age – untitled atm

107b – reflections (i am decently happy with my life)

I suppose I’m happy— even content— with life lately. There is something precious about solving life problems in your own way and at your own pace. I’ve been stuck with work stuff over the last couple months and although it was weighing pretty heavily on me, today feels different. Of course, in therapy yesterday, we discovered that I do need more structure and discipline to get on with the things that I want to get on with.

That is, I have a sufficient amount of freedom, but perhaps enjoying it would require me to work towards sustaining it. I’ve been worried, but only today I what it’s been about— I like my life so much that I don’t want it to change too much. I don’t want to go back to a 9-5. I don’t want to go back to coding for a living, not yet.

I’d prefer to continue to grow as a musician and a writer. Yes, that’s what I really want. And of course, I want that to continue, I’ll need to think about the financials of it all. But perhaps the way to do it is not— like I thought— to find part-time work right away, but to complete the things that I think I need to complete— before I can accept that I absolutely need to focus on the financials.

I’ve been struggling with sleep too but the last two days have been better. I’m up before sunrise today, but somewhat rested, and that’s progress too. Sleep has been a major issue for the majority of my life, but this time the “problematic phase” came after a much longer stable phase. I suppose, that’s progress too.

I turned 29 a few months ago and I don’t know if I got much time to reflect on it all. I feel the age, I do. There are aches in my body that persist for much longer than they probably should, without any real cause. But there is also a stability to my nervous system that I haven’t experienced for so long before. Of course, there are probably other factors involved in both of these things, but I think part of it is related to age. I don’t feel old though— I feel younger than I felt at, say, 26.

Anyway, reflections are fun, though my inner critic says it’s probably another way for me to procrastinate on the things I must be doing instead. But to my inner critic, I’ll say: my days generally go better when I begin them with some kind of writing, so that’s what I’m trying to manifest. A decent day.

As I think about ending this, worries start to pop up again. But I don’t want to get on that thought-train. I want to stay here. Here, in this reflective space. I suppose making a task list for the day would help. Yeah, so that’s what I’m going to go and work on, next.

099a – reflective

Haven’t written for over a week. It’s been a decent one, for the most parts. Delhi summers is quite exhausting, however. Not sure how I feel about the coming two months. Realised today that my house lease ends sooner than I thought so that’s something I need to process, and then I also need to take some time out to decide whether or not I want to look for work anytime soon. I don’t know if I can handle (or cope with) two big rocks on my head.

Going to hang with friends tonight, looking forward to it, been a while. Have some friends visiting next week and also have a weekend trip planned towards the end of the month. Looking forward to both these things.

Relationship stuff has been pretty smooth so far, quite happy and grateful about that, don’t want to take that lightly.

My back has been aching for the whole week now— not sure I slept weird or whether it’s the age that’s starting to show up (haha). (Feel stupid to even laugh at this because part of me doesn’t want to make age-based jokes and part of me is genuinely worried whether age-based issues are going to start bothering me at this very (in many ways) young age.

I think I’m going to take out some time over the weekend and set some intentions for May! Feeling kind of excited about it so I’d love to make use of the energy.

Stopped writing this last night because I didn’t have a lot of time, but back at it today morning. Had a great night, unexpectedly fulfilling actually.

Woke up feeling a bit reflective today morning for some reason, and it made me realise that these days I feel like I have more memories already in my head (or my body or my heart, whatever) that I feel like I don’t have the space to go out and make new ones. I was talking to my sister on the phone the other day and she was sharing some memories of us from back when I was 2 or 3 (I had asked her if she remembers anything) and really, it was quite overwhelming (in a good way though). [Sidebar: I’m trying to find a word for this—ie overwhelming but in a good way but I can’t.]

The general theme from yesterday seems to be documentation and preservation. Even with the folks I hung out with, we were actually exchanging a lot of stories from our pasts.

This week I also complete a year to having moved from Amsterdam to Delhi. I hope I can find some time to reflect upon it all.

Of course, documentation ties this post up nicely too. Happy to be doing this, happy to be making notes. Happy to preserve and document and reflect on here so I can continue to make more memories, ie live more and live as much as I can.

Happy May, folks! xx

093a – age, explore vs exploit, attachment

Feeling very reflective today. I think I’m not that afraid of turning 30 anymore. I feel like things have only gotten better (so far) with the power that experience and age brings. I’m still ambitious, motivated, excited, prone to chasing pleasure, prone to human longings, but I feel more grounded. Of course, these feelings of stability and security are not PURELY related to age. There’s a lot of other things that play into it— geography, community, loving people ie family and friends, romantic partnerships, anti-anxiety medication, my therapist, goals I’m working towards, and lastly art and artistic outlets; and some of these (maybe most) can be present at most ages. But whatever it is, I’m feeling good about still have over an year to 30, and then sort of having a nice “second half” of my life from 30-55 or 30-60.

I don’t want to say that the life I envision post 60 is not valuable, but I imagine that will be very different considering the challenges that “old age” might bring, so I just feel like it’s futile to think about that right now. Obviously, one might argue it’s obviously futile to even think about anything beyond a week or two, really, but let’s keep that aside for a minute.

The point is— I’m excited about the second half of my life.

The numbers are just rough markers, of course.

I’m satisfied with the amount and kind of “explorations” I’ve done over the course of my 20s, and I feel good about sort of entering a bit of the “exploit” part of life, at least in the bigger picture. Not to say that I will curb my exploratory needs as and when they come up— and I think I am sufficiently exploratory by nature, and this has also been sufficiently stable over the last couple decades, despite the anxieties that come with exploration in general and despite my personal fears and anxieties. So I wouldn’t want to curb my exploratory needs too much, and my brain does devote maybe 10-20% of its bandwidth on curiosities. However, I’m learning to focus on the stability and safety that comes out of really leaning into the remaining 80-90% of the thing itself. Or (and) celebrate the good parts of what is.

—

In therapy we also talked about differentiating attachment (of the spiritual sense) and the real attachment (the one that exists within relationships etc). I think I’ve been mixing the two a lot over the last few years. I’ve convinced myself that I get attached too quickly and in unhealthy ways (even though that attachment was coming from my ego) and I forgot that I’m capable of maintaining and nourishing healthy attachments too. With friendships, for example— I’m actually capable of showing up in many many healthy ways. I’d like to not do myself disservice by confusing these two terms. Maybe it makes sense to think about what the healthy attachment means and looks like— do I want it? Is it a subset of love? What are the pitfalls? Why am I so afraid of it? I am not afraid of intimacy but I do find myself being quite afraid of “attachment”. So, yeah, that’s something I’ll be thinking about this week as well.

Cheers, happy Feb! xx

051a – drained

Emotions are really hard these days. After I woke up today, I lay in bed for almost twenty minutes doing nothing, paralysed. Just thinking. Ruminating. Eventually, crying. I hope I’m PMS-ing because I don’t know if I can take more mornings like these, at least not this week. I’ve been trying this “morning pages” thing which allows me to journal right after bed or right before going to bed, which has been nice, and yet, today it didn’t help at all. The idea is to clear your head as much as you can and then go about your day. Of course, these word-vomits tend to serve a similar purpose, when I can manage to do them.

I started house-hunting which made me realise I was biting off more than I could chew, so then I decided to pause one other project that I was planning to work on. I think collaboration is something that doesn’t come very easily to me, not without external / organisational structures or the base of knowing a person beforehand, and so that added some icky feelings around this particular project in me as well, which is the primary reason that it was the one I chose to cut.

This weekend was very draining, emotionally and mentally. I had a long, open conversation with some of my family about queerness and sexual, gender identity and although it was much needed and I really appreciate them taking the time to engage, it was definitely tough. I don’t know if I can do this very often. The conversation also took a bit of a turn and people also ended up sharing a bit about some of their stuff, their past, etc.

I wish people of all ages and backgrounds (who can afford to) would be intentional about healing. I wish people would realise how much trauma they hold and carry, I wish people would put in effort to look at it. I don’t like that a lot of people hide behind their age and their “generation”. When you tell about anything that’s a little new to them, they’ll say things like “oh this is just not how our generation thinks” etc etc. But like, we’re not talking about the whole generation. We’re talking about you. Or me. Ah, it just feels like an excuse.

A lot of people will tell me that “when you grow up is when you’ll realise how difficult new things are for you to accept as well”. And I don’t know, maybe I’ll find out they were right, but I hope with all my heart they aren’t. I hope my curiosity doesn’t die. There’s a lot of things that I still don’t agree with or vibe with (AI art, for example), but I don’t think that’s got anything at all to do with age or anything similar to that.

Being in India for the next 2-3 years feels like a pretty challenging quest. And definitely I don’t know if I can be here for the long haul.