learning – untitled atm

089b – on balancing love and learning

Haven’t word-vomited in a few days. Have many thoughts. Been socially busy, but it’s been nice. But also a bit over-stimulating. Need calmness. I’ve also smoked quite a bit over the last few days and haven’t worked at all and I’m definitely not happy about that. Need to go back to reading Allen Carr.

Giving all of my attentive time to sentient beings feels quite nice, almost a bit addictive, but I’d like to be more careful with it. I noticed a white hair on my head today and although I’m not TOO worried, it definitely is a little uncomfortable. For this and adjacent reasons, I’d like to go back to prioritising health over pleasure.

Lots of people in my universe lately. I’d like to preserve my energy and attention, however. Since sometimes it becomes hard to recover from persistent feelings of being spread too thin.

January is about to end and February first-half is busy with friends but I’d like to plan work-goals for the second half of February so I don’t regret spending all my time on social things. I read a quote (can’t find it right now) which talks about how loving and learning are the two most important things in life. Because they are the two experiences you will likely not regret in life, regardless of how they come to you. I think I’m fairly aligned with this, at least for 2024.

So I just need to balance love (social) and learning (work) for the next few months. In the chase for secure love and attention, I do not want to put myself, my needs, my goals, my ambition behind. My relationship with myself still needs to be the most important relationship in my life.

There’s a quote by Rilke which goes: “And you must be indulgent with the answer, which will perhaps often leave you empty-handed; for ultimately, and precisely in the deepest and most important matters, we are unspeakably alone; and many things must happen, many things must go right, a whole constellation of events must be fulfilled, for one human being to successfully advise or help another.”

I quite like this. Something I’m attempting to do a lot more and live by is to “not put all my eggs in one basket” when it comes to people. I think the urge to find all answers and all peace in singular people has been quite harmful for me in the past. Safety, reliability, having your needs met (through and with other people) are very valid pursuits, but they need to be done mindfully.

Ah, I suppose that’s the theme of this whole word-vomit. How to give, take, love without getting too attached. Or how to practice connected detachment, I suppose.

I am a romantic and that’s okay and that’s great but I’d like to continue to be wary of romanticisation. I think it’s good and healthy.

Pillars have to be multi-fold. A single pillar cannot take the load of my depth. And that’s okay too.

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

080b – missions

I’ve been finding things that feel really great and authentic to myself. Missions, I think I could call them. At least, at the moment. Things I’m passionate about, in other words.

Art— this has been consistent for a while now. More of writing, more of music. Write more, sing more, learn to play more instruments. Learn to play instruments better. Learn to sing better. Do more of original writing and original songwriting until it starts to feel like I don’t like or enjoy it.
Healing, meeting my inner self— this has developed over the last couple months. I’m finding that there’s a lot more “experiencing of my soul” that I want to be doing, and that is aligned with one of my biggest values ie authenticity. Only by knowing yourself can you learn to “be” yourself.
Creating and accessing more safe spaces— for myself and others. I find that I really like it when someone tells me they feel safe around me. It feels special. And I feel called to do more of this.
Courage over convenience— what does this mean? I don’t know yet, maybe I mean “whenever possible, courage over convenience”. Of course we don’t want to be reckless and idealistic in a self-destructive way, but in steps, we want to be making the courageous choice as opposed to the convenience choice.
Play, fun, beauty— @britchida says that play is the opposite of survival mode. So of course when things are tough, I will not be engaging in play as much. However, whenever I can, I want to be leaning towards play and fun and beauty. And of course this ties with #1 because art is the one space where I can be playful and have fun even when I’m in survival mode (emotionally, at least).
Sustainability— this is of course the realist and rational part of me that wants to ensure that I approach life from a grounded place. I am at heart a romantic and a dreamer but I need to be an adult, I cannot operate like a child. Sustainability is going to be about that. About not being reckless. About remembering to think things through. Whatever that would mean to me.
Learning— this is another top 5 value of mine. I enjoy learning, I enjoy being good at things. It’s not about validation from other people (though of course I can’t deny that that’s enjoyable too) but it’s more about the kind of doors that can open for you. But that’s secondary, I also just like being good at the things that I enjoy doing, it’s just an inherent thing. I like the processes, I just like learning and deep-diving into certain subjects and gathering more knowledge about them. This also ties to why I like people— because you can learn a lot from people. In ways that you wouldn’t from books and the internet, I think. (I want to write more about this, actually, because it might be important to think more about “what” I want to focus my learning abilities on).

And that’s 80k words! December was a little slow with writing but that’s okay I think. There’s still 10 more days to do more of what I like. Sometimes I feel like I just want the words to keep flowing and never stop. Maybe this will be another thread.

Cheers xx

034b – art v/s. skills

Alright, it’s been a while since I’ve written, it’s due.

Life’s been interesting, now that I think about it. I consumed some pot, so I’m pretty active. Plus, I slept in the day, so I’m pretty active.

I’ve got this .. problem? of sorts. I feel quite all over the place, when it comes to practicing art lately. I’ve found that I enjoy 4-5 forms quite a lot – music (guitar, learning keys, singing), digital drawing, writing (poetry, blog..kind formats, and comedy-sketches-typeof things.)

Soo let’s break this down into pieces.

Why is this a problem? Is it a problem? Well, I got limited time. If I’m spending 4-5 hours of my free time on 2-3 different things (ideas) everyday, that’s probably making me inefficient / suboptimal. In terms of.. well, output, as well skill development.

One counter to this could definitely be increased organization. If I’m spending some time on structure and logging, I could probably reduce the overhead caused by context-switches etc. Alright well, I organized my notes directories. I’m actually pretty happy with it! I have deep faith in organizational tools, and making time for them.

Anyway, coming back to the problem breakdown. The deeper philosophical question: why is reduced output or reduced efficiency bad? What are my personal motivations behind creation or art, and what am I losing out on, then?
I think I have talked about this before, but for me there are two primary purposes of art:
1. expression, and 2. connection.
There could also be some secondary purposes. One (perhaps) is skill development.

The expression part, I think I’m good with. My natural self is able to find enough time and ways to handle that. So what remains is connection. And maybe a bit of skill development.

I think.. the connection part also, I’m good with. What remains then, is just this wish to be more.. skilled? But not sure of the reasons for it. Until my skills (or the lack thereof) are being a hindrance to what I want to express, I shouldn’t need to worry about skill development. Okay, I’m good with that conclusion.

To recap, one: I start being a little more organized. Which means: taking more notes, finding time for regular structure updates, setting weekly or monthly goals. (Also I noticed as I started filling up some of the docs, that as with tasks etc, my perception is probably pretty bad. The number of ideas or whatever I have in my head aren’t actually as much as I think I do, at a given point in time.) two: I reduce worrying about skills and where I’m at in those individual journeys. I recognize (or acknowledge) that that’s more of a distracting thought. I don’t need to know all the scales before I can express myself with music. I don’t need to be good at Procreate before I can express myself with drawings. Etc.

Onward!