growth – Page 2 – untitled atm

093a – age, explore vs exploit, attachment

Feeling very reflective today. I think I’m not that afraid of turning 30 anymore. I feel like things have only gotten better (so far) with the power that experience and age brings. I’m still ambitious, motivated, excited, prone to chasing pleasure, prone to human longings, but I feel more grounded. Of course, these feelings of stability and security are not PURELY related to age. There’s a lot of other things that play into it— geography, community, loving people ie family and friends, romantic partnerships, anti-anxiety medication, my therapist, goals I’m working towards, and lastly art and artistic outlets; and some of these (maybe most) can be present at most ages. But whatever it is, I’m feeling good about still have over an year to 30, and then sort of having a nice “second half” of my life from 30-55 or 30-60.

I don’t want to say that the life I envision post 60 is not valuable, but I imagine that will be very different considering the challenges that “old age” might bring, so I just feel like it’s futile to think about that right now. Obviously, one might argue it’s obviously futile to even think about anything beyond a week or two, really, but let’s keep that aside for a minute.

The point is— I’m excited about the second half of my life.

The numbers are just rough markers, of course.

I’m satisfied with the amount and kind of “explorations” I’ve done over the course of my 20s, and I feel good about sort of entering a bit of the “exploit” part of life, at least in the bigger picture. Not to say that I will curb my exploratory needs as and when they come up— and I think I am sufficiently exploratory by nature, and this has also been sufficiently stable over the last couple decades, despite the anxieties that come with exploration in general and despite my personal fears and anxieties. So I wouldn’t want to curb my exploratory needs too much, and my brain does devote maybe 10-20% of its bandwidth on curiosities. However, I’m learning to focus on the stability and safety that comes out of really leaning into the remaining 80-90% of the thing itself. Or (and) celebrate the good parts of what is.

—

In therapy we also talked about differentiating attachment (of the spiritual sense) and the real attachment (the one that exists within relationships etc). I think I’ve been mixing the two a lot over the last few years. I’ve convinced myself that I get attached too quickly and in unhealthy ways (even though that attachment was coming from my ego) and I forgot that I’m capable of maintaining and nourishing healthy attachments too. With friendships, for example— I’m actually capable of showing up in many many healthy ways. I’d like to not do myself disservice by confusing these two terms. Maybe it makes sense to think about what the healthy attachment means and looks like— do I want it? Is it a subset of love? What are the pitfalls? Why am I so afraid of it? I am not afraid of intimacy but I do find myself being quite afraid of “attachment”. So, yeah, that’s something I’ll be thinking about this week as well.

Cheers, happy Feb! xx

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

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

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.
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

083 – reflections

Alright, January is here. I did some reflection earlier in November, but I’d also known I’d want to do it January, again. (It’s so much fun!) Luckily, my sister sent me a guide that she found which looks pretty interesting. So I’m just going to use that format to do this.

(Always) make your questions bigger than your answers

Q: What was the biggest question I answered this year and why was it important?

Hands down has to be the question around how much do I enjoy art and creative pursuits, and how much time can I spend on these activities. The enjoyment is unparalleled, these activities give me a sense of deep joy and fulfilment, something that I only get from nature and people otherwise. I don’t know yet whether I can spend 40 hours on these activities but if I keep cycling between them in some way or the other, I can. This was important because really it feels like a way of life and I probably want to design my life in a way that I can keep enough time and energy for it.

Q: What are the three questions I want to gain answers to in the next year, why are they important?

What do I like more between music and writing? If at all there is an answer to this— or what would I like to prioritise, or focus more on? I do think I get more unadulterated joy out of music, but I’m not a 100% sure yet. I do think I need both in my life. It’s important because prioritisation is very important to output, and I’d want to have clarity on this.
Am I able to look at Delhi or any other Indian city as a place I can settle in, long-term?
What is my relationship with gender, masculinity and femininity?

(Always) make your purpose greater than your money

Q: What achievements over the past year most aligned with your purpose? What are you most proud of?

Moving to India (because it helped me spend more time with art and music)
Starting drums and learning keys more
Doing more songwriting
Music open-mics, poetry open-mics
20-30K words on my blog, started substack, wrote a lot more poetry

Q: What impact do you want to have over the next year? What actions will give you the greatest momentum toward this goal?

(Attempt to) release an EP (or a single at the least)
Write more songs
Try out more production
Collaborate with more people (find people with complementary strengths)

(Always) make your confidence greater than your comfort.

Q: Looking back over the past year, where did you expand out of your comfort zone? In what ways are you more confident now as a result of this expansion?

All the achievements I’ve listed above involved a lot of stepping out of my comfort zone. I’ve done a lot more exposure therapy wrt my anxieties as well. Even before to India, I’d done a lot of new things in Amsterdam itself. (Meeting new, diverse people, poetry open mics, more biking, etc). I’m definitely a lot more secure as a person lately, or at least a lot more accepting of me, my flaws and my limitations. I post a lot more without thinking about it, I invite people in my inner circle more easily. I trust “vibes” and frequency a lot more than “thoughts”— which is only a result of positive experiences which have come out of an inherent trust in life and the universe.

Q: What new commitment will require a jump in capabilities over the next year? What will be possible in making this leap?

Since releasing an EP is my biggest, most-important goal in the coming year, I would need a lot more trials, experimentation, technical skills, etc to make it all happen. Primarily I feel very blocked by the idea of sound mixing and editing and whether I want to do it myself or find other people to do it will become important to answer. But I can only know by trying it out, so I will need to get over that blocker and just do it. Making an action plan can help, I imagine. Which I will- this week.

(Always) make your cooperation greater than your status.

Q: What is an example of extraordinary teamwork or collaboration from this past year that created a big breakthrough?

Q: What teamwork will be essential to your multiplier goals this year?

Kind of the same here. Do a lot more collaborative music projects as opposed to solo projects. Learn to rely on other people for things that I’m not very good at, especially if they’re willing to do it. (For example, mom for help with house decoration etc, domestic help for taking care of house maintenance, food, etc), so on so forth.

(Always) make your enjoyment greater than your effort.

Q: Looking back over the past year, what activities, team- work, or projects provided the most enjoyment?

Q: Going into next year, what strategies or delegations will free you up to focus more on the activities that fascinate and motivate you most?

Again, this is the same here. I’ve already been focused on joy and fulfilment more than other things. So, pretty sorted with this.

(Always) make your gratitude greater than your success.

Q: Who are you grateful for in your life right now? are they important to you?

Q: What can you do to demonstrate or express your gratitude to these people?

Note that success to me is waking up happy, having a decent day, and going to sleep on time or getting enough sleep in the day, doing my healthy things, not resisting negative feelings that come my way, not resisting external situations too much. That being said, I feel like I do express a good amount of gratitude for the good people in my life. So, again, kind of sorted on this. Will obviously also make a Bangalore trip to visit close friends and kind of thank them, in a way. I suppose since quality time is my love language, I tend to prioritise that for people I love. But maybe I can also look at how people like to receive gratitude, and not just rely on quality time.

(Always) make your performance greater than your applause.

(Always) make your learning greater than your experience.

(Always) make your future bigger than your past.

Looking at these questions, I’m realising that the answers for me are pretty much centered towards creative pursuits (esp music), so I’m just going to leave the last few questions unarticulated, since they’re pretty repetitive even in my mind.

I’m linking the doc here in case anyone’s interested in referencing it for their own reflections!

Happy new year, cheers xx

081a – growth recommendations

Haven’t done this in a few days. There’s something about private journaling that’s just not cutting it. Almost like the reverse of what used to happen— that is, journaling used to be better than writing in public because I would feel more free. However since I feel sufficiently free here as well, I feel better when I write here, since it then adds towards goal-completion pursuits. Journaling sometimes feels like “lost progress”.

I’ve gotten a bit into Myers-Briggs and other personality tests again lately and though I know they can be a bit harmful (esp for people like me), I couldn’t stop myself from indulging in them. I think some of the findings have been interesting and can be potentially helpful too, actually, if I can take some time out to process them properly.

The INFP thing I’ve been pretty comfortable with, but a friend recommended the Enneagram test to me as well, and that’s been a lot more stimulus than I was expecting. I test to be a type-4 at the moment and everything that’s listed in the “growth recommendations” is stuff that is quite.. intense, for the lack of a better word.

The top two things that stick out, that also feel tough to implement right away, provided I’d even want to, are:

Don’t pay so much attention to your feelings— this is quite tough since the last few months have been me actually paying a good amount of attention to my feelings. I think the meaning I’d want to assign to this is that feelings are valuable, and I definitely want to validate them, take my time to “feel” them perhaps (through activity and action as much as possible), but maybe I need to have time-caps on this, because spending more time than needed on any of the feelings can be harmful, of course. Maybe I want to cut myself off before it becomes “indulgence”.
Avoid putting off things until you are “in the right mood.”— this is also something I’m quite guilty of. I do tend to take a lot of time to do things because I generally believe I don’t do good work if I’m not doing it from a good state of mind. While I thought I had gotten quite better at dealing with these perfectionist tendencies, maybe there’s some more work to be done. I think if I had to be real, I’ve gotten better at this from one end only— for example, I’m now okay with leaving things at “90%”, but maybe I also need to be better at “starting things”— even when I don’t feel like I’m in the best state for them.

The general theme seems to be that action, activity and discipline would be much better for me than fantasy and indulgence. Of course, this is something I know and I’ve been attempting to get to a point where I can think about implementing this, I haven’t yet.

I had a couple of interesting conversations with strangers this week and those was also quite impactful, but something my therapist said which really helped me look at it differently was:

What is the meaning you want to assign to it?

This is important since it made me realise the right words— especially the right questions— can make such a big difference. I was taking everything I was thinking and feeling to be the truth, whereas really, I do have some control over how much importance I want to give to events and stimulus and feelings and thoughts.

I feel like I have more things to talk about but I’m not sure what exactly. Social calendar is getting a bit pressurising— even though action and activity is nice, and it’s mostly nice to be around people, I don’t know what part of it is pressurising and draining exactly. Maybe it’s just my introversion needs coming into play. But when I do get time to myself I end up spending a lot of time in my head. So I guess the thing to figure out is how to spend time with myself that is still aligned with what I’ve learnt about action and activity. I think physical activity is the main thing I need to incorporate. I’ve been dancing a lot more and that feels pretty great, actually, but perhaps there’s more room for it.

Alright, I think I have a qualitative plan, I’ll convert this into an action plan next week.

Cheers xx

080a – better to speak, she said

“Is it better to speak or to die?” I’m starting to think it’s always better to speak.

I’m realising I’m perhaps not meant for the mainstream world. I know mainstream is a pretty evolving concept and it’s already been evolving from the previous decade or even the previous five years but what it is right now (especially in my environment) is definitely not where I belong. I really need to change my circles and/or my environment and find my people, my tribe. I definitely don’t belong in the heteronormative world.

Or is that just the anxiety talking? I don’t know. Sometimes we solve for x when we really need to be solving for y, I don’t know.

It’s the middle of the night and I have a long day ahead but I’m unable to sleep. Someone told me sleep problems are caused by a lot of suppressed thoughts and feelings in the subconscious, which would.. make sense, except that it’s hard to access suppressed things, they’re obviously suppressed for a reason.

Thinking about rationality and the heart and the gut a lot today. It can be really nice when they’re all in sync but often they’re not.

I’ve allowed my heart to run my life a lot lately but I might need to listen to rationality a little bit too.

What is rationality, really? Not ignoring evidence, I suppose. I suppose the heart can be a bit of a kid sometimes— stubborn, blind, spoilt, pampered, etc. And rationality, then, would be a bit of parent, or an elder sibling, really showing the heart that you don’t always get what you want and that’s okay. Most people in life don’t get what they want. There is no end to want, anyway.

How do we then make peace with what is? I suppose just facing realities can be a good first step. Acknowledging that what is is what is, even when it’s unpleasant, could be enough.

I always go back to poetry and music when things are tough but I haven’t been able to do that too much this week, not sure why.

How will I ever solve sleep? I don’t know. I need to make more action plans. I can’t just keep sitting with my problems, I need to be working towards movement.

Looking forward to this week though, have a couple of exciting music things lined up, and a couple nice social plans too. Maybe I’ll incorporate some workout too.

Alright alright, we got this. Gratitude, kindness, authenticity, learning, joy, nature— I can keep coming back to all this when things are tough.

078a – summoning courage

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!

075 – must I write // pt 2

Pt 1: Here

We’re on the way to being 75% done. I’m doing some reviews because this is the last quarter of this goal. I was looking at annual insights and I actually only wrote 5000 words in 2022. (Compared with 35K in 2021 and 25K in 2023). Wtf was I doing in 2022? I know Feb-May was pretty busy with the move but I’m surprised that I barely wrote throughout the year. I remember 2022 being okay too. I don’t know then. Maybe I was doing other things. Maybe I was living. Maybe I was growing? Is what I want to think, but I’m not a 100% sure. 5k words is like a seventh of 35K words. This is just incredibly surprising to me. Maybe at some point I just lost awareness of this goal I had in mind?

I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. Anyway. It doesn’t matter. I am a bit sleepy so I must write fast tonight.

I am clear that I like to write, a lot. Quite a lot. I’ve gotten better at it too. I like writing in short spurts, in flowy afternoons, on anxious days, on depressing days, on great days too. I do prefer writing in a notebook than on a laptop but of course I can do longer-form writing on a laptop.

Authenticity is a value of mine. Which needs clarity. Which needs writing. So I must write.

I’ve been doing more poetry and songwriting lately too and all of it also flows easier. I don’t know if these type of posts directly contribute to any of it but I imagine they must. How could they not? At worst, they’re reducing the gap between your brain (you) and the words coming out of you. And I’ve noticed this happening when I’m doing songwriting, I’m able to come up with truer-sounding lyrics without thinking much about it. So I suppose, that’s pretty great.

But an evaluation on why you must write is also an evaluation on what you want from life, at least in the medium-term, if not the long-term. Since I perceive inner and outer life through writing, these are the questions, problems, opportunities I want to explore in the next medium-term phase.

My relationship with gender, sex, femininity and masculinity
My relationship with courage— how do you find more of it, how do you build capacity, how do you balance it with not pushing yourself too much
The balance with myself, my creative pursuits, my “search” for love and maintenance of existing relationships
The balance with music, writing and limited time
The balance with creating things and sharing things (most recent explorations here)
Do I want kids? If so, do I want to bear children or do I want to raise children?
Do I dare to dream? Dreaming has become a little scary lately, do I want to be a realist instead? Or where do I want to be on this spectrum?
I feel a sense of responsibility towards my parents and (sometimes) the society. How much can I take? What are my values here?
There are certain things I don’t even imagine I can do based on the version I have of myself. What are these things? Knowing them wouldn’t hurt. Whether or not I choose to pursue any of these (based on #2 and #7) will be a question for the future me, but it might be worth exploring what kinds of wants and desires I have. (Soul-based, not ego-based).
I’ve been enjoying reading a lot more again (over the last 6 months). I want to continue to read more. What kind of books should I look for. I want Ocean Vuong and Sally Rooney type of words since they always really inspire me to write more. So I think this is worth looking into.

Maybe that’s it for now. I think writing is the easiest way for me to get in touch with myself. I used to be critical of why I go through these qualitative analyses and evaluations when I should be jumping to lists and action items immediately. But now I’m realising these explorations, rambles, etc are the equivalent of what two or more people would do in an ideation and brainstorming session. What are the things we want to be working towards, what is the general vision, etc. Filtering all this down into action items is a separate task. Writing is the first step. Writing is what brings things from inside into the conscious awareness, at least.

I know I may be repeating myself a lot in this post but I think I need to write the truth over and over again to make sure I can (eventually) internalise it. I may or may not have said this before, I cannot remember.

If I wanted to, I can write everyday for the rest of December and wrap this project up. I used to always maintain that this is a “quantity first, quality later” project and do I want to change tact at this point? Why should I worry about the quality now? If I wrap this up I can also start thinking about the other projects in my awareness. I don’t know, let’s see. I’m not sure yet. I was in survival mode the past week so I don’t want to push myself too much either.

This wasn’t fast and it took me slightly over an hour. But we’re done and that’s a lot of progress too! Happy Monday, folks. 🙂

067b – the inherent insecurity of an artist

Something that I always keep coming back to is labels. I know that it’s important to me that I accept certain labels (from myself, for myself).

What are these labels, you ask?

Well, to name a few: artist, photographer, writer, poet, musician, singer, vocalist

I want to be able to use them for myself without scoffing.

I know exactly when I started rejecting these labels (I actually picked it up from someone else who was rejecting labels because they didn’t feel deserving of them, and because I thought that this person was actually much better at the craft than I was at the time, I internalised “well if they’re not even calling themselves a photographer, how can I?). And I applied the same reasoning to all others labels as well.

HOWEVER, there is only so much time and brainpower. It gets tedious to go through this dialog which almost always goes the same way.

Oh but how can I call myself an artist?
> Oh but you are an artist.
But I’ve never made any money out of my art or I don’t even know if any of my art is good!
> Yeah but that doesn’t matter.

So, obviously, there is a push and a pull here. There are two parts that are fighting with each other.

Maybe rejecting these labels served me a purpose AT SOME POINT OF TIME. Maybe I didn’t want to come across as overconfident, or cocky, or lacking self-awareness, etc etc. I was afraid of judgement, basically. But is it serving me at all anymore?

If I write -> I am a writer.

If I click pictures -> I am a photographer.

If I paint (sometimes) -> I am an artist.

If I write poetry (sometimes) -> I am a poet.

If I play or make music -> I am a musician.

This SHOULD feel true. This SHOULD feel enough. But why is it that it still doesn’t? I think it’ll take some practice.

Let’s look at some definitions:

noun: artist: a person who creates paintings or drawings as a profession or hobby.

noun: musician: a person who plays a musical instrument, especially as a profession, or is musically talented.

noun: writer: a person who has written something or who writes in a particular way.

You get the gist. I think it’s always the “especially as a profession” that I would hang on to as the main reason for rejecting all these labels.

Yesterday at a poetry slam somebody talked about the inherent insecurity of an artist. Obviously I really related to that and we talked about it at length, but couldn’t really come to a conclusion. I think over the last few years, enough people have given me the gift of putting these labels on me and while it always feels magical to hear someone call you a poet or a musician or an artist etc etc, I know that what I really really NEED is for me to give myself the same gift, again and again.

So okay, there is a clearly an inner-critic who is not ready to give this to me. Maybe I can think about the benefits of these labels, instead, then?

To be honest, the only benefits I can think of for now are just more efficient and optimal conversation, I do think second-guessing everything you say can get tiring for someone listening to you. And then that (ie more confidence, surity) allows for quicker connections with potential collaborators as well.

Maybe you’re thinking, how the fuck does this all matter? Call yourself whatever you want, just do the damn thing. But I’ve found that loopy dialogues like these are exactly what prevent me from doing the damn thing. If I’m thinking about this insecurity, then there’s a reason for it. I feel strongly about it, and I do feel a need to resolve it.

Maybe that’s enough. Maybe I don’t need 100 benefits to a thing to adopt it. It feels true, it feels resonant. I know I revel in labels like woman, queer, demisexual, ambivert, etc etc. So why is it that I feel so undeserving of these other labels?

I still don’t know. Ah, I don’t know if I got anywhere with this.

But I’ll end this with one more point to my inner critic: maybe it’s just realising that calling yourself a musician doesn’t mean that you’re implying that you’re a good musician. That is something you cannot decide. You’re passionate about these crafts and you’re also cognisant about the subjectivity of art, that is all there is, actually.

066b – more on being HSP

I mentioned a few posts ago that I’ve been learning more about the highly sensitive person trait lately. Today has been a bit of a gloomy day because of some of the things I read. Although in many ways this feels like a puzzle piece that had been missing for a long time from my landscape of self-understanding, it does come with its fair share of sad-ish realisations.

I will not be able to express all my ideas.

I think this hit harder because yesterday had been a very prolific day (from my standards) in terms of creative expression and I’d been feeling overjoyed and extremely enthusiastic about a lot of it. I did feel a little overstimulated already today morning, since I hadn’t caught enough sleep, but then I ended up reading the book I’ve been reading on HSPs which coincidentally also hit this point. That someone like me can feel overstimulated or over-aroused not just because of “intrusive thoughts” but also thoughts (and ideas) in general. And we need to be aware that we won’t be able to do justice to them all.
The balance between finding peace/calm and “satisfaction” might be a constant struggle.

If I’m someone who wants to work on, express and share a lot of my ideas, but can only operate on a lower productivity than the “majority” of the people around me, I’m probably going to find myself either a. a bit dissatisfied or b. regularly overstimulated. So, yeah— I suppose this is going to be a constant struggle. I might have to REALLY ask myself what’s important.

In other words, sustained peace might also be a bit elusive. I imagine it’ll be a regular dance of arousal and calm as opposed to just staying calm for a whole day, for example.
I need to not use social media as a way to calm myself down.

This one isn’t sad, it makes sense actually, and I need to work on this anyway. I was checking Instagram a lot throughout the morning and even after waking up but by the afternoon, I felt completely depleted even though I didn’t really do anything exhausting or tiring, really. I’ve noticed that I end up feeling not very great if something important to me doesn’t get the response I expected. I’ve talked about this before, but this is my reminder. Definitely need to be cautious about this.
Paying attention to and not compromising on sleep will be of utmost importance.

I am susceptible to letting sleep suffer if I’m really enjoying certain activities (whether it’s hanging out with friends or really getting in the zone with something creative etc). However, I need to remember that that short-term gratification is NOT worth fucking up your entire next day. We’re pretty good at accepting that that’s true for things like work and partying (for example) but I need to remember it applies to almost everything. Except like really urgent situations. (Health-related, etc).

Okay, this is all for now, I imagine I’ll be talking more about this regularly. Like I said earlier, bear with me! And if you’re HSP too, let me know!