Tag: friendship

085 – a break from doomscrolling

Happy with deactivating Instagram to be very honest. I’m realising it’s actually quite a waste to have your thought-process interrupted by social media. Of course, not all thoughts are interesting or useful, and I’ll be mindful of that, but from the chatter often come very interesting things, and that’s part of the skill-building I imagine, to find interesting things from a bunch of the noise. But for that I need to learn to tame and sort through the noise, not just quieten it down every time it starts to build. 

I’m also happy with a little bit of the abundance mindset dating I’ve been doing (or trying to do lately). Simply put, dating more than a single person at a time. It’s really the only way I can emulate secure attachment at the moment. 

Really want to get better at structured writing, or long-form writing, ie tying multiple related thoughts into a singular thing. I’m pretty meh at that right now. I used to think I have a lot of thoughts running through my brain ALL the time, but lately I feel like half of them are literally useless. I guess this is okay to realise, maybe that’s what growing up feels like. Or maybe that’s what a lot of word-vomiting allows me to get to. That I’m not as interesting as I thought. (And I don’t mean this in a self-deprecating way). Or maybe, that I need to put in more effort or work or focus-time to mould my thoughts into something “interesting”. Of course, that also opens up the question of what interesting is, really? I think I know this in my heart, though putting it out in words feels tedious, so I won’t attempt to do that right now. 

Something that I’d been mulling over is the amount of time I want to be giving to maintenance of relationships etc, since I sometimes feel like there’s too many relationships to maintain lately and I don’t know if I can maintain them all. Of course, this doesn’t mean I want to “end” relationships or whatever, but just that sometimes it’s hard to make time for too many people in a single week, or a single month or whatever. There’s also that constant quality/quantity debate. Generally, over the last few years, what has worked okay for me is thinking of friendships and relationships in tier-forms. (I know a lot of people think this way and I think that works for me too). That I have some tier-1 friends (inner circle, etc) and a lot of tier-2 friends and then some tier-3 friends, etc. I’d also seen post by Casey Tanner about types of friendships and that was pretty cool as well because then you don’t have to “rank” friends in a way but you can still (for your self) define how important different people are to you. I can’t find the post right now but it was something along the lines of: close friends, lifelong friends, daily friends, dinner friends, party friends, affinity friends, family friends, etc etc”. I do have a lot of “affinity” friends for example. Queer friends, music friends, writing friends, self-growth friends. And these are important connections, but I wouldn’t necessarily hang out with them every week. 

Anyway, I’d been mulling over how much time I can take out for social needs and whether I might just be over-indulging (ie continuing social interactions even after my social needs have been filled) and something I’m realising is that conversation is definitely something that I care about a lot. Conversation, when it goes well, has the power to move me in really unique ways. Conversation also allows me to test thoughts (and ideas) a lot better than anything else does. Sometimes I may have written a very simple word-vomit and even that allows me to be more articulate about my thoughts and feelings in conversation. Even about the simplest things. Basically coming to the conclusion that conversation is a great tool that runs parallel to writing. To that end, I don’t want to cut down my social time too much. I do think it contributes a LOT to creative work and growth, so I think it’s worth putting in the effort into it. And then again of course there’s the whole “you learn a lot of unexpected things from people”. Obviously, time is not infinite, so maybe I can’t just spend all my time with people (and obviously, my introversion will not allow for that either), but three good hangs in a week is something I can definitely strive for. At least for the next few months. I can always reevaluate once (when) I start working. 

I’m up at 9:30 am today and feeling great, even though today’s a pretty chilly day as well. Good sleep, good food, good people around me, I suppose it’s all quite nice. Feeling pretty grateful, too. 

I have a feeling reducing social media will also help me make more time for all the admin tasks I generally detest so much. Man, I’m feeling quite excited about this break! I might be romanticising it a little bit (lol) but I think that’s okay. If the benefits actually turn out to be that good, it’ll be very worth it. The main thing I’m doubting I think is whether it was even an addiction if it feels so easy to “quit”? I’m not sure, I guess we’ll find out. Will have to go back to the open question of understanding the addiction a lot better. 

Alright, that’s it from me right now! Cheers xx 

018a – can we make it in time?

A puff, two, four. His first cigarette of the day, two, three. A honk, two, a few too many. He finishes his pack, he wishes he had another. The car in front of him finally moved an inch, two. 

There wasn’t much in the world Aakash really cared about, but he valued being there for his friends. He was finding it terribly hard to accept that his best friend was struggling to get through a depressive episode at home and he might not be able to make it in time to help. He tried calling him. A ring, a text. Voicemail. A prayer. ‘Fuck’, he swore. 

He’d never been so upset about being stuck in Delhi traffic, even though he complained about it everyday, ever since he’d started driving. For all his promises about how he’d get out of the country soon, he knew he wasn’t really sure if he wanted to leave. There was a reason he hadn’t talked to his manager about potentially quitting soon. He had the options, he had the admit letters in his inbox, starred and marked unread for him to access easily, but he wasn’t sure if he was ready. For one, he genuinely didn’t like the thought of leaving Dev alone. He knew he wouldn’t be alone alone, but he also knew that none of their other friends really understood Dev’s struggles as well he did. They never seemed to have the same sense of urgency, the same sense of concern. Dev had never said anything though, of course he never would, they both knew they were adults with their individual, independent hopes and dreams.

A sigh. The traffic was finally moving and he was breathing a little normally again. He typed another text: “Yo I’ll be there in 10, you hanging on?”. A familiar swoosh told him it was delivered. He found himself speeding, touching numbers even he normally wouldn’t. He knew he was creating quite a bit of anger in people as he passed them, but he believed he was justified. They didn’t know what he knew, he thought. 

They didn’t know what it can mean to not make it somewhere in time. They didn’t know what regret can do to someone. They didn’t know about the promises he’d made himself that one night. The night his life had, for the lack of a better word, changed. The first time he’d lost someone. Really lost someone. They didn’t know the value of time. They didn’t know that sometimes you have to push aside rules for things that really matter. For people that really matter.  

‘Fuck’, he swore again. His rumination over the past wasn’t helping anyone right now. He finally slammed on the brakes. He’d reached Dev’s apartment building. He haphazardly parked the car and ran upstairs. Knock knock knock knock knock. He rained a swarm of knocks all over the door. He tried the doorknob, realized it was open and blasted inside. 

‘You could have replied to my texts, bitch!’, he yelled at the empty living room. ‘Dev! Dev?’, he continued to yell and seek. He entered his bedroom and finally saw him sitting on the floor, staring into nothingness. Not an unfamiliar sight. A breath, two. A sigh of relief. 

‘Hey, buddy’, he sat down next to him. He exhaled a few more breaths. He knew he’d made it in time.