Category: Personal

069b – morning pages + the need to zoom out + finding balance

Want to write a quick word-vomit before I start my day for real. I’m waiting for some groceries to be delivered after which I can make my morning coffee, then I call my sister to wish her happy birthday. 

I have enough tasks to be working on today and I have to go out in the afternoon for a chore which I’m almost excited about it. Planning to soak in some sun (however little/much we get lately) and maybe get a coffee from Third Wave on the way back. I’ve also asked friends if they want to get dinner later tonight so we’ll see whether or not that happens. 

I also have some house chores to do within today and tomorrow and I’m going to make sure I do get them done. 

A thought I’m struggling with is that I’ve been happy to take things (goals, productivity) at my pace (which can be considered a little slow) and although I’m very happy with the pace in the present, part of me wonders if future me might regret not getting “enough” done during this time, because I was “too easy” on myself? I know it’s unlikely that I will feel this way, because I know from experience that the decisions you take for present “real” happiness are never ones you can regret. And if at all we do feel regret, it’s coming from the lack of something else. For example, on certain days lately I almost regret not doing more of music and art even alongside my job, ie over the last 5-6 years. But then, that’s coming from a place of “oh I could have been better at it by now” or “oh I could have a greater chance at “success” by now, if I had”. But it’s important to remember that I do navigate the “present” with decent awareness, and I was doing the best I could with the knowledge that I had. 

This is all fair for the past, but the question still remains. I plan to discuss a zoomed out version of my plan and intentions and this conflict a bit more in therapy, and I need to write-up a summary of all of it to share with therapist so that she can review it before our session. I plan to write that today, I imagine it’ll also give me some reassurance. 

Struggling with developing songs lately though, and since that is my primary goal at the moment I need to find some more inputs on it all. I think I need to watch more tutorials, lessons and practice scales. Yes, I suppose I can focus on that today and tomorrow. 

I think finding balance on everything is the hardest part of our lives. It can literally be the “one” guideline to follow if you have no other guidelines to follow. (One of my friends had actually said this many years ago too, and I think she’s right). But it’s so fucking tricky. How do you balance self-compassion, laziness and “desire” and courage? How do you balance self-love and the search for love? How do you balance freedom with your responsibilities? It’s all quite tough. Maybe I need to make a list of everything I feel like I’m balancing so that I can review this better. I feel some tension stir up inside me as I write this which means I need to explore this more.

I feel a time-crunch upon me right now and part of me doesn’t want to stop writing but it’s also good practice for when sometimes I do need to “ignore” my feelings for a bit when the world and/or duty (or coffee) calls. So I’m going to do just that. Write later!

069a – passive writing, intentions for the week

I want to sleep before 4am today. Because I really want to wake up before noon tomorrow. Which means writing a word-vomit now, doing some reading and then literally just switching off the lights by 3:45am. Had some friends over today and realised I really care about them. One of them I was meeting after more than 6 months and he’s been going through a bit of tough time. Him getting me upto speed is when I realised how much I really felt for him. 

I’ve been a bit triggered about lacking a romantic relationship over the last couple days so today was a bit of grieving the last person I dated. I thought I was mostly over them but today brought some new (old) inner feelings out, I guess. It’s been over a month since we ended things and I expected this much time to be enough for me to grieve. But maybe I need a few weeks more. 

I’ve decided to purchase an electric and a semi-acoustic guitar soon but the research part of the purchases is not very fun. 

I think I definitely want to complete 2 more songs before the end of this year. That’s doable, I think. 

I haven’t taken a flight in a while. I think I’m missing the feeling. Even though flights and travel give me some anxiety, I think even WITH the anxiety, the overall feeling is nice and interesting. Maybe I’ll go somewhere early December.
I guess I used to think the net feeling in a moment is the “sum” of your positive and negative feelings but I think it’s not really that. It’s not [happiness minus anxiety = less happiness]. It’s just (happiness, anxiety). This is actually quite interesting to me. (#epiphanies)

This word-vomit is slow because I keep getting distracted. I’m really tired today though I don’t know why. I’ve slept enough and I didn’t do much. Maybe it’s just that. I didn’t do anything refreshing.

Do I really not have any thoughts at the moment? How is that possible?

I have many tasks to do this week, most of which I’m not looking forward to. So, then, what am I looking forward to, if not those tasks? How can I make this week a bit nice? There’s an open-mic I could sign up for potentially, but I don’t know what songs I’d want to sing. Okay yes, I think I can do this. It’s a task that’s the right amount of challenging, plus it’ll also be nice to move towards my medium-term goal of doing ten open-mics by the mid of next year. It’s also at this queer/mixer event type thing so it could potentially be nice to meet some new people, and I’ve been meaning to find ways to do that anyway.

I want to get back to 1000-word posts because I think more stuff comes out when you write 1000-word posts as opposed to shorter ones, so yeah– that’s something I’ll probably start doing soon. I’ve also decided I’m not switching to substack until I’ve written 10-long posts/essays that I’m actually satisfied with (where the satisfaction rating is at least a 7/10). Alright, these conclusions feel good. 

068b – diwali but this post is barely about diwali

It’s been a busy three days. We’re celebrating Diwali here in India. I posted a bit already on Instagram about how it ended up being a bit too much for me, especially since I’m celebrating in India after six whole years. It’s mostly over, but I’ve been thinking of regret and “fomo” a lot. On Friday, I was sensing increasing anxiety about the festival, the parties, the firecrackers etc and I was wondering why I wasn’t able to surrender to it all. I was also wondering if I would regret it later, whether I would miss not spending enough time with the family and friends around me while I have them.

But I’ve been thinking about the last few years, and while I did miss spending time with family/friends when I wouldn’t get to see them for many months, I don’t think I’ve missed “big” events too much.

But I’ve also been thinking of this all from the sensitivity lens, and I wonder when things got so intense. Like I don’t remember being bothered too much by loud noises, events, overstimulation etc when I was a kid. 

I think part of it has to do with our collective lowkey-obsession with our physical forms, which always seems to increase around events etc. Now, I do understand why some people like to dress up, etc, but I think there is a bit of an expectation for everyone to do it, and that is what I’m not too fond of. I specifically remember times in my life where I’ve actually really enjoyed events— and those were times where the people I was hanging with weren’t too form-obsessed, where we were doing a lot more than just clicking pictures, commenting on each other’s outfits, etc. 

I did also get a haircut yesterday that I didn’t end up liking (and I miss my longish hair) so maybe that’s got me a bit annoyed as well. 

Talking to my sister about everything really helps though. We spoke after almost 4-5 days today and it’s nice that we’re now able to put some gaps between interactions. (Since our phone calls tend to get pretty long and hence time-consuming). We’ve actually been weirdly in sync about life stuff over the last couple months. We were going through what felt like slumps throughout August and September and somehow came out of them together as October came around. 

I often wonder what the point of these journal-entries-like word-vomits is (ie is there a point to making them public?)— and I’m going to come back to this question soon. Sometimes I feel like I’m being lazy when I write these. But let’s see, I want to have sufficient reasons to why I’m doing this in public. I know I had reasons when I’d started but lately I can’t remember them. Or be convinced by them. I know they hold value for me— more on that later— but I want to be sure of the reasons why I’m doing this in public. Otherwise it’s just vulnerability for vulnerability’s sake and I don’t necessarily need that in my life at the moment. 

I feel better now, though. Man, making space for all the unpleasant thoughts in your brain feels so good. 

067a – jacob collier + taking up space + living

This is a bit of a morning pages kind of word-vomit and I don’t know yet whether I’ll post it. Let’s see. 

Yesterday was.. quite something. Saw Jacob Collier live and I imagine I’ll be talking about this for years to come. I already feel like I might have been a bit annoying about it with friends, family and social media. I don’t know. 

There is definitely a voice in my head that thinks taking up too much space isn’t okay. I think a bit of it it comes from my parents— my dad takes up too much space in rooms, my mother’s been taught not to. Although, she does take up a decent amount of space in certain rooms, I know she makes herself smaller in some.

Although I’ve gotten MUCH better at taking up space, and I think it’s a very good thing, I do wonder where and when I might have internalised this though. 

Jacob Collier actually talks about this a lot, and although I mostly agree with him, I do wonder if there’s one point he’s not addressing though, which is skill. The people who get good at “creatively” taking space will obviously find it easier to do that. And there is also the second aspect of subjectivity. The other day at reading circle it was easier to take space because the people around were similar to me in many ways. So there was a natural connect, resonance. But if I go talk about the same things in front of people who’ve never had any of those experiences AND are not open / curious enough to listen to what I’m saying, then taking up space will end up making me feel bad, probably.

Then maybe the thing to get better at is how to not take the lack of connect, resonance or general engagement personally. If I’m taking up space and someone has a non-positive reaction or feeling about it, that’s not something I can really help. Or maybe there is a way to take space while bringing the other into it along with you. 

Anyway, that was a nice little side-trip. 

I saw Jacob Collier live and I imagine I’ll be talking about it for years to come with anyone who will listen. There’s obviously a lot of thoughts and feelings and I’d love to really “evaluate” them all but I’m not going to do that right now. Maybe another time. 

Because I’ve had a lot of (ie sufficient) time for emotions and art lately, I sometimes get the feeling that I’m not “living” enough. I don’t know if that’s true though. I imagine that the time I spend engaging with all of these art forms (and learning) should count as living, even if I’m doing it by myself? Or maybe this feeling comes from feeling quite happy and content over the last couple weeks and I’m not too sure how it’s possible that I’m so happy and content. There it is— these last couple weeks have been the happiest I’ve been in at least the last 5-6 months. Are there important things missing from my life, still? Of course. Is there a lot of emotional work I need to do still? Of course. Are there certain situations I still avoid in order to maintain this sense of peace and calm? Of course. 

But am I also regularly moving towards the things I want, the emotional healing I crave, the avoidance I want to cut out? Also yes. Is it slow movement? Yes. But it’s what’s tolerable. I cannot make it faster, that’s just not in my capacity.

Do I still sometimes worry about things suddenly going wrong, or events I may not be able to tolerate? Of course. But I’m trying to let those worries be passing, and not engage with them all the time. 

People, nature and art will be the light to follow while of course being cognisant of my (somewhat limited) capacity to take in the new. 

066b – more on being HSP

I mentioned a few posts ago that I’ve been learning more about the highly sensitive person trait lately. Today has been a bit of a gloomy day because of some of the things I read. Although in many ways this feels like a puzzle piece that had been missing for a long time from my landscape of self-understanding, it does come with its fair share of sad-ish realisations. 

  1. I will not be able to express all my ideas. 

    I think this hit harder because yesterday had been a very prolific day (from my standards) in terms of creative expression and I’d been feeling overjoyed and extremely enthusiastic about a lot of it. I did feel a little overstimulated already today morning, since I hadn’t caught enough sleep, but then I ended up reading the book I’ve been reading on HSPs which coincidentally also hit this point. That someone like me can feel overstimulated or over-aroused not just because of “intrusive thoughts” but also thoughts (and ideas) in general. And we need to be aware that we won’t be able to do justice to them all. 

  2. The balance between finding peace/calm and “satisfaction” might be a constant struggle. 

    If I’m someone who wants to work on, express and share a lot of my ideas, but can only operate on a lower productivity than the “majority” of the people around me, I’m probably going to find myself either a. a bit dissatisfied or b. regularly overstimulated. So, yeah— I suppose this is going to be a constant struggle. I might have to REALLY ask myself what’s important.

    In other words, sustained peace might also be a bit elusive. I imagine it’ll be a regular dance of arousal and calm as opposed to just staying calm for a whole day, for example. 

  3. I need to not use social media as a way to calm myself down. 

    This one isn’t sad, it makes sense actually, and I need to work on this anyway. I was checking Instagram a lot throughout the morning and even after waking up but by the afternoon, I felt completely depleted even though I didn’t really do anything exhausting or tiring, really. I’ve noticed that I end up feeling not very great if something important to me doesn’t get the response I expected. I’ve talked about this before, but this is my reminder. Definitely need to be cautious about this. 

  4. Paying attention to and not compromising on sleep will be of utmost importance. 

    I am susceptible to letting sleep suffer if I’m really enjoying certain activities (whether it’s hanging out with friends or really getting in the zone with something creative etc). However, I need to remember that that short-term gratification is NOT worth fucking up your entire next day. We’re pretty good at accepting that that’s true for things like work and partying (for example) but I need to remember it applies to almost everything. Except like really urgent situations. (Health-related, etc). 

Okay, this is all for now, I imagine I’ll be talking more about this regularly. Like I said earlier, bear with me! And if you’re HSP too, let me know! 

066a – daily rambles, hello november

It’s a beautiful day to write. 

Why do these words ring true? I hadn’t even stopped to consider that it really is a beautiful day today. I woke up a little late today and immediately got to some of the things I try to make sure to do every morning— the routinely stuff, basically— but I think I was operating from a brain lens, not a body lens. And yet, these six words, they brought me back to the present like nothing else had, until so far. 

This is the power of words. This is what I want to access more often. I write a lot lately but I know there’s a reason it’s satisfactory only like 6/10 times. Because I’m not feeling it, often. So how do I write in a more embodied way? 

I’ve been having the same experience with drums. My instructor is pretty good at this, he keeps asking me to come back to present, to not “think” so much, to “feel” it. And initially, I wasn’t really getting it. I was very defensive (unintentionally). I kept claiming that no, I don’t think I’m thinking too much, and what? Of course I’m feeling it. But then, when I actually felt it, I knew what he’d been trying to say all along. And it’s been lovely. I can’t yet keep the focus active for maybe more than a third of the class, but that third is the most satisfactory. 

So I imagine that’s going to be the case for writing too. So, how do I write in a more embodied way? I want to spend more time with this question. I’m running a bit late for class right now so I gotta stop. But I’m going to come back to this. 

— 

Alright, back at this. 

Had a nice action-oriented evening.. attended drums and vocals lessons, bought some food on the way back. Shortlisted some of the poems I want to submit for a thing, resumed lessons with the other kid I’ve been teaching for a bit. 

I’m trying to understand how I feel around children. Sometimes I feel really nice, sometimes I feel a bit weird. I think it’s a me problem though. I don’t know, when I’m relaxed and not too worried about my goals and “adulting problems”, I enjoy interacting with kids. But when I have all these things on my mind, it’s generally a little annoying. But I think there’s a lot to learn from them. How to take up space, for example. How to be authentic. How to connect by giving attention. Kids aren’t skilled at having equal conversations, you don’t go in expecting it to be a 50/50 exchange. You give attention without expecting much in return but then you get it eventually. But you get it back in ways you wouldn’t have been able to foresee actually. But that’s the best part.

I have a theory that most kids (hence, humans) are at least somewhat sensitive but when they’re forced to grow up (or for various other reasons like societal pressures) they numb down or dull down their sensitivity— at least a little bit. [More research on this sometime]. 

Got some laundry done too, I’ve been putting it off for a while. 

Stepping out of the house (even for an hour or so) can have such great returns. Should make it a point to do this most days. 

065b – building virtues 

I often talk in detail about my vices on here. But the other path to self-improvement is (of course) also building virtues. And that’s understandable, some of my vices were bigger (or more important for me to look at) than these “lacking” virtues. I also felt like reducing certain vices might automatically help me be better at certain things. 

And maybe, to an extent, that’s true. 

But I really want to list down some of the qualities I really want to keep in my conscious realm so that I can regularly work on them in small or big ways. 

Patience (and Curiosity)

This is the more urgent, most important one for me. I think I have improved on this a lot already, but there’s so much more work to be done here. 

I find myself getting really antsy whenever I feel misunderstood, or understood but “not fast enough”. I even want to be calmer during discussions that are important for me. I want to use more “I” statements as much as I can. I want to approach conversations from a place of curiosity and understanding, and not just attempt to disagree and talk about what “I” think.

I think some of the other things that I’m doing will also help with this a lot (and will feed into them as well). For example, getting better at instruments, getting better at my “worldly” desires not being met (right away, or at all). 

(Heated) group discussions or arguments with people I care about is where this bothers me the most because I just end up feeling bad about both the aspects— 1. That I lost my cool and 2. That I might have hurt or made someone else feel bad.

I know it’s okay to “feel” strongly about certain things, but overall I really want to get better at hanging around in the space between the feeling and the response. That’s where all the magic lies, I think. 

Discipline 

I’m actually not very sure about this yet. I am certain this is important and can play a big role on my overall productivity, satisfaction and general health (physical and mental). 

When I say discipline I primarily mean sleep. Everything else I’m still okay around. 

But there is also this very real thing that I really am naturally more productive post noon. Earlier, I used to think this is a circadian rhythm thing but here in India there’s also very real practical factors around it all. There’s definitely a lot more distractions during the day-time (especially noise and domestic workers coming in and out sometimes). I get a good amount of work done from 10pm-2am. 

The only way productivity would remain the same if I were to shift my sleep schedule is if I were able to wake up by 8 am latest. This would mean sleeping by midnight latest. Don’t think that’s something I can do at the moment. But I suppose I can still set a limit of 3 am on the “when should I sleep by?” question. This involves getting enough of writing, music and reading done in the day for me to feel satisfied.   

Time-Management

Since I’m not yet ready to cut out some of the things I’m wanting to fit into my day, the only other option I have is to get better at “managing” my time. I know that I need at least one (ideally two) focus blocks of 2-3 hours in a day. This means no people, no texts, no social media, etc. I get one block from around 2-5pm on most days and I get another from 10-2am. These two blocks, ideally, can be enough. 

Okay, just updated my calendar. I think I need to get stricter with keeping this updated. 

Organisation 

This I suppose is the sister virtue to time-management. Here’s what’s been working so far: 

I’m satisfied with my “noting down” ideas pipeline. 

When it’s thoughts I just drop them in my Notes app (mostly on my phone) OR sometimes if I’m not using my phone I’ll use my journal. And I regularly scan my journal for any leftover ideas and transfer them to my Notes app. 

When it’s music stuff or if I don’t feel like writing I simply use voice memos. This works fine too.  

Also sufficiently satisfied with tracking my expenses. 

Only other thing that eats up some time and bandwidth is planning for social outings. I do of course like to spend a good amount of time with friends and family and planning for that sometimes gets to me. But I don’t think I can change this TOO much right now, so maybe it’s fine. Maybe working on time-management might just suffice.  

064 – How can I become friends with my fantasies? 

Preamble: I rarely make two posts in a day, I’ve no idea what the internet guidelines around that are, but well– I’ve written it now, there’s no point waiting to publish.

—

Anyway, this is the question that has been on my mind a lot, lately. Because I know many of my problems come from (or are made worse) because I’m often walking around “in my head”. Fantasising about conversations I might never have, about ideas I may never execute, about dreams that might never become real. And on the flip side, also “fantasising” about problems that don’t yet exist etc— of course, this is better known as anxiety. 

I know that part of it is an “addiction” to thinking, and the simplest advice is always to “come back to the present”. 

But I want to talk about an important reframe, first: 

There are benefits to thinking, keeping some checks in place for big worries (for e.g. financial investments, planning), preparation for important things like job interviews, and various other things. Especially now that I know myself better, the benefits are EVEN more important to remember, because the pre-thinking (or preparation) is an important part of my process, and without it, I may have more regrets, and a lower tolerance for things “going wrong”. 


However, the thinking needs to happen in a more embodied way. Which is why journaling, blogging, doodling, notes, etc are GOOD. Thinking that is ONLY happening in your head— BAD. 

So there are two sides to the problem of fantasy:

  1. Anxiety (or Worry, or a “need” to plan a bit for the future) 

    From above: I think this is okay, we have to be mindful of overdoing this, but a bit of embodied preparation and planning is beneficial, and I can continue to do this.

    But there’s also the other side, which so far I used to let myself go almost “crazy” with, and have only very recently started looking at in more depth or detail.  

  2. Fantasy (Good Fantasies)

Why is this a problem? Well, I think, the more you fantasise about things, the more you’re prone to disappointments and heartbreaks. With dreams, love, whatever it may be, you’ve added to your life an imagined reality which you then have to grieve. While wants and desires are perfectly natural, I do wonder if stitching vivid images of what they should look like is necessary. 

Overall, there’s also the thing which we originally started with. Some of us often fantasise to escape our feelings, really, to escape from the present. For example, I’ve noticed that if I feel (romantic) curiosity or longing or an interest towards someone, I start to fantasise about a potential future where I’m dating this person and having all these amazing conversations with them. What am I escaping, here? I’m escaping the feeling of “not actually having someone in my life at the moment” who I can do all those things with. That’s the feeling I’m escaping. Inadequacy, dissatisfaction, sadness, longing, etc. 

Heidi Priebe talks about all of this at length in this video, and I find some of her insights incredibly useful. 

Anyway, this brings me back to the original question. Is there really a way to still look at my fantasies from a friendly lens? 

I suppose the answer would still be the same as what I mentioned earlier. But I suppose writing, journaling, blogging, doodling, notes, etc, these are only just mediums (for embodiment). What we really need to do is keep some of these reframes in mind: 

  1. Take a look at the complete fantasy, ie not just the last five steps, but also the next (first) five steps— ie the actions you might have to take in the next 48-72 hours to get closer to this fantasy that you seem to want.

  2. Take a look at the problems and the challenges involving the fantasy— if we’re using the fantasy to escape the present, chances are we’re only looking at the good parts of the fantasy, or romanticising the problems that come along with it. Ask yourself whether the problems that come with this fantasy are really what we want, are those problems better than the problems we have right now? Because there is no life without problems and pain, the main goal is to find problems you like (or at least— like more than your current problems).

  3. Ask yourself whether you can enjoy the journey— of course, resistance may show up now and then, but that might actually be a part of the process as well, it definitely is with creative work, for example– and in such a case enjoying the journey would look like actually enjoying overcoming the different forms of resistance, even.

  4. Come back to the present with more acceptance and kindness. There’s a reason your current present is the way it is, and only through kindness, forgiveness and acceptance can you move towards making it better. Or move towards trading your problems for better problems.

For instance, while writing this post out I did realise that maybe I don’t want too much success, or fame (even though I sometimes do fantasise about those things), because I do like having spare time to myself, and I do having a lot of my life to be private. I want to be more seen, yes, but perhaps not through fame.

I do want a relationship though, because I know I actually like the problems that come with it, I love the idea of doing emotional work with someone who’s as invested as you in building something real and deep. I really enjoy conflict resolution, I really enjoy getting creative with problems like compromise, etc. 

I do want to be a better writer and a better musician, because I do enjoy the process and the hard-parts of these things too. 

To sum it up, stay embodied, and take a look at the whole picture, from the present to the journey and then lastly, if you have time– at the goals themselves.

062b – grief is not generous

Everything feels a little different now. The news of Matthew Perry’s death is hitting hard. I read the news in the morning and went back to sleep, hoping I’d wake up to a different reality. 

I rarely feel this way about celebrity deaths (Matt Haig states the same sentiment in one of his very fresh posts). In fact he’s already expressed some of the things I’m feeling today / right now so maybe this is repetitive to anyone’s who’s reading this. But it doesn’t matter. 

I rarely feel this way about celebrity deaths but maybe Friends was different. Even when I’d made real, made-to-last friendship bonds, Friends was still precious. Our friendships deepened over long character and episode discussions and many, many rewatches of them. 

In school, I’d relate to Chandler a lot. 

This May, I saw the reunion movie (after a long break from the series) on a flight to Bangalore, which I was on to visit my college friends, after a sufficiently long gap. I told them when I met them how fitting it was that we (well, most of us anyway) were all obsessed with this show during college and now here I was watching the reunion movie almost a decade later since we first became friends.

It’s all a lot. 

I know a lot of people I know are feeling a lot. But I don’t know why that’s not making any of this easier. 

I suppose grief has a way of taking all your attention, all your resources. Grief is not generous, I’m realising. 

There’s also other contexts of the world (or our own personal lives, in many cases) that we cannot ignore. But we must grieve each story, each loss: whether we do it individually or separately is upto the feeler of said feelings.  

Or maybe “big specific deaths” also bring into focus the fragility of life. You get tense about the things you haven’t done, the stories you haven’t told, the people you haven’t spent enough time with, the grudges you haven’t let go of yet, the nice things you haven’t said to the people you want to appreciate, all of that. And yet, will you change? Will you take the courage to do even a little bit of everything you haven’t done? I’m going to do it. I’m going to write love-letters (or e-mails) to all the important people in my life today. Or at least, as many as I can. 

October seems like it’s becoming the season of goodbyes. 

Wake me up when October ends, I think? 

063 – on “introspective writing”

As I’ve stated many, many (MANY) times on this blog already, lately I’ve been getting more in touch with the joy I get from writing. But because I have a brain that is anxious and hyper-sensitive, I’m often troubled with the problems that still remain. 

(branch // re: on focusing on existing problems) [Because I realised this was a bit of an internal judgement] {

I don’t think that will ever change, to be very honest, since we never reach perfection, and it’s almost part of my nature to be very aware of what’s missing. 

However, what has changed, and what I am working on changing more is how I feel about whatever is missing. As long as I don’t feel upset about the missing stuff, it’s actually very good for me, because that’s what gives me direction, that’s what tells me how to grow. Or even if I do feel upset but can recover quickly from the feelings of it, being aware of what’s lacking is GOOD. 

Yes, this reframe is important because for years I’ve heard from the external world that “being TOO focused” on what’s not good makes you a “negative” person. But it’s not that I’m not grateful and happy about what’s good, maybe voicing it out was never as important as voicing out the things that were lacking. At least in these aspects. If people wanted more appreciation and gratitude about THEM from me, they could have always stated their needs. But if it’s just a “general preference” thing, then I think it’s okay if that is an incompatibility. To each their own. I don’t need to internalise this. (As a child, teenager, etc, maybe even an insecure adult— I must have— but I’m going to work on internalising this reframe instead.)

}

So anyway, one of the “problems” I’m currently thinking about is how I only gravitate towards introspective writing. The book I’m currently reading ie The Highly Sensitive Person mentions that it’s pretty typical of HSPs to gravitate towards a LOT of introspection.

(branch // re: HSP ) {

Bear with me as this might show up a lot in my expression for potentially a few days, weeks. I’m only starting to learn more about this right now and because it seems to explain a lot of things about myself that I’ve often questioned (sometimes subconsciously)— I might talk about it a lot. 

Of course, all psychological research AND labels should be consumed with a grain of salt, and I’m going to be mindful of that (I read some reviews earlier which made a little skeptical) but maybe the whole point IS that if I’m getting affirmed by what I’m reading, then there’s nothing wrong with that as well. If I fall exactly in the target audience of the book, maybe that’s okay.

So, yeah, I might be VERY HSP and maybe I’ve been needing a lot more affirmation and validation than I might have realised so far. 

}

So, alright, heavy introspection is a part of my nature and that’s likely not changing. And I have one great example of someone who does a LOT of introspective writing and has managed to make that useful for people as well. 

So why is this a problem, really? Why do I think this is a problem? 

Because CURRENTLY I don’t have an audience, I suppose. Or currently, I don’t know how to make my writing useful for people. 

But is this really a problem right now? 

Well, yes, because over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about exploring writing professionally as well. (Even through internships and such). 

Phew, it actually feels very stupid why it took me so long to get here.

(branch // storytime) {

I was talking to a friend a few days ago and when I mentioned that I do think I enjoy writing a lot and I might want to explore that professionally as well but that I’m worried about who I could write for or whether people would find value in it, in an effort to comfort me, she said something like “well you don’t actually need to worry about this right now you can just focus on sharing whatever you’re writing right now”. 

So.. her statement was very well-meaning, however I’m realising that the reassurance did not help me. This is something I’m trying to remember about myself: Other people’s reassurances will not help me in the long-run. There’s a specific way of deliberation and reassurance that works for me, and I need to go over it all, my mind does like to have gone over the ten different questions of a thing for it to be okay with proceeding. Also, I don’t think that’s procrastination. For me, that’s just the best way of minimising regret over anything. Deep deliberation. 

}

So, anyway, it’s okay that I want to carve some time out thinking about who the audience might be. Even if I decide not to explore writing professionally right away (OR ever), even when you’re doing creative work as a hobby, I don’t think it’s wasted effort to think about who might see, benefit from or resonate your work.  

I guess, all this to say: 

  • I do like a lot of introspection and naturally, introspective writing is what I do the most. But this is okay. 
  • I’m often focused on “what’s missing” or “still not great”, and that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful for what’s good, but a focus on “what can be better” is okay too, since it gives me direction and aids growth. 
  • I probably need to be careful with taking reassurance from other people since it can often set me back. 
  • I don’t have clarity around whether my writing does or can have an audience. Although I have many examples of great writers who do do a lot of introspective writing, it’s still worth doing more research on this. Until then, it’s okay to not have this clarity since my primary goal with writing is still that it helps me (it’s almost a need, really) and that I find immense joy in it. 

(Wrote a 1000-word post after v long! V happy)