love – Page 2 – untitled atm

069a – passive writing, intentions for the week

I want to sleep before 4am today. Because I really want to wake up before noon tomorrow. Which means writing a word-vomit now, doing some reading and then literally just switching off the lights by 3:45am. Had some friends over today and realised I really care about them. One of them I was meeting after more than 6 months and he’s been going through a bit of tough time. Him getting me upto speed is when I realised how much I really felt for him.

I’ve been a bit triggered about lacking a romantic relationship over the last couple days so today was a bit of grieving the last person I dated. I thought I was mostly over them but today brought some new (old) inner feelings out, I guess. It’s been over a month since we ended things and I expected this much time to be enough for me to grieve. But maybe I need a few weeks more.

I’ve decided to purchase an electric and a semi-acoustic guitar soon but the research part of the purchases is not very fun.

I think I definitely want to complete 2 more songs before the end of this year. That’s doable, I think.

I haven’t taken a flight in a while. I think I’m missing the feeling. Even though flights and travel give me some anxiety, I think even WITH the anxiety, the overall feeling is nice and interesting. Maybe I’ll go somewhere early December.
I guess I used to think the net feeling in a moment is the “sum” of your positive and negative feelings but I think it’s not really that. It’s not [happiness minus anxiety = less happiness]. It’s just (happiness, anxiety). This is actually quite interesting to me. (#epiphanies)

This word-vomit is slow because I keep getting distracted. I’m really tired today though I don’t know why. I’ve slept enough and I didn’t do much. Maybe it’s just that. I didn’t do anything refreshing.

Do I really not have any thoughts at the moment? How is that possible?

I have many tasks to do this week, most of which I’m not looking forward to. So, then, what am I looking forward to, if not those tasks? How can I make this week a bit nice? There’s an open-mic I could sign up for potentially, but I don’t know what songs I’d want to sing. Okay yes, I think I can do this. It’s a task that’s the right amount of challenging, plus it’ll also be nice to move towards my medium-term goal of doing ten open-mics by the mid of next year. It’s also at this queer/mixer event type thing so it could potentially be nice to meet some new people, and I’ve been meaning to find ways to do that anyway.

I want to get back to 1000-word posts because I think more stuff comes out when you write 1000-word posts as opposed to shorter ones, so yeah– that’s something I’ll probably start doing soon. I’ve also decided I’m not switching to substack until I’ve written 10-long posts/essays that I’m actually satisfied with (where the satisfaction rating is at least a 7/10). Alright, these conclusions feel good.

062b – grief is not generous

Everything feels a little different now. The news of Matthew Perry’s death is hitting hard. I read the news in the morning and went back to sleep, hoping I’d wake up to a different reality.

I rarely feel this way about celebrity deaths (Matt Haig states the same sentiment in one of his very fresh posts). In fact he’s already expressed some of the things I’m feeling today / right now so maybe this is repetitive to anyone’s who’s reading this. But it doesn’t matter.

I rarely feel this way about celebrity deaths but maybe Friends was different. Even when I’d made real, made-to-last friendship bonds, Friends was still precious. Our friendships deepened over long character and episode discussions and many, many rewatches of them.

In school, I’d relate to Chandler a lot.

This May, I saw the reunion movie (after a long break from the series) on a flight to Bangalore, which I was on to visit my college friends, after a sufficiently long gap. I told them when I met them how fitting it was that we (well, most of us anyway) were all obsessed with this show during college and now here I was watching the reunion movie almost a decade later since we first became friends.

It’s all a lot.

I know a lot of people I know are feeling a lot. But I don’t know why that’s not making any of this easier.

I suppose grief has a way of taking all your attention, all your resources. Grief is not generous, I’m realising.

There’s also other contexts of the world (or our own personal lives, in many cases) that we cannot ignore. But we must grieve each story, each loss: whether we do it individually or separately is upto the feeler of said feelings.

Or maybe “big specific deaths” also bring into focus the fragility of life. You get tense about the things you haven’t done, the stories you haven’t told, the people you haven’t spent enough time with, the grudges you haven’t let go of yet, the nice things you haven’t said to the people you want to appreciate, all of that. And yet, will you change? Will you take the courage to do even a little bit of everything you haven’t done? I’m going to do it. I’m going to write love-letters (or e-mails) to all the important people in my life today. Or at least, as many as I can.

October seems like it’s becoming the season of goodbyes.

Wake me up when October ends, I think?

057a – some clarity

It’s been a difficult week. Anxiety has been super active, and I’ve found that it likes to focus most on two subjects: career and love.

The interesting thing to realise is that my anxiety doesn’t focus on geography as much lately. (I think this could be a sign that India is working well for me, potentially. However, I know that it could be conditional on the fact that I have kept my daily frustrations minimised to a high level. I think I do feel more number of smaller, daily frustrations here and yet feel more of a long-term overall groundedness. But if the frustrations were more for any reason, there is potential for that to rock that feeling of overall stability, of course).

re: career

I’ve gotten more clarity on this as well. I’ve found that music and writing are the two forms of creative expression that I gravitate most towards (for various reasons which I know very well but don’t need to list out here). I can legit sit at home and play, sing and learn music all day, and that’d keep me at peace and also happy and also satisfied, fulfilled. If I were living in a vacuum, I’d probably continue life the way it has been over the last couple months for at least another couple years. But because we live in a society, and money is a thing, I’m thinking I’ll start looking for part-time, remote jobs (what kind, I don’t know yet) starting January. This would still allow me to continue to spend on creative pursuits, I think. And then I can always reevaluate.

I also think I’m not a big fan of the term “career”. I don’t think I’ll be working on building another career, so to speak. I’m probably more aligned with the idea of jobs, yes, when you need money, and otherwise of course spending your time meaningfully is important, and for me that meaning can be derived from the little things. In the current phase of my life, majority of my “work”-time would be devoted to creative expression, whether or not I share the results with the world or not. It’s what allows me to best explore my inner world (and maybe even the external world), and it’s what gives me the most joy and meaning. Whether or not it’s enough for long-term satisfaction is something I’ll probably know with more time, but for now this is enough.

re: love

I’m learning to focus more on the present, as opposed to worries about the future. This is obviously valid for life in general too, but can sometimes really show up with relationships and dating stuff. I’m learning to work on some of my anxious-attachment symptoms, therapy has been super helpful with all of this. I’m learning to listen to my body and my gut as opposed to my mind. My mind is very loud, tuning into the body is often the only thing that helps me be closer to what I really want.

Time to head out for my vocals lesson. Cheers!

047a – the value of thought-dumps

People can be quite afraid of thought-dumps. Or self-deprecating about them. Like that isn’t “good writing”. But I (along with a lot of other people) think they can be super valuable. Like if I wasn’t afraid of thought-dumps I’d tell you how happy I feel when I have a nice time with a person I’m getting to know and learn about and how great I feel when I’m able to express that to them. If I wasn’t afraid of thought-dumps I’d tell you how excited I am for my morning blended iced-coffee and how I can’t wait for it to arrive. (The light is out so I can’t make it at home or I would’ve.) I’d tell you how grateful I’ve been feeling for some of my friends who’ve taught me how to communicate more, and better. Who make the logistics part of things easier. Who taught me that you can exchange goodbye hugs before you wear your bags so that the quality isn’t compromised. How bad I feel that I’ve been procrastinating on calling some people just because I’ve been unable to find blocks of time but I really do want to talk to them and get caught up with their lives. Thought-dumps show you what you care about the most, at the moment. Clearly, for me it’s people things. I didn’t fully love Bangalore as a city. This has been surprising for me since I’ve visited a few times and I’ve never noticed anything non-positive towards it. I like that I have so many people here, of course, but objectively, I don’t know if this is a city I’d want to move to, even to “just try” it. Maybe definitely not to “just try” it. If I had another reason to (like work), maybe then.

The other day a sufficiently close friend of mine told me I can be quite intimidating. The reason, he said, was that I have a really strong sense of boundaries and I’m also strict about making sure to set them, and not allow people to cross them. I think, his reasoning is fair. And of course, it’s not pleasant to hear that you can be (are) intimidating, especially if that’s coming from people you consider close, but then, I also think maybe that cost is unavoidable. I’m generally pretty socially satisfied and I don’t think that’s possible without strict boundaries. I have been letting loose quite a bit overall in this trip though. I’ve hung out with people throughout the two weeks, and let myself be in their physical presence for really long periods of time, even though I didn’t always feel safe or comfortable. I was realising yesterday that emotionally, my capacity to be vulnerable is quite high, much higher than most people I know, but what’s hard for me is vulnerability in physical space. (This includes just hanging out as well.)

So anyway, thought-dumps can be quite valuable. I hope people can see it too.

045b – gratitude + journeys

I am absolutely in love with the world today. I don’t know if it’s because my dad did a really cool ally thing* today morning or because a cute girl called me cute on Bumble or because I took the metro to go somewhere after ages of being fed up about traffic and the (perceived) lack of public transport in Delhi** or because I spotted (and bought) a super cool t-shirt at Uniqlo which gave me major gender euphoria (and general euphoria) and made me feel like I have great taste or because I had a nice time hanging out with this really close friend of mine or because… just. It’s probably all the things, not just one of them.

Regardless, it’s a happy day.

Overall, more good days than bad days over the last month. And that’s really great.

Having time for your emotions and ideas is really great. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back to the constrained ways of living. I mean, I still practice “discipline” a little bit, I haven’t let everything run amok. But I don’t think I can do the 9-5 routine thing anytime soon.

I like the idea of having “certain things” that you do do everyday. Like I like playing online Catan and having cold coffee for breakfast each morning (or noon, when I wake up). I like watching a little bit of good TV with some good food sometime in the day. I like reading, I like doing at least one creative thing (painting, singing, writing). And lastly, I like some physical exercise (workout at home or preferably a walk outside). I do like having these set things that I do do, almost daily. But I don’t like having “fixed” times around them. Or I don’t want a compulsion around any of this.

I love the journey. Some (very few) of my thoughts (very tiny thoughts) lately have been in colours. And images. I really like that. It’s like learning a new language. And then to truly learn a skill would be to directly be able to think in this different language as well. Because, sure, translations are important. But the real magic I think will happen when your consciousness directly receives these thoughts and feelings (from inside you) in this different language. (Think words, melodies, colours, movements, sounds as the “different languages”.)

Anyway, I’m not high. Point is, the universe is great, life is precious, routinely activities are nice, and learning a skill is like learning a language, and if you’re lucky, you get to enjoy the journey.

*cool ally thing: he forwarded me dates of a pride march that his company is doing in various cities

**public transport in Delhi is actually pretty decent, compared to some other cities in India. But of course, my latest point of comparison is the Netherlands, which is hard to beat, so I hope I can be excused.

034a – hey, 2022

I didn’t really get much time to reflect this month. Had a couple of flights in which I’d done some writing, but nothing similar to what I’d managed to do last year. Last year I had goals – small, big, I had achievements, I had pillars I wanted to focus on in the (then) coming months.. all the works.

I think this year I’ve been avoiding it a bit. Since I just got back from India around a week back, i’m still getting used to being alone, etc. I’ve been watching a lot of TV for some sense of normalcy, and trying to curb my smoking, for the most parts.

I think that’s also the major thought I’m trying to avoid. i.e. whether I should be working on reducing (quitting?) smoking this year. It’s a hard thought.. I’m already anxious around it all the time, why would I deliberately sit and think about it, right?

But I’ve been forgetting how facing these devious thoughts is the only way to make them lose their power. So, here I am. Ready now, I think.

Let’s start with the big blocks I want to be focusing on. A rare moment of clarity made me realize those are going to be love, peace and growth. I don’t think this needs more thought, I can’t think of anything else that’s more important. Well, alright – maybe discipline a bit? Routines, in some ways. Though I don’t feel too strongly about that so I probably won’t be trying too hard on that. Health, though.. is a whole other conversation. Health is going to be important to think about, it needs to be. My aim for January is going to be to track smoking, and not let it go beyond 2-3 cigarettes a day. I think I will also need to add some physical exercise to my week. It’s been completely absent for almost the last 6 months. Mornings, as much as I can. Evenings, if mornings don’t work out. Diet, I think a bit as well. Would want to eat healthier. Of course I would have to break all this down into more actionable goals, but this is a good start, for now.

I want to continue to create more.. content / art / watchamacallit. So that’s continuing to write, clicking pictures, playing and making more music (with more people as well).

Love. SIGH. I think it’s looking more clear that it’s going to be hard for me to organically meet someone. I might have to accept that dating apps is where it’s at, for me. Once I accept that fully, I’ll probably be able to put in the work as well. Let’s see though, I don’t know if I feel like thinking about this right now..

Insecurities, self-confidence, self-acceptance.. I think that’s going to continue to be an ongoing journey, but I want to stay on the path, even if it’s never ending. I definitely don’t want to stop the “fight” so to say.

Alright, I think that’s all I can do for now, happy new year folks!

031b – welcome, september

Humans don’t provide much comfort today, so here I am again. Have to get over more feelings I recently acquired. Vulnerability doesn’t feel easy either. Friends are good, nice, magical even, but things are hard still. Art is nice, helpful, magical even, but things are quite difficult anyway.

Been watching this show called Normal People and Hulu and it’s probably one of the best, most beautiful things I’ve seen on TV. Pretty emotionally intense, to the point that it can even become hard to watch sometimes, but man did they do a good job on it.

Life is a little tough lately, the matters of the heart have come around to bother me once again. I will be spending the next few weeks attempting to get over someone. Once again, I find myself wishing that feelings were easier, though I know that wouldn’t achieve anything. I want time to pass faster because I’m hoping it’ll do its thing, but I also don’t want it to – for multiple reasons, one simply being that I only have a few more months here in the States.

I spoke to an ex on call after a few months today, and if I’m being honest it made me feel really good – mostly because I realized how, given enough time, feelings do pass, and eventually you’re able to see people as simply friends, or people, regardless of how strongly you might have felt about them at a point in time.

I have 1.5 days of the long weekend still left with me, I’d like to catch up on chores and some housework before Tuesday arrives – things have been pending for quite a few weeks now. I also wanted to work on some music stuff, but unable to find the inspiration for it. I know the lyrics are decent and the melody for the verse is pretty decent too, just haven’t been able to figure out how the chorus should go. Ah well, should probably treat it with a little more respect and just sit down at my desk to work on this, rather than hoping that it’ll come to me in my sleep or something. Also want to make some travel plans for the end of this month. And as usual, need to follow up on some emails. Wow, this might just be turning into a verbose todo list.

Anyway, love (or lack thereof) is hard. I miss having constant friends (people) around. At this age people move around so quick, or they keep traveling, or they’re just busy. Everyone’s seems to be living in the abundance mindset, maybe I need to as well. My smoking addiction is off the charts – noting it down here so I have some accountability. Maybe I should get a vape to transition into quitting. Sleep’s been much better though.

Clearly haven’t written in a while since 500 words is getting hard to reach. I know it’s not a big deal but I’ll try to be regular again (for myself, of course). Happy September!

002 – sexuality

Alright folks, today I want to write about something I’ve been sitting on for a while. And that is – my ~discovering my sexuality~ journey. It’s been terribly complex (still is), but I think I finally have some answers – answers that come with their sweet share of complex emotions – but for the last couple months as I’ve been riding down an intense heartbreak, I’ve also slowly been recognizing and accepting a new immense relief that’s been coming around. Something that must only mean that I’m at least somewhat beyond the muddy cloud of “WTF DO I WANT”.

Weirdly, the last couple years have been full of a lot of open questions, most of which are still unanswered.. but over the last few months I’ve also just wanted to play around with writing a little bit more. @visakanv calls things like these word vomits, and i’d like to do the same. Right now this is just a note in my notes app, but I hope to set up a website or something in the next month or so, so I can start sharing them to a single sink.

So it seems that these answers come to me at a good time – a time where i’m motivated enough to try to make them coherent and share them out into the world.

However, writing, thinking and talking about sexuality, though extremely interesting, carries a big obvious problem with it. It involves “coming out”.

Now, coming out probably deserves a whole other word vomit by itself. It’s such a complex and personal act, so different for everyone. But I’ll try to write about it in the context of this piece. I was 18 when I’d realized that I’m not straight. So I picked the “bisexual” label for myself and then continued to do life “normally”. The people who needed to know knew about it and I was mostly comfortable enough with the idea of it. I did still operate on a “need to know” basis, and I think I still do, to a large extent, but I’ve been questioning it lately. I’ve always had a complex relation with “attention (seeking and receiving)” as well, and thus coming out was always something I’d been conflicted about.

One of the biggest problems I always had with the idea of coming out was context. And I know now as I write about it that this is a problem with anything that is important or vulnerable to me. How do I, when I tell someone something about myself, capture the confusion and the story that exists behind that piece of information? How can I say “I’m queer” without always wanting to talk about the whole story? How can I say “I’m currently exclusively dating women” and yet hold back this simultaneous thought of “I know I sound really sure about what I want but I question this everyday.” And today I realize this comes from an unnecessary need of wanting to be exactly right, all the time. Wanting to be be precisely correct, to really live up to what I say, to not say something if I’m not sure about it. Only recently I’ve accepted that I cannot fulfill this need for myself. I can try my best, but of course my thoughts and feelings are subject to change. Nobody else holds this almost crazy expectation from me (as people rarely do), it was mostly inherent.

Apart from context, there’s the second big one. Shame. Any queer person (person who’s queer? i’m not sure what the correct usage is at this point) can probably go on for ages about shame, I’m sure, but I’ll save you, the reader, from that, for now. But in general, of course shame is a big rock. Even once I was beyond my “own” feelings of shame, there’s the collateral shame to think about (i.e. shame that my close ones might feel about my sexuality). I sound really chill in this paragraph I know, but I’ve only recently slightly risen above that. And I needed a really strong close person to truly help me see that.

The third one, and this one sucks a little for me to accept because I haven’t seen enough dialog around it – but the third one is a very selfish one – the risk of losing “free” attention from men (right now, and.. maybe even forever?). Addressing this opens two questions up – 1/ do I even want attention from men – if so in what ways? 2/ maybe I just don’t want it right now, and it’s probably okay if i realize that i do want it later? (The second one again ties back into the initial problem of context, and how hard it is for me to accept that “right now” is all there is.) This problem I think is very normal, and yet a little hard to accept. It’s probably the same as staying in a relationship someone’s not completely happy with – because they risk losing some of the things they like – generally comfort, normalcy, some sort of happiness, even if it’s not fully real? So, yep. It’s that. But of course I know what lies at the other end – probably, attention that I do want. Attention that I will maybe value more, maybe like more, maybe like in different ways. Possibly, real happiness. Or at least, more answers. Or at least, new questions.

Now that I’ve acknowledged and addressed the three big problems with coming out, I can safely come out. I don’t know where on the Kinsey scale I lie and I don’t know what my labels are – but for now I’m exclusively dating women and identifying as queer.

Now that I’ve addressed coming out, I come back to sexuality. (Do you see how amazing it is to unthread the levels of thoughts and feelings? ah I love it). (Re)discovering and accepting my sexuality has been so amazing. I’ve been developing new crushes left and right, I’ve been discovering how exciting it can be to have sustained eye contact with women, I’ve been discovering so much beauty in the world. I’m feeling super optimistic about the world and life. And the one that makes me the most happy – I’m finally accepting men for who they are. I’m excited about rediscovering them as equal members of the society who I might just not be sexually attracted to. This is the one I’m most excited to write more about, and hopefully I can do that in another piece.