motivation – untitled atm

061a – training

Training hard, training myself to live in the present more and more. Yesterday was a very packed day, I chose action and activity a lot more over “sitting and thinking and doing nothing”. Tiring, but satisfying, in most ways. It’s a little scary to realise that most people might already be living this way, naturally. That they might be so well-adjusted that they don’t have to “do” this? Deliberately? Eh, I know this line of thinking isn’t very helpful, but it’s alright.

This week and the previous week has been more action-oriented, for sure, and I think it’s been good that way. Making stuff can be addictive though, and I do have a tendency to go all in, even at the cost of food, health, sleep, social needs and/or other healthy habits. Don’t want that for myself. Want to maintain balance even when I’m inspired and active with “work”.

I’ve had a couple of really crazy nights, I think I had “trips” without any intoxicants, I’ve experienced some new feelings (mostly positive) over the last couple days, I don’t know whether I just thunk myself into this new territory or whether they were real, only time can tell, but it was interesting, at the least.

Two conflicts remain though:

Can I (and how) spare 3-4 hours a week for social work? I really want to, but how much do I want to? It’s draining for sure, but it’s also an opportunity, and it’s work that’s aligned with my values, I think if I set a schedule it shouldn’t be tough. Let’s figure this out this week.
Do “good” work and share it is the advice Austin Kleon gives in his book “Steal Like An Artist”. I’ve always believed you get good at something only by doing a ton of it. But even after that (let’s say after a certain units of said thing), how do you differentiate between work and “good” work? I’ve been focused on action, and I’m going to continue to do that for the next couple months, see how much capacity I have for even just “doing the work”, but at some point I’m also going to have to start thinking about how to focus on doing “good” work, I guess.
Of course, would need to think more about what “good” even means. (To me, to him, to the world). Okay, it’s a fair concern, but a concern for future-me.

Anyway, as I was going over this book again, two of my other worries were somewhat addressed. People, other people I mean, people who haven’t engaged enough with “multiple passions” I suppose, always keep telling me I need to focus on something if I want to “get somewhere”. But Austin says you don’t need to cut out any of your interests. In fact, it’s futile and counterproductive to do so. So, I’m going to trust him on that.

The other thing which I’d been worried about (like I’ve mentioned in previous few posts as well) is the sharing aspect of creation. It’s tough not only because of the pipelines but also because sometimes the things you make/share don’t get enough engagement etc. But again, Austin (bless him lol) says that in the beginning, obscurity can be good. It keeps you free from pressure and expectations. You can experiment without thinking about it too much. So, yeah, I’m going to try to make the most of obscurity. If it ever lifts, great, if not, I still have everything I want.

Will end this with beautiful thoughts by John Kim: Give less fucks on what people think about you and where you should be in life and more (real) fucks on what you can do and how you can be present and be of service to yourself and the world. (I’ve modified these for myself but I’ve added a link to the post in case anyone’s look for motivation!)

056b – blocked or directionless?

I think I’ve been resisting a lot. Moments, feelings, thoughts. Resistance makes everything so much tougher than it needs to be. What am I feeling, really?

Right now, I think I do feel some amount of boredom, lack of motivation. I do feel a pressure to “do”, in a specific direction. In a direction that might feel justifiable to the brain. But I’m tired of my brain ruining my life. I’m tired of my brain constantly asking for attention. When it’s my body, my heart and my soul that I want to give more of my attention (and awareness to). So, okay, maybe the resistance was present for a reason. Maybe the resistance was coming from my body, and not from brain. Maybe my body knows that we don’t want to give in to the brain right now. The brain acts like a dictator at times, maybe the resistance was a combined protest.

I’m actually also feeling blocked by an Amazon pickup scheduled for “sometime” today. They haven’t really given me a specific time and generally somebody comes by before this time in the day. I need to take a shower and get on with life, but this thing has been blocking me since the afternoon.

I wish I could understand my cravings better, how they shift from one to another. How different addictions play against (or with) one another.

Adulting and surviving has been quite tough lately. I need to start “living” more again. I think the weather has been a major blocker to everything. I just feel so bogged down by the tiny but very many problems in and around me.

Okay, gratitude and positives: I have a vocals lesson coming up in a couple hours which I’m definitely looking forward to. I also like the walk back home from the place, so that’ll be nice. I can also practice drums a little bit if I can get there earlier.

Hoping the weather improves a bit over the next couple weeks, so I can try going out more during the day.

I think I’m definitely observing large amounts of the need of “control” over everything in life. It’s just so difficult for me to “let go” of things and let them take their course. I want to get better at surrendering to moments.

The thing that’s been helping the most is this book I started reading called Conversations on Love. It has a lot of helpful perspectives and different philosophies that can be applied even outside the context of love. The thing that’s helped the most so far is an introspection of “longing” as a feeling, which I do often struggle with.

Since I’m actually struggling with this right now as well, I’ll try to write some quick thoughts on longing: wanting something different than what you have, feel or are right now. Often, it’s unexplainable why you want the present moment to be different than what it is.

For me, currently it comes from an overarching feeling of lack of direction in life. Though I don’t think it’s completely true that direction is lacking. It’s maybe just enough, yet. Like there’s some presence of direction, but maybe I want more of it. Like a stronger presence of it.

I don’t know, maybe today’s a little like walking a bit in different directions but finding each path blocked, so I keep returning to take a new path. But I keep coming back. That’s the main problem. Anyway, maybe this wasn’t completely futile.

027 – find the why of whatever you’re doing

The other day I was talking about goals with a couple of friends. I mentioned how I’ve started this project where I’m hoping to write a 100,000 words. Both of them reacted with surprise about how that sounds like a lot. And I explained a bit about how it’s just 100 posts that’s a 1000 words long, and then I immediately shifted to how “it’s probably a wish, not a goal”. I’m wondering whether there’s something worth examining here. I know that in the past I’ve had problems with being ambitious in public, and I generally prefer to err on the side of underselling myself. I know where all that comes from, but I wonder if it’s worth continuing. Did I need to change the terminology of this project from a goal to a wish? Did it have any consequences?

I’ve been writing less since the last couple of weeks and part of me thinks this might have affected my motivation. Though I think most probably there’s other factors that might have affected it and this might be *completely* unrelated.. I still feel like it might have had at least like a 10% role to play. Almost like not-owning up to the goal in that moment made me subconsciously relax from it.

I stumbled across a post of Visa’s where he examines his reasons for doing this, and it made me realize it’s worth doing that from time to time. It’s like when you’re questioning your love for something you try to remember why you started, and why (if at all) you want to keep going.

Earlier (way back in my first post), I’d listed these few reasons for wanting to do this:

To “fight off” vulnerability
Developing as a “writer”
Developing as a person / growth
Potentially meet people + have more / more interesting conversations

I think I’ve successfully handled vulnerability now (this is huge for me, btw)! I don’t feel this urge to backspace words or delete posts, I rarely feel hesitancy before publishing. I think I still feel some hesitancy while sharing specific posts with individual people (especially people I know IRL), but overall, in terms of publishing on the blog itself, I’m in a good place.

I’m pretty sure I’ve developed as a writer too. I scoff less every time I use the term. I’m okay with calling myself an “aspiring writer” and letting it exist on the home-page of this blog as well. I’ve become much better at talking about this in real life conversations as well. I’ve already talked about this in some of my previous posts, but words flow easier now too. I don’t second-guess my sentences much, unless I’m trying to do creative-writing. Which brings me to another gain. I didn’t think I would actually end up writing creatively at all when I’d started this – but I’ve found that I’m able to (even if not too much), and I’ve also found it to be quite satisfying and inspiring.

Definitely developed as a person. My weeks are better when I’m writing enough, it’s showing up in my mood and my therapy sessions too. I feel like I’m able to process difficult things without always having to wait for my appointments. Realized that I can feel empty, if I want to. I don’t always have to feel overwhelmed with thoughts. Realizing that I don’t always need to share thoughts and feelings with people, pretty much writing about them is good enough as well. Since I was testing whether there’re limits to introspection, I think I might have found my answer for that as well. (It’s most likely a yes, as discussed here.)

I haven’t had a lot of the last one, but I haven’t felt the need for it either. I did initially try to share some of posts with specific people to initiate conversations about certain topics, but turns out it didn’t go the way I wanted. I think once you’re sort of done with writing about something, it’s hard to care about it again. This is weird and I’m not sure if that should be the case, honestly.

And then one other unintended gain I’ve gotten is that I’ve gotten quite decent at titles. Earlier the titles would end up being very straightforward summarizers (which is fine too), but I think I’ve gotten much better at making them a bit more catchy.

Looks like I’ve met most of what I wanted to achieve from this, so it makes sense my motivation might not be as high as it was when I’d started. Time to redefine goals and OKRs then?

Creative writing – Do more creative writing (not sure what this will look like but I must investigate)
Research – Delve into the dark cloud of research – why I don’t like it, why it’s scary, what does a well-researched piece of writing look like, what’s the line between being inspired by existing work and “generating” new work almost entirely by existing work?
Sharing – Think about sharing work – why I should do it – how I can do it better?

I think I should be able to come up with some more goals (these don’t seem enough) but it’s funny how this looks like a classic case of “I want to do something, so I’ll find reasons to do it”. I wonder if we often function like that? How many “needs” in the world are “created” needs?

Okay I think I’ll wrap this up with a third unintended gain I’ve had. I realized I’m definitely able to enjoy this (writing) purely by itself too, not just when I’m using it as an escape. Quite happy about that, nothing else to say here!

001 – all creative work is vulnerable

I’m stuck in a new place. I’ve 5 word-vomits sitting in my notes app, I’ve set up a WordPress website and everything, I’ve tried making one post public and hidden it again. Just five days ago I was super excited to write quickly and publish quickly, and get to ten published posts as quickly as possible. But today I feel like it’s a hard act, I’m feeling hesitant. I’m feeling hesitant about being vulnerable. Not about the writing per se, since we’ve established that we don’t need to worry about the quality, but about the content. It’s real, it’s raw.

I first saw the words “all art is vulnerable” on one of Timothy Goodman’s posts, and it resonates a lot from time to time. And while I’m not at the stage where I can call these word-vomits art (hence the title), the feeling’s still the same, of course. And since I’ve taken up this project at a time where most of my “battles” have reached their brim, of course all of my writing is going to be about all of it. At present, there’s three big rocks in my life that are not fully resolved and sometimes (often) cause me a lot of shame and pain. They’re 1/ my body dysmorphia, anxiety and occasional depression, 2/ my sexuality 3/ my relationship with my work. I’m also aware that they might never feel fully resolved and that’s okay too. But of course they’re going to show up if I talk to anyone honestly. And of course I’m going to be honest in a word-vomit, how can I not be?

So I guess I need to accept that the only way I can write, write, and write, is to accept the following few things

These three things are a big part of me
These things do cause me some shame and hence I’m a little afraid to put them out into the world
There’s things that people will think (if they read this) and opinions that they will form
There’s a big part of me that worries about what they’ll think and what opinions they’ll form
The only way out is through

Well, there it is. Maybe it’ll be easier now. A lot of amazing people have said a lot of amazing things about vulnerability. It was slightly over a year ago when I’d first seen Brené Brown’s – A Call to Courage. This was the first time someone had made me think about life from the lens of vulnerability. Nobody had ever explained the word better than she had done it, or at least – nobody had ever talked about it the way she had. And I knew then that that’s all there is to life. Vulnerability and connection. So, I know, that it’s okay that I’m feeling this, and that maybe I’ll continue to feel this all the time. Yet, it’s hard. So I’d love to think about, in a little detail, what I hope to achieve by being vulnerable with these word-vomits. Why should I publish these? In the best case scenario, what do I get? In the worst case scenario, how do I cope and continue doing it anyway – if I need to?

I do have some experience with being vulnerable on the internet, so I’ll probably consider that as well.

How have I been vulnerable in the past and how have I benefited from it?

I started posting “artsy” pictures on Instagram a few years ago. I think I’ve developed as a “photographer”. I started from super basic stuff, really really basic phone camera stuff. Got a good amount of validation from various kinds of people – people whose skills I admired, people whose tastes I admired. Unexpected, genuine compliments. Great conversations. Confidence. Development of skills. Development of taste. Stronger connections with some of these people.
Then, I started posting some music stuff a couple years ago as well. This one was actually harder since it was much more vulnerable, since I’d had negative feelings about my voice in the past. I also posted videos, which was very hard too since I’d had negative feelings about my ~aesthetic~ in the past as well. Regardless, a similar thing happened. The compliments and validation made me genuinely wonder and eventually believe that I’m not “as bad” as I’d thought I was. I ended up starting singing lessons. I got better. I started owning the fact that I like to play music / sing. I even started dreaming about composing music someday.
Lastly, I joined twitter and started posting about my body dysmorphia and anxiety. Again, terribly hard when I started. Got a ton of engagement on all of that “content”. But so much to be grateful for! I remember it being super scary when more and more IRL friends started following me. But it opened the door for amazing IRL conversations as well. I realized I like conversations. I realized I like meeting and talking to new people! (Something I’d never thought about myself before.) I met new people through Twitter – it was pretty cool.

I mean, it’s all here. It’s all good things. So let’s get to the next question.

What do I hope to achieve from this project?

For starters, it’ll probably be a good additional point for the next time I’m questioning something like this again. Instead of 3 points in the previous paragraph, I’ll have 4.
Just based on evidence, I’ll probably be a slightly better writer at some point of time if I keep doing this. Or at least, my perspective on my writing could become more holistic. I could become okay with calling it writing instead of constantly calling them word-vomits.
@visakanv mentioned this in his reasons for doing this, but yes, I’ll probably be a different person by doing this, and doing it publicly. And I’m excited to meet her!
Of course, I could make some new friends because of this, have new and/or deeper conversations. Good ol’ connection.

In the worst-case scenario, what happens, and how do I cope, and go on if I need to?

People will know of details about me that they decide they didn’t really wanna know. I suppose they wouldn’t tell me if they realize something like that. So I wouldn’t really know that they thought something like that. Even if they say something like “oh you’re being too vulnerable”.. well, what is too vulnerable? It’s me. Of course I could be judged for these parts of me, but that’s probably a small price to pay for all of those benefits I listed above. So I’m sure I’ll cope.
I mean that’s all there generally is, right? Fear of judgement. The one that I feel most vulnerable about is my sadness. I don’t know. There’s this one word-vomit that’s super raw, reading it makes me feel a lot of pain. Now, I’m not assuming that a third person will feel it just because I do. But maybe I’m scared of the feelings of pity. Nobody wants to be pitied. Well, compassion is different from pity. So maybe people will know how to be compassionate instead. Regardless, I wouldn’t know. Or I probably wouldn’t care in the grand scheme of things etc. So I guess I’ll cope? I guess we’ll see.

Okay, things make sense now. I’m not sure in what order I’ll start posting these. In the order I wrote them or in some other order. But I think I’m ready.