life – Page 4 – untitled atm

088a – feeling feelings

They say a sign of emotional intelligence is to hold feelings without letting them drive your decisions. But I hope it’s okay that I “decide to” write (and publish) even when I have big feelings because I (like to) think of myself as somewhat emotionally intelligent and I won’t let them tell me otherwise. Granted, I do spend a good amount of time with my feelings lately but I did want to spend a lot of my time on creative work and the one thing I know for sure is that I create best when it’s driven by feelings. Skill has always been a secondary pursuit to me and reception is also not been something I’ve been able to measure but I know that my happiness and joy in creation is highly dependent on following feelings.

There is a lot I’ve been feeling today and I wrote it all down earlier tonight but I still don’t feel empty.

There are things I want to say to people who may or may not want to hear them but I am fragile and I don’t know how to gauge well what other people want. What do I want? I want to bare my soul (or whatever) without being made to feel like that’s something I’m not supposed to do.

Sure, I can make music and I can write poetry and I can make it all a little more “digestible” but what is it about things being as is that makes it “non digestible” for other people? I won’t know. Maybe I’m not supposed to know.

My mother has become quite a close “friend” of mine over the last few months and I feel so lucky to have her in my life. I lay my head in her lap today and asked her how we as a race (ie humans) can get intimacy so wrong and she looked at me with sympathy which made me feel like she thinks it’s not necessarily a race problem but a me problem. And maybe it really is a me problem and I’m okay to take that feedback because I’ve been doing a lot of the work and I’ve been doing healthy things and maybe it’s okay that there’s still a lot of work to be done and I’m willing to accept that because the other explanation is that I’m severely unlucky and that just does not seem to be true, really, so.. I don’t know.

I feel like the world always wants me to process things faster than I want to process them and despite repeatedly expressing that I don’t like being rushed people keep rushing me. They want me to move on faster, be happy faster, not grieve as much as I do, not be sad as much as I am, not talk about things as much as I do.. and yet, they don’t know how to set their own boundaries, is what jumps out to me, almost. I guess this means I would really respect people who are able to set their own healthy boundaries.

I don’t know. Today’s a bit of a bouba day. Although I’m not displeased. Cheers xx

087b – january rambles

I want to write, I need to write. And to do that I need to accept that the only thing I want to write about is you, at the moment. Well not just at the moment. Since a few days actually. And I imagine that will continue for a few more.

In a way, you’re a muse.

And maybe that’s why I’m already attached to you, the idea of you, etc. I don’t want to do this. I want to see you. Not through my image, but through yours.

Anyway, stomach is upset so I can’t get rid of feelings in any other way except by ranting about them on here.

I wonder how we can cultivate a better relationship with our muse(s)? All the people that I’ve liked and loved have always been a source of inspiration for me in terms of art and creative work, and yet.. it’s futile to think of your relationship with different people as something in your control. It’s really not. That’s generally the beauty of it. That they (or your interactions with them)make you feel things you wouldn’t have felt otherwise. And I’m not just talking about romantic feelings, though of course yes, they do generally dominate the muse-world.

I need to figure out the main tasks I want to be working on from next week onwards because essentially I didn’t really get anything done this week. Journaling and music journaling is something I’m automatically finding myself doing a good amount, and that’s great, but I’d like to use these two things as tools for the next few weeks, and not aims. I know that most people swear by the idea of “keeping yourself busy” and I think that’s something I need to follow and be strict about over the next few weeks as well. I think this also means going back to being a bit more routinely with work, etc. The way I’d been able to do back in November. Honestly, it’s the winters that has completely fucked up everything for me. I don’t know why I feel so cold and why this seems to be a bigger problem for me than it is for most other people I know.

I’m hungry, too, but anything I eat makes me feel terrible and I don’t know how to solve this.

Someone once told me I’m very slow with things, and I feel like it’s true, but I don’t know how to be better at this. How does one be faster at things? I think I need to automate food, sleep and chores to the extent that I can. It’s really coming in the way at the moment actually.

I’m also experiencing the need to call onto rationality. I feel like I’ve been spending a lot of time with feelings lately (I also feel like I’ve mentioned this here before) but I’m not sure how to be rational. Or how to access the rationality that I know I have in me.

Rick Rubin says we write to see things we already know. I suppose we can keep writing until we’re able to incorporate the things we need. Hope this makes some sense. That’s it from me for now. Cheers xx

087a – updates and planning

Lots going on. Lots of feelings and thoughts. Attended a big-ish poetry open mic which triggered some insecurities, although I did come out with a couple of really nice takeaways. Found some inspiration, found some people to connect with, and was also able to “provide value” (I think) by talking to a few students who were really interested in the processes and the community and how they could get more involved with poetry and slam poetry in general.

I think it’d be nice to be able to attend a workshop on slam poetry sometime soon because shifting from page to slam might require some more intentional work that I’m not able to put in yet.

Something I’m incorporating in dating (ie what I look for in a partner) now is maturity. For the longest time I’ve “known” that this is something I like but I’ve also thought that it’s something that I can get by without (because “I’m plenty mature for the both of us”). But I’m realising lately that that’s not how it works (LOL). But also realising that maturity doesn’t just come from books and movies but also a good amount of life experience. Also maturity on what fronts, really? Not just in terms of life and existing and suffering, but really having interacted with a good amount of people, with a good number and type of people, situations, etc etc. I don’t know yet how I can test for this when dating, but it’s something I’d definitely want.

I wrapped up the 10-songs project for now (reflections here) and something I’m realising is that it’s literally very similar to word-vomiting and journaling. I’m still continuing with music and writing as need based things (ie feeling outlets) and that will likely stay, I think. Production and release will be a separate project, one that I’m not beginning anytime soon. I’m going to be working on the smaller things this January. Small admin tasks, other P1 mini-projects etc. I’ve also got a vocals exam and I’d like to wrap it up soon since it’s stretched on for too long now.

The other thing that’s going on is no-Instagram-January. Today I felt like I want to activate it again because I felt the need for connection. But then if I don’t carry on for at least 2-3 weeks without giving in I wouldn’t really be able to tap into the returns, if any. Because my need for connection actually wasn’t a need for connection, only regulation. And for regulation, I mostly want to rely on myself, or actual, real people, not social media.

Not sure exactly what to focus on this week, work-wise, but I need to decide at least a few things otherwise I might end up doing nothing, really. I think I might need to follow a sprint model for personal tasks as well because that actually works pretty well, in my experience. It’ll allow me to not get “triggered” by my todo list but instead just look at it as opportunities— opportunities that I can explore at the pace that I want to.

Alright that’s it for today! Hope you’re having a good start to the week. Cheers xx

086a – thought-trains and fears

Fucked up sleep schedule again. I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to sleep. Either I just accept that I’m sleeping weird hours or I genuinely try to be disciplined. I think I’m just going to accept that for the next few weeks because once I’m traveling (ie end of this month) and spending time with other people I think the routine will automatically come into the picture.

Yeah, so maybe for the next couple weeks, it’s alright to have a slightly weird sleep schedule.

Did a lot of music things the whole day yesterday, felt pretty nice, although I do feel like I’m getting very daydreamy with my goals and tasks. Like it’s not like I’m not spending enough time on the doing (I am), but I’m still spending a LOT of time just romanticising it all.

In general also, I’ve been thinking a lot about romanticisation and glorification. Is it a problem? It’s obviously better than catastrophisation but I think it’s sort of the same thing. In a way, you’re spending time away from the present and away from awareness. So, yeah, I’d definitely want to be spending less time in my head. So how do I do this really? I’ve cut out a lot of my “vices” or copes to this problem over the last few months, I think there are in a way just the innermost layers remaining now.

Ie just core strong self-discipline. Habits, I suppose, is what people vouch by a lot. Yeah, maybe I’ll think about habit building a bit too. Maybe I recognise what situations I’m most prone to rumination and daydreaming in. Obviously, keeping a journal and a guitar near me as much as I can helps me too. But that’s not enough, I think. I think I’d want to be better at both the routes— cutting the thought “spirals” (regardless of whether they’re down spirals or up spirals) through body interference (movement, or action for eg) but also through brain interference (“hey, you’re in your head”, “hey, you’re on a thought-train, do you want to write about it perhaps?”). Yeah, I think I’ll try practicing these things a bit.

I slept from 7am-2pm today and I think that’s okay, I do tend to need 9 hours of sleep. Anyway, I think it’s all okay. I can’t always be questioning everything. I’m happy doing the work I’m doing lately, I just don’t want to get lost in it— is something I’ve been feeling lately. But just as I write this, I wonder if it’s okay to get lost in it for a few months? I’m just afraid of becoming a workaholic to be very honest. I don’t want to prioritise work over health and relationships. I do want to keep health at the top, and then relationships and work at an equal footing, for sure.

Man, there’s no sun today either. Hope tomorrow is better! Hope you’re having a good week 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

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

082b – seriousness

Thinking about meaning and usefulness lately.

re: meaning

Lately I’m realising I do like assigning meaning to things. (I mean, I’ve always known this but it’s only lately I’m realising how automatic, strong and frequent this process is for me.) Obviously, this contradicts a little bit with mindfulness, and I’m still not sure how much I must allow myself to extract meaning out of events. Sometimes I think that we do have roles to play in this world, because otherwise there isn’t a point.

Or if life or sentience is even, simply put, a random occurrence, even then, if assigning meaning to it makes it easier for me— then why not?

I suppose it is only the “attachment” to the meaning (whatever that is for you) that might make it a problem. I guess, if we can practice connected detachment, then meaning can probably serve as a good guiding star.

What is the problem, then? I suppose the problem is it’s hard to keep a check on how far you can constantly get lost in the narrative. If you don’t keep your meaning-assigning-parts in check, or if you don’t regularly question them, or put them through scrutiny filters, you might end up away from awareness.

Okay, where is all this coming from?

I was having a discussion with some people and someone claimed that “life shouldn’t be too serious” and I think I got somewhat triggered by that statement. I went on a bit of speech on how “life is serious, actually” and how there’s wars happening and how people aren’t being nice and kind to each other and all of that is serious. But now that I recognise that maybe that’s not what that person was claiming at all, I suppose, I need to apologise to them. (Oops)

But I do feel strongly about how humanity needs to be better. I don’t know what this is exactly but I clearly need to explore this more, otherwise I might get keep getting triggered every time someone says anything along the lines of “life isn’t that serious”.

Of course, I recently came across this which I’m planning to read soon because it might be helpful for me. And something I read probably from the same essay was that the trick is to “not take your self too seriously but it’s okay to take your work seriously” and that does resonate with me a lot. I’ve now accepted that my work isn’t about me necessarily but I am the vessel that’s doing the work and for me to do it well it makes sense that I would take it seriously. Even if I’m having fun, I tend to be serious about having fun, if that makes any sense at all. And maybe another thing to remember is that people just function differently, maybe “taking things lightly” allows some people to live an easier life— and that’s okay— but for them to generalise this for everyone is what I don’t necessarily like.

So, I suppose part of the problem is just accepting that I am a serious person and I do take “life” and the world and many things that we have in front of us seriously. Whatever that means, really.

I’ll talk about usefulness another time, I don’t feel like getting into it at the moment.

Happy last day of 2023, I hope you don’t resist whatever comes your way 🙂

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.

078b – rest and recovery

Fun, beauty and truth. Maybe just incorporating enough of these elements in a sustainable way is what I need to be doing for this chapter of my life. It’s been incredibly difficult over the last two weeks and yet, I know that I’ve faced difficult life situations before and why should this be any different? Or even if it is, it doesn’t mean I can’t face it.

Writing and music are the two things I can still do while nothing else makes sense, so here I am.

I’ve started anxiety medication again (the last time I tried them was in 2021) and I don’t know why but my body seems to be resisting them a bit. Obviously I’ll discuss this with therapist and psychiatrist but regardless wanted to note down this feeling.

My biggest worry with medication has always been whether it can hamper my creativity (since overall toned down feelings could potentially reduce my motivation to “express”), but in the past that wasn’t the case. I’m hoping that’s not going to be the case this time as well.

When I started the “what do I like to do” question journey, something I would constantly tell myself is that it’s okay to not know. I wonder why I’m not able to tell that to myself when it comes to the gender question also? Gender is going to be such a complex thing, how can I possibly know in a month or two? I need to be open and patient with myself as I address this question.

Of course, I might need a lot of help, from people who aren’t even in my universe yet, so I need to make actionable tasks for how I can possibly find this help, support and resources that I might need.

If being alive is the ultimate creative act, maybe it’s okay to take my time as I figure out what I want “me” and “my life” to look like.

But yes, I do feel some apathy towards my form which I’m obviously not very happy about.

How to approach open questions sustainably, then, becomes an important question.

When I had a lot of work stress I asked my manager if I could take a week off. Maybe right now I just need a week off from personal stuff. From everything. Maybe I just want a week off from thoughts and feelings. I suppose that’s okay too. Because survival over truth, at the moment.

Yes, I think it makes sense to want rest, physical and mental. I’m just going to take it easy till Sunday. Do the bare minimum, and not push myself. Maybe focus on food and rejuvenation.

Alright looks like we have a plan, onward!