084b – trying to funnel life a bit

Been very busy— socially— over the last couple days. Haven’t had enough time to myself. Haven’t been sleeping too well either but I finally caught up on that earlier today. The sun hasn’t been out for almost a whole week now which sucked quite a bit although music and people have been keeping me sane and happy. 

Finally bought an electric guitar after many months of mulling over models etc. Excited to practice and learn a few songs this month. 

I’d been thinking about temporarily deactivating Instagram for a while now and I finally took the plunge. Current plan is to keep it deactivated for 2-3 weeks and then see if I need it or no. Reasoning behind deactivation is primarily that I want to minimise unnecessary stimulus. I want to be more careful and mindful about the kind of content I consume and Instagram is coming in the way a bit, I guess. Further, the two main reasons I was still keeping it around were that

  1. it was one of my primary ends for creative expression (especially with photos as well as “thought dumps”) but I think I’m more determined to focus on journaling/writing/music as the primary forms of expression, at least this month, so maybe Instagram is just a bit of a distraction from those goals.

  2. i think I also had a lot of space for new people and connections in life and I thought Instagram can be a good way to keep that channel open. And while it’s true that you do sometimes find interesting opportunities and people through social media, I just feel like I have enough on my plate for the next few weeks so maybe for now I’m alright. 

So yeah, figured it’s worth testing. 

Kind of excited about getting to 100K words soon(ish) but also wondering what the next steps would be. This is good practice, I feel like I tend to keep jumping ahead with things. Or maybe, I just leave this question here and let the answers come to me. If the answers haven’t arrived, then I can potentially keep going as well. [open question]

Focused on drums class, vocals exam, learning Corduroy Dreams on guitar this week, and that’s probably sufficient work to be thinking about, so maybe I can allow myself to not have to think about January planning etc. 

Still have a couple of people I want to meet once or twice before they go back to their bases. 

Lots of travel lined up this year and pretty excited about all of it. 

I’d like to think about (and do some research on) whether long-form content consumption (like books, for example) is actually healthier compared to social media content consumption or not. Like obviously, intuition says it is, and I’ve heard a lot of such sentiments in passing, but I don’t think I’ve ever read about it properly. So yeah, that’d be good to learn more about. [open question]

Cheers xx 

055b – quietening voices

I spend half of my time trying to quieten the voice in my head. My self-talk isn’t too negative (ie I have worked hard on this and at least that’s good), but there is still a lot of talking happening, I don’t think it’s very helpful. However, it’s a little tough to keep yourself engaged with something all the time. I wish doing nothing wasn’t so effortful. 

I was working on a painting today but it didn’t turn out very well, so that bummed me out for quite a bit. But then I was going through an old sketchbook (not super old, maybe from a few months ago) and I discovered a painting that I really liked. In theory I know that making a lot of “bad” art is the only way I’ll also be able to make some good art, and all that’s fine, but it’s still a bummer when you don’t like the end result. 

I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to focus enough on a single form of creative expression for long enough that I can consider monetising it. This could just be the anxiety talking, or maybe I genuinely need some help with this. 

Feeling more and more settled in my new place with each passing day though, and that feels good. I’m hosting a housewarming thing over the weekend and definitely looking forward to it. 

I finally finished reading “Normal People” (having seen the show before made the read a little slow) but needless to say it was a great book. Sally Rooney’s definitely getting added to my favourite-authors list.

Having time to myself (ie time for emotions and art) has been great, but I do think I need to increase my chores/errands output a little bit too. Not very sure about how to go about doing this. Maybe I need to get more organised in some ways. 

When I consume great content (ie content that impacts me in a unique way), it’s always accompanied by a desire to be making great content, but I’m not able to follow-through on execution, not much. I wish the line between self-compassion and complacency was not as fine. 

Despite me having having moved out, the presence of my grandmother is just too strong. I feel bad for her mental state, but I also know I don’t have any solutions for her. She calls me once every 2-3 days and I try to talk to her but it’s just incredibly frustrating. I think knowing that she affects both my mom and dad so negatively makes me additionally unaccommodating of her. 

Anyway, despite all this, I think I feel sufficiently grounded on a day-to-day basis. I’m about to turn 28 soon! I did some yearly reflection the other day but I want to make some more time for it. Might share that next post. 

Good week ahead!

(Wrote this last night but forgot to hit publish, so here I go)