “created” some bits of music in the last couple of weeks, it was huge for me because for some reason I always thought it was impossible to do. Which is weird, since other parallels never seemed as tough. You get colors, you’re okay throwing them on a blank canvas and seeing what comes up. You get words, you’re able to make sentences and prose and even poetry out of them. But for some reason, even though I always had the notes (i.e the building blocks), I never thought of forming melodies with them. 

I think I always stopped at whether “it made sense” or whether “it was good enough” (even just in my head) to even attempt it. I’m amazed at how long at it took me to get here, and all the forces that must have been at play to get me here. But I’m happy I’m finally here. 

I also want to learn a little more of music theory. Jacob Collier’s masterclass has been incredibly inspirational. I do think you have to find the romance in everything that you like for it to truly be inviting. I’m allowing myself to dream and daydream (again). 

I don’t know how to be organized about all of this, though. Prioritizing and sorting through all of these small half-baked ideas seems like a chore. And the only motivation to do that is to increase executive function. How do you resolve the conflict between discipline and freedom?
I also don’t enjoy “production” as much. I think it requires much more of all of the discipline and the organizational skills. It feels plainer, less creative. You have to really like the pieces you have and you’ve to really believe they matter for you to spend time and effort on putting it all together. 

Then there’s the other part to this, lived experiences. What stories do I want to tell, what part of life is interesting enough to share? These blog posts don’t matter, even the most trivial thought-clouds I don’t mind sharing on here. But with music, do I want it to be a little more? I guess it’s like any other thing. Maybe it’s a numbers game. Maybe I need to start from the basics. Just put numbers on the board. Once I make ten melodies, maybe I can think about the quality and the actual content. 

Dreams do have their own place, but eventually it’s the execution that’ll move us forward. 

030b – creative queues and time management

I finally had a gin and tonic the other day. They charged us a fortune for it. We found a table outside and talked for an hour. There were heaters above us so the air didn’t feel as chilly as it generally does. The time was perfect, most of the evening crowd had gone home, but it wasn’t dead either. The city’s quite beautiful at night. The moon was out, it was a little foggy (as it often is), there’s enough voices to keep you grounded but not so many that you get overwhelmed.  

I got back home and realized I can’t do something like that every night. I mean, I wouldn’t want to. Part of the magic just lies in the novelty of it. I need to be okay with the routine and the day-to-day as well. I want to be able to enjoy that. I can’t always keep looking for something exciting, new, wild (??) to do. 

I got a haircut the next day so that was fun. I’d let my hair grow out for more than eight months now so that’s been crazy. Today wasn’t great though. I ended up sleeping in the whole day, missed all the sunlight – and the week’s kicking off tomorrow so I’m a little worried about how it’s going to go. 

I’ve been worried about all the things that have been brewing in my head and taking up space. So much so I’ve ended up procrastinating on this post as well. Now that I’m finally in it though, it seems fine – it’s not as much material as I thought it’d be. (As usual, I guess?) 

I don’t think I’m excited about being in tech. Even though it’s one of the biggest “things” in the world and I’m sure I’ll have a ton of fomo whenever I “switch” fields (if I end up doing it, that is), yet I think I want to accept that it doesn’t excite me enough. I just genuinely really want to be successful at a creative job.

But there’s the hard part, right? I can’t guarantee the success. 

I’ve been debating about what the next “phase” of my life is going to be. Where do I want to be next, where do I want to go next? Summer’s about to be over soon and I’m going to have to start taking some decisions, eventually. The uncertainty’s eventually going to get to me. 

Time management’s been a little hard. I think I’ve been all over the place. Between my social goals, creative goals, travel goals, relationship (??) goals and my job and chores – I feel like I can’t get everything done. I’m also aware that this is a common problem and that it’s okay, but I wonder if there’s a way to prioritize or set some boundaries or constraints at the start of a week to have some guidelines to follow as you execute? That sounds like a decent idea. I’m going to give that a shot this week.  

Welp, I hit 500 words exactly. So I think that’s a wrap. Time to celebrate – I’m finally done with the 30k milestone! Hope you all have a good week ahead. 

030a – sleep schedules and the need to feel seen

All right! I’m awake at 5pm on a Saturday, well-rested and feeling good after a while. A couple of friends have recommended fixing my sleep-schedule now, and while a little annoying, I do know they have my best interests at heart. Also, the fact that people my age are really swearing by it and thinking it’s something really worth fixing makes me think that it might be time. Physical offices are probably also going to start opening by fall as well, so starting now gives me enough time to potentially fail a couple of times if needed and get back on track. 

I realized a few things last night. 

  • I really enjoy long phone conversations so finding some of those people in my time-zone’s going to be important. (Right now I spend a lot of time talking to some of my friends and family back home and for some reason the timing’s been working in a way that it stretches into my night).
  • Not procrastinating in the day is going to be critical. I really want to make time for hobbies and self-work and making that time in the daytime implies getting done with chores and pending “work” earlier in the morning, especially on the weekends.
  • Then of course, there’s the 10pm/11pm temptations. The caffeine cravings, for example. I’m going to have to be a little strict about not giving into many of the things I like doing post-dinner. It’s going to have to be wind-down period. Until my body clock adjusts (which, might take a few weeks to a month at least, I guess), I’m going to have to be very deliberate about this. 

So, that’s enough on sleep and commitment to that. 

(Random update) I bought a mic! I’m excited to figure out a little bit of recording technicalities and then I’ll potentially record some music and experiment around with that. 

Lastly, the main thing I’ve been thinking about since yesterday. What is it about “feeling seen” and “feeling known” that feels so good? I would say I was a fairly private person up until two years ago. Eventually, opened up to people and eventually also started to really enjoy sharing my work and my “art” (and therefore more of me) with everyone. 

Of course, one of the main things that spurred this into faster action was a breakup, for me. I doubt I ever felt a void when I was with my now ex-partner. Him and some close friends and family having “know” me was quite sufficient. After the breakup, there was definitely that need, that empty space. Savannah Brown (recent discovery) has interesting thoughts on this – she asks if anything really then has meaning unless “people” are involved. Unless “people” are seeing it? I’ve never tried playing music for an animal but I’ve heard it can be quite amazing. So it might not just be people, but maybe.. connection? 

Is feeling seen simply an indicator of connection? Or is it the acceptance, the apparent lack of judgement, the freedom that comes from it? 

Ah well, looks like there’s clear evolutionary reasoning behind it. This was easy 🙂 

Also, very excited to hit 30k soon! Have a happy weekend, everyone. :partyemoji:

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.

029a – platonic intimacy and friendships

We don’t always get what we want. But we get other things. Other things that sometimes end up being silver linings. 

I took a somewhat spontaneous weekend trip with few of my friends from grad-school this week. I’d never realized how platonic intimacy has many similar stages like romantic intimacy does. The obvious, tangible things like shared spaces, shared bathrooms and beds. But more than that, the smaller things – the newer fights, some of them caused by unsuspecting jokes, the small adjustments to each others’ habits. Quirks. The privilege of getting to see each others flaws. The vulnerability that comes with telling someone you’re a late sleeper. The vulnerability of being cranky when you haven’t had your day’s coffee. Then there’s the meditative moments when you all sit around someone packing their suitcase on the last night, watch them slowly fold their clothes, one piece after another. You realize how much at peace you all can be, together. Nobody says anything until it’s done and everyone suddenly realizes how magical the moments that just passed had been.

I’m all for virtual friendships and long-distance relationships, but I’m realizing that some dimensions of intimacy can only be achieved by spending actual time with people. I think throughout school and college, some of this happen pretty automatically, since trips and spending time with each other is kind of a default. But as adults, some of us often have to be a bit more deliberate about it. Glad to be able to do it though! 

In general, it’s been a great year for friendships for me (of course, being single will do that to you anyway). But I have realized that I’m much more social than I used to think, and it’s been fun to lean into it. Though one new concern that’s come up for me is whether having “more” friends can affect the quality of friendships? (I mean obviously, but I wonder what the numbers are.)
I was definitely a believer of “quality over quantity” earlier, and though I have liked increasing the quantity so far, I don’t want the quality to be affected.

Am I making “enough” friends so that I don’t have to face disappointment when someone is unavailable etc, or do I just genuinely like having that many friends? I think it’s okay when I have multiple friends for different purposes, like enjoying different kinds of activities or when people fill different roles for me, but having multiple friends for similar purposes and roles might be an overkill. 

My eventual goal though is to reduce my dependencies on social media and have just enough close friends that I can keep in touch with them and be able to reach them through the older mediums of connectivity. This should provide a good enough upper constraint, I guess. 

Anyway, that’s all on this. Onwards. 

028b – flights

Adding this picture here since I think it has some interesting things worth noting. I love how it has things related to the pandemic as well as the fact that it’s the pride month – something else I wanted to talk about it in this piece, but didn’t end up getting to. Still worth it, though, I think.

I’m stuck in a five hour flight. Two of the five hours have passed and I’m slowly starting to enjoy it. Had a terrible night since this was a 6 am flight, and why past me thought it’d be feasible is beyond me. Spent the whole night in the “too anxious to fall asleep” and “too sleep-deprived to focus on anything” loop / limbo. But.. I’m here now, and not unhappy nor frustrated. The airport was terribly packed, by the way. In a way I’ve almost never seen before. It’s not completely unexpected since the pandemic is sort of coming to an end here, or at least a pause (who’s to say, really), but still took me a little by surprise.

I was trying to write a little bit earlier too. I was thinking about how it’s been difficult to sit down and focus on writing coherently. I was thinking about how inspiration has been fleeting lately. How it does knock on the door from time to time but flees before I can invite her in. But it’s interesting how a medium-long flight offers exactly the right kind of an environment to focus. 

My body is, admittedly, quite uncomfortable, but I’m sure my plight is nothing next to that of the very tall boy sitting next to me who seems incredibly uncomfortable in the middle seat.
This got me thinking about the economics of shared but unequal travel, or in general… shared but unequal experiences. It’s been quite a while since travelers have been able to afford various privileges for an additional cost, but it’s one of the first times I’ve been on the more privileged side. It’s a weird feeling, I didn’t expect so much guilt around it. I wanted to let him know to let me know if he wanted the windows up or down, and for a minute I’d even felt like offering him my seat if it were slightly less uncomfortable. Then I remembered I’d paid more for my seat and there was no reason for me to have to do that. So yeah, the guilt around privilege was and is very real. 

Anyway, my time in the States will be coming to end in around 7-8 months. And it’s weird how that changes things so much. I’ve noticed how ever since I got the confirmation of this news my perspective on my remaining time has shifted quite significantly. Every experience feels retrospective even as I’m living it. I was thinking about the people who made the last three and a half years worth recounting. Some of them were people I knew from before I moved, some I met once I got here. So, so happy and content with this last phase of my life. I think I’ve grown a significant amount and learnt so much about myself and what I want from life. Of course, I don’t know whether I would get everything I want or not.. but it’s still nice to feel more aware. 

Flights always bring up a lot for me. Something I can’t stop thinking about is the first flight I took when I was moving here. I was seated with another girl similar to me in age, and a married man probably in his 30s. The three of us had ended up talking a lot and having a great time (flights from India to the US are terribly long),  – and it just warms my heart to remember that experience. It was such a great welcome to this place, and I’ve always been so grateful to both of them for providing me with that. Hope I can pass that on to someone else at some point. 

028a – are you up to speed?

Haven’t posted in a while, I start things but don’t end up completing them. This is definitely going to be a good old word-vomit. Hoping to complete it tonight. Things have been busy, somehow. I moved to my own place a few weeks back and though it’s all been nothing short of spectacular, it’s definitely also been a little lonelier, if I’m being honest. I did expect a little bit of that to happen, and I’d promised myself I’d have some structures in place to not let it get out of hand. Structures like a minimum of two social activities per week (one during the week and one on the weekend), and mostly – I’ve been abiding by that. But looks like I might need three of those? Or I might need the two to be really fulfilling… 

Got my second shot of the Pfizer vaccine a couple days ago and had a high fever as a side effect. Again – this was something expected but I’d forgotten what it feels like, don’t think I’ve had a fever in the last two years (hurrah!), so it was definitely very draining, exhausting.  

Also been feeling a little bit anxious here and there. Part of me feels like it’s because I haven’t written in a while. Biweekly summaries of “what’s been up” have been quite helpful in the recent past, and even though I’ve been catching up with people and giving them a bit of all of this – it’s not the same as doing it for (?) myself. I think it’s because when there’s other people involved – new things sometimes get added up. Probably things like – feelings about their reactions, their own updates, this, that. 

I think most of the anxiety and the fog is because of the state of the pandemic back home – the second wave hit India really hard and pretty much everyone I know is or has been suffering – either directly or through families. My grandfather passed away too, and though he lived a long, full life and it had to happen one way or the other, it’s been weird to grieve while I’m away from the rest of my family. It’s been weird to half-heartedly grieve, since I know most of it will hit me only when I visit his home. That’s where most of him resides, for me, and I can’t fully feel or process his absence until I actually go there. And I don’t really know when I’ll get to go, considering how unsafe it’d be to travel to India right now. 

Thankfully work’s not been too stressful the last couple weeks. I managed to get a decent amount of time for many of my creative pursuits, I’m recording a lot of music, doing a decent bit of photography, meeting new people – enjoying it a lot. Want to ensure I keep working hard enough to sustain this job. I see the benefits of it from time to time. 

Well, looks like we’re done. I want to post something I wrote the morning I heard about baba’s death, but maybe I’ll wrap it up around some context and post it soon. 

026b – on softness and femininity

Random thoughts from the past have been visiting me lately. Mostly good stuff, thankfully. Memories from my childhood, often a source of comfort and warmth in the cold summers of San Francisco. What a contrast from the summers of New Delhi, eating mangoes at my nani’s house. I remember the one time I was sitting next to her watching TV, and she softly held my palm in hers, told me how pyaare and soft they were. She said she’s old now, so her hands are rough and wrinkly. I told her how I thought they’re rough because she works a lot, I’d read something like that in a book. She laughed and then accepted that without much argument.

I value the softness of my skin a lot. The one other time someone’s opinion of it affected me this much was when I was around 19. The first boy I was ever intimate with. He’d whispered a soft “wow” when he’d touched my arm, and I genuinely felt happy and grateful to have my body loved by someone. There’s something about softness and femininity being related that appeals to me, it appeals to the girl who’s always been “tomboyish” growing up. I suppose she cherishes it because it’s a visible mark of how feminine she is, something that sticks with her regardless of how she presents – regardless of the clothes she wears or the haircuts she sports. 

It took me a while to become comfortable with myself and my body, years and years of misery and therapy and coping, but I think I’m finally getting there. It’s incredibly liberating, as I always knew it would be. I would imagine days like this as something from a piece of fiction, something I knew I wanted but wasn’t sure I could get. Something I was working towards but not actively so. I always thought that societal acceptance would be the easiest path to self-acceptance (even though I knew that sounded wrong, somehow), but I think it was also some sort of rejection at this stage of my life that actually sped up the process of my self-acceptance. I’d been putting a lot of effort into myself when this one brutal rejection came my way. It was devastating, but somehow made me reach a point of “I don’t care about anything anymore”. Or at least, I attribute getting to that point to that event. And with that lack of care came a lot of forced acceptance. You could perhaps call it “giving up” as well, but eventually that evolved to a healthier version of care – i.e “I do give fucks, but mostly only when I want to”.

I don’t have a lot of structure for this post, since I followed a bit of a “I’ll let the words take me where they want to” approach, and though I’m not unhappy with it, I’d love feedback if anyone happens to read this – was this as confusing as it feels to me? Thinking about Rilke’s lines now – thinking about what he said about soliciting feedback on your art. If you delve deep inside yourself, and you create art out of that knowledge and awareness, you wouldn’t have to solicit feedback. I suppose I haven’t delved inside all the way, yet.