Finally have my first-ish essay ready for Substack. I’ve decided to post more long-form and “thought-out” essays on Substack from this week or next week onwards. I imagine I’ll still continue journaling-style writing here and post on a much lesser frequency on Substack but let’s see how that goes. Not sure whether or not to port this mailing list so if you want to go ahead and subscribe to that in advance you can do that here.
I have an updated verdict on Indian weddings: I don’t hate them, in fact they can be very special, and I don’t want to not attend these in the near future. However I do need to figure out a more comfortable outfit situation so that I’m not background-frustrated for 2-3 whole days.
I also realised how large events (events with many people) can be pretty great for creative work— you get ideas and they’re also pretty great for sharing and testing ideas too. Plus personally I find a lot of general value in conversation too and I think places where you can have various types of conversations can be great resources.
I am however extremely exhausted and I’m going to fall asleep soon but I really wanted to write a post first since substack is not yet setup correctly with all the logistics etc.
I feel better in terms of organisation now, I have a better handle on tasks, projects, etc. I imagine this could work decently well at least for the next month or two. I still want to wrap up a few things in December and I’m optimistic about the next 20 days or so. There’re of course enough social commitments to also make time for but I’m going to attempt to “get” as much out of them as I can.
I posted about courage here as one of my open questions and I managed to do a couple of courageous tasks earlier today (ie facing my own thoughts and feelings about an uncomfortable topic) and I want to note down what worked for me.
- A lot of quiet time and observation-time with nature. I think it really helps to ground yourself through nature. Remembering that we’re all god’s creations so we are indeed capable of summoning all the courage from inside us that we might need.
- However, facing tough situations in steps— if you can afford to— can help a lot. It’s important to recognise that something is likely to be “too much” if you attempt to face it all at once, and so doing it in steps can be critical.
- Writing notes and letters to yourself. Affirming yourself.
- The internet is a great place to find people who can inspire you. Find heroes. Find people who might have gone through similar struggles. Find people who’ve done courageous acts and are talking about them. I think de-anonymised accounts help a lot more than anonymised stories, but that could just be my preference.
- Find community.
- Remembering that the opposite of facing your fears is either depression or delusion. If either of those things sound okay to you, that’s great, if not, you probably don’t have a choice.
I don’t know why I shifted to second-person when I started listing these down, but whatever. Maybe somebody will find this useful. Maybe not, maybe I will again, tomorrow.
I’ll keep this one short, feeling pretty tired today. Write later, welcome December!
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