Tag: frustration

055a – “morning pages” but it’s just frustration

Mornings get incredibly tough out of the blue these days. I guess it’s just teething issues but I think when you’re not expecting certain things to happen it’s tougher to deal with them. Although of course our true strength is determined by and the maximum growth of course happens with the unexpected. I think I’m used to people only coming around when I know someone is supposed to come around. I was woken up today by a couple of doorbells by random errand workers and it just completely messed my morning up. I’d slept pretty late anyway so this made it quite worse. 

I’ve been struggling with the amount of dust in the house, which causes me to be really alert and active when the house-help comes to do the cleaning and stuff. I’m also struggling with how much of mom’s voice keeps echoing whenever house-stuff is happening. Like I think in a vacuum, I wouldn’t even care about half the things, but her voice is so loud (figuratively) that I end up caring about 10 more things than I usually would. House tasks are endless, I haven’t been able to accept this yet. 

I think alone time isn’t alone time when it’s being used up by tasks and chores. For it to be really quality alone time, I need to have more brain and body space to do nothing. Or to do things that help me feel more connected with myself. Like this, for example. 

I have therapy today after almost two weeks, looking forward to it. I’d been thinking of reducing frequency from weekly to bi-weekly (to save expenses a little bit), but this gap made me realise I’m not ready to do that yet.  

Physical activity has taken a hit over the last couple weeks because of the move, which I think is also affecting me quite a bit. Need to get this started again. Food has also taken a bit of a hit simply because I’m finding I feel quite lazy to cook or even assemble food, I might need to just spend the funds and keep a cook for my own sanity. Let’s see how that goes. 

Social, dating, creative pursuits are going pretty decently, can’t complain much over there. 

I think overall, I definitely don’t feel as much loneliness or isolation here (ie India), and general “big picture” anxiety is lower too, but I do feel more stressed and frustrated by the little things on a daily basis. Jury’s still out on what’s worse. Will be a major determinant for geographical decisions. 

I got scammed by some fake caller the other day and I thought I was over it but somebody asked me a question about it just now and it triggered major “self-inadequacy” feelings in me (ie how could I be this stupid etc) which is making me realise I’m not completely over it. Ah, well. 

Anyway, that’s it from the last couple days. Hope your day’s going better than mine is! 

023b – frustration over the lack of time is generally about something else

Turns out there are limits to introspection. They’re not as straightforward as “I’m done now, I have nothing more to think about”, but more of a gradual decrease in the number of times you get triggered into introspective loops, daily, weekly, and so on.

Since I was mostly doing personal writing so far, my posting frequency has drastically decreased. I feel emptier now, in good ways though. It’s good for me generally, but not great for this “numbers goal” I had. I might have to consider sitting down to write even when thoughts aren’t coming up naturally. This means there’s going to be deliberate effort needed now. And we all know how bad most of us are at keeping things up when they get even a little tough.  

I’ve been watching a lot of Netflix for the last couple weeks. I don’t think I watched a super unhealthy amount, but I do feel some sort of negative feelings around it, which could be worth paying attention to. The good thing is, the show I was watching is over, so I don’t have anything great (or bingeworthy) queued up for the next few weeks. 

I think every time I feel frustrated about not being able to meet my writing goals, I think about time-management and end up on the “how do I make time for everything that I want to do?” question. But I think the truth is I’m not frustrated with the apparent lack of time, the frustration is simply about not having anything to write when I do actually sit down to do it. It’s a frustration about being distracted, about thinking of Y and Z while doing X. 

I think the frustration is also about not getting enough engagement on the things I’m posting lately. Be it blog posts or song covers. Although I’m aware that I’ve been putting in less effort in “sharing stuff” and engagement is only in limited ways a reflection of the quality of my work, it’s still generally nice to keep getting engagement on it. Even though it might not be enough to create motivation when it doesn’t exist, I think it can keep the flame burning, so to speak.

I’ve been thinking about whether I feel ready for “society” in the post-pandemic world. There’s still a decent amount of time to go before I absolutely have to start working from office, but even then, it’s something that’s on my mind. I’d be excited to see some people, some old hands, some new ones, but I’m also anxious about some of my old worries that used to come up when I was going in to work everyday.

Lastly, feeling grateful. Grateful that I get to do this. A weird random thought about how I probably wouldn’t be able to carry on a lot of the things if I had kids and/or dependents? Not sure whether it’s true but feels like it.

Sometimes I feel like reducing my minimum required words to 500 from 1000 is a little hacky. Since some of the interesting stuff is only uncovered much later into a 1000-word post. I feel like 500 words come around even with some of the surface-level stuff, and it allows me to exit before I can get to the juicy stuff. But I’ll think more about this later. Adios!