Category: Personal

089b – on balancing love and learning

Haven’t word-vomited in a few days. Have many thoughts. Been socially busy, but it’s been nice. But also a bit over-stimulating. Need calmness. I’ve also smoked quite a bit over the last few days and haven’t worked at all and I’m definitely not happy about that. Need to go back to reading Allen Carr. 

Giving all of my attentive time to sentient beings feels quite nice, almost a bit addictive, but I’d like to be more careful with it. I noticed a white hair on my head today and although I’m not TOO worried, it definitely is a little uncomfortable. For this and adjacent reasons, I’d like to go back to prioritising health over pleasure. 

Lots of people in my universe lately. I’d like to preserve my energy and attention, however. Since sometimes it becomes hard to recover from persistent feelings of being spread too thin. 

January is about to end and February first-half is busy with friends but I’d like to plan work-goals for the second half of February so I don’t regret spending all my time on social things. I read a quote (can’t find it right now) which talks about how loving and learning are the two most important things in life. Because they are the two experiences you will likely not regret in life, regardless of how they come to you. I think I’m fairly aligned with this, at least for 2024. 

So I just need to balance love (social) and learning (work) for the next few months. In the chase for secure love and attention, I do not want to put myself, my needs, my goals, my ambition behind. My relationship with myself still needs to be the most important relationship in my life. 

There’s a quote by Rilke which goes: “And you must be indulgent with the answer, which will perhaps often leave you empty-handed; for ultimately, and precisely in the deepest and most important matters, we are unspeakably alone; and many things must happen, many things must go right, a whole constellation of events must be fulfilled, for one human being to successfully advise or help another.”

I quite like this. Something I’m attempting to do a lot more and live by is to “not put all my eggs in one basket” when it comes to people. I think the urge to find all answers and all peace in singular people has been quite harmful for me in the past. Safety, reliability, having your needs met (through and with other people) are very valid pursuits, but they need to be done mindfully. 

Ah, I suppose that’s the theme of this whole word-vomit. How to give, take, love without getting too attached. Or how to practice connected detachment, I suppose. 

I am a romantic and that’s okay and that’s great but I’d like to continue to be wary of romanticisation. I think it’s good and healthy. 

Pillars have to be multi-fold. A single pillar cannot take the load of my depth. And that’s okay too. 

089a – safety and choice

I tell my father that people sometimes cry pretty easily in front of me. He is surprised. There’s space and silence as he processes this so I add that that’s not necessarily a bad thing though, and I almost feel nice that they feel safe around me. (Of course, truthfully, I know this isn’t about me and I’m just an aid or an instrument to what they might have needed, but admittedly, I’m happy when I’m able to offer a non-judgemental space to someone). He laughs and asks how i can feel good about making people cry. I think he is partially joking but I know it’s only partially so. He has never experienced safety in the ways I strive to experience (and hence, also bring to people) on a regular basis. This devastates me and yet I know I can’t spend too much time thinking about this. 

When I was much younger I would sometimes fantasise about people telling me their deepest, darkest secrets. I don’t know if this meant anything and part of me knows that I perhaps had a bit of a saviour complex. But I look up what a saviour complex means and a saviour complex is tied to fixing. I don’t think I ever wanted to solve people’s problems, even in my fantasies (unless they wanted me to, of course). I don’t know where this came from, then. Maybe this part of me just wanted to tell my deepest, darkest secrets to someone and I envisioned being this person for that part. It’s all good now, though. I experienced almost 10/10 safety through therapy and I don’t feel the need to offer safety to people for my own happiness. 

It feels nice to be here. Starting to think about choice a lot more. At 23, I started the journey of disidentification and detachment from my thoughts. At 28, I started the same with feelings. I’m recognising that thoughts and feelings are just that— thoughts and feelings. While it’s true that some of them can mean something and some of them can be worth listening to and following, I keep in mind now that there is always a choice. Choice of belief, choice of how much meaning you want to assign to them, choice of response. I’ve spent enough time with my feelings over the last few months to now for know that I don’t need to spending all my time with my feelings. 

Art is nice, of course. It allows to me pour my thoughts and feelings into something. Something tangible, almost. I suppose in a way, it gives meaning and an end and a home to my thoughts and feelings. It’s safe. Maybe that’s the primary reason I do this, maybe that’s the primary reason I’ve always done this. Of course, if someone miraculously finds value in it, that makes me incredibly happy, but I suppose there is enough value in it for me too. 

I don’t believe in a forever anymore. It sounds pessimistic and unromantic but i feel really great about believing this. To me, it means that I have fully grieved the people I’ve lost. Because if no feeling is final, how can a forever be final? Choice (and hope) is what makes a forever, and choice is hopefully something you can always carry with you. (I pray to god I never have to be out of choice.) xx 

088b – good vibes, experiencing space

Feeling pretty great today. I feel like I’m in problem-solving mode as opposed to problem-thinking mode. But it’s not anxiety fueled. It’s actually positive energy and motivation and genuine resonance fueled. Obviously, I have a bit of an obsessive streak when it comes to open problems and open questions but I’m thinking it’s not such a bad thing. For a set amount of time, if I can channel this energy into getting things done that may not be such a bad thing. As long as I can keep “productivity” and the “doer” energy balanced with “being” energy, days could be nice. 

Got some clarity on the gender and body dysphoria question in therapy today, and that feels pretty great. For now, I’m good. Turns out there are certain days I just don’t like being strongly associated with femininity, but I have enough moments where I do like that association (and in various ways). Currently, for a couple months, I’ve been experiencing a good amount of the yin and the yang, and I’m pretty okay with that— and I imagine I’ll learn to actually really celebrate that as well. 

I think I have some space for mentorship in my life. I already have an “emotions, health and interpersonal relationships” mentor ie my therapist, who I’m pretty happy with. But I think what I need is someone who has experience with creative work, ie a writing industry mentor and a music industry mentor. Obviously, I don’t have space for two people so something I may need to figure out is what I need more at the moment, but I’m going to be exploring that this week. 

I’m thinking that it could be nice to try to look for creative work / freelance jobs in H1 this year. Currently I have the time, resources and the opportunity to explore this thread, and it’s worth trying it out with 100% effort and only falling back to the things I know and like ONLY IF it doesn’t work out. Ie let’s say I find don’t find the kind of work that I might actually like, maybe I can fall back to my more stable tech pay check job world. I just feel like there’s enough people working in the arts industries and why should I not give it a shot, at least? Especially maybe if I’m okay with earning a bit less at the moment. Obviously, I’m not saying I will be fully fulfilled right away, but I just feel called to at least trying to look. Why should I give up before looking? I don’t know, let’s see. 

Also learning to set better boundaries with people in my DMs, something I’ve been practicing for a few years now but still need to continue to do, for reasons I’m not sure. I thought most people who interact with me are actually people who know the things that I stand for, but maybe there’s still some “warding off” of negative energies that needs to continue. 

Anyway, that’s that for today. Hoping for a good last week of January! Cheers xx 

088a – feeling feelings

They say a sign of emotional intelligence is to hold feelings without letting them drive your decisions. But I hope it’s okay that I “decide to” write (and publish) even when I have big feelings because I (like to) think of myself as somewhat emotionally intelligent and I won’t let them tell me otherwise. Granted, I do spend a good amount of time with my feelings lately but I did want to spend a lot of my time on creative work and the one thing I know for sure is that I create best when it’s driven by feelings. Skill has always been a secondary pursuit to me and reception is also not been something I’ve been able to measure but I know that my happiness and joy in creation is highly dependent on following feelings. 

There is a lot I’ve been feeling today and I wrote it all down earlier tonight but I still don’t feel empty. 

There are things I want to say to people who may or may not want to hear them but I am fragile and I don’t know how to gauge well what other people want. What do I want? I want to bare my soul (or whatever) without being made to feel like that’s something I’m not supposed to do. 

Sure, I can make music and I can write poetry and I can make it all a little more “digestible” but what is it about things being as is that makes it “non digestible” for other people? I won’t know. Maybe I’m not supposed to know. 

My mother has become quite a close “friend” of mine over the last few months and I feel so lucky to have her in my life. I lay my head in her lap today and asked her how we as a race (ie humans) can get intimacy so wrong and she looked at me with sympathy which made me feel like she thinks it’s not necessarily a race problem but a me problem. And maybe it really is a me problem and I’m okay to take that feedback because I’ve been doing a lot of the work and I’ve been doing healthy things and maybe it’s okay that there’s still a lot of work to be done and I’m willing to accept that because the other explanation is that I’m severely unlucky and that just does not seem to be true, really, so.. I don’t know. 


I feel like the world always wants me to process things faster than I want to process them and despite repeatedly expressing that I don’t like being rushed people keep rushing me. They want me to move on faster, be happy faster, not grieve as much as I do, not be sad as much as I am, not talk about things as much as I do.. and yet, they don’t know how to set their own boundaries, is what jumps out to me, almost. I guess this means I would really respect people who are able to set their own healthy boundaries. 

I don’t know. Today’s a bit of a bouba day. Although I’m not displeased. Cheers xx 

087b – january rambles

I want to write, I need to write. And to do that I need to accept that the only thing I want to write about is you, at the moment. Well not just at the moment. Since a few days actually. And I imagine that will continue for a few more. 

In a way, you’re a muse. 

And maybe that’s why I’m already attached to you, the idea of you, etc. I don’t want to do this. I want to see you. Not through my image, but through yours. 

Anyway, stomach is upset so I can’t get rid of feelings in any other way except by ranting about them on here. 

I wonder how we can cultivate a better relationship with our muse(s)? All the people that I’ve liked and loved have always been a source of inspiration for me in terms of art and creative work, and yet.. it’s futile to think of your relationship with different people as something in your control. It’s really not. That’s generally the beauty of it. That they (or your interactions with them)make you feel things you wouldn’t have felt otherwise. And I’m not just talking about romantic feelings, though of course yes, they do generally dominate the muse-world. 

I need to figure out the main tasks I want to be working on from next week onwards because essentially I didn’t really get anything done this week. Journaling and music journaling is something I’m automatically finding myself doing a good amount, and that’s great, but I’d like to use these two things as tools for the next few weeks, and not aims. I know that most people swear by the idea of “keeping yourself busy” and I think that’s something I need to follow and be strict about over the next few weeks as well. I think this also means going back to being a bit more routinely with work, etc. The way I’d been able to do back in November. Honestly, it’s the winters that has completely fucked up everything for me. I don’t know why I feel so cold and why this seems to be a bigger problem for me than it is for most other people I know. 

I’m hungry, too, but anything I eat makes me feel terrible and I don’t know how to solve this. 

Someone once told me I’m very slow with things, and I feel like it’s true, but I don’t know how to be better at this. How does one be faster at things? I think I need to automate food, sleep and chores to the extent that I can. It’s really coming in the way at the moment actually. 

I’m also experiencing the need to call onto rationality. I feel like I’ve been spending a lot of time with feelings lately (I also feel like I’ve mentioned this here before) but I’m not sure how to be rational. Or how to access the rationality that I know I have in me.  

Rick Rubin says we write to see things we already know. I suppose we can keep writing until we’re able to incorporate the things we need. Hope this makes some sense. That’s it from me for now. Cheers xx 

087a – updates and planning

Lots going on. Lots of feelings and thoughts. Attended a big-ish poetry open mic which triggered some insecurities, although I did come out with a couple of really nice takeaways. Found some inspiration, found some people to connect with, and was also able to “provide value” (I think) by talking to a few students who were really interested in the processes and the community and how they could get more involved with poetry and slam poetry in general. 

I think it’d be nice to be able to attend a workshop on slam poetry sometime soon because shifting from page to slam might require some more intentional work that I’m not able to put in yet. 

Something I’m incorporating in dating (ie what I look for in a partner) now is maturity. For the longest time I’ve “known” that this is something I like but I’ve also thought that it’s something that I can get by without (because “I’m plenty mature for the both of us”). But I’m realising lately that that’s not how it works (LOL). But also realising that maturity doesn’t just come from books and movies but also a good amount of life experience. Also maturity on what fronts, really? Not just in terms of life and existing and suffering, but really having interacted with a good amount of people, with a good number and type of people, situations, etc etc. I don’t know yet how I can test for this when dating, but it’s something I’d definitely want. 

I wrapped up the 10-songs project for now (reflections here) and something I’m realising is that it’s literally very similar to word-vomiting and journaling. I’m still continuing with music and writing as need based things (ie feeling outlets) and that will likely stay, I think. Production and release will be a separate project, one that I’m not beginning anytime soon. I’m going to be working on the smaller things this January. Small admin tasks, other P1 mini-projects etc. I’ve also got a vocals exam and I’d like to wrap it up soon since it’s stretched on for too long now. 

The other thing that’s going on is no-Instagram-January. Today I felt like I want to activate it again because I felt the need for connection. But then if I don’t carry on for at least 2-3 weeks without giving in I wouldn’t really be able to tap into the returns, if any. Because my need for connection actually wasn’t a need for connection, only regulation. And for regulation, I mostly want to rely on myself, or actual, real people, not social media.  

Not sure exactly what to focus on this week, work-wise, but I need to decide at least a few things otherwise I might end up doing nothing, really. I think I might need to follow a sprint model for personal tasks as well because that actually works pretty well, in my experience. It’ll allow me to not get “triggered” by my todo list but instead just look at it as opportunities— opportunities that I can explore at the pace that I want to. 

Alright that’s it for today! Hope you’re having a good start to the week. Cheers xx 

086b – the kiki bouba effect in conversation

kiki: sharp, precise, particular

bouba: loose, round, soft

I’ve always been a little Kiki when it comes to.. most things, really. I was reminded of this while talking to a close friend of mine. We’ve been pretty close for almost a decade now— suffice to say we know each other pretty well and have talked about various things under the sun. We were reflecting on our friendship and relationship a bit, how it has evolved etc and something that came up was a difference of ours. This is one of the few differences that has persisted over the decade— he’s a little bit Bouba and I’m a little bit Kiki. 

In conversation, I tend to be quite Kiki. I’ll always be the one thinking-frowning at words that I don’t think fit very well and at generalisations and at vague descriptions of problems and (although this is unrelated) unsolicited advice. 

With some people, this results in great things, we collaborate to find words that fit better, we learn a little more about each other every time we strike off a generalisation and discuss how the generalisation may not apply even to us as data points, and we get closer to the sub-problems that we’re interested in talking or thinking about. (Even if that problem is a very simple and mundane one, like where should we hang out the next time we meet. Side note on calling this “open question” a problem is pretty Bouba of me but ah, well.)

So anyway, I suppose these people are equally or more Kiki than I am and so they’re okay with deep-diving into precision ABOUT the things I want to get more precise about. 

What happens when you talk to someone who’s not as Kiki about the same topics as you are, then? I am often met with resistance. They give me reactions like “ah, well you know what I mean don’t you” or “why are so fixated on x y z when that was clearly not the point of me talking about a b c” etc. And I’m okay to take that feedback, I think I’ve gotten a little bit better at being a little more Bouba with different people in different situations. Like yes, maybe sometimes being pedantic is really just coming in the way of transference of feelings. In a way, when I’m pedantic when the other person doesn’t want me to be, there’s of course a disconnect that they might feel. They might feel misunderstood, or like they’ve said— they might just feel like in the moment I (the listener) might be focusing on the wrong thing.

This makes sense. For people like me then, it becomes important to discern when there is a “discussion” or a “debate” happening, and perhaps when it’s just feelings being shared. 

But what about when Kikiness is actually really useful? How do I communicate that to people? Like there are some people who are so Bouba that they get defensive about any examination of the things they’re expressing. 

Maybe it does just come down to discernment. One of my friends does this pretty well, he might say: “I disagree with the use of the word XYZ here, but I know what you mean”. And then if I want to open a thread there, we can do that. If I don’t, we carry on with the original conversation. 

I don’t know, I thought I was going to go somewhere with this, I really wanted to make a case of “when can being Kiki be useful”, but I’m gong to test out my discernment theory a little more in conversation from now on and then see where that takes me. 

086a – thought-trains and fears

Fucked up sleep schedule again. I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to sleep. Either I just accept that I’m sleeping weird hours or I genuinely try to be disciplined. I think I’m just going to accept that for the next few weeks because once I’m traveling (ie end of this month) and spending time with other people I think the routine will automatically come into the picture. 

Yeah, so maybe for the next couple weeks, it’s alright to have a slightly weird sleep schedule. 

Did a lot of music things the whole day yesterday, felt pretty nice, although I do feel like I’m getting very daydreamy with my goals and tasks. Like it’s not like I’m not spending enough time on the doing (I am), but I’m still spending a LOT of time just romanticising it all. 

In general also, I’ve been thinking a lot about romanticisation and glorification. Is it a problem? It’s obviously better than catastrophisation but I think it’s sort of the same thing. In a way, you’re spending time away from the present and away from awareness. So, yeah, I’d definitely want to be spending less time in my head. So how do I do this really? I’ve cut out a lot of my “vices” or copes to this problem over the last few months, I think there are in a way just the innermost layers remaining now. 

Ie just core strong self-discipline. Habits, I suppose, is what people vouch by a lot. Yeah, maybe I’ll think about habit building a bit too. Maybe I recognise what situations I’m most prone to rumination and daydreaming in. Obviously, keeping a journal and a guitar near me as much as I can helps me too. But that’s not enough, I think. I think I’d want to be better at both the routes— cutting the thought “spirals” (regardless of whether they’re down spirals or up spirals) through body interference (movement, or action for eg) but also through brain interference (“hey, you’re in your head”, “hey, you’re on a thought-train, do you want to write about it perhaps?”). Yeah, I think I’ll try practicing these things a bit. 

I slept from 7am-2pm today and I think that’s okay, I do tend to need 9 hours of sleep. Anyway, I think it’s all okay. I can’t always be questioning everything. I’m happy doing the work I’m doing lately, I just don’t want to get lost in it— is something I’ve been feeling lately. But just as I write this, I wonder if it’s okay to get lost in it for a few months? I’m just afraid of becoming a workaholic to be very honest. I don’t want to prioritise work over health and relationships. I do want to keep health at the top, and then relationships and work at an equal footing, for sure. 

Man, there’s no sun today either. Hope tomorrow is better! Hope you’re having a good week xx 

085 – a break from doomscrolling

Happy with deactivating Instagram to be very honest. I’m realising it’s actually quite a waste to have your thought-process interrupted by social media. Of course, not all thoughts are interesting or useful, and I’ll be mindful of that, but from the chatter often come very interesting things, and that’s part of the skill-building I imagine, to find interesting things from a bunch of the noise. But for that I need to learn to tame and sort through the noise, not just quieten it down every time it starts to build. 

I’m also happy with a little bit of the abundance mindset dating I’ve been doing (or trying to do lately). Simply put, dating more than a single person at a time. It’s really the only way I can emulate secure attachment at the moment. 

Really want to get better at structured writing, or long-form writing, ie tying multiple related thoughts into a singular thing. I’m pretty meh at that right now. I used to think I have a lot of thoughts running through my brain ALL the time, but lately I feel like half of them are literally useless. I guess this is okay to realise, maybe that’s what growing up feels like. Or maybe that’s what a lot of word-vomiting allows me to get to. That I’m not as interesting as I thought. (And I don’t mean this in a self-deprecating way). Or maybe, that I need to put in more effort or work or focus-time to mould my thoughts into something “interesting”. Of course, that also opens up the question of what interesting is, really? I think I know this in my heart, though putting it out in words feels tedious, so I won’t attempt to do that right now. 

Something that I’d been mulling over is the amount of time I want to be giving to maintenance of relationships etc, since I sometimes feel like there’s too many relationships to maintain lately and I don’t know if I can maintain them all. Of course, this doesn’t mean I want to “end” relationships or whatever, but just that sometimes it’s hard to make time for too many people in a single week, or a single month or whatever. There’s also that constant quality/quantity debate. Generally, over the last few years, what has worked okay for me is thinking of friendships and relationships in tier-forms. (I know a lot of people think this way and I think that works for me too). That I have some tier-1 friends (inner circle, etc) and a lot of tier-2 friends and then some tier-3 friends, etc. I’d also seen post by Casey Tanner about types of friendships and that was pretty cool as well because then you don’t have to “rank” friends in a way but you can still (for your self) define how important different people are to you. I can’t find the post right now but it was something along the lines of: close friends, lifelong friends, daily friends, dinner friends, party friends, affinity friends, family friends, etc etc”. I do have a lot of “affinity” friends for example. Queer friends, music friends, writing friends, self-growth friends. And these are important connections, but I wouldn’t necessarily hang out with them every week. 

Anyway, I’d been mulling over how much time I can take out for social needs and whether I might just be over-indulging (ie continuing social interactions even after my social needs have been filled) and something I’m realising is that conversation is definitely something that I care about a lot. Conversation, when it goes well, has the power to move me in really unique ways. Conversation also allows me to test thoughts (and ideas) a lot better than anything else does. Sometimes I may have written a very simple word-vomit and even that allows me to be more articulate about my thoughts and feelings in conversation. Even about the simplest things. Basically coming to the conclusion that conversation is a great tool that runs parallel to writing. To that end, I don’t want to cut down my social time too much. I do think it contributes a LOT to creative work and growth, so I think it’s worth putting in the effort into it. And then again of course there’s the whole “you learn a lot of unexpected things from people”. Obviously, time is not infinite, so maybe I can’t just spend all my time with people (and obviously, my introversion will not allow for that either), but three good hangs in a week is something I can definitely strive for. At least for the next few months. I can always reevaluate once (when) I start working. 

I’m up at 9:30 am today and feeling great, even though today’s a pretty chilly day as well. Good sleep, good food, good people around me, I suppose it’s all quite nice. Feeling pretty grateful, too. 

I have a feeling reducing social media will also help me make more time for all the admin tasks I generally detest so much. Man, I’m feeling quite excited about this break! I might be romanticising it a little bit (lol) but I think that’s okay. If the benefits actually turn out to be that good, it’ll be very worth it. The main thing I’m doubting I think is whether it was even an addiction if it feels so easy to “quit”? I’m not sure, I guess we’ll find out. Will have to go back to the open question of understanding the addiction a lot better. 

Alright, that’s it from me right now! Cheers xx 

084b – trying to funnel life a bit

Been very busy— socially— over the last couple days. Haven’t had enough time to myself. Haven’t been sleeping too well either but I finally caught up on that earlier today. The sun hasn’t been out for almost a whole week now which sucked quite a bit although music and people have been keeping me sane and happy. 

Finally bought an electric guitar after many months of mulling over models etc. Excited to practice and learn a few songs this month. 

I’d been thinking about temporarily deactivating Instagram for a while now and I finally took the plunge. Current plan is to keep it deactivated for 2-3 weeks and then see if I need it or no. Reasoning behind deactivation is primarily that I want to minimise unnecessary stimulus. I want to be more careful and mindful about the kind of content I consume and Instagram is coming in the way a bit, I guess. Further, the two main reasons I was still keeping it around were that

  1. it was one of my primary ends for creative expression (especially with photos as well as “thought dumps”) but I think I’m more determined to focus on journaling/writing/music as the primary forms of expression, at least this month, so maybe Instagram is just a bit of a distraction from those goals.

  2. i think I also had a lot of space for new people and connections in life and I thought Instagram can be a good way to keep that channel open. And while it’s true that you do sometimes find interesting opportunities and people through social media, I just feel like I have enough on my plate for the next few weeks so maybe for now I’m alright. 

So yeah, figured it’s worth testing. 

Kind of excited about getting to 100K words soon(ish) but also wondering what the next steps would be. This is good practice, I feel like I tend to keep jumping ahead with things. Or maybe, I just leave this question here and let the answers come to me. If the answers haven’t arrived, then I can potentially keep going as well. [open question]

Focused on drums class, vocals exam, learning Corduroy Dreams on guitar this week, and that’s probably sufficient work to be thinking about, so maybe I can allow myself to not have to think about January planning etc. 

Still have a couple of people I want to meet once or twice before they go back to their bases. 

Lots of travel lined up this year and pretty excited about all of it. 

I’d like to think about (and do some research on) whether long-form content consumption (like books, for example) is actually healthier compared to social media content consumption or not. Like obviously, intuition says it is, and I’ve heard a lot of such sentiments in passing, but I don’t think I’ve ever read about it properly. So yeah, that’d be good to learn more about. [open question]

Cheers xx