The Creative Process – Page 2

096b – the creative process of intimacy

I haven’t been writing (publicly) as much because all I can write about lately is love and romance. Anyone who knows me knows I’m deeply wary of the idea of being enmeshed with anyone else, especially romantic partners. And yet, these days I find myself wanting to spend all of my time with a specific person. She’s great and we both seem to be on the same page about most important things (including our own individual needs wrt alone time etc), and yet I do find my alone time not being as precious lately. It’s almost like I’m able to “recharge” with her and hence am able to do my “alone time” with her as well. Which.. I know it isn’t necessarily a bad thing— I’ve been in monogamous relationships before and they can be really pleasant— and just because they come with very strong, deep attachments doesn’t mean I have to be so fearful of them. But still, I know for sure that to retain my sense of myself, my individuality (which really, philosophically, I’m fully sure of wanting to do), I do need to remember what I like about my alone alone time.

Writing and music have been the two most important things over the last year, and to be fair to myself, I’ve been doing enough of the two, even if I’m not doing them publicly.

Still, I would like to continue to make my writing / journaling / blogging public, to the extent possible.

This actually feels really good too. Just the idea of writing things down and sharing them with the world does give me a sense of comfort and security. And this is important for me to note and regularly stay in touch with so I can do everything that I talked about earlier in the beginning of this post (ie retain and maintain my sense of self).

Something I’m more in touch with lately is a bit of the “crazy” and “weird” parts of me. Of course, calling them crazy and weird is a bit of a judgement, but perhaps I just mean the parts that maybe we’re not fully secure about, whether it’s because we carry internal judgement or whether society makes us that way, doesn’t really matter. Channeling all this becomes very important though. Of course most of us know creativity and art thrives on all of the parts of us that we’re not able to express through other ways. But to channel them successfully we need to make sure our routines around creative work are not falling apart. If I’m not writing everyday, for example, then even being in touch with part a or b will be useless. To create good stuff, or stuff we can be happy with, then, needs the following things—

a. being in touch with all sorts of feelings and parts of us,

b. routines wrt outlets and our creative practices,

c. the courage to express and the courage to share it or put it “out there”.

I suppose the process of intimacy (with another) and with the self looks the same in many ways then.

Anyway. Was this too rambly? I don’t think so. What am I saying? I’m saying that even though I haven’t been creating as much art as I may want to, I think I’m okay with it because I’m deepening my connection with someone, and that is, in many ways, the same thing as creating art (to me). The output, yes, is quite different, but for a while I think I’m okay to invest my time and bandwidth in the “creative process of love and romance”, and not just my existing preferred creative outlets.

Happy april, folks! xx

091a – content, grateful and ambitious

Back to Delhi. Back to thinking about work and projects. Kind of happy with all of it. Had a terrible flight back but all worth it. I think traveling is such a great way to get new input, data and feelings and gives me a lot of stimulus about things I naturally care about. Feeling pretty good about the frequencies that I know I like with traveling now.

I’d like to sleep by 2-2:30am which means that I’m time boxing this word vomit once again. What are the major things on my mind lately that I’d like to think about? Polyamory, physical intimacy, art, music, production, reading, giving up addictions, grooming, haircut, health related tasks, how much emotional bandwidth can I give to friends and family, how much work can I get done in Feb considering my sister’s visiting and I don’t get enough time with her throughout the year, yeah that’s about it I think.

I’m doing a freelance photography gig (event based thing) for some family this weekend and I’d like to do it well (more so) since I’m getting paid for it, would like to take some tips from people I know who’ve done this before. Editing etc is something I may need to do some research on. Actually kind of excited for this!

Lately I start writing a ton of word vomits but I never get past 200-300 words. I’m not very sure why. Is it really possible that I don’t have enough to process? Or do I have more people around me which allows me to process some things with them instead? I’m not sure, it’s likely the latter though.

Another thing I’ve realised is that I’m definitely more of a space taker than I used to think. Of course, I strive to be considerate and I’m also mindful of how much space I take, but I do take enough of it. Maybe therapy has helped with this too. I like it. I guess writing is also a good way to take a lot of space in the ways you need to. The page is the room you probably actually really need. But it’s a great room. It’s better than most rooms.

Art, safe spaces, mental health, suffering (reducing it if possible for myself and other people), being good— these are the things I really care about.

I’m also glad that I’ve made “niceness” and earnestness almost a pretty big part of my identity (or I’m slowly doing it) and it feels nice that when you stand up for it really strongly, most people don’t try to oppose it. In fact you also learn whether people do actually want to oppose it or not, and if so why etc. When you make claims that most people in theory agree with, but you do it gently, you are making space for questions they may not be brave enough to face themselves actually.

I also used to think I’m not hardworking or ambitious but it’s just that my energies were not being directed into the right things. I feel like lately they have been. So I suppose that’s what makes me happy and content.

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

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

079a – rest & recovery (2)

Slept a lot today, woke up towards the tail-end of the afternoon after a very long time. I think sleep, a little bit of laziness and slothness are my primary vices at the moment. I’m not being too hard on myself since it’s December and the anxiety medication has a role to play in the added sleepiness as well, but sleep schedule has always been a problem for me so I don’t want to let it get too out of hand. Getting a good amount of daylight is very important since it really messes up a lot of routinely things. Social commitments, chores, and of course general mood and feelings.

I think I’m ready to start moving towards some stability soon. Which means I’ll have to start looking for part-time work even though I don’t know what kind I want. I think I’m now in the state where creative pursuits can be pursued in parallel, and I don’t need to devote all my waking time to them.

Spoke to a close friend today about some of the stuff I’ve been avoiding and she was super supportive, it was quite nice to receive reassurance and comfort about some of the things I’ve been really fearful of. Resistance towards experimentation, exploration and potential change. But she was of the belief that exploration is worthwhile and can really get you closer to your true, real self and it is generally worth it, even if it’s tough. We’ll see, I guess.

I don’t think I have a lot to write/vomit about today so I’ll keep this one short. What are my intentions for December? I think health is primary and I’ve probably mentioned this before. I was feeling pretty stuck musically but I’ve been getting melody ideas again so that’s nice. I do need to come back to songs and summon some discipline though so I can complete some of these ideas I have. I don’t know why it becomes so tough in certain weeks. I had a nice couple weeks in November when I was wrapping up a lot of loose threads, I’d love to be able to operate the same way again. I guess I just need to get over myself and do it. But can you really gaslight yourself into doing things? I don’t know. I’ll find out, I’ll make some time post-dinner today.

Community stuff has been nice, I’ve met some nice people lately and also been spending more pleasant time with parents and old friends who keep visiting. Winters makes everything a little tougher but I guess there aren’t a lot of good solutions for this. Maybe I just invest in better clothing though.

Alright so what are my priorities for this week and the next?

Wrap up a couple songs (at least first drafts)
Get some health related tasks done
Continue writing word-vomits if not essays
Maybe make some time for dating if I can

Sounds good enough, I’ll write later!

077 – complete the things you’ve started

Unpublished. Unreleased. Words that will start giving me a headache if I sit on my work for too long. If you keep things under the wraps for too long, they can go stale. I know that I’m enjoying creating and making things but how will I get better at completing things and shipping them? Why can’t I combine all the single, lonely, paragraphs sitting in various separate notes into an essay? Would they be happier in an essay? Or do they want to be left alone? Do they feel complete already?

Or can they create more when they come together? More impact? More.. something. More of what, though? Why is it important that I complete things and ship them? What am I hoping to accomplish with all this? What will creating impact get me? Whenever I go down this train of thought, I don’t generally like it. But it’s important to think about this too, from time to time. Obviously, I suppose, someone resonating with the things you’ve written can make them feel… something?

Someone once told me that some of my notes were a healing experience for them and that of course, was quite incredible. Generally, I write because I can’t not. So what is it, then? Why am I stopping here? Why do I get stuck here? In this tension between “I do it for myself” and “I want it to have some impact on others”.

What if it wasn’t a tension, though? What if it was “I do it for myself” and “I want it to have some impact on others”? What if both those things are true and I just need to work a bit more on bridging the gap? What if there are many ways to bridge the gap and I what if I just haven’t looked at this space with a broader mind?

What would impact look like, to me? What can I hope to achieve with the stuff that I write?

Inspire, guide someone the way my heroes have inspired or guided me
Make someone see something in a different way— which might lead to them learning something new
Help someone get in touch with any of their own feelings, feelings they may not have been able to make space for otherwise— and as a result create some resolution in them
Evoke new feelings (because sometimes we consume art to of course— feel new feelings)

I suppose this makes sense. I know this is pretty generic, but these are just measures. I’m not trying to convert them into targets. Or I’m not trying to “achieve” these. But these would be good ways of measuring impact, if I wanted to do that.

So, yes, if I want more impact, then I would want to “complete” things and ship them. Of course, completion will look different in different cases. I don’t always need to do long-form writing. I know that short-form writing (especially in today’s world) can create impact too. And I’m okay with the process around this. I know when a piece feels complete, and when it doesn’t. I guess the tricky part is when I think I’ll “come back” to something but then I mostly don’t. Maybe then it’s important to regularly review the incomplete things and see if they can be given life. Maybe I don’t want to always be starting new things. And I do enjoy going through my notes anyway. In another essay I wrote the other day, I did come to the conclusion that completing things can be worth it for two reasons:

It allows you to start new things with more joy
It has the potential to create more impact

But it’s still a bit of a “brainy” “work”y activity. It’s not joyful in the same way as simply the dots and the scribbles are. But then the answer to that is always that the more you do it, the better you might get at it and ultimately— completing things or shipping might start becoming easier too. OR, I just accept the fact that #1 is reason enough to do it.

That is to say, if I want to keep creating, I have to complete the things I have started. Maybe a version of my hell is all of my abandoned ideas floating around me. Maybe my task is to just complete ideas and ship them, and just accepting that only 60-70% of the work will be joyful. But that 60-70% of the joy might be good enough for me to put in the effort for the non-joyful aspect of the thing.

And it can be, actually, more joyful too. For instance, I spent an hour earlier today doing some organisation and that was actually not unenjoyable, once I was engaged in it. The right tools, I suspect, can make the organisation, the completion, and the shipping sufficiently enjoyable.

I suspect this post is in fact a result of some of that organisation. Because I made some space in my brain, I had some more ideas today, so I realised I was starting new things without completing previous things. This is okay, too, because I’ve at least made a note of the things I do want to complete.

Or maybe I’m realising that the brain space gets filled up regardless of what you do. I’ve had this thought before too. That being better at todo lists may or may not make life easier. I mean, I may get “more” done but it’s not necessary that that will provide sustaining or persisting comfort. Ultimately, the comfort has to come from other ways. If currently writing and “doing more” is my reaction to filling the voids, that’s okay. But I may need to be more aware of what the voids are saying too.

076 – music journey // pt 2

Most recent previous explorations: Here

When you obsess over something, not getting it is a deeply painful experience. Sometimes I wish I could approach all my goals from a place of security ie the soul. I know that obsession makes for good (and potentially great) work but I don’t know. The things I’m doing lately are dependent on so many external factors that being obsessive about them isn’t helping that much.

There’s also many frustrations that have been coming in the way of writing, recording covers (or music) and just general focus.

—

I finally found a window of a couple hours and was able to record the stuff I’d been wanting to. I’m getting separation anxiety at the thought of being away from my digital keyboard (ie piano / idk what to call it) for the next 5 whole days and I’m going to really miss it. I’ve realised I really like the sound of keys and I don’t know why I hadn’t started learning it earlier. What was I doing? HMM.

I’ve been a little obsessed with self-growth and it’s been happening and it feels really great and maybe I don’t want to stop. I mean I want to keep up this pace. Maybe even want it to be a bit faster, actually.

I’ve also found some answers to the “sharing your ideas on social media” conflict. I used to get really disappointed earlier if the expected engagement with something didn’t match the actual engagement, but I’m getting at better at understanding my own reasons for “still sharing the thing anyway”. I’m realising that I do eventually need to shift to streaming platforms (or at least add them in the mix). At the end of the day, I really want to share the sounds and test whether people want to listen to them or not. I’ve been a little lazy and procrastinatey about this because recording is a bit of a hassle (or I worry about the quality a lot) but I guess at some point I really just have to suck it up and get to it.

I do need to streamline some of my processes though so I need to make some space for that as well. Actually, maybe that’s the major thing I need to work on this week, understanding my overheads and seeing if I can reduce any of them.

The overhead problem will have to be approached from a very “work”-based lens. I know I don’t enjoy that aspect of the creative process but maybe I need to do it anyway. I’ve to wrap up “today” in a couple of hours since I’m headed to my parents’ place for the rest of the week.

I also had this thought the other day that I still haven’t been able to decide whether I want to focus more on music stuff or writing stuff. Obviously, songwriting could be the best way to combine both these longings but I don’t think my original music (ie the melody stuff) is very good yet. (I do think my lyrics are decent.)

I’ve also been really appreciating poetry and song lyrics a lot more so I want to take some time out to do an assessment of my creative family tree (as Austin Kleon calls it). The idea is to study the people who inspire you. I may also not need to separate these out by interest area, since we’re just targeting people directly. (But yes I’d wanna think about writing, music, songwriting, all of it.)

I’m realising that I do self-regulate a bit with fantasy and that’s probably not very healthy. Need to tackle the addiction of thinking (chatter-thinking) at some point. Or like, on a day-to-day basis.

I think I want to reflect on music journey a little bit for the rest of this word-vomit. Because there’s too many threads open now in this area and maybe I need to evaluate a little more at this point so I can walk more deliberately.

Been singing and playing (off and on, ie as a very non-serious hobby, but something I did always enjoy a lot) for more than ten years now (14 years, actually). First 5-6 years was just singing and playing by myself. Very occasionally sharing some recordings (covers) with very close friends. Was probably growing at a very slow pace but again, that’s just an unnecessary judgement.
College was when I started singing and playing with people a little more. I was still extremely shy about it all and never really liked my voice that much so it was another four years of relatively slow growth. But I was listening to a lot of music, experiencing a lot of social, people-based experiences so it was all fuel for what is overall the creative process.
Grad school— Another 1.5 years of primarily singing and playing by myself. Grad school was a very tough life phase so I can’t really blame myself. But— started my social media account towards the end of grad school ie started sharing some of it with more people.
Next four years were great, found people to regularly sing and jam with. Started jamming and covering songs with a lot more people. Got much better at not thinking about “quality” ie got more confident. Started vocals lessons, was posting a lot more on social media as well. Started learning keys and drums too! Also started composing original stuff (albeit very rarely). Have been to a couple open-mics and now and also want to jam, collab and perform a little more.
I’m here, now.

How do I feel about all this? I feel pretty proud, actually. I like that I have a better relationship with my voice now. I also like that I have a better relationship with my feelings (which are generally major fodder for all this). I do want a better relationship with my self-image since that can come in the way of “publicly” singing/performing a bit. I’m also not very good at “marketing” and promotion stuff and maybe I need to get better at this. (This will involve first addressing why I don’t like the idea of self-marketing etc.)

Okay, I think this is good enough for now. The rest is literally just sitting and transferring all of this to an actionable list, which I will definitely do over the next couple days.

Onward!

075 – must I write // pt 2

Pt 1: Here

We’re on the way to being 75% done. I’m doing some reviews because this is the last quarter of this goal. I was looking at annual insights and I actually only wrote 5000 words in 2022. (Compared with 35K in 2021 and 25K in 2023). Wtf was I doing in 2022? I know Feb-May was pretty busy with the move but I’m surprised that I barely wrote throughout the year. I remember 2022 being okay too. I don’t know then. Maybe I was doing other things. Maybe I was living. Maybe I was growing? Is what I want to think, but I’m not a 100% sure. 5k words is like a seventh of 35K words. This is just incredibly surprising to me. Maybe at some point I just lost awareness of this goal I had in mind?

I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. Anyway. It doesn’t matter. I am a bit sleepy so I must write fast tonight.

I am clear that I like to write, a lot. Quite a lot. I’ve gotten better at it too. I like writing in short spurts, in flowy afternoons, on anxious days, on depressing days, on great days too. I do prefer writing in a notebook than on a laptop but of course I can do longer-form writing on a laptop.

Authenticity is a value of mine. Which needs clarity. Which needs writing. So I must write.

I’ve been doing more poetry and songwriting lately too and all of it also flows easier. I don’t know if these type of posts directly contribute to any of it but I imagine they must. How could they not? At worst, they’re reducing the gap between your brain (you) and the words coming out of you. And I’ve noticed this happening when I’m doing songwriting, I’m able to come up with truer-sounding lyrics without thinking much about it. So I suppose, that’s pretty great.

But an evaluation on why you must write is also an evaluation on what you want from life, at least in the medium-term, if not the long-term. Since I perceive inner and outer life through writing, these are the questions, problems, opportunities I want to explore in the next medium-term phase.

My relationship with gender, sex, femininity and masculinity
My relationship with courage— how do you find more of it, how do you build capacity, how do you balance it with not pushing yourself too much
The balance with myself, my creative pursuits, my “search” for love and maintenance of existing relationships
The balance with music, writing and limited time
The balance with creating things and sharing things (most recent explorations here)
Do I want kids? If so, do I want to bear children or do I want to raise children?
Do I dare to dream? Dreaming has become a little scary lately, do I want to be a realist instead? Or where do I want to be on this spectrum?
I feel a sense of responsibility towards my parents and (sometimes) the society. How much can I take? What are my values here?
There are certain things I don’t even imagine I can do based on the version I have of myself. What are these things? Knowing them wouldn’t hurt. Whether or not I choose to pursue any of these (based on #2 and #7) will be a question for the future me, but it might be worth exploring what kinds of wants and desires I have. (Soul-based, not ego-based).
I’ve been enjoying reading a lot more again (over the last 6 months). I want to continue to read more. What kind of books should I look for. I want Ocean Vuong and Sally Rooney type of words since they always really inspire me to write more. So I think this is worth looking into.

Maybe that’s it for now. I think writing is the easiest way for me to get in touch with myself. I used to be critical of why I go through these qualitative analyses and evaluations when I should be jumping to lists and action items immediately. But now I’m realising these explorations, rambles, etc are the equivalent of what two or more people would do in an ideation and brainstorming session. What are the things we want to be working towards, what is the general vision, etc. Filtering all this down into action items is a separate task. Writing is the first step. Writing is what brings things from inside into the conscious awareness, at least.

I know I may be repeating myself a lot in this post but I think I need to write the truth over and over again to make sure I can (eventually) internalise it. I may or may not have said this before, I cannot remember.

If I wanted to, I can write everyday for the rest of December and wrap this project up. I used to always maintain that this is a “quantity first, quality later” project and do I want to change tact at this point? Why should I worry about the quality now? If I wrap this up I can also start thinking about the other projects in my awareness. I don’t know, let’s see. I’m not sure yet. I was in survival mode the past week so I don’t want to push myself too much either.

This wasn’t fast and it took me slightly over an hour. But we’re done and that’s a lot of progress too! Happy Monday, folks. 🙂

072 – easing up

Today was tough. I want to sleep but I also want to write so that it doesn’t feel like a complete waste of a day. Obviously, it’s okay for a day to be wasted also, in the grand scheme of things, if that’s what’s easier in the moment. But I feel like I’ll be happier if I do something, just anything.

I’d woken up a bit late today— at noon— but had had a perfectly decent start to the day, except it just took a nosedive around 3pm. I got my period and was hit by an anxiety attack out of nowhere.

It wasn’t zero awareness, I was trying to ride it out using writing, music, grounding techniques etc and waiting for my parents to come back so I could talk to them. But it was still quite tough. And the rest of the evening wasn’t much better either. I think I still feel like I’m in my head a bit. I think it feels really uncomfortable to tune into my body. I don’t know why. Is it possible that I subconsciously opted for mental pain to avoid the physical discomfort? I don’t know.

Okay, let’s make some space for the anxiety. What am I worried about?

Definitely experiencing some body dysmorphia. I’m catastrophizing. So what’s the answer to this? Okay, right now— it’s fine, and I’m going to restart medications soon, and note that whatever is meant to happen will happen. If you’re meant to face the worst, you will. Maybe it will mean that the universe has other plans for you. We’ll find out. But we can’t worry about that right now.

I also thought I was experiencing some gender dysphoria. I’m not sure if that’s what it was and I don’t know yet. I took an online quiz and the results say it’s not that likely. However, I do need to make some space for some of the thoughts related to this because they’re obviously not coming out nothingness.

A job, I think. But okay, I think I can keep this aside until March.

I’m also a bit worried about my parents. They get really worried about me and they have their own troubles to deal with as well. Ah, I wish this was easier.

Too many events, people and commitments. I hate Indian weddings. They always stress me out so much, I’m just going to stop going to them from next year onwards. I can’t take it. Okay actually, I just realised that I’ve never officially added them to my fear ladder, maybe I just do that instead. So that I know that when I am attending one, I’m actually doing an exposure and so it’s okay for me to expect anxiety. On the flip side, I’ve been doing some decent amount of exposure therapy anyway so I should be really proud of myself and I don’t need to be doing all kinds of exposures all the time. So I think I can afford to skip the event tomorrow, I really have enough to drive me crazy already.

And my primary goals really are existing, maintaining sanity, music project (10 original songs), writing project— so why should I make life more difficult for myself by attempting to do a lot of other things?

Yes, I think making life easier is a good strategy for me to follow for the remaining part of this year. Let’s not try to do too much. Let’s prioritise health (mental and physical) over everything else. I think I can (want to) also keep social media intake a bit on the lower end.

Connected detachment.. man that’s really the thing I want to get better at. Obviously I care so much about everything and I think I like that, it’s one of my strengths, but I really want to be okay with things not working out. Like caring about things is fun in and of itself, the outcomes shouldn’t change anything.

Speaking of, here’s some fun progress updates on the music front:

Half-completed a decent song yesterday, I was writing about silly things but then the song got pretty substantial out of nowhere. It also felt like a proper click, when you find words or sounds that really feel like they’re capturing the essence of what you wanted to say. And I’m really enjoying the process.

Discovered some interesting chords and sounds today while trying to sing about the anxiety stuff earlier in the afternoon. I think it’s cool. I’m done with 5/10 songs and I think I can definitely write 2 more in December. So that’s exciting!

I really think sometimes I’m just running around in circles. But I know there is some movement, it just comes really slowly sometimes. Let’s just end this on this note.

What are some silver linings from today?

Did some writing, made some stronger/newer music (I think) because of stronger feelings
Was able to reach out to therapist, parents, friend before things got too out of hand
Limited my information intake, didn’t give in to worst fears
Communicated a bit with my grandmother also, might be a good step in terms of mental health and sanity
Feel like I’ll be alright by tomorrow and if not worst case by Tuesday. Which is great progress considering something like today would have taken me quite a few days to recover from maybe until a couple years ago.
Body dysmorphia (not going away but I can cope with it), gender dysphoria (will look into this and avoid triggers), people and events (will cut down), job (will push this a bit more).

Also, big thing – I actually feel quite better now. Feel like I’m back into my body a bit.

Alright, let’s ease up! Stay sane xx

071 – find ways to get over yourself

I realised why I haven’t been feeling the same amount of satisfaction on my music account lately (as I used to earlier). It’s not about the validation or the lack thereof. It’s about the fact that I’ve been holding off, a bit. I enjoy the freedom I have on this blog, I really do.

But I think because more “known” people follow my music account, sometimes I tend to hold back. I should accept that my style is verbose. I’ve been trying to “play” a part. I wanted to appear a certain way. But I think I’m happiest when I’m posting as much as I want and in the ways that I want. That’s always going to be the primary purpose. Even when I have secondary and tertiary purposes (ie connection, more engagement, good “quality” work etc) the primary purpose is still sharing your art AND YOURSELF in the ways that YOU WANT. This is my account and it’s only tracking my journey.

Being verbose actually helps me a lot. It helps me free my mind of the clutter. I also have really fresh learnings from yesterday about how new ideas sometimes only come to me when I make space in my brain from them. This actually literally means thought-dumping in all the various ways I need. Yesterday, it looked like finishing a song (even though I didn’t end up happy with the “final” result— more on this another time), making a couple of covers, journaling a few times, going over some of my older stuff and taking it a bit forward (even when I couldn’t reach too far), and then going out and sharing some of my thoughts on all this with a couple friends too. (Luckily there were people around me who like talking about stuff like this.)

I think about my first really great software engineering internship experience. I had a superb mentor. He was great at most of the things I needed help with— code reviews, technical advice, prioritisation stuff, debugging— all the jazz. But do you know what he was excellent at? Teaching me how to get the fuck over myself. He didn’t phrase at this way. He was gentler about it, and I’m glad. One of the questions that I would ask him on a recurring basis was, “Oh should I just ask other people for help directly or should I spend time by myself on the thing before that?” As an intern or a new grad, some of us tend to be very afraid of bothering people. We tend to be afraid of looking stupid. And yes, there’s a balance to be struck with all this, I’m not saying you want to be the person who’s walking up to one person 20 times in a day. But here’s the thing: You want to get over yourself because the work that you’re doing is more important than you. If you zoom out, everyone you’re sharing the space with has a common purpose, and you have to trust that everyone around you will remember that as well. (I’m going to write more about this in a more structured way).

But the point is, my social media accounts are currently PRIMARILY there to serve me. If they can serve me, I can get better. If I can get better, I can perhaps come up with and share more ideas with the world. Maybe there are people who are naturally able to directly serve others. But for me, serving myself is the only way I’m able to serve others.

So, I’m going to do this. I’m going to post more on my music account in the ways that I want to. Not hold back, because I don’t want to follow a template. I want to be my verbose, journey-loving, process-loving self on there. Whatever people think about that, I’ll leave that up to them.

Because if I really had to be succinct about my goals on my music journey (and really all creative journeys) at the moment, they’re just:

Making a lot of things
Understanding myself better

—

Anyway, that’s that. I’m a little hungover from going out (and drinking a lot) last night so that’s going to be it on all that. I’ve been feeling a few unpleasant feelings since I woke up today so maybe I’ll just share those and get rid of them.

I don’t like this feeling that comes when you’re hungover. I don’t want it. So I’m going to make it a point to stop at 2-3 drinks OR if I really do cross my limits, I really need to make sure to hydrate before I go to sleep. Definitely don’t want to be doing the early 20s kind of drinking anymore.
I also get triggered when I see too many couples doing couple things and I want to find a better cope for this.
I got a rejection from a portal for online tutoring that I’d applied to. It’s only a small bummer by itself but it opens up a bigger question. Obviously, part of me wanted this perhaps a bit “easily”. If I want to apply to a few places (or a few times) then I really need to decide whether this is the thing that makes the most sense for me to “try properly”. [for part-time paid work]
There’s a friendship I’m lowkey struggling with. We’ve been sufficiently close friends since college and this is perhaps one of those friendships where I feel close and intimate enough with the person to share a variety of stuff and we have a good amount of fun together and yet there’s something missing. Maybe I just want more quality time. Or more attention. I don’t know what it is exactly, and this is quite interesting. I gotta come back to this.