She wakes up around noon on the day they have to leave. She promised them she’d wake up early in the morning but her sleep schedule’s messed up because of lapses in willpower the previous few nights. Her parents are going back after spending almost a month with her. They hadn’t seen each other for a year and having them around was more wonderful than she could have ever imagined. They’re leaving at a good time, she’s not tired of them yet but she’s quite satisfied with the amount of quality time she ended up getting with them.
She’s not good at goodbyes (who is?). Whether someone stays with her for a week or a month, she notices too many associations all around the house once they leave. Places they order food from, the spots they go to walks for. The television shows they watch together, the tiny arguments they have around daily habits.
In some ways, she’s glad there’s less time for the “last day” stuff. Less of the “take care of yourself” and “when will you come visit us?” that might cause her to break down. She doesn’t like airport goodbyes either. She prefers to keep the limbo time short. She prefers the cuts to be cleaner.
She’s made social plans for later in the evening so she doesn’t have to feel her feelings when they’re fresh, she’s found that getting some space and time from emotions can help her process them better later on. She has a lot to do in the coming few weeks and it’s going to start making her anxious soon. She knows it’s probably better if she addresses this feeling sooner than later. She makes some to-do lists and is happy to notice that helps today.
Whenever she gets blocked on writing or reads something engaging, she ends up thinking about storytelling. There’s an episode in the new show she’s watching where someone talks about art working only if there’s truth in it. She’s gotten good at speaking the truth but she wonders how she could speak more engagingly, or more creatively. She’s gotten really good at giving everything a personal touch but she still struggles with believing that things deserve to be made simply because she wants to make them. She wants to add ornamentation and frills to the things she makes but she doesn’t always know how to do that. Should stories be told because someone wants to tell them or should they be told because someone wants to listen to them? Does the world have more bad listeners than good speakers?
She wants to meet more people, she wants to know more about them. She wants to meet interesting people so she can make characters off of them.
She’s afraid of being content. When she’s content, she’s not driven to create. Creation is easiest when she’s seeking something. Ephemeral feelings of contentment and happiness are great, but she doesn’t know if she wants to be safe and warm in a blanket of satisfaction. She wants to be awake, not asleep.
Category: Uncategorized
021b – cigarettes, shame and the anxious brain
Had a cigarette right now. Been thinking about how the last pack had lasted me more than a year. Which averaged like 2 cigarettes a month. One of my friends said that’s okay since you gotta feel French once in a while. This pack however lasted me around two months. Which averages to roughly 2 cigarettes a week. Not happy with this but I want to plan to not buy another pack unless I’m spending it with friends. Having a pack to myself definitely made it much easier for my frequency to increase.
Wondering what feels so good about smoking. I had to resist myself from lighting another one up when one ended. I managed to, and I feel good about it. But there’s a big doer energy in me right after smoking. I feel good, I feel optimistic, I feel hopeful. I want to feel this way from other things. I want to remember that this temporary relief isn’t natural. That it’s just that – temporary relief, temporary goodness.
Was researching a little bit last night and it does look like the nicotine stimulates the release of dopamine in the brain, so it’d make sense why I’ve been craving it more often these days. Don’t know enough neurochemistry to jam on this but I’m definitely curious about what’s special about this chemical.
I’d been feeling a lot of shame around smoking, however. I managed to separate it out into a) a worry about it becoming an addiction, b) cultural and societal shame around it. So for starters, it’s also nice to be able to smoke without feeling the shame associated with it. I feel like as long as I was feeling the shame, I was also wanting to smoke more. It’s natural to want things you can’t have, right? Once you remove the barriers to getting something, you can plainly see how much you want it. Honestly, it feels easier to let go of it once I ditch that emotion of “can’t have”.
I’m not sure how I feel about publishing something related to smoking on this blog, but since I know I’m kind of following a full-disclosure policy with stuff I write, I know if I don’t publish this, I’d be doing that out of (you guessed it) shame. So I suppose it’s worth completing this and hitting publish.
Since I gotta add around 200 words more – I was thinking about how the anxious brain is never out of thoughts. If my anxiety is cured, what will I write about? Will I still have thoughts to share? There’s definitely a part of me that has been anxious and coping with anxiety for so long that a lot of my identity has been shaped by it (even though I’ve tried hard for it to not be the case). There’s a lot of “good” sides to anxiety, being able to have very sharp focus when stressed, having a ton of foresight, “remembering” a lot? And of course I’m curious (or worried even?) about whether those “good” things will go away if I’m not feeling regularly anxious anymore. Thankfully, someone has written a nice, well-researched post about this as well. And thankfully, I don’t write or do creative work for a living, so I probably don’t have to worry about this as much as those people might have had to. I like the conclusion there, I can probably treat it as an experiment. If I never try, I’ll never know. Maybe everything is an experiment anyway. Like publishing this post.
021a – bridge the gaps through personal conversations
Something new I’ve been realizing is that I’ve been intellectually starved. When you’re not talking to enough people who care about similar things as you do, you can forget that it’s a major part of satisfaction. I spend a lot of time thinking about things like gender, sexuality and mental health, stories and narratives but many people around me don’t. The sad thing about some of these topics like these is that they often come up only personally or when someone seems to be demanding things or pushing an “agenda”. And that’s maybe the unfortunate fact with anything that has a history of stigma associated with it, or a “minority” topic in general. For example, nobody questions anyone talking too much about travel, or money, or grades, or games or real estate or family. These are perfectly acceptable dinner table conversations. And yet, these other things can often be “too heavy” for most people.
Talking to a couple friends yesterday about my personal history with anxiety and my sexuality, I realized that I enjoy talking about these things. But I also realized it doesn’t always have to be in the context of me or my history, I would probably enjoy talking about these things even “generally”. But I had to pave the way for these conversations through my own context. It makes me realize how much of “bridging the gap” might have to be done through personal conversations. Social media can be so loud about all of this in this day and age, and yet perhaps people end up paying attention only when they’re more involved, when they’re almost a bit personally (?) involved.
“Finding your people”, then seems to be an important pillar to keep in mind while navigating life. It takes time to realize how much you’re missing until you find the good stuff. Nilan has posed a nice question that caught my eye recently. What do I want my life to prove? Currently, authenticity is something that I really want to swear strongly by. Right now, I really want my life to prove that living authentically (more than we think we can hope to) has no limits. Calling a spade a spade doesn’t make you socially ignorant, there’s reasons why people don’t do it, and those reasons deserve to be questioned.
And while wanting to live authentically should need no justification, it seems like finding our people would also be 10x easier if we did operate extra authentically all the time?
This also seems to me like a nice spin on vulnerability. What is vulnerability if not simply being authentic? Let’s normalize being authentic. It doesn’t need to be an act of courage. It doesn’t need to be a conscious effort. There’s no limits, and the benefits seem worth it. I don’t think it always needs to happen through social media or the internet but I think these mediums make it easier to reach or find the people we wouldn’t have found as easily in our own limited circles.
Also, one thing I’d like to tell you if you’re someone who’s practicing authenticity but feel like it’s not always reciprocated – keep at it. Often the seeds of such efforts bear fruit only a few months later, but know that there’s always someone who’s noticing it, and getting themselves ready to reciprocate.
016 – the mere-exposure effect
I love writing. Or at this point I can simply call this filling up a page with words. It genuinely makes me feel alive. I was going through a phase of loneliness and I kept going back to this idea of “a person is a person through other persons”. And that still may be true, but since I’m not feeling lonely anymore, I don’t have to think about it all the time.
So once (or while) my basic needs are fulfilled, writing genuinely makes me feel alive. Sometimes I want eyes on the stuff that I write, but often I don’t care as much. It’s almost addictive, letting the words flow out of my head, through my body and out on the screen. I think I genuinely achieve flow when I write. Not always, but often enough to enjoy it. And sometimes I’ll aid myself with good music and a nice beverage.
Nothing new, but conflict and being misunderstood is still on my mind, a lot. I don’t currently want to dive deep into it since I feel like it’ll bother me. But I suppose I could dip a toe in and see whether it does.
I had another argument with my mother today and she expressed annoyance about how we’ve been disagreeing over pretty much everything. Now, I do believe I am someone who is very vocal about things I don’t like, specially within relationships that matter to me.. but I think it gets a little complicated with parents or “unequal” relationships. I think something that might be hard for parents is to look at their children, truly, as adults? I mean we often disagree and argue and face conflicts in friendships too, but they’re rarely so intertwined with emotions and history, I suppose.
Anyway, I genuinely think most conflict or dislike is rooted in a lack of complete understanding. And I don’t just mean this in relationships and people, though it’ll obviously be easier to make a case for that. Even “ideas” should be easy enough. Though I think we can “disagree” after a full understanding. What I’m curious about is “dislike”.
The one I’m more interested in is with things like art and “creative” things. I wonder whether the hypothesis “if I don’t like something, it must mean I don’t fully understand it” can be true. I once told someone that I don’t really like EDM, and I always support that with the reason of “I haven’t really heard it enough”.
There’s beliefs in psychological theories of love and attraction that proximity and familiarity can increase both. The reasons might seems obvious but I’m not sure if they are. I also wonder if we can apply the same to art too? It would make sense right? We’re all quite used to the phrase “it’s grown on me”.
What happens when this occurs, let’s say in case of a… song? Do we simply get more “familiar” with it, or do we actually somehow understand it better?
So looks like the mere-exposure effect does apply to all sorts of things, including things like words and paintings. So how does this work? Do we know anything about the reasons or causes behind this effect?
Did a quick search, seems like the two main reasons behind this effect are
- reduced uncertainty, and
- increased understanding and perception
There was a time when I used to think that art is more valuable for the aesthetic value it provides rather than being something one could understand and/or resonate with. I used to often click pictures only for their form and not care much about why people were liking them. People would often say “I don’t get it” to some of my posts and I would just say things like “that’s fine, you can judge it purely based on form”.
But it makes sense now that form could also simply be the first layer or signal to a potential understanding? It’s one of the biggest reasons we conform to societal beauty standards as well, right? To signal an understanding of society.
It makes sense then how repeated exposure could work for reducing the dislike for something as well. First, the danger and uncertainty and fear is eliminated. Once that’s done, we could become curious and more open-minded about really perceiving and understanding the thing or the person.
Does that mean that given enough time, intent and courage we can “grow” to like anything? Probably does. Feels like good news to me, lol. (Now I remember how this is one of the biggest arguments used by the proponents of arranged marriage setups as well.)
This is great. If we start here, we then don’t have to pick things simply because “we already like them” or “we’re already good at them”, we can have the freedom to pick things (or people) based on other factors. Though this sounds great in theory, I already feel an anxiety about time coming up. It tells me how I’m conditioned to want quick returns.
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Since I’m veering towards thinking about this from a romantic relationships perspective again, it might be a good time for me to think about my values and the things I care about —
- Being self-aware and living without least regrets
- If I like doing something I want to be able to do it but I also want to be somewhat aware of why I like doing it
- If I want to do something but I’m not doing it I want to be aware of my constraints and know whether I plan to change them or not (if they’re changeable)
- If they’re unchangeable that’s fine, but I want to be aware of them as well
- Note to self (call grandparents tonight)
- Health (physical and mental)
- Connection (with humans as well as living beings as well as… nature?)
- Being “there” for people
I can’t (at this moment) explain how this came up from whatever I wrote above, but until two years ago, I used to be quite sure of the fact that I want to have kids. I’ve been questioning this for the last year or so. I think the more people I meet who “don’t plan to have kids”, the easier it becomes to question it as well. And sure, it might depend on whether I’ll meet someone I want to spend the rest of my life with, and what their preferences are, etc. But so far it’s nice to be able to even question it.
014 – it’s okay if life is just one season after another
What if I somehow allowed myself to unwind with writing or with chores? What if I somehow resisted the urge to check twitter or instagram or other social media except for when I want to post? What if my breaks became productive? And honestly, I dislike that word a lot sometimes. But I don’t mean productive in terms of capitalism or whatever, but something that either leaves me feeling better or is otherwise necessary for me to do. Scrolling and mindless content consumption is just something that might give me the “illusion” of feeling better. Right now I’m writing since I’m waiting on a response from a coworker, I should probably be working now instead, but I’m mostly okay with the work I got done today so might as well as do something that leaves me feeling good.
What if I really looked at why I’m unable to let go of so much of my stuff? Why am I attached to things that I haven’t used in a couple of years? I’m definitely a hoarder. And I wonder what the need for “backup” items is. Where does it come from, what does it tell me about myself? What does my stomach feel so tense whenever I think about everything I should let go of? I know part of it is simply the fact that I’ve been putting it off for a while. But the other part I think is simply that.. I feel like I’m not ready to face all of it. Hence I escape and write about it. I suppose I could simply look at it from a “grieve old things, make room for new ones” perspective too, and that could help.
Okay I got distracted. I’m going to switch to using my personal laptop instead.
I think when people say “keep yourself busy” they forget to say that they probably mean “keep yourself busy with things you like to do”. It’s probably obvious but to me I feel like there’s a lot here that I missed out on. Sometimes I make random plans (e.g. social plans, vacations) to “stay busy” but end up feeling worse.
I think I need the time to really look at what I want to be “busy with” next, so that I don’t regret the decisions as much. Regret can be a pretty annoying feeling. Landing in situations where I feel like I don’t have enough control to change can feel extremely heavy. I think once you make a lot of wrong decisions you get quite wary of making wrong decisions again. Though I also think that self-blame for the past and fear of the future is probably just misattribution to some feelings that exist in the present.
I think the internet makes me feel like everyone really has it all figured out. People talk about moves and big changes and it feels like they happen quickly for many people. And maybe they do, but they also happen slowly for a lot of us, and there’s probably nothing wrong with that? I’m in a much better place than I was 6 months ago, and 3 months ago, and 3 weeks ago, and I can probably allow myself to be really grateful for that.
The planning phases are important. But being smart, compassionate and honest during the planning phase is important too. Maybe I was planning in terms of “finding joy”, whereas what I needed to plan for was simply “reduce worries”. It’s like being in an unhappy marriage and planning to find love, whereas the better plan could simply have been getting out of that marriage. Recognizing progress is important for future progress.
And who says I can’t find joy in the little things even when I’m reflecting on the past and planning for the short-term or long-term future? In the past, some of the best things have happened during these periods of limbo and transition. I think I can romanticize pretty much anything. So if I decide to make these temporary periods special, I know I’ll be able to do so.
The pizza dinner you have the first night you move into a new place, sitting on the floor and making plans about the colors you’re going to paint the walls. Developing romantic feelings for a city when you know you’re going to be leaving in three months. Coming to a new city for an internship, planning to only focus on work and getting to know the city but ending up discovering a love for cats instead. Saying goodbye to friends after a vacation and getting unexpectedly warm hugs from some of them.
It’s probably all there, should we choose to look at it. I don’t know why I used to have this feeling of wanting “permanency” and “stability” before letting myself experience joy and happiness, but now I think it’s not that important.
In fact, were these things special because they were ephemeral? What would it really mean, for me to have a permanent job and a (mildly) permanent house and permanent relationships? Would they really be permanent or would I only think of them as permanent? Does the (often false sense of) security actually add much value, or is it mostly illusive?
I have spent a lot of time telling people I miss them. I think the right thing to tell them is that I’m thinking of them. It’s so much more true. I think when we think of people, we’re probably thinking of some specific “time” or moments with them, we miss that. We can’t miss the people because we don’t even know who they might be now. I have spent a lot of time trying to mend broken friendships. But yes, maybe these things were important and special only because they exist in memory, and only because they changed.
So it’s okay that the next few months of my life are going to feel like a summer. And it’s also okay if that’s followed by another.
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References: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9324238-the-meaning-of-the-river-flowing-is-not-that-all
013 – it’s okay to value your time
I made a mistake. I was actually feeling really good about getting done with the day around 11:15 pm but then I dawdled. I dawdled and I checked my phone and then I started reading stuff on twitter. And now it’s 11:45. This isn’t a great feeling. I wanted to explore a bit when I’m at peace. I don’t want to fall into the trap of revenge bedtime procrastination. The only way I would be able to sleep on time is when I find enough time in the day to be able to feel “satisfied”. And that’ll come from being able to do a little bit of things that make me happy and give me personal satisfaction.
It’s good that I know this and I see this. It’s good that I recognize this feeling that arises whenever I dawdle and scroll for too long. At least I think it’s good.
I want to get a little better at valuing my time. Earlier I was pushing back against this a bit. Because I thought I don’t want to be overly attached to my goals and desires. But now I feel like there can be a compromise. I’m sure it’s possible to have goals and desires and yet be non-attached to them? I know this is a pretty ideal state to be in, so I’m not taking it lightly.
I was also questioning where the need to value my time was coming from. I know now that it’s coming from a recognition of unfulfilled wants and desires. One of the reasons I was fighting so hard against my day job was that I felt like it was leaving me with no time for all my other pursuits. Of course, the anxiety and stress was real too, but maybe it doesn’t have to be a wild change. I see what’s happening, I’m trying to find a compromise. I’m trying to see if valuing my time (and eventually managing it better) will help me be more satisfied.
Whenever I think about creative pursuits, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs comes to mind. I keep thinking about how I’m often sad and/or dissatisfied because I keep trying to fulfill the (self-actualization, esteem) needs even without fully fulfilling my (physiological, safety and belongingness) needs. Why are the bottom three rungs so boring to look at or think about? Maybe because I haven’t solved them. Maybe because they’re supposedly easy and I keep failing at them. We keep trying to hack at happiness.
But then I also remember seeing a few posts about how Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is flawed. I also dislike research so I don’t think I’m going to look this up, though I do feel like it would be interesting to. (Well, note to self.)
I’m very glad that I’m not consuming mindlessly a lot these days. It’s nice. I think I’m not as addicted to scrolling and content anymore.
How do you set boundaries with your parents? I really love them and I genuinely like spending time with them, but I can’t figure a good way to seek and take their support without also inviting “parenting” in. I don’t want to be parented anymore, I just want some support. It’s a fine line. I’ve already had a couple of really tense arguments with my mother, and she’s barely been here two whole days. I remember it’d been the same way with my sister when she’d come to stay with me for a month around a year ago. But I remember making a shared document of working styles and communicating styles which had actually worked pretty well for us. Maybe I can do something similar this time too.
It’s already 12:30 am and I really wanna be in bed by 12:50 am. Can I try writing 400 more words in 20 minutes? I mean if I really just want to ramble on I probably could. What stops me generally is wanting to write something of relevance, something of value, something that ties in well with whatever I’ve written so far. Even though I’ve (way too) often told myself I don’t need to be worrying about all of that. I suppose there’s a part of me that thinks unabashed writing is lazy writing. And honestly, it probably is. But it’s probably better than no writing. Doing this day in and day out. This is the primary reason I really like my music teacher. She keeps asking me to sing and keeps reminding me how singing wrong notes is better than singing no notes. She gets it, she gets me, and she really “attacks” the biggest and the most primary fear in me. The fear of being bad.
I’m happy to have some of these structures in place. I think I do need to take some time out to set up a few more of these. I probably need monthly check-ins for admin tasks, large cleanup tasks, decluttering tasks. I know that getting these things done feels really good and yet I don’t do them enough. I think there’s something about batch processing not done right that just ends up being worse than the unideal alternative of stream processing.
I think at some point, somehow, I had just accepted batch processing to be the superior option for most tasks. This is especially true for chores. I would often skip daily chores and let them be a “weekend problem”. But when the weekend would come around I would often not feel like getting them done, sometimes just whimsically, and sometimes because it would feel more mammoth. So then I unconsciously shifted to stream processing for “all tasks”. Which then ended up crowding my daily life way too much. So now I gotta do an intentional evaluation of the treatment different kinds of tasks deserve.
Well, I’m kinda done. So it turns out I’ve started valuing my time again. I think it’s a good direction to be headed in. This doesn’t mean I would want to be crazy about saving time all the time and not be okay with wasting it once in a while, but in general, I would probably want to be at least a little aware of it. I still have 4 minutes to 1:00 am so I’d say not too bad. *pats self*
012 – why say, when you can ask?
I want to free some thoughts from my head. I woke up early (proper early – 6 am) since my mom’s visiting from India today and I plan to go and receive her. But there’s a delay (duh) so I have some free time as I wait to leave. I’ve barely slept 5 hours but I feel much better than I expected to feel. The sunrise’s scheduled for 7:15 am (it’s 6:45 am right now) and I’m torn between trying to write on here or go down and click pictures. Decisions, all the time. They weigh so heavy on my shoulders but there’s always many to make.
We’re constantly doing resource management, of course it’s going to be hard. Why is it harder for some people? I feel like I have a few problems. I don’t trust the budgets that I set for myself so I’m often optimizing for money, even though it would just make more sense to (or make my life easier if I could just) trust the budget. There’s probably reasons to why I don’t. It’d have to be a whole other annoying examination of everything I’m not tracking currently.
What about time? What structures can I have in place to reduce the worry of time-optimization in daily life? Monthly goals setting? Big and small? I do suppose that could help. It’s also the first day of February (short month!) so it seems like an opportune day to be thinking about this.. and maybe even attempting it, oof.
Not sure where this is coming from, but something about people and draining interactions.
How do you teach people to ask questions, instead of giving (mostly unsolicited) advice? I don’t know, constantly being “told to do something” has made me strongly averse to listening to people. I often feel a visceral recoil when someone gives me advice or says anything along the lines of “do this, do that.”
Even a conversation like this often bothers me quite a bit:
Me: I’m thinking of doing X.
Friend: Yes, you should do it.
This obviously has multiple possible explanations – maybe I already had some feelings about X, maybe I don’t like my friend as much as I think, etc etc. But, I think it’s also that a lot of people don’t know how to talk very well. Or maybe I’m very particular about the semantics.
Here’s a few examples of responses that wouldn’t have bothered me:
(Best)
Me: I’m thinking of doing X.
Friend: Oh yeah I think that’s a great idea! / That sounds so nice!
(Not the best but still decent)
Me: I’m thinking of doing X.
Friend: Oh yeah I think you should do it.
Maybe I just have a really bad relationship with “being pushed”.
And while I know that talking in terms of “I think” and “I feel” is generally regarded as good practice for communication between most “close” relationships, I wonder if that’s too much to hope for from all relationships?
Decisions and draining conversations – how do these relate? I think I know how. I think every-time I go through a draining conversation, I have to, in real time, decide whether to have the “you’re saying this, but I’m hearing this” conversation. If I decide not to do it in the present, it still persists and eventually I have to decide whether I want to have the “when you said this, I felt this” conversation. Even if I decide not to do it, I still have to resolve my feelings around the whole thing, LOL.
This brings me to another question. Lately I do feel like having the “when you said this, I felt this” kind of conversations with a lot of people. These are generally quite acceptable in personal relationships.. but how do we feel about them in professional relationships? Do we want to be having them? I see nothing but major benefits. But I don’t know, haven’t seen enough of these happening yet.
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Unrelated. What is it about immersing your whole body in water that feels so good? I suppose it can be meditative. A few minutes of not being answerable to anyone (including self), not being accountable to anyone (including self), not having to make sense of anything. I can allow myself to exist, without having to be anywhere. Almost as if my feelings seek an outlet, and the water can sometimes provide that.
I’ve been wondering about the deep desire to be understood, I know I’ve been talking about it a lot. But where is it coming from? Today morning I had an extremely strong reaction to a misunderstanding between myself and my mom. I couldn’t figure out why being misunderstood feels like such a threat to me. I think it’s something about.. if people don’t understand me, then they have power over me. Do other people even matter though? Perhaps it’s more about myself.. If I don’t understand my feelings, then they have power over me.
I know the truer reframe for that is “if I don’t accept my feelings, then they have power over me”, but I hope it’s obvious that it’s so much easier to accept after understanding. So maybe all I’m really look for is my own understanding of my feelings. This is a nice little motivator for me to unpack as well. I could simply want to understand myself better so that my feelings don’t have (as much) power over me anymore.
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How do I feel about writing that builds on what other people have already written? Last night I was questioning (again) why I’m doing this. I found this thread (of course it’s Visa) and I liked how much of a case he makes for being in touch with our feelings. I was looking for something like that and I found it and it resonated with me. When will this happen by itself though? When will I really be able to give myself the permission and encouragement to do this, solely because I want to? …I suppose it’s okay, can’t really question everything so much. There’s only so much time in a day.
011 – consumption, creation and the desire to feel special
Been wanting to think about this for a while. This post of mine from almost a year ago came back to me recently and I was thinking about how much things have changed. I was gravitating towards (media, art) consumption because the desire to feel something was trumping the desire to create something?
How out of touch from my feelings must I have been? Or was the tank really just empty? Guess I won’t know but if I had to hazard a guess it was likely the former.
I think when my “feelings tank” is full, consumption rarely helps. It can sometimes help in the moment by providing a distraction of sorts, but more often than not it just acts as a temporary numbing agent. But when the feelings tank is empty, it looks like consumption can help me feel something? I feel like whenever I’m at this point – if I change my consumption of (media, art) to that of (experiences, people) instead, could I possibly feel more valuable things?
Gosh, I don’t know, this is getting a little dense for me right now. I watched Call Me By Your Name for the second time and enjoyed it so much more than I had the first time around. I realized I’d missed so much of the brilliance when I’d seen it earlier. I ordered the book as well, looking forward to reading it. But my motivation today to start watching it wasn’t to “feel” something, my feelings tank was definitely quite full, but it was more to resolve one or more of these feelings — the feeling of loneliness, the feeling of not being fully understood by the people around me? and other related feelings.
And this is pretty much the same reason I’ve been posting as well, to resolve the feeling of not being fully understood.
This might be one of the rare phases that consumption and creation were driven by the same motivation. Or maybe they always can be, and us choosing one is perhaps based on other factors?
Last week I kept feeling like consuming isn’t as exciting as creating. But watching this movie was a thoroughly exciting experience.
I think it’s safe to say that both consuming and creating can help resolve certain feelings, and give rise to new ones as well. Should we always pick creation though, since it adds more value to the world? Or is that even true? I’m sure when we consume certain things, we are in some (many) ways adding value to the ones who created them. So it’s also safe to say that both are equally valuable to the world.
So it looks like both activities can
- help resolve certain feelings
- help create new feelings
- add some value to the world
So how do we even pick between them? Is it even a competition? Maybe they can work together for us.
Or maybe we can think about what are the requirements for each of these.
consuming
I feel like when we want to consume to resolve certain feelings, we might need to have an idea of what we want to consume for that to happen. If that’s not the case it’ll probably just end up working as a numbing agent.
And when we’re doing it to create new feelings, the main things we need are probably time and an open-mind.
creating
In this case, when the driving factor is feelings resolution, I think it’s simpler – if we follow them, they pretty much do the work we need. It might be safe to say that we need at least one of (ideas, feelings) to create something. I suppose the best things come around when the two work together?
Eh, I don’t know where I’m going with this. There’s not much more to say on this right now so I’ll give it a rest and stop forcing myself to come up with something.
—
*12 hours later*
Went back to Visa’s post about “reflecting on why” since I remember reading some stuff about this topic on it. He talks about how being really, deeply useful to a lot of people is something that could fulfill him. I think that’s a good, different framing for “adding value to the world”, and I think that’s one of my unfulfilled needs at this time as well. This often comes to us in different words, right? Impact, purpose, calling. Feeling needed, feeling like you exist, for something or someone else. It doesn’t have to be a single thing or person, as long as the sum of the value you’re adding to the world is enough for your own satisfaction.
I suppose my dissatisfaction is coming from the fact (or the feeling) that for the last few months I’ve only been “taking” support from people. Taking, taking and taking. At work as well as personal relationships. So bear in mind that when I say “creating”, I don’t only mean art or media, it can really be anything. I guess at its core I probably just mean “creating value”.
Not to say there’s anything wrong with seeking support and maybe needing that for extended periods of time as well. I do believe in the idea of “secure your own mask first before assisting others”. Or with things that cannot be fully resolved, it’s okay to do it somewhat parallely as well. But yes, it does create an unfulfilled need. Finding small ways of adding value could probably help with that. Creating small units of “content” has been quite nice for the same reason, so far. Offering support to junior team members at work is another – I plan to do this the coming week. Of course, one would say, if you really wanna add so much “value” to the world, why don’t you go out and do some social work? Honestly, it’s a valid counter. I wonder why the thought of it is not as exciting. Is there something about me wanting to provide value in “my own, unique”ways? Wanting to feel special, even?
It makes sense then why creating could generally be more exciting than consuming. Consuming in “my own special way” can only work if I can communicate that to someone (examples: give an artist feedback about how their work impacted me, or tell someone a story about how a particular experience shaped me). Creating on the other hand probably has that “uniqueness” built in itself.
Do I want to summarize this? Not really sure. I’ll just end with maybe the factors I might want to look out for the next time I have a chunk of time and I can’t decide what to do with it. When picking between two activities, I probably want to optimize for these and ask myself if the activity will:
- help resolve certain feelings
- do i know which feelings i want to resolve and what kind of content or activities can help me do that?
- help create new feelings
- am i open-minded at this point of time? emotionally, intellectually
- add value to the world
- do i have ideas and skills
- add value that only i can provide / honor my uniqueness
- do i have ideas and skills
- do i have ideas and skills
008b – rest and growth
Preamble: Wrote this a couple days ago since I was feeling quite “inspired”. But turns out it was just a passing feeling, hence the easy end.
I’ve been thinking about growth lately. There’s definitely a big part of me that likes to grow. I don’t like worrying about things too much and anxiety almost always feels like a constant problem, but sometimes I enjoy these problems, I guess. Or at least, I like the feeling of making my out of the darkness. Or even when it’s not as dark, even when it’s a “simpler emergence”, I do like chasing some sort of goals. Nothing special, pretty normal, a lot of us do it – it’s just new again for me since for a while I thought I only wanted to rest. I had weeks and weeks of wanting to do nothing, I just wanted to breathe and relax and take life in.
When things get hard, I enjoy dissociating from myself. I subscribe to Buddhist ideas like “I am not my thoughts, I am not my feelings”. And it’s pretty helpful. The less attached I am to the idea of “Me” or “I”, the easier it generally is to accept whatever is happening to me.
But when things are “okay” again, I sometimes find myself getting attached to myself again. I find myself looking at myself like a project again, something to constantly be improving and working on. In the previous post I realized I don’t value my time enough, and I think that’s a product of some of “detachment” (so to say) that I was trying to practice.
But I’m thinking about growth again, and I’m finding that I want to get over my fears “faster”. Where’s that need coming from? I’m finding that I “want” to value my time? Where is this sense of urgency coming from? Do I want to pay attention to it? Do I even want to act on it? Is it even correct? Probably not, I think.
I think many us go through this. Phases of growth, phases of rest. The sinusoidal waves of life.
But I need to be careful between the rest and the growth phase. Even though it’d be nice to keep failing fast, I want to be a little careful, still. Because emotions can be unpredictable. It would probably make sense to keep a decent amount of buffer for them. When I plan for a growth phase, I probably shouldn’t do the planning based on “how I feel during the rest phase”.
I suppose this ends up at the two common strategies we often debate on:
A. Under-plan, and overdo, if that happens?
B. Over-plan and be okay with meeting only a % of it?
I think at this point, strategy A looks like a better option to me, because it leaves enough time for me to have fun on the way.. not super sure why I was even debating this to be honest.
009 – why we’re scared of failing fast + are we?
Why am I scared of failing fast? Why do we spend hours and hours in preparation for important things only to tank them anyway? I think it comes from a belief that “opportunities are limited”. And for me, that comes from my parents’ upbringing, and hence mine. When they got opportunities in their time, it was critical for them to make the best of them – because opportunities were indeed, limited.
For me however this is barely true anymore. I’m privileged enough to have more than a basic set of skills, tools and financial support to sustain myself. A few missed opportunities is probably barely going to make a difference for me.
I know it sounds like I’m coming at this from a “work and career” perspective here but I mean this for everything. I have a terribly strong fear of failure in me. It shows up in long-term “important” actions like wanting to quit my job sometimes (and here maybe it’s aligned with my values for that to exist), but it also shows up in the most minuscule of actions. I only put up code changes once I’ve made them “as perfect” as possible, because I’m afraid of “too many” comments or feedback on them. (Even though I don’t need to be.) Failing fast should probably work much better for most communities, and at some level I do know this. I should be able to bring up issues and problems out in the open, as fast as possible. It’s not “on me” to fix everything. The more problems that exist, the happier my company would be, ideally. These are people who enjoy problem solving.
I’m afraid of going on dates until I feel like I’m in a good place, even though.. I think, in reality – all of that barely makes a difference. I can be the most perfect version of myself and it still won’t work. Or I can be flawed and rough and it still might. Plenty of people in the world, right?
(Emotional) tunnel vision probably has a big role to play here too.
It’s the same thing with difficult emotional conversations as well. Scared of testing the waters. Afraid of saying the wrong thing too soon.. when in reality – the faster you fuck up – the faster you improve and grow. I’d heard this advice from someone on how to do college best. It was that one should try to get a C or a B right in the first semester itself – it’ll free you up. Though it made sense to me even at the time, I wasn’t fully able to absorb it. And then there’s this other piece of how a bad grade might also not feel like enough of a failure sometimes. I still think it’s brilliant advice though. I see one problem with it however – it’s often hard to fail deliberately. It’s hard to go into something “knowing” you’re likely to fail at it.
The only thing you can really do is continue to set yourself up for failure (without thinking you’re doing that), by doing every little scary or difficult thing that you’re pushing away. Probably best to do a quick cost-benefit analysis though – we don’t want to be impulsive and risk getting traumatized.
The other reason could be low self-esteem, of course. The lack of trust and confidence that I’ll be able to cope with failure, that I’ll be able to build myself up again. I’ve been beating myself up lately about how “I haven’t really failed enough” and that’s the reason these new failures feel so big. But today as I’m thinking about it, I think that’s not correct. I have failed enough. I do remember how much some of the “hardships” I’ve had to face in the past have affected me. Like if I made a list – I’m sure I could come up with at least 10 ten things which at the time felt like “the end of the world”. Yet, this month, I felt like everything bad that was happening to me was for the first time in my life. So maybe we forget how strong we are? Maybe we forget how much we’ve coped with? There’s a famous quote by Donald Winnicott, which is – “The catastrophe you fear will happen has in fact already happened.” It makes sense – trauma is probably so painful that it makes sense for us to suppress it when it happens – but often it manifests as fears instead.
Does that mean my fear of failures points to a bunch of unprocessed failures? It’s possible.
I’m sure personality types do have a role to play here. What makes some people grow from failures, and what makes some people more fearful instead? It’s possible that different people are afraid of different types of failures though, so it might just feel like we’re alone in our fears.
Didn’t really get too far on this but here’s what I have so far (for myself, at least)
- Beliefs about scarcity and limited opportunities, people
- Beliefs about self’s inabilities to cope with failure, to cope with the emotions that accompany failure
- Hazy memory, inability to collect and remember past failures
- Potential unprocessed failures
- I might not truly be as fearful as I think I am
- This might have some truth to it since I’m up at 5 am not giving fucks about my sleep schedule, even though last week was traumatic and I’d told myself I that I need to be disciplined
Okay, I think I have one more. People like me don’t value our time enough. And I don’t mean this in a harsh way. But if I did, I’d probably be getting more done – I’d be failing more and succeeding more. I’d spend more of my time facing my fears than I’d spend living in those fears. This one’s good, this one’s important I think. And seriously fuck the pandemic excuse. Anyone who’s saying they’re not growing during the pandemic is probably not being creative and intentional enough*. It’s interesting, this one was present in the question all along. We were talking about failing “fast”. There’s clearly a time dimension there. 🙂
*Of course, assuming one is safe, healthy and has a job.
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