awareness – untitled atm

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. 🙂

022 – achieve flow in self-exploration

Yesterday someone told me how “no sleep is better than the sleep you’re not supposed to be sleeping”. We were talking about whether I’m enjoying writing only when I’m escaping into it, or whether I can enjoy it even when I have ample time to do it. So here I am trying to enjoy writing even when I have a couple days off coming up, starting tomorrow.

There’s a few things on my mind, cigarettes and shame, for starters. Shame about cigarettes and smoking, to be clear. But I don’t know if I want to think about it or elaborate on it. The other thing on my mind is loneliness. I don’t know if I want to think about it, either. They could be related, possibly. Maybe it’s smoking alone that’s shameful. It’s definitely easier when you do it with company. Maybe it’s the alienating aspect of it that brings shame sometimes.

I’m definitely getting distracted by loud talking voices coming from outside my room. Music doesn’t help either, since it’s quite distracting also. I never understand how people are able to work or do mental tasks alongside of music. Even instrumental music can be distracting for me, more often than not. Trying not to pick my phone up every five minutes.

Was thinking about how it’s insane that I was doubting my ability do code. I have proofs from various systems that I can, I am “employed” as a software engineer. And yet, imposter syndrome + anxiety had got me doubting myself so intensely. Even if I’m not a “star” programmer, I’m okay. Feels good to see it again.

Whenever I get stuck in the middle of any of these posts, I end up checking the word count. I don’t think it’s a great habit, since it can be discouraging more often than not. It’s like checking results in the middle of an experiment. Should perhaps take into account the problems that come up with the observer effect. I know this isn’t exactly the same thing but it feels like it.

What is loneliness? Can a textual or video conversation resolve it? Can it be broken down into other feelings? I know intellectual starvation was one. Lack of people who understand you and care about you is another. Lack of people you are interested in, could be another too. I think part of loneliness resolution is having enough people you’re curious about. With tons of information coming at us every minute, maybe we forget who we intentionally want to hear and know about. Maybe when there aren’t enough people around me arousing my curiosity, I could make myself the subject. Maybe I can achieve flow in self-exploration. Maybe it’s the right amount of challenging and interesting. And we all know that we are equipped enough to do it.

Recently read a bit about flow again. Saw a video that mentioned how people who achieve significant periods of flow in a day can be happier. I think I’m definitely able to achieve flow with programming, and photography, and writing. For the last few days, I’ve managed to spend 3-4 hours at least, at work, “in the zone”. But it’s not as satisfactory, I feel. My main motivation to get my work done is just that – to get the work done. To reduce the stress and worries. But my motivation with photography and writing is often more positive. Of course, I know the relationship could change if I were doing these things to earn money or make a living, but so far, I don’t need to worry about that. I suppose it’s okay to notice that there’s a difference, at least currently.

I want to explore film photography. There’s so much to research, though. It’s daunting. I really don’t love the research part of things.

Alright, going to keep this short. I enjoyed this. I think I can be happier when I keep reflecting a little bit from time to time. I love uncovering the strongest thoughts and feelings, the ones that persist across hours and days, and are significant enough to come out even when they’re completely unrelated to everything else that I’ve been thinking and talking about so far. The need for an outlet is quite real.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a thing such as too much self-awareness? Is that possible? Are there downsides to it? Both the therapists I’ve had in the past have often told me I’m quite self-aware. Some of my friends have often told me that too. And I think most people have meant it as a compliment. But I wonder what I feel when I hear it. I think a part of me relates it to narcissism and/or being self-absorbed.
Looked up a few articles. Couldn’t really find any clear downsides apart from potential over-thinking and over-analyzing. Joke’s on you, article – I already do that anyway.

It’s crazy how on the one hand I feel sad about how I don’t know what I like who I like what I want and on the other hand I worry about too much self-awareness. Just goes to show how much nothing is worth believing.

Well, I didn’t actually end up keeping this short. I’m happy, though. Got a long day ahead of me tomorrow. Excited about the outside time I’m planning to get. Maybe it’ll give rise to another post. Or maybe it’ll just be a nice day by itself. Thinking of treating hours and days as opportunities. Time, in general. I suppose. An opportunity to be curious and authentic and brave.

018b – thoughts are cheap, my darling

She sits in a chair and looks at the pink lilies sitting on the table. She’s divided them into different bottles since she didn’t have a vase to put them out into, but she’s happy with the arrangement. She’s grateful for the one who helped her pick them out, she’s not sure if she’d have bought them if she was alone. She doesn’t fully get why these small acts of kindness make her so happy, but they do. She feels a little silly when she thinks about all of this, but she’s also happy it’s generating words for her.

Night time’s precious to her, it always has been. She tries to conform to societal rhythms to function better but she just does so much better from the hours of ten and three. She now thinks of it with the context of her generalized anxiety, and it makes much more sense. Lesser interruptions, fewer people demanding things from her, lesser accountability, fewer things for her to solve..

She doesn’t actually have problems with focus. She knows she’s good at focusing for hours on end if the conditions are right. Conditions that the night easily provides. She doesn’t think it’s super sustainable though, since waking up around eleven in the morning leaves her with little time to chase the sun.

She’s been using these friendly hours to write lately, but she might have to consider using them to catch up with some of the work from her day job. It’s quite ironic, she knows that.

Even the motorbikes don’t sound as noisy when she’s writing about them at 12 am. They drive her crazy at 7 pm though. She wonders if if she can use the flexibility of working remotely to her advantage. She knows she was enjoying it all when they’d just started out, almost a year ago. She doesn’t know when it all went haywire.

One thing she likes about the act of writing is how she can go from “thinking” to “doing” without much effort. She knows it’s almost common knowledge how thinking is easier than doing, and writing allows her to become a doer, for whatever it’s worth. Even if it’s often a thought dump, she likes how she ends up with something to show for it. For the time she spends thinking said thoughts.

It wasn’t easy tonight. She got distracted multiple times, she got distracted by the internet, she got distracted by tiny chores. But at some level, she knew it would happen as long as she came back to it. She recently read something about how there’s five elements to the human experience. These are – the form, the perception, the feelings, the mentality and the awareness. She thinks when she writes like this she’s almost speaking from the awareness’s perspective. It’s interesting to her, she almost becomes detached from the other four. And maybe she does. She likes to believe she does. When one becomes detached from the other four, they’re left with a purified form of awareness, she’s heard them say. She likes the idea of it. Ideally though, she’d want to be detached from the awareness as well. But it’s okay if that’s too far into the future.

She knows she’s taking it one week at a time, one day at a time, a few paragraphs at a time. That’s all she can do, really.

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