Tag: conversations

084a – sleepless + abundance mindset + resignation

New neighbor that I have no way of contacting is drumming (it’s the middle of the night) and I can’t sleep. Obviously, sleep has been tough even otherwise but it’s extra tough with this added problem. I have brunch plans for noon so this is quite painful. Not sure if I’ll be able to wake up on time. 

Funnily enough, I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a drum kit since I’ve been learning them for a few months now— and I’ve been super confused between an electronic and a steel kit, and even though I knew acoustic kits can be super loud I was still considering getting one, hoping that maybe since there’s no one around on my floor I could still get by. But now that I know someone is nearby AND is equally annoying as I am— this could go either ways. One thought is that I’ve been pre-given a taste of my own potential medicine, and the opposite possibility is that “hey, we could both annoy each other”.

I’ll write this and then do some reading and just hope that they eventually stop. If there is a god then I’d love to get at least 6 hours of sleep tonight. 

I’ve been having nice conversations with friends lately and I get such a kick out of stimulating conversations that it sometimes feels so dry when you don’t have that going with other people. Where this is coming from is that lately I’d been trying to be more accepting of different kinds of relationships and dynamics in my life, I was trying to spend time with people even for other things apart from conversation— ie good feelings that come from other things like a ton of shared context, shared past, physical affection, and just.. non-words, in general. But I don’t know, when the words are good, that makes everything so much more fun. 

I’ve been thinking about abundance mindset a lot lately. With art, I think I’ve incorporated it a good amount into practice as well. For example, creating “more”, posting/sharing “more”, expressing “more” and with “more” types of people, so that you are not tied to specific things. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, as they often say. 

With friends also, I’ve gotten better at this. Make more friends (to the extent you can without a quality compromise, of course) for different parts of your life, perhaps. I wouldn’t say this is a cope to “loneliness” necessarily because I don’t think more friends can solve this really, at some point you also do need to be okay with being lonely, etc. However, it’s nice to have different friends for different interests, and different kinds of activities etc, I do believe it results in greater resonance than attempting to mould existing friends for everything. 

It’s been toughest for me with romantic interests and romantic relationships, though I’ve gotten much better at it over the last few years. It’s a hard thing to learn and accept really but at the end of the day you cannot make very few specific people the centres of your universe. And the trick is to not necessarily have to make “your own self” the centre of your universe or whatever, the trick is to really have just MANY centres in your universe. 

Obviously for me that’s consistently been friends, family, animals, nature, music, writing, art, tv, books, philosophy, and a little bit of spirituality for a good amount of time now. But then on some nights (nights like these), I cannot use my usual faculties to feel okay, and that’s when things feel quite tough, I suppose. 

*Sigh*. It is what it is, I guess. I’m going to make something to eat now and then read a bit. Hopefully, I’ll get to sleep soon. 

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.